the brink, the wind from the chasm swirling her skirts wildly about her knees. "Don't be afraid. There's no other way. Look! The fire is getting closer. Jump with me, Nicholas. Fly with me!"
"Doreen, this is crazy. We'll be killed."
"Yes, crazy, that's what we are. Now, Nicholas, now." She grabbed his other hand and yanked him toward her for a kiss so deep he didn't notice as she angled their bodies precariously over the edge until she set them spinning into space. Still joined by their kiss and clasped hands, they seemed caught by the wind for a while as they dipped and swirled like falling leaves.
She broke the kiss. "We're free, Nicholas! Now they'll never get us back." The wind whipped the words from her, and they splintered in echoes down the ravine. She stiffened her fingers and slipped them free of his, and they parted.
"Doreen! Doreen?" He realized with the jolt of awakening that he had spoken her name out loud. His heart still thumping in his ears, he pulled himself upright and blinked away the remnants of his dream. God, Doreen! He shuddered with the memory. Why had he dreamed of her after all this time? The sky lightened outside and the hall bustled with early morning activity. He thought a walk and maybe a smoke in the parking lot would dispel his foreboding.
No one could blame him for what happened to Doreen. No one could have stopped her. No one. Nicholas paused in the doorway to look once more at Trissa. No, it would be nothing like Doreen this time. He would not let things get beyond his control. He was older now. But was he wiser?
Over the months he had learned to adjust his gait to the altered state of his foot since the loss of his frostbitten toes, but when he was weary or too absorbed in his thoughts, his limp became pronounced. Tonight, it was aggravated by stiffness from his hours slumped in the chair so that his walk down the hall made a clump and drag sound he was, at first, unaware came from him. When he realized it did, his spirits sagged further.
A cigarette and the walk would not be enough. He was faced with a decision that would require a half a pack, a quart of strong coffee, and some serious pacing. His determination to be with Trissa when she awoke evaporated as the memory of Doreen gnawed at him.
"Crazy is not wrong, only different." Doreen often told him. "They lock us away because we scare the bejeebers out of them," she would declare as she picked at a lock with a hairpin. Doreen had the skill of Houdini, if not the speed. And Nicholas was confident that with practice that would develop. She was only seventeen. "The locks take the place of the inhibitions that keep them bound but that we lack. Open sesame!" The tumbler would turn and the door would fly open and they would be off, hand in hand, down the stairs and free.
Nicholas did not remember his beginnings at Edgewater. It seemed his conscious life had begun the day Doreen found him there. "I can get you out of here, Nicholas. Come with me." She took his hand and they escaped that day for the first time. Lying in the aromatic cedar woods, with glimpses of sparkling, blue Lake Michigan winking at them occasionally through the trees, they discussed life and death and craziness.
"How old are you, Nicholas?"
"Fifteen, I think." Or newborn with your touch, he could have said. Age had no real meaning for him.
"Never follow a statement of fact with a doubt," she said, "Even if you have one. Don't give them the satisfaction. If you think you are fifteen, then you are, no matter how long you have actually lived. Me, I prefer to think I'm seventy-one. A reversal of digits does no one any harm. And it's an age no one else aspires to, I imagine. Unless you're already seventy, that is."
"But why so old?"
"Wisdom. It comes with age. Wisdom is the most important thing in life. Except death. And being seventy-one puts me closer to both of them."
Her dark eyes snapped and sparkled at him. Was it honesty or mockery he saw in their depths?
"Does the word make you nervous?"
"What word?" he asked, dragging his own eyes away from the hypnotic depths of hers, casting them up through the trees, anywhere but down at her.