Another Sample of Writing (a teaser if you will)

Pool

She stared into the pool, her mind focused on the clear blue in front of her. The light from the porch was so dim that she could barely see her reflection. She bent over and touched the transparent mirror image of the moonlight water in front of her as it drifted through her fingers. She couldn’t help but feel connected with something else out there…something else in the water.
She closed her eyes and let herself fall into the water, drenched in her own sadness. She touched the tiles on the bottom of the pool and opened her eyes to the sight of the light blue water and the smooth, white tiles. She lifted her finger and felt the velvet-soft touch of the tiles. There was a crack in one of them that bothered her slightly, but she felt content in her surroundings.
She loved the feel of the water around her. All of her senses became entranced in a spell, one that only her lungs could curse. She smiled slightly to herself as she ascended up into the faint light and heard a voice.
“Who the hell are you?” A shrill voice was muffled under the waves of the water, but it still shook her eardrums.
She didn’t answer. She breathed in and went back down into the water. Her hair formed a myriad of branches that grew when nourished with water.
“Why are you here?” It was a man, shady but his dark eyes were just as intense without the help of light. His image pierced through the water like he was already inside her mind.
She stopped breathing and rushed to the top of the water. Her eyes were watering and pulled her hair back into a makeshift ponytail. She sniffled and stared up into the man’s shark eyes.
“Don’t ever come back again.” He stated and she ran. Her clothing and shoes were soaked, her vision hazy and her face flushed with terror. She ran back through the wooden fence with splinters all across the handles and jumped over the broken porch steps that creaked as she leaped onto the dirt path. The shack had been there for years but something had drawn her there that night. She thought that it would inspire something in her, but all she came back to the orphanage with was fear.


“Why are you soaked?” Mrs. Burges inquired as she felt the sleeve of Kathryn’s jacket. She held a candle up to her oval face. “It’s after midnight young lady. And before Sunday! Up to bed you go. We’ll talk about punishment later. Go to bed! Go!”
Kathryn walked up slowly, her pricked hands feeling the coolness of the stair railing and a surging rush of the bitter cold throughout her whole body. The orphanage couldn’t afford extra blankets so all Kathryn could do was put on her dry work clothes and sleep as tightly as she could under the striped sheet she washed twice a week. She was glad it wasn’t Tuesday or Friday or else she wouldn’t have anything to keep her the least bit warm.
As soon as Kathryn’s head it her pillow, she saw the man’s eyes. His red, evil face and the words “don’t come back again”. She couldn’t seem to block it out unless she thought of water, but he always seemed to be in the water, watching her. She shook her head furiously, but that only woke up the others in their cots.
The eyes of the cold-blooded man stayed in her head. She saw a woman being dropped, her blood splattered everywhere and eyes open. She wore rags and her eyes were bronze, so beautiful but so lifeless on her ghost-white face and pale lips. The bottoms of her feet and her back were torn as if she had to walk for a long time then dragged.
Kathryn woke up screaming, her back upright and her hands shaking. She was the only one who was in the room besides a little redheaded girl named Piper, who was getting dressed for church.
“Are you coming Kathryn?” She asked all smiles. “The Lord is waiting for you.”
Kathryn tried as fast as she could to compose herself for this happy-go-lucky five-year-old. Her gaze was averted elsewhere. Had this little girl heard her screaming?
“Come along, my friend.” Piper smiled with all of her face. Her seaweed-green eyes danced next to her freckles.
Kathryn was already wearing her work clothes, so she just followed Piper down the hall into the study where Mrs. Burges taught classes useful to girls. Her job was to be able to make ladies out of these social throwaways and have them get married. It was the least she could do. Her own husband had run off with his mistress as she told it, leaving her with no notice. The only way to survive was to get remarried or find a job. She was after a widower named Hudson Jones, a prominent banker in the community. His own wife had gone missing and was later found dead in the woods. The press announced she had been mulled by a wolf, cut marks all over body.
“She’s a liar.” A girl named Mariel told a late-night group. “The truth is that Mrs. Burges’s husband told her that he was never in love with her and wanted them to move to different towns to create themselves again and not be married anymore.” Mariel lit a cigarette and started to smoke. “She refused and told him that it would be an abomination to Christ and shit. Finally, he told her that he was in love with a woman he had loved ever since he could remember who had been promised to an English ambassador. He told her this for five fucking years. She didn’t give up on him. Rumor is she’s still a virgin. Well, that’s shit. He didn’t want children, didn’t want to deal with those kinds of responsibilities. She did, she drugged him up, took off his pants, and convinced him that he had gotten drunk and that they fucked. I bet she has a master somewhere that tried to impregnate her so she could have children.
“As for Hudson, he killed his wife. It’s that simple. She was cheating on him, that I know for sure. She was a dancer in a brewery, how could she not be? He said she was a disgrace. Told her to run and kill herself. She ran; he got his henchmen to beat her. Of course, they went too far and did some goddamn awful things to her, so they made it look like a wolf did it. They even shot one to prove their point.”
After everyone got over the shock of Mariel’s story, someone asked how she knew all this.
“Use your eyes people. They’re blinding you with God to distract you from the bad. People are dying and being tortured everyday; that explains this place, huh?” She blew out a puff of smoke.
There were some giggles but more coughs.

Peach Theory

Peach Theory

I can’t remember anything about that night. The night all of this started and everything that seemed certain became this horrible reality. The most frightening part was anything could’ve happened and all I can ask myself is: would it have turned out different? I’ve gone through so many different emotions and I can’t even think of the smallest detail to remind me of that crucial night. I just wanted a smell, a touch, a taste, but all of those were stolen from me. All I have to remind me of what might have been is a statement from Nikki Welling, a newspaper article, and a video tape. They all tell the same story. My story intertwined with others to create some relief for my frustration.
This is how I see it:
It was a Sunday evening during the summer after tenth grade. Nikki invited me out to Jessica U.’s party. It was a senior party, so she assumed that I would be ecstatic to come with her. We had just received our reading lists for next year, but ditched the work and went out to celebrate the nights that seemed hours longer.
I walk into the room. I look at the camera and shift away with Nikki who’s desperately trying to look cool even though she has the most awkward personality you can imagine. She turns and goes to the left of the door and I stand and eventually go to the right.
Suddenly, a bunch of MADA mothers come and bust down the door with a few narcs with their guns in the air. A few girls scream and shots are fired. I scream too and I say, “I didn’t do anything!” with everyone else. There’s a shot of me getting cuffed with these plastic handcuffs and my swollen face looking in the camera. The tape runs out.

Chapter One:

It was the morning after that everything starts becoming clearer. I walked downstairs and ran into my mother, chopping lettuce with a knife that could cut through stacks of paper. I groaned and sat on the stool by the coffee table we called our dining room. It was a small wooden table with dirty dishes from the night before stacked upon grimy magazines, some moments away from slipping onto the dusty floor. There were articles torn out and plastered everywhere, strange ones about diseases and crimes with a couple about how to achieve that glamorous movie-star look and the perfect orgasm.
“Where were you last night?” She asked.
“At a party,” I replied, resting my head on my hand, “I didn’t do anything. But you know that, don’t you?” I looked back into the hole in our wall peering into our “living room” consisting of a poker table, a small television, a beat-up rug, arm chair, and couch that my mother got from my Uncle Bernard after he was locked up for robbery and assault. There were more glamour articles in the living room as our version of décor. They rested on the poker table with tubes of red lipstick and a plastic mirror with crayon border and mints scattered in-between pages and caps that had lost their Tylenol bottles.
“Miss Stanley doesn’t seem to agree.”
“That stupid housewife, she doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about.” I picked at the dirt underneath my fingernails, staring at the cement floor and hoping for a way out of this conversation.
“Do you think she made it up?”
“I was just having some fun with Nikki,” I smiled to myself, automatically adding, “I’m not on drugs.” She always assumed I was on drugs. It was just easier to accept and treat than having a stubborn daughter who didn’t take any of the crap she spit out day in and day out. She always made me eat dinner with her; relentlessly insisting on being a family in the hellhole she called a house. She went nuts if I ate at someone else’s. I swear, after she talked about all that happened to her that day, I always felt a little bit better about myself on my own personal high. My mother’s misery was my drug of choice. I didn’t need to snort coke to feel better than her.
“You were at a drug party, what am I supposed to think?”
“I didn’t know it was a ‘drug party’ as you say it was. You are my mother. You should believe me.”
“And you are my daughter. You should obey me. You should have done what I told you: stay home and have done your homework.”
“I cannot believe you.” I said under my breath.
“What did you say?” She continued to chop lettuce.
“I said ‘I can’t believe you.’” I spoke more clearly. “You think that I’m this stupid, little baby but I know a lot more than you’ll ever know.”
“How dare you talk to me like that! I am you r mother!” My mother spun around and gave me an angry glare.
“You’re a bitch.” I stated without a second thought. “You don’t give a damn about me. If anyone’s on drugs, it’s you. Nice crank bugs, Mom.”
She gripped the knife beside her and my heart skipped a beat, but I stayed strong. I made a fist underneath the table and breathed in slowly. She wasn’t drunk, so if I just pushed or socked her, she wouldn’t attack me back and leave me alone. The stakes were higher with a knife, but she didn’t have a boyfriend to blame if she stabbed me again. I was lucky, the nurse had said. What’s lucky about having a mother like that?
I didn’t tell the police what she had done. That would just make them go poking around where they didn’t belong. I said I was making lunch, I was spooked by the TV and it just slipped. They questioned my mother and she confirmed my story. She told them I was easily frightened. I was a delicate creature who only needed her protection.
The only thing I needed protection from was from her.
She stood there, with the knife and some duct tape, her blonde hair disheveled and her loose, red shirt sagging over her thin shoulders with her jean jacket around her equally thin waist. The next thing I knew, I couldn’t breathe. Her hands were around my throat. I started gasping for breaths and my head was getting lighter than air. The whole room was spinning in this dim haze. Everything around me felt distant, but I could still feel what my mother was doing. I felt my hands getting tied up and my mouth being covered. I tried to kick her but that just provoked more anger. I had never seen her like that.
She took her elbow and shoved it into my back so I fell onto the floor. I screamed through the tape, but no one could hear me. The house felt unbearably alone. She slapped me in the face and punched me in the arm for almost no reason. My resistance grew thin and all I wanted to do was escape, my survival instincts surfacing. We were walking out the door. The strain was in my legs and the pain took a toll on the rest of my body. It was shaking and my thoughts were numb. I couldn’t feel anymore, but I still wanted to die. Another part of me fought the urge, but my hands shook with every breath and every move took me to a new place.
It was like I was outside of my body. All I could do was hear her push me into the back of her horrible, little car and my head bang against the roof. It all went black after that.

Chapter Two:

I woke up with a horrible headache that made it painful to even move. Breathing felt like a chore even though the tape around my mouth had been taken off. The only part of me that was restricted was my hands. They were still stuck together with her makeshift handcuffs. My legs were still sore. My first instinct was to scream at my mother.
“What is the matter with you, you crazy bitch?” I shrieked and the car immediately swerved to the right.
“Do not yell at the driver. It’s the cause of most accidents in this country.”
“Who are you to criticize me about my passenger etiquette after you’ve just kidnapped me? You psycho!” I yelled.
“Do not talk to me like that.” She was monotone. She was always like that after she did one of her crazy stunts. She had once driven me for an hour and pushed me in front of our neighbor’s house and claimed I was a runaway. Sometimes she had her moments of complete mental dysfunction, but none of them were like this. Her zombie-like state always seemed to fool people, but I couldn’t figure out. I didn’t know that woman.
We began to drive again, except I had no idea where we were. It was all trees, grass and road. The rows of trees passed along one by one, all too perfect and in-place. The green gave me a migraine and the image of the green and brown turned blurry and bright even as it was starting to get dark. How long had we been driving? As my mother swerved between lanes, I could feel the vibration of the dirt road. My head viciously grappled with the pain, but my will was too weak in comparison to deal with it. The stinging sensation made it difficult to look for anything besides what I had already seen to figure out where I was. I just closed my eyes and felt the pain pulsating against my head from the road.
When I woke up again we were in front of this large, white building that resembled both a hospital and office. It had the cross and handicap rail, but the windows…it was the windows that made me think of an office building. Except that there were bricks all around; maybe hundreds of thousands of them that were surrounding the premises with an iron gate closing it off. What were they trying to keep inside? Who were they trying to keep out?
“Get up Hilary.” My mother poked me. She led me to the door where a police officer un-taped me and put on plastic handcuffs. From one hell to another, I sighed to myself. I was escorted into the building like I was the criminal. That’s what this hell was. Maybe hell altogether, I figured. I was about to enter a cell of the worst kind.
This one traps you into your own mind; you can never escape yourself. No matter how hard you try.
The nurses looked like they were in costumes with their weird hats with the Red Cross symbol on it, white dresses and matching shoes. They looked like circus people.
“Excuse me, why am I handcuffed?” The officer seemed to be a reasonable man. He could un-cuff me if I was charming enough.
“You are a security threat. Please sit down miss.” He pointed to a red chair and there I walked and sat down while my mother read one of those interior decorating magazines. He unhooked my cuffs for a minute just to tie it down to my chair. As he left, all I felt was disbelief and resentment.
“I hate you, you know that? I hate you.”
“That’s just the drugs talking. I am not listening to you.”
“I am not on drugs!”
“The tests prove otherwise.” She shook her head. “I am so disappointed in you Hilary.” She said as she caressed my cheek.
Since I couldn’t move my hands, I jerked my head away and scowled.
“I am not on drugs. Your pain is my drug.” I scowled again.
“Be careful dear. If you stick with that face for too long, it’ll be stuck that way.”
I could not believe her and told her so.
“You want this to be normal? Take me home. Where are we anyway? An asylum? A nuthouse? Because let me tell you something: I do not belong here.”
“You obviously have anger-management issues. It must be from withdrawal. You always seem so happy after a dinner with me.” Her tranquility sickened me to the core.
“I have friends! I have a life! You have nothing. Nothing! Nothing at all to live for! Why do you even wake up in the morning? Not that you ever sleep.”
“I wake up because I know you’ll be there to cheer my day.”
All I wanted to do was hit her.

Chapter Three:

“All finished!” She pulled out the forms and handed them to a woman with spectacles that seemed to emphasize her large, yellow eyes.
“Excellent.” The woman said and motioned me forward to follow her. “We’ll be putting you in a special ward where you can have group therapy three times a week and plenty of rest to get your mind off this whole experience.”
“So this is a psychiatric hospital.” I breathed in the faint smell of industrial strength cleanser and cotton balls.
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken.” The woman gave me a superficial smile and pointed me to room 319.
I was about to go in when I got the sudden urge to just say what was on my mind.
“Hey let me ask you a question.”
“Go ahead.” The woman was still trying to be pleasant, with all of her insincere smiling and kindness. I’ve always thought of insincerity as a personality’s toupee. You can spot it from a mile away, you know see what is really underneath, and you really wish that they’d stop lying to themselves and everyone else.
“What is with these costumes that you seem to be wearing? I mean, these nurse outfits look they came straight out of an old movie! Are there any female doctors or male nurses here? Because what I’d like to know is how you can participate in the misogynistic, male-empowered nuthouse that is trying to detoxify a girl who is already clean? Must you try and cleanse all of society? There are others like me, and believe me, I will find them and you will be sorry.”
“I’ll see if I can find you a doctor with whom you’ll be comfortable with. But, please, go into your room and rest. You’ve had a long day.” And with that, she left.
“What about these handcuffs?” I yelled after her.
“Please wait for your doctor.” She called over her shoulder.
Room 319 was like the rest of the hospital: white walls, bluish tiles on the floor but with one exception: there was a window.
It was small, with barbed wire across it, but it was a window nevertheless. I could see that I was, indeed, in the middle of nowhere. The only sight I saw was one of trees in the distance, peeking from behind the brick wall that dominated the window. The branches curved over the wall, so I could only see a glimpse of the outside world. Security seemed to be of the utmost importance.
I had a roommate who was hooked up to a machine, so close to death when I first saw her. Her blond hair cascaded down to her hips, her pale skin and lips were chapped, but she still looked like a princess. She didn’t look more than twelve.
When Dr. Riley came in to greet me, I asked about the girl.
“She is a little bit of an odd case. She’s in a drug-induced coma after she tried to kill one of the orderlies. She is in a great deal of pain.”
I instantly found a median between sadness and fear and asked the doctor to please remove my handcuffs. He complied and left me alone.
I sat on my bed and stared at her. Why I was with a sociopath to be? Was my mother trying to kill me? I kept on my thought process until I fell asleep with that image in my head of my new roommate, lying there with the moonlight pouring on her milky-white complexion. She seemed to…float above the floor. How a girl like that could try and hurt someone?


At exactly seven o’clock, a nurse came in and shook me awake.
“Time for breakfast!” She exclaimed a little too loudly. My head was still killing me. It didn’t help there was a plate of bacon, sausage, and bird crap in front of me.
“Could I please have pain medication for my head?”
“No, sorry. Standard procedure for all those in for rehabilitation.”
“Isn’t this a hospital? Isn’t your job to cure people of their ailments?”
“We are. We are curing you of your addiction.”
“No, I am already cured. What you’re doing is keeping one of your patients in pain.”
“Alternative treatments will be available during group therapy such as hypnosis.”
“Hypnosis? I’m not a middle-aged, dysfunctional workaholic trying to quit smoking.” I gave myself a smile. “Although, I was living with one.”
She obviously had no sense of humor.
“Your group therapy session will be at ten o’clock down the hall and lunch will be served in the cafeteria at noon. You will have some exercise at two o’clock and have the afternoon to study and read the required reading material in your room. Please do not disturb the other patients during your stay. On days without therapy, you will be in the adolescent ward for classes on a variety of subjects. Have a pleasant stay.” She walked out.
“You said ‘stay’ twice! Why is breakfast served in bed but lunch isn’t? Where’s dinner? When’s dinner? If you want to treat patients, why are you trying to kill them with bacon?” I sighed.
I froze as I heard a weak laugh behind me. I turned around. She was awake.
“Another failed drug.” Her voice was soft and delicate.
“What do you mean?” My heart fluttered with fear and curiosity, trying to decide which instinct to trust.
“This medication was supposed to keep me from talking for forty-eight hours, but I’m awake, aren’t I?” The smile on her face looked almost…painful.
“Why don’t they want you to talk?” I felt something build up inside me, something just wasn’t right.
“About the procedure. They don’t want us to get close.” Her lip began to quiver.
“Why? What procedure? Are you alright?”
“The trials…the ones…with… my reason…being here.” It seemed like she was slipping in and out of consciousness. She was starting to lose her breath. “No more rooms.” Her breathing became extremely heavy. “You aren’t supposed to be here.”
No more rooms? “You mean, here, in this ward?” I had to know.
She nodded and rested her head down before she made a little smile with the corners of her lips. Suddenly, the lights on her monitor were blinking. Her lips were open but she wasn’t breathing. At first I thought she was dead, but I had to do something.
“Somebody help her!” I screamed. “She’s not breathing! She’s not breathing!”
Nobody responded. I ran out into the hallway to the nurses’ station. There was no one there. “Help, somebody! Goddamn, she’s not breathing! Somebody! Somebody!”
Dr. Riley came out and ran to our room with a team of nurses behind him. They followed him and I followed them. Dr. Riley put his ear to her lips and asked for the nurses to do CPR. That’s when she started having violent seizures. Her eyes rolled back while she made this kind-of choking sound and all I felt was this terror. Not of her, but rather for her life.
“Get restraints!” He yelled. “Let’s get two grams of Rondaveir, now!”
The nurses did as he said without hesitation and he injected it right into her arm. The seizures got less violent, but slowly drops of blood fell into Dr. Riley’s hand and her pillowcase. She was coughing it up. Her face was quickly turning yellow. Her eyes were still rolled back as she made a hissing noise. She kept on trying to sit up straight, but the doctors kept trying to restrain her.
“Oh God,” I whispered to myself. Every part of me was frozen. All I could do was watch as they injected all kinds of medication into her. The seizures eventually stopped, but I heard Dr. Riley say that her liver was failing and her lungs were full of blood. The doctors rolled her out down the hall to get her into surgery. I didn’t know how long I had been standing there until a nurse came in and told me I was late for therapy.


It was then I decided there was no use trying to fight my mother and the hospital. They thought I was a junkie, so I was going to pretend to be one and get the hell out.
“My name is Hilary Carlson and I am addicted to marijuana.”
“It seems here, your tests show you are a heavy methamphetamine user.”
I was speechless.
“I have never done meth. You must have your results mixed up with someone else.”
“I’m looking at your chart right here.”
“Liar!” I yelled. “Goddamn, there is absolutely no way I have meth in my pee. How did you even get my piss?”
I saw some smiles on people’s faces, but I don’t know what the hell they were laughing at. There were girls that looked like they had absorbed the fat from the skinny ones. The boys looked uncomfortable with socks that pooled above their sneakers. You could see the bones in their faces. One of the fat girls was loudly chewing a piece of gum.
“We drew blood from you.”
“No, you didn’t. See, I would have remembered something like that.”
“Well, your chart says you had blood drawn.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Denial will never get you anywhere Hilary.” The group leader was a petite woman with round glasses and pulled back brown hair. She looked like she had never seen the light of day.
“Oh, shut up!” I groaned and sat down.
The woman shook her head and wrote something down.
“I was talking to myself.” I lied.
She gave me a half-sincere smile and put her pen down.
“Look, I don’t know why the tests say that, but it isn’t true. I don’t touch that shit.”
“Alright, well, I suppose you will have to have some time to yourself. You may leave now.”
“What? You want me to go?” I narrowed my eyes. “What’s your angle here?”
“You have to Hilary. You have an introductory meeting with Dr. Zeborbin.”


Dr. Zeborbin was a fat, balding man who had gray whiskers coming out of his ears and nose. I thought he was going to die right in front of me.
“Can you tell me about your family?” He asked.
“Oh, nothing much,” I smiled. I got the feeling no one should be trusted. “My mother and I didn’t get along.”
“How so?”
“She is not a very nice woman.”
“How so?”
“She hit me.”
“Didn’t your father do anything?”
“He died when I was seven.”
“How?”
“A hunting accident.”
“It says on your history that your father was unemployed.”
“He inherited money. He did not have to work. Hunting was a favorite hobby of his.”
“You were on welfare, Miss Carlson.”
I laughed a little. “I didn’t say it was not a lot of money.”
“You didn’t grow up near any gun ranges or hunting grounds.”
“I lived in Montana and Texas. We didn’t move to Maryland until after he died.”
“When was that?”
“I was seven at the time.”
“He died of a hunting accident?”
“That’s what I said.” I smiled. Was this guy even paying attention to me?
“You lived in Minneapolis when you were seven.”
The smile fell from my face. “I have never lived in Minneapolis.”
“That’s not what your mother said.”
“She is a liar.” The words came out so naturally.
“Really? She told us a story about your father being stabbed to death.”
“That is a lie.” I feel tears swelling up in my eyes.
“He was involved in some money laundering…”
“Stop it.” I could have sworn a tear ran down my cheek but when I tried to wipe it off, it had evaporated.
“…your mother said you would cry every night…”
“Shut up.” I bit my lip.
“…you started hitting her…”
“I don’t know anything about that. All she has told you are lies.” I controlled myself. “I never hit her. He wasn’t stabbed. He was shot on a trip that he went on with his friends. She paid one of them to do it. I know she did. I never lived in Minneapolis, her boyfriend head a heart attack while we were on a trip there to visit him. He was like a dad to me, OK? I did cry, but all she wants is sympathy. She wants justification for her meth habit and don’t you give it to her. May I leave now?”
“Of course,”
As I walked out, I stared at the bluish tiles, looked up at the fluorescent lights and only asked that no one knew everything about me. How easy it would be to lie.

Chapter Four:

I ventured out into the hallway, turning corner after corner just to pass the time. Every room seemed more depressing than the last, old men dying without their wives holding their hands, little girls with eyes so big and sad, alone and just sitting there. I wanted to get the image out of my mind, but I knew if I returned to my room, that girl might be there and that was something I was just not ready to face.
I found a spot near the stairwell, a small bench that overlooked the trees. The room was high enough to see over the brick fence. I could see the vibrant greens and the tranquil blue of the river trickling down in-between the blades of grass with the perfect, grey stones lined up to surround it. My head began to swell. Oh God, what’s wrong with me? I could only lie on the wall and close my eyes when a shrill voice awakened my almost comatose state.
“You’re Hilary, right?” She smiled eagerly with a round face, long brown hair and eyes that squished in between her equally squished nose. She almost looked Asian with her tan skin.
“Yeah, why do you wanna know?”
“I saw you, during group therapy?” The girl smiled eagerly. “Man, you really told her off.”
“Yeah, well, all I have is the truth now. Bitch took away my freedom.”
“Pat’s harmless you know—”
“My mom, she’s the bitch that took away my freedom.” I could only assume Pat was the group leader.
“Oh, you’re really not addicted to anything?”
“You don’t believe me either?” I decided to just walk away, but she kept following me.
“I do, I do, but…tests don’t usually lie.”
“See, ‘usually’ is the word I have a problem with. I’m not like everyone else.”
“I can see that.”
I stopped in my tracks and turned around to look at this irritating being.
“I’ve never done drugs before in my life. You think I’d come here willingly?”
“I did.” She said defensively.
“Why? Who are you?”
“I’m Darcy Corrington. You should meet someone.”
“I don’t have to do a damn thing.” I said bitterly.
“Well, that’s true, but you should know why I’m here.”
“Why’s that? Why should I?”
“Because behind every human thought is reason and my reason might change your mind about me.”
“Yeah, right. If there really was reason behind every thought, the world wouldn’t be in the shape that it’s in. We wouldn’t be knee-deep in our own fat, constantly trying to kill ourselves with everything from prescription pain meds or just plain pain from overworking ourselves until we die in our garages, no one even bothering to check until the stink pisses everyone off.”
“I can’t imagine why they think you need therapy.”
“Ha, ha, I’m leaving now.” My tone was still bitter as I turned away again.
“You don’t know everything about this place. You need to know the people here. I can tell you want to.”
“And how’s that?”
“You haven’t moved more than five feet away from me. You want to know the reason I’m here.”
I rolled my eyes and turned back around. “Fine, tell me.”
“Like I said, you need to meet someone.” Darcy walked towards the stairs, down to the children’s ward. I had passed it before but I had never been inside. Unlike the rest of the building, it was carpeted with brightly colored blocks scattered around the round “magic” rug where story time was held. There were pictures of children’s hands plastered on the walls with a border of numbers and letters. The only sounds were those of nurses quietly whispering to the babies and the whirring noise of the airplane model that spun round and around from the ceiling.
Darcy looked at me solemnly as we walked towards a little boy. I thought I was going to break down right there.
He had no legs and only one arm. He seemed utterly alone playing with his blocks until he saw Darcy. His grin seemed to light up what was once a spiritless body. He hopped up and down in his wheelchair and reached out with his right hand, grabbing for her with his only four fingers. He didn’t have an index finger. He grinned at me too, but I couldn’t smile back with a tear running down my face.
He had the most beautiful chestnut brown hair, like Darcy’s, and big, curious brown eyes. He called out for her, “my Darcy! My Darcy!” and she instantly came to his side as I slowly followed.
“Hilary, this is Eric, my brother. My Eric! My Eric!” She laid her head on top of his. “Won’t you say hi, Eric?”
“Hi, Hilary!” He waved to me. “Come over here, silly goose!”
“OK,” I said softly. I was still a couple of feet away from them, but I came closer to see a small scar above Eric’s left eyebrow. “What happened there?” I asked, pointing to it.
“Eric fell out of his wheelchair a couple of days ago.” Darcy explained, looking over at him. “He should have asked someone to get the paintbrushes for him.”
“Darcy! Stop treating me like I’m a baby. I am six and a half years old, you know.” He smiled back at me.
“Really,” I wiped off some tears with the back of my hand.
“Why are you crying Hilary?”
“I just had a grueling therapy session.”
“What’s that?”
“When you talk to someone about your feelings and problems.”
“Oh, yeah! I talk to Miss Marie about being in a wheelchair.”
“And what do you say?” I got down on one knee like Darcy had done.
“It’s OK, I can’t run or nothing but it looks hard anyways. Darcy says I’m lucky to be here.”
“Why’s that?”
Eric laughed. “You ask a lotta questions. Miss Marie says it’s good for people to ask questions, then you learn lotsa stuff.”
“Yeah…I mean, yes, yes you do.” I finally cracked a smile. “What else do you talk to Miss Marie about?”
“Regular stuff, what I like doing while I’m here.”
“What do you like to do?” Darcy seemed to get agitated with all my questioning.
“I really like drawing. You wanna see?”
“Yeah, I would.”
“Darcy, to the wall!” He said laughing, shooting his arm straight up in the air, gradually leveling it so he was pointing towards a bulletin board. Darcy pushed his wheelchair towards it. We weaved between toddlers and small children, some with nubs for arms or legs, some off in their own world, staring at the ceiling and others that just didn’t seem to want anyone to look at them.
But none were like Eric.
“Which is yours?”
“Right there,” he pointed, “don’t you see it?”
“I see.” For a six-year-old, he drew an amazing portrait of a bear. It bared its sharp teeth, clawing at the viewer, menacing yet so warm with the rich colors it was painted with.
“Well, don’t you like it?”
“I love it.” I turned to him and smiled. “You’re a very good painter.” For some reason, I started welling up again.
“Thank you muchly.” He grinned. “Miss Marie says I’m an artist.”
“You are.” Darcy kissed Eric on the forehead. “We have to go to lunch now, OK? But we’ll see you again.”
“Okie dokie, nice to meet you Hilary!” Eric looked back at his art, smiling contently as we walked away.

Chapter Four:

“I hope you don’t mind me asking, but why is your brother like that?”
Darcy and I were sitting in the cafeteria downstairs, eating ham sandwiches and chips that were as stale as they were tasteless.
“I don’t know. There was a drug that my mom was taking while she was pregnant, but doctors don’t really know why he has only one developed arm. It’s a medical mystery. He is very creative, no brain damage so who knows?”
“So why are you here?”
“My dad was abusive after Eric was born. He called him a freak, blamed my mother for everything and told her it was her problem now. He beat her. He didn’t stay for much longer after she went to the hospital with Eric. She wouldn’t give him up. She was in her forties, she would never get another chance to have a kid when these letters started coming from Monopan Corporations.”
“What’d they say?”
“I don’t know, but they had to promise her something good because five letters later, she’s gone and when she comes back, she tells me Eric drowned in the bathtub when I was twelve. I started using drugs to dull the pain when she caught me and told me I could see Eric. He was still alive. Last year, she sent me up here and I’ve been here ever since.”
“So, you’re clean now?”
“Yes, but I can’t go back. Not to her. She lied to me.”
“Looks like we have something in common,” I gave her a sad half-smile.
“Looks like it.” She agreed, taking a bit of her sandwich. “But, listen, you really need to get to know the rules. You can’t be bitchy to everyone, you can’t ask too many questions like you can’t question authority all too much or you’ll pay.” “What does that mean, ‘you’ll pay’?”
Darcy gave me a hard look.
“You have to trust me.”
And for the first time in a long time, I felt I could.


I went back to my room to find the girl there sleeping. All I could think was, thank God.
I tiptoed to my bed to lie down and stare at the ceiling and start wondering about my stay at this rehab/psychiatric center. Would I get a change of clothes? If not, some new underwear? What about my period, what then? Where’s the shower in this place? If I can’t have a tampon, can I shower? Is there a shower allowance?
Does anyone even care?
My train of thought was suddenly interrupted by a shrill scream from the girl next to me. She was clutching her stomach in agony when she sat up and started howling, pounding on the bed like she was having a tantrum, crying and begging for help when for no reason she stopped and fell onto her back before the doctors could reach her. It was at that moment I realized she had passed out.
Dr. Riley came in right afterwards.
“Were you the one screaming?” He asked me.
“No, she was.” I pointed at the girl with no name. “She passed out.”
“It’s a side effect of the medication; she should be fine in a few hours.”
“She was screaming in pain.” I said defensively.
“It’s all in her mind. Her emotional pain is so intense that her body is hurting itself. With hard work, she will be all better soon.” His smile is the last thing I remember before things get hazy again.


What I really remember is the color, with the bright radiance and the circles of light surrounding me, I felt invincible for some reason. I was hearing music, familiar music that faded as quickly as it came. I stared into the light before I had my first episode when I traveled back in time when life was just a little bit simpler.


It was January when I was in seventh grade. Nikki and I had just become best friends at Osling Junior High and we were both bored in history class. We were partnered together to work on this diorama of Spanish settlers in the United States and write an essay as if we were one of the settlers.
“Oh my God, this is so stupid.” Nikki rolled her eyes as we were working. She had plastic green army figures that she was painting tan to look more real.
“Yeah, I know.” I agreed. “I don’t see why we should have to do this. Like it serves any real purpose in the real world.”
“O.M.G. I love that show.” Nikki laughed.
The first response in my mind?
What kind of idiot did I latch myself to?
“Yeah, well, I agree.” I restated. “It’s stupid, plain and simple.”
“Sure is.” A voice said behind me.
And there he was: Samuel Owen Michaelson.
Now, he went by Sam by pretty much everyone, but there was already a girl named Sam in the class who liked not Sammy, but “Sahmi” (which I thought was completely ridiculous) and silently named her Sam but the hottest guy I had ever had the pleasure to call eye candy was always Samuel Owen Michaelson.
God damn.
I was always ambitious, but guys seemed to be easier targets to hit. And believe me, I just felt myself swelling with ambition for S.O.M.
“I know.” I turned around from my seat and could feel myself getting redundant, but pressed on. Nothing less than a perfect bull’s-eye. “Why should we have to use our valuable study time to construct dioramas that will be in the trash within a week?”
“That is the question.” S.O.M. smiled. I knew while drop-dead, walk-away-so-I’ll-have-a-chance-to-breathe-but-never-leave-my-side gorgeous, he was an academic at heart and didn’t buy any of the whole “get your hands on learning” aspect unless you were under the age of eight and played with blocks with numbers on them.
“But I guess I could talk forever about it.” I looked away with my “shy” smile, though it was anything but while lightly tossing back my hair. “You better get back to work.” I bit my finger, not hard, but just enough to let him know I had, that I was nervous.
Of course, guys are sometimes idiots.
“Hils! There is blood on my butt! I think I’m bleeding on the inside!” Nikki started harshly whispering while S.O.M. was in ear range.
Of course, this also comes on handy.
“You do not have internal bleeding. You got your period. Let’s wash up in the bathroom.” I whispered. I handed Nikki her sweatshirt from the empty seat next to me. “Put that around your waist.” There was no way in hell I was giving her mine.
“OK,” Nikki followed me to the bathroom to stuff toilet paper in her underwear. She was afraid of tampons after the health lecture on toxic shock syndrome and didn’t have any money to buy them anyway from the vending machine inside. Pads were also not an option because she didn’t want to look at her own womanly functions.
Luckily for her, being stupid was an option I wasn’t going to let her take.
“Look, Nikki, I’m trying to look at for you. Either stick it up your vagina or wear a diaper and/or pad. No one likes it, no one cares. Deal with it.”
“OK,” she nodded obediently, “I will.” And she went inside the stall.
I scowled to the mirror. “Idiot,” I said silently to myself, wishing I had brought some cigarettes to smoke. I didn’t smoke, but I thought about the scene. I started imagining myself inhaling the smoke, while mumbling “idiot” while putting the cigarette out on the sink in the dimly lit ladies’ room. It seemed like something in a movie.
I smiled, thinking about S.O.M. and waited for Nikki to come out of the stall so we could finish the damn project before I had to kill myself.


My arms were all contorted uncomfortably, as were my legs, but it didn’t seem too long since I had been out of it.
It had been six and a half days.

Chapter Five:

The girl next to me told me what day it was.
“What? What were they doing to me?”
“Tests, I suppose. I was sleeping during most of it. Treatment’s really knocking me out.” The girl seemed to have more energy than before. She was upright, nodding, even smiling.
How strange.