Chapter Eight

"So tell me about your brother," Marco said from across the table. When we'd stepped inside the craft room, he had made a point to take the seat in the far back corner. There were a few other kids in there with us and I felt comfortable knowing there weren't any obstacles between the door and me. I'd done a lot of research on this madness that had taken over my mind, and this symptom was known as hypervigilance: the constant scanning of the room and the need to know how to get out of it at a moment's notice. It had started shortly after the bullying became physical.

I moved my round-tipped scissors around the red construction paper. My eyes lifted to the door for the hundredth time since we'd sat down. "He's sixteen." My lips curled upward as I thought of Luke. "He has two big loves." I set down the paper and counted off on my fingers. "Football, and virtual reality." Marco laughed. I wondered if he was anything like Luke. Did he like the same things? Had he ever lived a normal life like my brother had before everything fell apart?

Old magazine pages had been printed, chopped up into pieces, and fanned across the tabletop so collages could be made, and easels were scattered around the room with fresh white sheets of paper hanging from them, just waiting for a paintbrush. Even with all the artwork hanging around, some kid-created and some professional for inspiration or ambience, Marco was still more interesting to look at. A year ago I would have laughed at everything he said, leaned in and made sure my arm brushed his, maybe even asked one of my friends to poke around and find out who he thought was cute, but now I could barely bring myself to sneak a glance at him. I felt unworthy. I wanted to be invisible.

"He sounds like a typical kid."

"He was," I answered, pulling my lips tight and holding in a sigh. Things were different now. I didn't know how to explain it and I wasn't sure exactly when it had all gone so terribly wrong, but I knew I played a large, horrible part in Luke's new persona. I picked up the paper again and went on cutting out the large bubble letters, trying not to dip my toe into that negative-thought whirlpool I always had so much trouble swimming out of. I sensed Marco wanted to ask me more about it, but he didn't. He respected the boundary I'd set and let the silence fill the space between us.

"He's having a rough year," I finally admitted when the silence had stretched so far I could feel it in my bones. We all were. My parents had no idea why their son was staying out past curfew, drinking and doing pot with his friends. They didn't understand why I quit the cheer team before the end of football season and became a recluse, staying in my room unless physically forced to leave it.

"Looks like it's been a tough year for all of us." Marco reached for a tiny scrap of red paper and began to cut out the dot for over the 'i.' Together we created the words 'Happy Birthday' out of scraps of construction paper and glued them to a blank card we found in a box on the counter. It would be the first paper card I'd given him. Usually we just sent credit to each other's various accounts with a short message. The room started clearing out and with each person that left, I felt myself growing more uneasy. When it was just me, Marco, and one younger girl left, I started to clean up our mess.

"Your card isn't finished yet," Marco stated, confused, as I fluttered around, clearing the table as quickly as possible, looking up to make sure the girl wasn't leaving just yet. It took him a minute, but then he began to understand what was happening. "I'll leave when she does," he said, watching to see if his guess was accurate. I froze, looking at him to see if I could trust what he'd said. I nodded once tightly and tucked myself back into my seat to finish the card. We might not be here for a long time, but this was as fresh a start as I was going to get.

"Are you going to try it?" he asked quietly, glancing over to the girl as she put away the modeling clay she was using. Marco pushed back his chair and stood, watching to make sure he wasn't going to be alone with me. I couldn't be trusted. People would talk and I'd had enough of that already.

I thought about his question. Would I try the medication?

"I'm afraid," I whispered back.

"I'm doing it." He took a step away from the table when the girl exited the room. "What's there to lose?"

I remained unmoving as he took a few more steps away from me, keeping his promise to leave so we wouldn't be alone together. "That's the thing," I began, "I have nothing left to lose—so what will be left of me when it's done?" I picked up the card we'd been making and carefully ran my fingers over the colorful paper. I tried so hard to hold it together so that I wouldn't make an even bigger mess of things for Luke. He deserved to live a normal life and I wanted nothing more than to give that to him. That's what my suicide was supposed to accomplish. I was supposed to be out of his life so mine wouldn't keep spilling into his and ruining everything.

"Think about it, Koralee," Marco urged, "Maybe going inside our heads is the only way we're ever going to get out of them." He didn't wait for me to answer. He left the room and I put the card down on the table with a shaky hand. I sat beneath the bright glowing lights looking at what we'd created, but not really seeing anything. My thoughts were elsewhere. Facing what I'd done was my biggest fear. The never-ending consequences of my actions were so out of my hands at that point I had long since given up ever being able to fix them. So that was the pickle, really; should I risk facing my demons in the hopes that they would flee? Or should I leave the door I'd tried so hard to shut closed and stack anything I possibly could in front of it until there was no chance it could ever be opened?

A soft chime played over the intercom and then the soothing voice announced it was time to return to our rooms to get ready for the night. I opened the card and reached for a pen in the decorated jar sitting in the middle of the table. I removed the lid and held it above the blank cardstock, wondering if there was anything I could say that would make a difference. Would my words ever erase the ones my peers had written on the walls for everyone to see? The chime rang out again and I pressed the tip of the pen to the white sheet, forming the words I knew to be true:

Happy Birthday, Luke

I love you madly,

Koralee

No matter how many times I'd told him to go away when we were younger, being away from him was hard. I'd once felt like I could protect him and keep him innocent. I didn't say bad words in front of him and when he tried to watch things our parents didn't allow while I was babysitting, I'd make him turn them off. It was my job to make sure he was happy. This last year I failed. Instead of keeping his head above the dirty water, I fell in and dragged him down with me. How could anyone ever forgive me when I could never forgive myself?

This time when the chime rang out, Lorelei popped her head into the room. "We're shutting down the recreational rooms now. You should head back to your room and get your stuff ready to take a shower."

I nodded, but when I didn't move immediately, she came closer and leaned over my shoulder to look down admiringly at my card. "That's nice," she said softly.

"Thank you." I stood and pushed my chair in, looking at the card so I didn't have to look at her. Eye contact felt so intimate now and I couldn't stand to feel more vulnerable than I already did.

"Art is good for your heart." Lorelei grabbed a blank envelope from a drawer behind us and handed it to me. She picked up the little-kid scissors from the table and shoved them back into the decorated jar along with the pens and markers. I walked slowly toward the door, not wanting my nightly routine to begin. I could distract myself when I was awake with loud music, dark poetry, or an alternative life inside my VR where I could start over as a new person without any history, any time I wanted. But at night when I closed my eyes, the life I was living was the real one I had destroyed and there was no reset command. The words I recited weren't those of famous poets like Plath and Poe, they were the threats and judgements of my peers and friends I'd seen written on message boards and scribbled on the walls of my high school. For the last year as I'd fought my way into a restless sleep, no matter how much I turned up the volume of my favorite songs the only chorus I could hear was the chants of my classmates as they taunted me for what I'd done. I'd wake with a gasp, eyes wide and chest heaving, but with no words on my tongue, no rebuttals to their accusations, because if I was being honest, most nights I wasn't angry at them—I was envious. For a while now I'd found that I identified with those that hated me more than I did with myself. I didn't want to be me anymore.

They say when we dream our subconscious projects itself onto all the characters so that we are actually everyone. If that's true, and I believe it is, I was harboring some very dark opinions about myself. It didn't happen very often, but some nights I would close my eyes so tightly they hurt in hopes that my brain would make sense of it all. I'd wake up the same, though, startled and struggling because no matter what, I couldn't undo the damage that had already been done.

I didn't know Braden Ertz, a boy I'd never met who was awaiting his fate in some prison cell miles away, but I understood why he wanted permission to end his life. He couldn't change what had happened. And sometimes that alone was impossible to live with.

When we got to our room Aideen was already in bed. She looked awful. Her body was curled up and while she was shaking with the covers wrapped over her shoulder, her face was dripping with sweat. Beside her bed was a bucket, and a fresh washcloth lay on the dresser near a paper cup of water. "Is she going to be okay?" I asked as I took in her sickly image. "She seems to be getting worse, not better."

Lorelei closed the door behind us and moved to stand at my side. "She'll be all right. This is the worst of it. It's painful and feels pretty terrible, but she'll pull through."

"What's the matter with her?" I asked. Lorelei gave me an apologetic smile.

"She can't tell you," Aideen practically grunted from the bed. I'd thought she was asleep but maybe she was just too sick to open her eyes. "Medical stuff is confidential. So stupid. Everyone is going to find out in group anyway." Her eyes opened and she tried to focus on me but it looked as if the light from the fluorescent bulbs above was burning her eyes, and she squinted so much they were almost closed again. "I'm in withdrawals. Opiates. I ODed on heroin and synthetic benzos. I don't want their meds so I'm just going cold turkey. They can't make me take anything."

"I don't know why you aren't letting us help," Lorelei pleaded and I could tell this was the middle of an argument that had clearly been happening for some time.

"It just prolongs it." Aideen kicked at the covers like there might be bugs crawling on her legs.

"It won't kill you," Lorelei said matter-of-factly.

Aideen opened her eyes and glared at her. "Of course not! I can't do that right. I get to lie here and suffer. I try to bump a little heroin and go to sleep and instead I'm going to want to scratch off my skin or crawl out of it with just my bones. I've already lost all the moisture in my body in the last few hours and I can barely stand up. No, I'm not going to get to die. I'm going to get to suffer. Don't give me your shitty medicine, which is just something else I'll get hooked on that my mom can't afford. I don't want to be a Goddamn burden! I want to be done! Just fucking let me DIE!"

Lorelei didn't even flinch, but I did. Shima was pressed up against her bed, her face frozen in shock and her eyes wide. Lorelei turned to us and said calmly, "Girls, go take your showers. You were all supposed to go together but Aideen won't be able to make it just yet. Tell Nurse Amber I sent you."

I watched for another few seconds as Aideen rocked uncomfortably in her bed. If misery was a motion, that would be it. Then Shima and I gathered a change of clothes and our bathroom items and headed down the hall. We didn't say a word to each other. For the first time since leaving my local hospital, I felt homesick. I wanted my mom even though I knew there was nothing she could do to make me feel better. I hadn't thought about her comfort in a long time. When going to her hadn't fixed any of the horrible feelings I held inside myself, I'd crossed that item off the list of things I could do to find comfort in my life. I hadn't even gone back. But as we walked down that hallway far away from home, I wondered if maybe some things on that list should be passed by with a curse of disappointment, but not scratched from the list forever.

Just outside the bathroom door a nurse greeted us. She had a tablet and it appeared she was checking off girls as they showered for the night. I knew Shima was shy so I spoke for both of us. "I'm Koralee and she's Shima. Nurse Lorelei sent us." She slid her finger along the screen until she found our names and then checked off each one with a tap of her finger. 

"Where's Lorelei?" she asked.

"Our roommate isn't feeling well so she's staying back with her."

The woman paused for a moment, looking past us down the hall. I turned around and saw Lorelei waving from our door. The nurse waved back. "Okay, ladies. You have to be out in ten minutes or I come in after you. If you want to shave I'll need to be in there with you."

I shook my head, choosing privacy over smooth skin. Shima did the same. The nurse motioned for us to move inside. There were four showers side by side, each with a small metal partition between them. I set my change of clothes, towel, and toiletries on the bench just inside the stall. It reminded me of when my family used to go camping. We'd stop at campgrounds along the way and they'd often have showers just like the one I was in, only with plastic curtains instead of nothing. I closed my eyes for a second, trying to recapture the feeling of innocence from my youth.

The sound of the faucet in the stall next to mine pulled me from my thoughts and I opened my eyes and reached for my knob, turning it until the water was scorching, the way I'd been doing for months. The hotter the better. Steam filled the confined area quickly as I stripped from my clothes and stepped beneath the hot spray. My skin stung instantly, my breath escaping in a hiss from my lips. My feet danced around while my brain warred with my body to step out of the scalding water. I wouldn't let it. I deserved the pain.

I could see Shima's feet below the metal wall of my stall. She tipped them one by one on their sides as she shifted her weight. Soap bubbles slid down her ankles and spun around her feet until they slipped down the drain. I wondered what she wished she could wash away. I wondered if either of us would ever find our way back to who we were before we decided we didn't like that person anymore.

I soaped up my washcloth and scrubbed my skin, ignoring the way the bubbles turned pink as the scabs broke open and the sores seeped with fresh blood. My neck always felt so disgusting. I pulled my hair away from it and worked the soap into a lather there before moving on. At home, sometimes I would stay in the shower so long the water would run cold or my parents would knock on the door to make sure I was all right. The thought of only having ten minutes seemed to rev the motor that ran the anxiety monster inside me. I felt like I might gag, so I focused on breathing in the damp air and feeling the hot water pound against my back.

I no longer trusted myself to be normal. I couldn't trust myself to know when enough was enough. Had I been soaping up for two minutes? Five? Thirty? I didn't know. Instead I waited for Shima to turn off her water, and then I rinsed and shut off mine. We dried our bodies in silence, the only sound being the dripping of water as the faucets surrendered the remaining drops.

My skin was hot and moist and it made pulling my clothes onto my body extra difficult. It was like trying to stretch latex gloves over sweaty hands. I had to tug and pull until I was sweaty again, almost negating the entire purpose of freshening up in the first place.

I heard Shima moving out of her stall so I did the same. I glanced quickly at her wrists and saw her wounds were still tightly closed, feeling some relief in knowing she was still together. We weren't allowed to have our shoelaces in here, so our shoes had been exchanged for sandals right before lunch. We stood in front of the mirrors, brushing our hair with the cheap hairbrushes. The glass surface fogged our from the heat of our bodies and we'd take turns clearing it with our towels. When our eyes would accidentally meet, we'd offer a small smile and then look away.

A chime played over the speaker and the now-familiar soothing voice informed us that dinner was being served soon. We didn't rush, both of us using every minute of those ten that were given to us to be as alone as possible. Yes, we were with each other, but we had a silent understanding that we weren't going to be talking. When the bathroom door cracked and the nurse from outside peeked back in, we gathered up our items as if we'd just finished and headed for our room. I don't know about Shima, but my hair had never been as tangle-free as it was just then.

Aideen appeared to be asleep, but I could see fresh tracks of tears streaking down her face. Her pillow was damp and her hair was matted and wet. Her hand hung over the side of the bed, firmly grasping the bucket, and I noticed that Lorelei had tried to help soothe her with a cold washcloth across her forehead. Lorelei was sitting at the foot of Aideen's bed, her back against the wall with her feet crossed at the ankles. She set aside an old paperback book she was reading, tucking a bookmark between the pages before setting it carefully next to her thigh. The cover was worn and a few pages stuck out, the age of the spine allowing them to break free.

"You girls should go to dinner." She crossed her arms and rested her chin on her hand. I could see she was tired. I didn't know Aideen very well, but I'd seen how feisty she could get and I could only imagine what kind of fight she might have put up while we were in the shower. Lorelei had probably earned her paycheck in just a few short seconds.

"What about her?" I asked, lifting my chin toward our sleeping roommate.

"She's not going to feel like eating cafeteria food just yet. I'm going to have them bring her something later when she wakes up."

Shima and I set down our dirty clothes and toiletries. Lorelei scooted closer to the end of the bed, letting her feet touch the floor.

"Do you think she'll be better in time for group tomorrow?" Shima asked Lorelei.

"She's still going to be sick, but she should be able to get out of bed. Dr. Crimm told me you and Aideen are going to be the first to take the medication. Are you worried she won't feel up to it?" Lorelei asked.

"She was just really quick to volunteer. It seemed important to her." Shima looked over at Aideen. "I know withdrawals can make you sick for a really long time."

"They can. She's got a long battle ahead of her, but the worst of it should be behind her by then. Dr. Crimm has some medications prescribed to help if Aideen chooses to use them. We'll just have to wait to see what tomorrow brings. Hopefully she'll get some sleep tonight and be feeling a lot better tomorrow."

Shima nodded and folded her arms over her chest. I stood up and the two of us headed down the hall to the cafeteria. Just outside of it, two kids were using phones under the supervision of a staff member.

With both phones in use, there were a few people hanging around waiting for a chance to make a call. As we passed, I tried to think of who I'd call, but I couldn't come up with a name. I had been shut out by everyone. I'd spent the last six months losing every friend I'd ever had. And my parents? I didn't want to answer their questions. I had a story inside my heart that felt toxic and ugly, but my love for them kept it tethered within me. I couldn't set it free to poison them. There was nothing they could do. It was only a matter of time until they knew it all and I had been waiting like a prisoner on a figurative death row for word that my last allies had denied my clemency.

I turned my head away from the phones and focused my attention on the ground instead. I watched the lines of the floor disappear beneath my feet as we stepped into the cafeteria. The boys were already at a table so we got our trays and made our way through the line, gathering food I knew I had no intention of eating. It was taco night; my tray consisted of two tacos with unidentifiable meat and a scoop of red rice with sad-looking, shriveled green peas on the side.

When we took our seats at the table, the boys paused their conversation, their eating utensils poised above their food. "Where's Aideen?" Marco asked.

I turned and looked at Shima, and our eyes locked for a moment, questions silently flying between us as the boys looked on. We didn't owe Aideen anything, and the boys were just as much a part of our group as she was, but something about what she was going through felt like it needed to be protected until she was ready to share it. Shima dropped her gaze first, shrugging her shoulders, and spooned a huge bite of rice into her mouth so no words could be expected to fall free. When all eyes moved quickly and expectantly to mine I answered honestly, "She's in our room fighting her demons."

The boys didn't say a thing for a moment, their mouths closed as they thought that through, and then their eyes bounced off each other's as if waiting to see if anyone was going to press for more information. I knew for a fact no one at that table wanted to let their own demons free just to see Aideen's. So instead of questioning Shima or me about them, Marco just nodded his head and said reassuringly, "Let us know if there's anything we can do."