Walk Two Moons

Phoebe and Sal take a bus to Chanting Falls the next day. Ben is also on the bus, though he’s visiting the hospital rather than the university. When the bus arrives, Phoebe and Sal find Mike’s dormitory. Phoebe, however, is too frightened to go to his room: “What if we knocked on his door and he opened it and pulled us inside and slit our throats?” (229). Instead, the girls go out onto the quad, where they see Mrs. Winterbottom and Mike sitting together on a bench. As they watch, Mrs. Winterbottom kisses Mike on the cheek.

Upset, Sal runs back toward the bus stop. However, in her confusion she overshoots and ends up at the hospital, at which point she realizes Phoebe hasn’t followed her. Acting on “a hunch” (230), Sal asks the hospital receptionist to see Mrs. Finney. The receptionist says only family can visit patients in the psychiatric ward, but tells her Mrs. Finney and her son might be outside on the hospital lawn. Here, Sal finds Ben with a woman in a bathrobe: “‘This is my mother,’ he said. I said hello, but she didn’t look at me. Instead, she stood and drifted off across the lawn as if we were not there.