Read Online The Shibboleth by John Hornor Jacobs - Free Book Online Page B

world.”
    I’m cold for a moment, colder than normal, colder than the air of the ward, colder than the tiles of the building.
    â€œWhat is it?” I whisper back.
    Eyes open now, Rollie’s giving me the lip-nibbling look of worry, like she’s said too much. So I give her the old salesman grin, my tool of the trade back before Jack and the shibboleth busted up the party. When she smiled mean—that hurt and desperate smile—it didn’t do much for her appearance. But now, this vulnerability softens her and for a moment I feel like I can see her how she should be: whole, 11 percent body fat, olive-skinned, and smiling wholeheartedly on a softball field with other girls, her hair pulled back and threaded through the rear of her cap. Not this rattled bundle of nerves, fingernails eroded to nubs, hair as short as a prisoner’s, breathing out the ammoniac poisons her body generates as it devours itself.
    No, for an instant, I can see her beauty.
    And maybe that’s what the shibboleth is. It’s the commonality of human existence. It lets me get in their heads because we’re the same, all of us, this human utterance.
    She blinks and says, “I don’t know,” shaking her head. And the moment evaporates.
    We’ve been standing right outside the open double doorway, yet no one seems to notice two patients in gowns furiously whispering in their midst. A big bull-nurse sits on a stool by the door as zombies shamble in and out, humming, using their fingertips to trace invisible patterns in the air.
    We enter the reading room. There are magazines and
National Geographics
and books for teens, Judy Blume and Madeleine L’Engle. There’s a full set of smudged and threadbare Harry Potters and the requisite Tolkien. Fantasy is the preferred literature of the psych ward, it seems.
    I find a book of poetry called
The Sorrow of Architecture
by Liam Rector and paw through it. Rollie picks up a
Glamour
magazine. She’s silent now, and I have much to think about, but it’s hard keeping a single idea in my head with the medication thrumming and shivering in my system. It’s as if I cannot concentrate on anything for more than an instant, but each instant is an eternity. But Rollie stays close, occasionally glancing at me as if making sure I haven’t gone too far away.
    I can’t say how long I’ve stared at the same poem before moving on to a copy of
Songs of Innocence and Experience
and then, because the words begin to swim on the page, onto an issue of
People
, where everyone is beautiful and smiling. Flipping through the pages, I realize that in Hollywood, everyone gets a good night’s sleep.
    â€œAren’t you supposed to be showing me around?” I ask when I can’t look at any more magazines.
    â€œYou’ve seen the cafeteria. This is the reading room. That leaves the Wreck Room. Wreck with a
W
.”
    â€œGotcha. Because it’s a wreck.”
    â€œNo, because we are.” She tosses her
Glamour
onto the pile on the table and stands. “Come on, we can go play Chutes and Ladders. That’s not a euphemism for anything.” She winks at me. “Unless you want it to be.”
    In the Wreck Room, there’s a smattering of zombies pushing plastic figures around on printed cardboard. There’s one table of boys and girls seriously engaged in a card game. One of the boys is just bawling his head off, tears streaming down his face and snot running from his nose, and none of them seem to notice. In the corner, a very tall, very fat girl sings a song and tosses brightly colored Uno cards into a box, one by one.
    I am you, and you are me, though we always disagree
… It’s a strange little song, yet she’s got a wonderful voice, a choir voice. Rich timbre, throaty. She’s found a melody, minor, lilting.
Me is you and you am he, one and two and one make three.
I feel like I’ve heard the song before,