by E K Bennett
Lissi would cut her wrists and ankles whenever she thought Natalie was being weak, and sometimes when she just wanted attention. My parents freaked out. They stopped traveling and we moved to Charlotte. I was twelve, and Nat was ten. She was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder so we sent her here, and life went on. Lissi got less aggressive and we took her out of the hospital to live with us again, and we went back to traveling later that year.
But last spring she had a meltdown and my parents just kind of... broke. Natalie barely ever talked anymore, it was just Lissi. She never wanted to work, she always complained about the crappy conditions of whatever disaster site we were working at. Whenever Natalie did talk, she looked terrified out of her mind. I think that's when she started seeing ghosts. Lissi would have the psychic visions, and it freaked my parents out. They couldn't handle her, so this summer they shipped Nat back to Charlotte and wanted nothing to do with her. I had to practically beg them to let me come back home to keep her company. I've been visiting her once a week since I got here."
I stare at him, wide-eyed. "That's terrible," is all I can say.
He nods in agreement. "It's gotten better, although Lotty freaks Nat out. She always talked about "the little girl" when I came to visit, but I had no idea you were even staying here, so I never put two and two together."
I bite my lip. "I can't believe your parents would just cart her off like that."
"Ironic, isn't it?" he laughs dryly. "They seem so noble and strong when they're building houses in Haiti, but when it comes to their family my parents are cowards."
I give him a sympathetic look. "Don't I know it. My mother takes one look at my wrist and she sends me to a rehab center."
"I can't believe you're even here," he says. "No offense, but your mom must know nothing about you if she thinks you would hurt yourself. I've only known you for two months and even I know you'd never do anything like this."
He lifts up my left arm gently and pulls back my sleeve to look at the cut.
"I can't believe I let this happen," he mutters. The words 'too late' are almost healed into pale white wisps of jagged letters on my forearm.
"It doesn't hurt any more. Besides, there was nothing you could do. What were you going to do, tackle the girl with the knife? And look," I reach over and slip my right hand into his. "My hand's all better."
"I'm glad," he says smiling, and we walk in silence for the rest of the trip to my room.
I don't want him to leave, I just want to keep talking. "Can you stay just for a little bit longer?" I ask. I feel like as soon as he leaves, all the ties to my real life will just slip away, and I'll somehow forget about him and Sam.
He shrugs and follows me into the room, still holding my hand. He's so incredibly adorable. I sit on the floor at the edge of my bed and he slides down next to me, gazing at my "art" on the walls.
Before he can ask any questions or comment on the walls, I try to start a different subject than Lotty. I'm so done talking about her right now.
"Be honest," I say. "What are people saying about me at school?"
He raises his eyebrows, carefully contemplating what he's about to say. "Well...truthfully, there's been a lot of shit. Some people think you died. Um, there's a couple that don't even know who you are, no offense," -whatever, I'm used to being a quintessential nobody- "some people have stuck up for you, which is good. Like I'm not good with names since I just transferred from Saint Mary's, but there's been a few people that are actually a little worried."
I smile at that. I didn't know people even gave me a second thought. "So people haven't been, like, calling me a psycho or anything?"
"Nah," he reassures me. "Most people don't even know you're in rehab, let alone why. They just think you're skipping an obscene amount of school."
"Idiots," I mutter, smiling. "You know, Adam's probably going to start shit."
"I'll kick his ass," Josh promises, and he looks pretty serious. I roll my eyes.
"Josh, I don't care if the school thinks I'm a serial killer; no one there matters to me. You don't have to beat up Adam every time he says something mean about me. He may be pretty, but he seems pretty keen to fight. He's a loser, don't give him the satisfaction."
He sighs. "You're right, he's an ass. But he shouldn't be going around calling you schizophrenic."
I shrug casually. "Why not? Who's to say I'm not schizophrenic?" I laugh. "I argue with my more logical self on practically a daily basis! I seem to think there's a ghost who wants my soul. What's normal about that? I deserve to be ridiculed."
And damn, we're back on the subject of Lotty.
"You do not," Josh argues. "And everyone does that, it's called having a conscience. You're not insane."
I roll my eye again. "Even if I'm not, aren't the best of us a bit bonkers?"
He laughs, and I take this opportunity to change the subject. "Has my family forgotten about me yet?" I ask.
"What? I'm sure they haven't," Josh reassures me.
"But maybe they have. Mom's still mad at me for what I did to her at the hospital. She's ashamed of me for cutting myself, and she's scared of me for thinking I see ghosts. She thinks I'm insane."
"She can't," he says, but there's a trace if doubt in his voice. "I'm sure they'll come and get you soon."
"They were supposed to a week ago. They told me it was a two week program, so what the hell am I still doing here?" I complain.
"Maybe they don't think you've made progress," he suggests.
"I haven't cut myself once since I got here," I point out. "Is that not progress? I hate it here. I just want to go back to my dad's house, where my room is neat and I have music and art and I can look out the window and see trees, not an ugly parking lot. I want to see my sister have her baby, not sit here and wonder when I'm actually going to meet my niece. I mean how can you hate your daughter so much that you could deprive her of that?"
My eyes sting like I'm about to cry, but I'm so sick of crying all the time.
Josh squeezes my hand and I rest my head on his shoulder. "It'll be okay," he says comfortingly. "You'll get out if here soon, and then everything will get back to normal, just like you said."
I shake my eyes. "I don't know why I even said it, Josh. Things won't be normal because I'm going to die. I don't know why everybody keeps denying it. You're all like 'I won't let you die, we can stop Lotty!' when we can't. She'll just strangle anyone who gets in her way. Throw them out a window, maybe. We're teenagers, we're not immortal."
Josh takes a deep breath. "I'll talk to your parents. There's no point in you being here if there's nothing wrong with you, right?"
"Mhmm," I agree. "Thanks."
"You're welcome," he says.
"So you're living with Sam now?" I ask, changing the subject.
He laughs. "Yeah, that's gonna be an adventure."
"She'll probably dye your hair pink in your sleep, I swear!" I say.
"Don't give her any ideas! I'd like to maintain this stylish shade of roadkill brown, thank you very much," he replies.
And we joke around for another hour and a half before he has to leave.
31. She's Free
Five days is a lot of time. It’s one hundred and twenty hours. Seven thousand, two hundred minutes. Four hundred and thirty two thousand seconds. A lot of time. In five days, the average high school student goes to maybe forty classes, goes through about 275 minutes of note taking, worksheets, and tests. They probably change their shoes around ten times and eat fifteen meals. They see hundreds of familiar people, all in five days.
But in five days, the average high school student in a rehab/ mental hospital who is being followed around by a demonic ghost child goes to about twelve therapy sessions, three group self-harm meetings, and watches about seven minutes of Toddlers and Tiaras before leaving the lounge. She sees her parents a total of zero times, even though they had an appointment to see her over the weekend. She talks on the phone for the allotted twenty minutes allowed weekl
y. Ten minutes with Josh, ten minutes with Sam. Click. End of conversation.
I think about all this while sitting in the lounge , simultaneously counting ceiling tiles and blocking out the drone of the television. The lounge is the second to last place I’d like to be right now, with my room being the first. Any normal person would feel like they’re being watched in my room, probably because there are drawings all over the walls staring you down. The custodians tried cleaning it up, but the drawings won’t budge. Honestly, though, to me it's just another bill for my parents to pay. In that room, I know there’s more than drawings watching me. I know I’m being watched all the time, even in the lounge. But I want to prove to everybody that I’m heading back to normalcy by doing what they tell me to. I feel like if I kiss their asses, maybe they’ll let me go home. Maybe it won’t take my parents too much convincing to get me out of here when they finally get around to pulling me out of this program. It's bound to happen anyway, right? I wonder if they’d fight for me, even. If the hospital said I wasn't ready to leave, would my parents let them keep me until they said I could leave? Or would they argue with the doctors and therapists, telling them that I’d be fine and they wanted their kid back?
Do they want me back?
I feel like an anxious kid at the bus stop, waiting to be picked up. But the bus has broken down, and it’s snowing. It’s very cold.
I don’t know if Josh has talked to my parents yet, or maybe he chickened out, figuring that they’d come and get me soon anyway. At least, that’s what I figured a week ago, too, but trust hasn’t gotten us far, has it? Maybe Josh forgot. He’s probably studying for midterms or taking them right now. I don’t even know when they are this year. I’ll probably miss them…what if I have to repeat the ninth grade?
He probably lied to you, Logic says in the back of my mind. I don’t know when I started personifying my conscience, but it always feels more like a cynical conversation than a feeling of paranoia or skepticism.
He’s just telling you what you want to hear, it continues harshly. He’s just too nice to let you down easy. You glom onto him like some lost puppy, holding his hand and agreeing with everything he says. I bet he’s just stringing you along because he feels bad that you’re so pathetic. He knows you’re going to die just like you and I do, and he’s convinced that if he’s nice enough to you before you rot in here, he won’t hurt your feelings too badly. Once you die, he can carry on without having to deal with you.
My stomach turns and it feels like my heart is covered in splinters. Logic has never been mean like this, it was only ever doubtful of my sanity. But what if it’s true? Josh is too nice of a guy to just ignore me or flat out say that he hates me. Who even likes a girl who’s insane anyway? He already has to take care of his sister, why would he want to deal with me in addition to Lissi and Natalie?
All you do is cause problems for him. You got him kicked out of his house, you got possessed and spit in his face,- I spit in his face?- along with punching him a couple of times, screaming at him for trying to help you, and embarrassed him by making him talk about his sister when he clearly didn’t want to.
I don’t remember doing half those things! I screamed at him? Punched him? A cold wave of guilt washes over me. He left out a lot of the story when he told me what happened during the séance. I want to call and apologize, but I feel like it’ll just make the hole I’ve dug for myself deeper. I didn't think that he was uncomfortable with talking about Lissi and Natalie to me...I mean, after a while he didn't mind, right? Or was he covering it up? My head is spinning.
I can’t take the negative thoughts anymore and stand up abruptly, feeling as if I’m going to explode. I walk out of the room, trying to look calm and to not attract attention to myself, even though I want to run down the halls screaming. What I’m feeling is like claustrophobia and cabin fever, like I’m trapped inside this hospital with no one legit to talk to besides my own conscience.
I spend the rest of the night walking every single hall of the first floor before heading back to my room. I go to sleep, feeling robotic because I can’t show any emotion without getting locked up. If I throw the tantrum that’s eating away at my insides, every sign of progress I’ve made will go down the tubes. In the morning, I go to my daily group self-harm meeting, listen to people’s problems, how they’re improving in some way, and proceed to lie about how I’m doing. When the meeting is done, I monotonously turn for the door while my mind is still racing.
Someone lays a hand on my shoulder, causing me to turn around. It’s our group leader, Cheryl.
“Yes, Cheryl?” I ask quietly, wanting desperately to be anywhere else but here. She’s smiling at me like I’m a small child with food all over my face.
“I have amazing news,” she says cheerfully, as always.
I just stare at her, expecting her to say something along the lines of “the dinner special tonight is lasagna!”, but she motions for me to sit at one of the chairs by the door. She sits down next to me and smiles again. I raise my eyebrows, waiting.
“Well, you know that you were originally signed up for the two-week program, then your parents added another two weeks so they could help your sister move into her new house, right?” she says excitedly.
I blink. “Um, no. I wasn’t informed,” I reply in a bitter tone. Of course they would help my sister instead of coming to get me. Because that makes a lot of sense…not.
“Oh! We just suggested to them that you stay a bit longer because you weren't showing much improvement at the time...” Cheryl’s cheeks turn pink, which is unflattering on her pale face. “Someone was supposed to tell you! Jeez, you probably thought your parents forgot about you, didn’t you?”
“I guess,” I say blankly, because it’s not like I still think that or anything. It’s totally common for your parents to put you on the back burner so they can make sure your sister, who actually has a decent place to live in the first place, is comfortable.
“Well,” Cheryl continues, looking as excited as ever, “you seem to be doing much better this past week, and we called them this morning to pick you up! Congratulations, you’ve graduated early!”
She gives me a hug, and I don’t even mind because I’m too busy trying to get my jaw off the floor. “I’ve…graduated?” I say in a shocked voice. This is a dream. It has to be.
“Yeah! We’ve seen so much improvement, Lydia. Your attitude this past week has been so much better. Even your individual therapist suggested that we let you go early. We think that seeing your friends and family will do you a lot of good.”
“Oh my god,” I breathe. “They’re coming to get me?”
"Yes," Cheryl says again and gives me another hug.
The air around me seems lighter, the walls less constricting. The negative thoughts that have been buzzing in my head are somehow quieter, almost silent, and I feel myself smiling for real, for the first time since Josh and Sam left. I'm finally going home.
32. She's Stronger
The first place I go is the emergency ward, because I can't let myself leave without seeing Samantha first. And, you know, apologizing. My stomach is doing all sorts of flips and tricks as the lady at the desk directs me down the hall to Recovery, room 12. I remember I stayed in room 15 when I came here.
Room 12, Recovery is very standard-- a small room with pale blue walls and a dinky TV in the corner. Samantha's bed takes up most of the room and squished against the wall next to it is a little futon-looking sofa. It looks just like the room I stayed in for the first three days I spent in the hospital, while they pumped blood back into my system. On the bright side, Samantha's not hooked up to any monitors, and, just like Lissi said, only has a cast on her leg and a bandaged up wrist.
I stand awkwardly in the open doorway and knock on the doorframe. Samantha looks up from the television, and a wave of fear spreads over me. This is a mistake. The voice in my head, which has quieted down since I got the news of my leaving, chides at me.
She still hasn'
t forgiven you. She'll never forgive you, it says. But to my relief, Samantha smiles and waves me inside.
I let out a long breath I didn't know was holding and sit down on the couch.
"Hi, Lydia," she says. She still sounds the same; a sweet, knowing voice like honey. Yet I feel like I'm looking at a stranger.
"Hi," I reply smally. "How are you?"
She shrugs, awfully cheerily for someone who recently fell out a second-story window. "I'm not dead. That's thanks to Yuki, though. You know, she used to be a martial artist. She has amazing reflexes."
I shake my head, pretending to look surprised by this tidbit of information about her savior. I don't want to be the one to tell her about Yuki's arrest. "I'm really sorry about getting you mixed up in this," I blurt out. "I didn't mean for Lotty to hurt anyone else. I was so stupid."
