Asterism

6. sound familiar?

WHEN Marley and Jacobi were kids, they travelled everywhere in the world - without ever leaving their bedroom.

Marley was close friends with her librarian, who let her use the coveted colour printer in the staff room to print photo collages of Hawaii, Spain, Japan, France, England...all beautiful places with beautiful sights.

She'd bring them home to Jacobi, and they'd map out their world tour. Where to first? Where to second? Disney World is a must, for a third stop. A final stop at a tropical resort, able to sit by the beach with sun on their skin and sand in their hands.

It was something they fantasized as poor kids, getting out of their small town. For as long as Marley has memories of her older brother, he wanted to take off and see the world. He wanted it to be smaller because he'd travelled longer.

But maybe all along, his only purpose was to outrun his demons. Would a flight between his childhood home have them hiding under his bed? Would a hike in mountains leave them stranded on a cliff? Would they fall off a city tour bus going fast enough?

He had delusions. He heard voices in his head he couldn't place, couldn't explain. Some nights he slept for twelve hours, and others not a wink. Some nights he held Marley down in a closet, the men downstairs out to get him, out to get his sister. Some nights there were no men, there was no sound, but his racing heart as unidentifiable fear gripped him, and refused to let go.

One night his sister, only trying to follow after him - was the enemy. That night, she was pushed down the stairs for being too close to an episode, where his demons decided to dance.

A night their father protected her, a night that was supposedly not the first of its kind.

Jacobi Hoover dreamed of escape for as long as Marley Hoover can remember, but it had always been escape from himself.

When the episodes got worse, the nights more gruelling, their mother decided she'd had enough. She couldn't watch her son suffer uselessly, not able to afford traditional American healthcare. A clinic doctor gave her a card, promised it'd solve her problems.

With a ticket to Mexico, her son would be admitted to a facility with free room and board. He would be given a team of doctors and a team of nurses and a team of therapists. He'd be provided free medications for as long as he lived, once they found ones that worked. Jacobi was an oddity, a rarity, having developed such severe paranoid schizophrenia in early childhood - and they wanted to take notes, wanted to know more. That was all, and they'd let him go once he showed signs of improvement.

Marley's mother could go home, could see her family. She had an opening to leave a husband who saw her as a piece of furniture.

The price to pay? Leave her daughter behind.

But she did, and seven years later - the abandoned daughter met the broken son on the floor of a gravel trail in the woods, where he'd done whatever he'd had to, used whatever methods he could, to get there. To be free from a facility that turned into an experimental prison.

Jacobi had been given pills to heighten his condition, his hallucinations, his fits. Told to describe them the next day by doctors who wanted more information for decade-long studies. Promised they'd adjust him, when they were simply putting a lab rat in new scenarios, and watching it squirm from the other side of the cage.

The facility - raided by the FBI in January - held hundreds of women, men, children and adolescents. All suffering different disorders, all being tested under the same premise. All with signed over waivers that they were unfit to make their own medical decisions. All declared the hospital, the doctors, as their legal guardian.