The Dollhouse Asylum by Mary Gray

he drops his gaze to the ground.
    My heart warms. I know how he’s feeling—it’s an emotion I’ve felt many times myself. When you’re drowning and you don’t know if you’ll survive, you need someone to toss you a life preserver so you can continue to float. It’s an honor to do something like that for him, because he has always, always done that for me.
    Clearing my throat loudly, I open up my arm toward Bee, who’s still dangling her feet over the edge of the wall.
    “Thisbe,” I say, pointing to my redheaded friend perched high on the wall, “would go to her room and converse with her lover through a crack.” I try glaring at Bee, but when she doesn’t get what I’m trying to say, I jerk my head toward the other side of the wall.
    This works, for she’s sighing, “All right, all right,” and I watch as she swings her pale leg over the wall. Thank you, Bee .
    I wait, and maybe two or three seconds later there’s an “Oof!” That probably means she’s landed—is she okay?—but then she calls out, “I’m fine, I’m fine.”
    Smiling, I move on with the tale. “So the lovers conversed through the wall,” I repeat what Teo said moments before. Only Ramus has somehow lumbered away from the stage, so I gesture toward where he should be standing.
    “Ramus,” I say, trying to be patient, “stand over there.”
    Like he has the next ten years to act, Ramus strolls impossibly slowly over to the crack in the wall, hands in his pockets.
    Seriously ? I don’t have time for this. So I move on and say, “And what did Pyramus say?” Crap . How did that line start? Nothing’s coming. Crap, oh crap, oh crap. Maybe he’ll improvise or something.
    But Ramus shrugs, and I could shake him by the shoulders now. He opens his mouth. I tense, waiting to hear the eloquence rolling from his tongue, when he offers, “Hey.”
    I groan. Really? That’s the best he can do? I try to make a joke out of it. “Pyramus was most eloquent.”
    Teo laughs, slow and happy, and all I need is his warmth beside me. It may take some time, but together, we can teach the others to love the stories as much as we do.
    Smiling, Teo continues for me, “Of course, Pyramus didn’t speak alone. His Thisbe talked right back.”
    Everything falls silent when at last Bee answers, “Hey, Ramus, lover. I saw you checking out my legs!”
    Eloise slaps a hand over her mouth again, and the frizzy-haired Doublemint twin, Gwen, hunches over, holding her gut. Even Teo and I chuckle together. But Teo, recovering himself quickly, says over the laughter, “But the couple soon discovered the wall was not enough.”
    I join him. “So the couple decided to meet.”
    “At a mulberry tree,” Teo says, smiling at me. Releasing my hand, he walks off the stage. I can’t tell why until a string of lights flickers on and, like Teo said, there’s a mulberry tree. He reaches up to touch one of the branches, and like the other trees in the front yards, this, too, is new—slim and short. “Thisbe arrived first,” Teo says, studying the delicate leaves of the tree.
    It’s sort of awkward. Shouldn’t Bee be on this side now?
    “Thisbe stood there,” Teo’s saying, “and along came a lion. A female—her jaws drenched in blood. Terrified, Thisbe fled, dropping her veil. Our dear maiden would not want to be consumed by a lion!”
    A few people on the grass laugh, but it’s only a hiccup compared to the laughter before. The Doublemint twins, plaid-shirted Romeo, even Sal with his glasses slipping down his nose, smile. But Marcus isn’t smiling at all. He’s whispering something to Cleo and pointing through the trees. Ugh. Why can’t he pay attention to the most exciting part of the tale? It’s his own fault for missing everything.
    Looking away from Marcus, I join Teo next to the tree, and from the corner of my eye see Ana fidgeting again with the orange shawl on her head.
    “When Pyramus arrived,” I join Teo again, “he found his lover’s