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Reasons to Keep Going

Chapter One

  My liver is probably failing. It’s not really any huge surprise to me of course. I mean, I knew what I was doing when I got myself into this position. All those years of thoughtless actions would have their consequences. That’s just a fact.

  I glance around the sterile impersonal prison they called my room. This was where I was going to die. I look down at my hand restlessly rubbing against the harsh white sheets. All I could think was that I deserved this. I put myself into this position and now I just had to deal with it. I had no one to blame but myself. I just needed to suck it up and go on until the bitter end of it all.

  I roll my hand over and look at the scars on my wrists. The cuts had been deep. I should have died from them. But no, that would have been too easy. Instead, I had to go out this way. With a million scars announcing to the world how pathetic I was. How weak I am. Dying slowing from drug overdose rather than immediately as I had planned months ago. There should be a warning on pill bottles that said something like “Will kill you as desired, but will draw it out ever so slowly.”

  I throw my head back against the pillow and glare up angrily at the ceiling. When the doctor had told me I was dying I tried to get it over with sooner rather than later. I got caught though. So now I had to live out the remainder of my days in the hospital because I am a risk to myself. If they decided I was alright again they would let me out, but I doubted that ever happening. I rolled my eyes. As if it mattered anyway, I was going to die. It’s just a fact.

  Oh yeah, my shrink tells me not to give up hope. I’m on the list to get a new liver after all. Plus, they were treating me because there was still a chance my own liver would be just fine after treatments. I shake my head in disgust. What a joke. Let’s give the suicidal moron a new liver to kill after she destroyed the perfectly good one she had. That makes so much sense. It wasn’t up to me though. I wasn’t considered capable of making the choice for myself. Something about being severely depressed and whatnot. Whatever. I was twenty-one. I could drink and vote. I think I should have the right to decide if I wanted to just let myself die or not.

  I sit up and throw my legs over the side of the bed. It was time to walk around. I didn’t feel like fighting with the doctor about sitting in bed all day. Not today anyway. Most days I was fine with it. In fact, it was only thing that gave me some satisfaction. I’d become known throughout this place for my love of ticking them all off. But hey, they had taken away all my rights. The least I could do was fight them tooth and nail the whole way.

  I thought about grabbing my hoodie before heading out, but decided against it. That would be my act of defiance today. It wasn’t big, but it was enough. It was the time of day I could go outside for a while, and a fall chill had invaded the Virginia air weeks ago. It was not t-shirt weather. Silently, I slipped outside with some other patients. I had gotten so good at this by now that they never seemed to see me go outside. They’d find out I went out later. For now, I could just have some peace and freedom. They couldn’t watch what they didn’t know they needed to.

  I slipped around the corner to a part of the yard no one else usually bothered to go to at all. The others scattered to benches and game courts. Lemmings, the lot of them. They did exactly what was expected of them. It was saddening to say the very least. I sprawled out across my patch of browning grass and stared up at the gray sky. It would rain soon. That thought made me happy. I loved the rain. I always had. It felt right, and when I walked through the rain, it made me feel alive. I could feel everything and I truly felt like I was in the here and now, not detached from this life.

  I sat up, scooted closer to the chain-link fence, and ran my fingers over the diamond outlines until I reached the bottom of the heavy mesh. I smiled. How careless of them to not realize there were exposed wire ends here. If I had a mind to, I could make a lovely mess just to prove to them I was still calling the shots in my life. I wouldn’t right now however. I wasn’t upset enough to now. I would remember this little bit of information however, for one of those days when I really felt like rebelling.

  Standing up, I looked out beyond my cage longingly. I wanted out so badly. I wanted to be truly free, not just finding pathetic ways to feign freedom to convince myself I had choices still. I did not have any. It was just an illusion I had learned to create for myself so I could cope. Fact.

  I crossed the yard back over to where I had first come out. I could see Dr. Wilkes waiting by the door for us to all come back in. He was my arch nemesis and he knew it. He did not mind one bit though. He was convinced that by allowing me to hate him, he was giving me a way to release some of the emotions I was keeping locked away, even if he’d prefer my finding a less hostile way of doing so. That was another fact. That’s how I liked to think these days though. In cold, hard, unyielding facts. It was too difficult to think much more broadly than that. It was probably because of all the medications they had me on. At times, I would only pretend to take them, but often I would just take them since whenever they found out I hadn’t taken them they would take away privileges and I really disliked it when they did that.

  “I see you’re feeling better today,” Dr. Wilkes commented as I walked by him without even a nod of recognition that he was there.

  “It’s warmer outside than usual.”

  “In fact it is not. It’s actually colder.”

  I shrug. I know he’s right of course, I just don’t feel in the mood to admit it to him. He’s right. I am feeling better today. Not that I was sick before, I just had not formed any type of rebellion in the last few days. To Dr. Wilkes, my rebelliousness level was a sign of how depressed I was or was not feeling. In his way of thinking, the more rebellious I proved to be, the better I was doing. Once he explained to me that it meant I cared enough to fight back. It made sense enough I supposed, but then I would rebel but not rebelling just to throw him off his game. It worked more often than he realized which gave me a sense of satisfaction to hold onto.

  He follows me inside and I roll my eyes and release a deep breath. “So maybe you are feeling up to having a chat today?” he questioned me.

  “I’d rather not.”

  “But you’re not incapable of it.”

  “But I still won’t.”

  “Because…?”

  I spin around to face him. “Because I’m not going to.”

  He smiles. “Alright, maybe tomorrow we can talk. I’m glad you are doing so well today. It’s encouraging. Just come see me if you change your mind about talking.”

  “You wish,” I mumble, going back to my vague self again. I wouldn’t go talk to him today if my life depended on it. Without waiting for any further of a response I wandered off down the hall, headed back to my room. I glanced at the door that led out of the psych ward. One day I was going to get out of this place. I would walk through that door and they would not be able to stop me. No one would be able to. I just had to wait for the right timing. Some time when it wasn’t locked up or being watched. Who knows, maybe I would actually try to earn the right to go out it for a bit. Probably not. That would take a lot of opening up and heart-to-heart stuff, which I would rather not dive into. I could of course lie and bluff my way through it, but Dr. Wilkes would see through me and call me out on it. So that plan was a no go. I would just have to get out the old-fashioned way: A breakout.

  I flopped onto my bed. I had a few options of what I could do with my day. I could sleep. I could journal out all the stuff going on in my head and earn myself some brownie points �"that wasn’t going to happen for the sheer fact that it would be giving in to them. I could read one of their patient-approved books. That would be rather pointless because after they finished removing all the books with anything that would be “potentially harmful” to patients, it was all fluffy bunnies and rainbows. Not my style.

  I was just starting to drift off to sleep when I heard a scuffle somewhere further down the hall. Curiosity winning out, I slipped out of bed and wandered out to my doorway to peek out.

  “I know you think I am crazy, but I’m not. Well at least, I’m not any crazier than the rest of you,” the dark-haired newcomer declared, stepping away from the nurses trying to get him to take some medications.

  “We don’t think you are crazy, Aidan. You’re just a bit confused and we want to help you. If you are fine then these pills won’t do a thing, so why not just take them and prove us wrong?” Dr. Wilkes reasoned as he took the cup of pills from the nurse and held it out for the guy (Aidan, I mentally correct myself) to take.

  “Do you think I am stupid?” Aidan asked, voice flat.

  Dr. Wilkes sighed heavily. “Humor me Aidan. It’s your first day here. Why not give it a week and see if we can help you before you decide that we can’t help you? Is that really asking so much?”

  “Do you want my honest opinion?”

  “We always care about how you really feel about things.”

  Aidan lifted a brow, but took the pills from Wilkes anyway. He threw them into his mouth and chased them down with a tiny cup of water one of the nurses offered him.

  “Thank you. Lunch is in a couple of hours, so go ahead and get to know a few of the other patients until then,” said Wilkes before heading off into the direction of his office. Aidan turned around as the nurses left him as well, reached into his mouth, pulled something out and threw it away in the trashcan at the entrance of the hall. He looked up and seeing me, offered a quick grin before straightening his face once again. I retreated back inside my room now that the show was over. It was time to find some new amusement.

  I yanked out my iPod from behind my pillow and played some mind-numbing rock music, mostly keeping my eyes on the doorway. I was not permitted to have unapproved music, but one of my few friends visited me at the beginning of last week, when I first got put in here, and was kind enough to slip it to me. A few seconds later, Aidan appeared in my doorway and watched me.

  I yanked my earbuds out and glared at him disapprovingly. “Do you have some sort of staring problem?”

  He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head. “Do you have some sort of paranoia problem?”

  “No.”

  “Well I don’t have a staring problem. I was told to go forth and make friends, so that is what I am doing.” He took a couple of steps into the room. “I’m Aidan. So if you are not in here for paranoia issues, which I’m not fully convinced is the truth, why are you here?”

  “I like the food,” I respond dryly before returning one of my earbuds back to an ear and turn my attention to my iPod. “If you are supposedly so perfectly sane what are you doing here?”

  “Simple. I’m a serial killer.”

  I looked back up at him. “I thought they put people like you in places with a bit more security than this.”
  “Well I have yet to actually kill someone yet. It is only a matter of time though. Justice needs to be met out, and no one else is going to do it, so it falls to me.”

  “I’m beginning to understand why they put you in here I think,” I say, once again removing my earbud and stashing my iPod. “I’m Lacey by the way.”

  “Nice to meet you Lacey,” he said, offering a slight mock bow. “Can I trust you will keep my secret about what you saw in the hall?”

  I nod. “But you won’t get away with it for long. They figure it out, trust me.”

  He shrugs. “Maybe not, but it will be fun while it lasts at least. When you get stuck in a place like this you have to steal whatever fun you can manage to and just deal with the consequences later on.”

  I allow myself to smile a very little. “I agree.”

  Aidan slowly backed out the door. “I will see you around Lacey. I have more inmates, I mean, patients to meet. I have a feeling I’ll be back though. And when I see you again you will have to tell me why you are doing time. Deal?”

  “Maybe. See you around.”

  He gave a slight wave before disappearing from sight. Maybe things would finally start to get interesting around this place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two

  Walking out for lunch, I find myself looking around for Aidan. He was probably the only one in this place I really felt interested in getting to know any better. I see Kaitlyn McCoy, the local walking skeleton-girl; anorexic for sure. Then there was Andy Jenkins, he keeps to himself mostly and never wants to talk in group therapy, but I’m quite confident by the look in his eyes, or really the lack of one, that he’s here for suicide too. Then there was a handful of others in our section of the ward who I was guessing were probably drug addicts by the looks of them. I really didn’t know for sure because mostly, I just really could not care less.

  As I scanned the room while everyone got their food I saw no sign of Aidan. Maybe he’d already managed to get himself into lock-down for something. I couldn’t imagine, but maybe he had tried to shank someone in an attempt to prove himself as the serial killer he seemed to think himself to be. Just as I was settling down with my tray of food, he came into the room and got in line to grab his lunch. He must have seen me too because he headed right over after collecting his meal. He plopped down in the chair across from me and smiled.

  “We meet again my friend. Now you must share your own story on how you ended up in this completely un-wonderful place,” he announced before taking a large bite from his deli sandwich.

  “I don’t think so,” I replied.

  “But I told you why I got in here, the least you can do is return the favor, no?” he argued, taking another bite.

  I shook my head, enjoying my new game of keeping my secret from him. “No one made you spill your guts.”

  “True. I did it out of good faith because it is common assumptions that if you are open and honest with someone they will likely return the favor. Besides, you are the only one whose story I cannot figure out. Even if no one else had told me theirs, it’s not exactly difficult to recognize an anorexic or crack head when you see them.”

  I shrug. “You might as well give up now, because I’m not saying anything.”

  “Fine. I’ll figure it out on my own then.”

  “Good luck.”

  “I will, just wait and see. So, how long have you been in here, or is that also a secret?” Aidan questioned.

  “I’ve been in here for almost two weeks now,” I tell him, deciding it would not hurt anything for him to know such a useless fact.

  He studies me for a moment before taking another bite. “So it is obviously more than just self-mutilation otherwise they would have let you go already most likely. Unless they thought you were suicidal I suppose.”

  I stop mid-bite. Of course he would have seen the scars on my arms, I realize. I should have pulled on my hoody, but after the first few days in here, I had stopped caring what the other inmates thought about me. They were all about as messed up as me. This guy though, despite being somewhat disillusioned, was relatively normal and it mattered a bit more.

  “You’re wrong,” I finally reply, continuing eating once again and smirking slightly in an attempt to pretend his supposed failure amused me.

  “Am I? I really do think I am right.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “Prove me wrong,” he challenges. “Why are you stuck in here if not for that?”

  My smirk broadens and I lean forward to whisper conspiratorially. “I see dead people.” I lean away again and continue eating, smiling at my joke and noticing he is smiling as well.

  “Oh really? I still do not believe you, but I guess I can pretend to for now. Do you only see a few dead people, or many of them? Are they innocent souls begging for justice or simple wanderers looking for someone to assist them in discovering a place of peaceful rest?”

  “I see lots of them everywhere and all different kinds. Some of them are murderers looking for new victims to terrorize and I have to explain to them that they are dead and they cannot do any harm because unlike what people think, they cannot move things or cause harm. That usually upsets them a lot, but I think they usually get over it. Then there are the murdered who are extremely depressed because no one avenged their deaths. I simply tell those that no one is going to avenge them, so they should just get over it and move on or whatever. Then there are a few who decide they have nothing better to do than run around eavesdropping on everyone and haunting people. I like them because they tell me many interesting stories.”

  Aidan bursts out laughing as I conclude my tale very matter-of-factly. I smile and congratulate myself on having come up with such an obviously entertaining story. I finish eating my sandwich and watch him shake his head as he slowly calms back down.

  “I definitely still do not believe your story, but that was hilarious. Did you just come up with it?” his eyes sparkled as he awaited my answer.

  I shrug as I stand up, now finished eating. “Maybe, maybe not. You will never know I guess.” I cross back over to near where I first got my food and leave my dirty dishes in their designated spot so they can be collected and cleaned later on, Aidan following right behind me.
  “So, what’s next on the agenda?” he asks following me over to stand by a window.

  “Group time for anyone who wants to earn brownie points for being touchy-feely with each other,” I reply with an evident sarcastic note to my voice.

  “Not a fan I take it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well then what do you do usually?”

  I c**k my head to the side and study him for a moment wondering if I really wanted to keep this up. From the corner of my eye, I can see Dr. Wilkes attempting to keep a casual eye on us. His interest in this new development is clear and I know he will see it as progress because this has been the longest I have talked to any of the other patients. . If I ditched Aidan now, I could successfully frustrate Dr. Wilkes likely more than I ever had before. But I couldn’t bring myself to bring about the loss of my new-found ally.

  “Generally? I just sit over hear and listen to them while scribbling in a notebook. They don’t mind so much that I don’t join therapy if they think I’m doing something ‘therapeutic’ on my own.”

  “Haven’t they ever caught on?”

  “Sure, but they think that I really am helping myself without realizing it, so they let it go and don’t tell me what they think so I won’t stop doing it. It’s a bit complicated.”

  “Sounds like it. So do you have some extra paper?”

  I bite my lip and stare at him for a long second before nodding. “Yes, in my room. I’ll be back. I’ll assume you’ll need something to write with too?”

  “Well paper isn’t much good without it unless you expect me to make paper folding crafts or something,” he responded, laughing slightly.

  I rolled my eyes and went off to get what we needed. When I got to my room I paused. Was this really the road I wanted to go down? I was befriending someone, and really, it was rather cruel. He had no idea what I was doing in here. Or at least, no solid knowledge. Worse yet, he didn’t know I was possibly dying, regardless of whether or not I actually followed through on doing myself in. Was it right to build a friendship fully aware that it came with an expiration date? I didn’t know. A part of me reasoned that I didn’t know I was going to die for sure. The other part told me I’d been listening to Wilkes too much. With a groan, I forced the thoughts way down deep and grabbed what I came for before heading back to where I had left Aidan waiting. When I made it back to the main room, the others were gathering to form a circle with their chairs. One of the druggies was hanging off from the group by himself and Andy was on his own as well, but otherwise, Aidan and I were the only ones not joining in. I handed him a spare blank notebook and a stick pen.

  “What, no pencils for scribbling more effectively?” he questioned, taking the offered items.

  “Nope. Someone could jab themselves with it and break off the lead into themselves I guess,” I answer, getting comfortable sitting on the wide windowsill bench we were at. “Pens can’t be sharpened or broken off so easily.”

  “Well I suppose they think of everything in here.” He dropped down next to me, but leaned his back against the window frame so he was facing me instead of the group starting up their therapy. He watched me for a moment, then set to work on something on his paper. I looked down at my own sheet, determining to ignore him for a while.

  I chewed my lip absently and played with my pen. I had no idea what I should do. I actually wanted to write something, I just didn’t know what. I still refused to write out what I was feeling and all that. It just was not going to happen. Plain and simple. I wouldn’t allow it. I started sketching out random lines and formed some basic geometric shapes. I let my mind wander aimlessly and disconnected for a bit. I really did enjoy this and for me, it was therapy of sorts. It helped me just step away and breathe.

  A shadow fell over me and I looked up. Dr. Wilkes had wandered over to us from his position observing the intern doctor who was conducting the group this afternoon.

  “I see you two have become friends,” he observed. “How did you ever get her to talk to you Aidan?”

  Aidan shrugged, completely focused on whatever he was up to in his notebook. “It just happened I guess.”

  “Well just so you know, we do encourage everyone to participate in the group counseling. It can be very beneficial to just get things out there in a safe circle.”

  I rolled my eyes at his words and looked to see if Aidan was buying any of it. Aidan was smiling faintly as if he didn’t quite know what to make of the encouragement.

  “Well I have never really been a big fan of show and tell, so I think I’ll just stick with this for now,” Aidan told Wilkes, lifting up his notebook as he spoke.

  “That’s fine. Just know you are very much welcome to join us, whenever you are ready to take that step.”

  Aidan returned his focus to what he had been working on. “Cool thanks.”

  Wilkes stood and watched us for a second more and I thought maybe he had something else to say, but he kept quiet, smiled, and returned back to observing the main group.

  “What are you working on?” I asked after Wilkes had been gone several minutes. Generally, I could care less about what other people are doing, but I had noticed that every once in a while, likely when he thought I would not notice, he would glance up at me briefly, then go back to whatever he was doing. It was starting to drive me crazy wondering what he was up to.

  “It’s a secret serial killer type thing. I will probably show it to you sometime later,” was his only response.

  Unsatisfied with his response, I slowly shifted myself, pretending to be stretching, and attempted to see his paper. He smirked and drew his knees, which the notebook was resting on, up closer to himself to hide it better.

  “Nice try. I told you, I’ll show you later.”

  “I was just stretching. I don’t care if I ever see whatever you are up to,” I stand up then and gather my stuff up.

  “Wait, you are leaving? But they’re not done over there yet.”

  “We don’t have to stick around if we don’t want to.”

  “So you are just abandoning me then? That is not very nice.”

  I pointed off in the direction of the lone druggie. “Ryan could always use some company, or there is still the group session. I’m sure they would welcome you with open arms. Literally. Watch out, there are several huggers in here.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” he looked over to where Ryan was sitting, staring into nothingness. He lowered his voice considerably, “I think druggie Ryan is still on drugs.”

  “Oh he is,” I assure him. “The doctors and nurses are still trying to figure out where he’s getting it from. They have already tossed his room a couple of times. They put him in solitary for a couple of days to clean his system and give them time to find out where he was keeping it, but they couldn’t find anything and he got right back to it when he was allowed back out.”

  “Well he does not sound like the best friend I could make in here then.”

  “What, and you think I am? Trust me, you should find someone else to buddy up with. I am not a good choice at all,” I say, not wanting to drive away the first friend I had made here, but also not wanting to deal with all the stress having a friend would mean. Better to just exist in here and not let anyone get too close.

  “What makes you think I want you for a friend?” he questioned, looking up at me, still seated on the windowsill. “Maybe you are just my next victim and I am just stalking you so I can learn your patterns and figure out the very best way to kill you.”

  I raise a brow and tilt my head to the side, trying to decide how serious he was being. After all, he was in a psych ward for this very disillusion. Finally, I decide he’s not being serious and shake my head.

  “You’re not though,” I say.

  “Oh yeah?” He turns his notebook to face me and I see a sketch of myself on the first page. “This may just be the first of many I will put on my wall in preparation for killing you.”

  I shake my head, still unconvinced. “Maybe, but I doubt it. You told me you were a serial killer to seek justice, so why would you kill me?”

  “Practice,” he stated, dropping the notebook back in his lap.

  “Is this really the only reason you are in here, Aidan? I mean, you are definitely weird, but I don’t think you really belong in here with the rest of us.”

  “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” he answers, shrugging. “Are you going to tell me what you are doing in here?”

  “No.”

  “Well then if you are going to be keeping secrets, then so am I. Maybe if you decide to actually tell me the truth about why you’re here then I might tell you more about what I’m doing in here,” he told me. He closed up his notebook and tossed it aside while standing up. “So what do we do next?” he asked, staring at me while awaiting my response.

  “It’s up to you. Whatever you want to do until dinner unless of course you have to meet with Dr. Wilkes or someone.”

  “Nope. I’m free as far as I know.”

  “They are probably giving you a day to adjust to being in here before they jump in to everything,” I remark, starting to head off. “See you later,” I call without looking back at him. When I get to the hall, I hear steps behind me and turn to find him following me out of the main room. “What are you doing?” I demand, ready for him to leave me alone so things can be normal for me again.

  “Stalking you like I said. What are you planning to do all afternoon?” he asked me.

  “Stuff.”

  What type of stuff? Could you be just a bit more descriptive about it maybe?”

  “No. It’s none of your business what I am going to be doing.”

  “So your plan is to sit alone sulking then?”

  I narrow my eyes and without a word, make a point of turning away from him and heading off to my room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Three

  “So do you always hide in a corner by yourself?” a voice asked from above me. I opened my eyes and looked up to have Aidan’s bright brown eyes greet my green ones.

  “You shouldn’t sneak up on people. It isn’t nice of you,” I say, sitting up, knowing my sanctuary corner of the yard was likely forever ruined, at least as long as Aidan was a patient here. “What do you want?” I ask him as he sits down next to me. He lies back into the grass much like I had just been doing.

  “To talk to you. Sitting around moping all day cannot really be very good for you, you know that right? Besides, I still think you are the most interesting person in this place. Though to be fair, the pickings are slim. So have you seen any more dead people lately?”

  “Trust me, there are much more interesting people. You just have to look hard. That’s all. And yes. I met a lovely lady last night after lights-out time. She told me all about how she had been tortured to death for several months until she finally died. She said it had been a serial killer named Aidan. I explained about her to Dr. Wilkes earlier. He seemed worried. Maybe he is concerned you actually are a serial killer. I would make a break for it now before the police show up to take you away.”

  “As amusing as all of that sounds, I really don’t believe you. Besides, I doubt Wilkes would believe you even if you really did tell him all of that,” Aidan said, sitting back up and laughing at my words.

  “I’m not the crazy one. He has no reason to doubt what I say,” I countered quickly as I grab a handful of dying grass and break the pieces off. I begin rip the pieces apart absently as I watch Aidan.

  “I’m not so sure about the you not being crazy part. After all, you have yet to tell me exactly what you are doing in this place. You could be completely nuts for all I know,” Aidan pointed out, snagging his own handful of grass. “And if Wilkes did not question your sanity before, he certainly will now if you told him that little tale of yours.”

  I shrug. “Maybe, maybe not. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “I guess so.”

  I notice the others are all starting to make their way back inside once again, and I leap to my feet, remembering with a hint of dread what today was. It was Wednesday, which means I had to get evaluated by my doctors to see how I was doing with my treatment I had been receiving. It meant getting to leave to psychiatric wing for a few hours, but it also meant Aidan would wonder where I was and start asking around until he found it out. Not that they were supposed to be sharing personal information like that, but patients always seemed to learn more than they ever should, and in a psychiatric ward where nothing interesting ever happens, other people’s business was their only entertainment.

  Aidan stood up to and began matching my steps as I hurried to get back inside. “What’s the rush? Do we have to go in so early?”

  I shake my head, still walking towards the hospital. “You don’t have to come in too. Most people start heading in at about this time now that it is colder out, but you still have at least another thirty minutes before they come looking for you.”

  “Then why are you heading in so soon?” he pressed. We reached the door to back inside and I paused briefly, hand resting on the handle, ready to yank it open at any moment.

  “I have something I have to take care of this afternoon. You should stay out though for as long as you can. Make them drag you back inside again,” I suggest, starting to open the door. Aidan reached out and held the door closed.

  “So you’re not going to tell me what this is about?”

  “I just told you. I have something I have to do. I really don’t have any other option. I will see you when I get back later,” I say, yanking at the door and staring at his arm still holding the door firmly closed. He drops his arm and I throw the door open.

  “I will see you later, Lacey,” he called from behind me. I turn back and offer a slight wave before heading off down the hall in search of Dr. Wilkes to find out when I would be heading out to the part of the hospital they needed me to be in for running tests. I found Wilkes alone in his office, tapped lightly at his door, and waited for him to look up at me. He finished writing something, and within seconds, was looking up at me.

  “Are you ready to head out for your tests?” he asked me while motioning for me to come in. I stepped inside but didn’t sit down. Today was not shrink day, and I had every intention of making that clear to him. He smiled and leaned back in his chair, watching me. Instinctively, I knew what was coming next.

  “So, you and Aidan seem to getting along fairly well,” he began. “Have you changed your mind about letting other people in?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing has changed,” I assure him. “Aidan has basically forced his way into things, but that’s all.”

  “It’s good progress though. You are allowing him to be around you and you are talking to him. That’s good. Why don’t you want to give him the chance to earn your trust and friendship? It appears as if he really would like that.”

  “No.”

  “Why no?”

  “Because even if all these medications work and we can reverse or halt the damage that has been done, to my body, we both know my days are numbered.”

  “Everyone’s days are numbered. Whether you choose to kill yourself or not is of course up to you, but people die every day. Every time we make new friends we run the risk of losing them sooner than we would suspect or like. I’m not saying that makes killing yourself alright, but just because you have those thoughts, doesn’t mean you should avoid making any friends. In fact, if you were to make some good friends you might find yourself wanting to live more,” he told me, getting to his feet and grabbing up some things from off his desk, preparing himself for us to leave.

  “It’s not right to make friends you’re just going to end up hurting later. If you die unexpectedly in a car accident or something, well that’s just different. To know you are dying or to kill yourself isn’t unexpected. You know it is coming or at least that it is likely coming. I don’t want to feel guilty about leaving anyone behind.”

  Seeing that he is ready to leave, I turn around and head back out of his office and wait for him to come out and take the lead. Instead of just leading me out however, he tilts his head in a welcoming gesture and we head off walking side by side.

  “So you don’t want to connect with someone because you are afraid you will have second thoughts and regrets about hurting yourself? Lacey, that is exactly what you need at this point. I know it is easier for you to stay disconnected from life, but the key to healing would be for you to make connections. You need reasons to hold on and people who will support you when things are more difficult. It’s the only way you are really going to get any better. Otherwise, I’m afraid you are going to stay in a state of hanging in the balance for a very long time. Your own very own living purgatory.”

  We walk in silence down the hall to the door out of the ward. I think about everything he’s saying, but I don’t want it to make sense. I don’t want to really listen to any of what he is saying. I cannot seem to help it however. His words only reverberate through my mind.

  The real question in it all was whether or not I wanted healing to happen, and honestly, I wasn’t sure what the answer to that question really was. I mean, I had become comfortable with the idea of dying. I had stopped making plans for my life. I had stopped thinking ahead. I had already come to accept that I would not be alive much longer. That was all I really knew anymore. So the idea of actually living seemed so foreign to me now. What was healing? What was getting better?

  Wilkes stayed silent as we continued our journey, seeming content to leave me to my thoughts on what he had said. He held open the door for me and we officially walked out of the psychiatric ward. It was the first time I had been out in a week. It felt strange walking back out into the real world.

  I followed him blindly, having fallen back once we began to enter unfamiliar territory. Snapping briefly out of my thoughts I looked around myself. So many hallways. So many chances to totally disappear in this place. There were cameras everywhere, but if you moved fast enough, you still had a chance. I could get away, maybe. I had no idea where I would go if I did get away though. I mean, would I just run off and find the quickest way I could kill myself? That would really be rather pathetic of me. Then again it isn’t like I could do much more than that without getting caught and taken back. If I went to visit my best friend �"okay, my only friend- Sandy they would find me because chances are wherever she is would be the first place they would check.

  Sandy, my only friend and a notorious drug addict on campus. She understood how I felt to some extent, but even she did not fully support my ideas. She had helped me by getting me my iPod inside of the ward, but beyond little pieces of encouraged rebellion, she thought it might be okay for me to be in there. My mind flashed back to her one and only visit, two days after I had been admitted into the psychiatric ward of the hospital after trying to kill myself when I found out I could be dying.

  “Well Lace, you know, this might be good for ya, you know? I mean, maybe they can help or something,” she had told me.

  “What, are you kidding me?! They don’t have the right to keep me in here. It’s my life! I should get to choose what happens to it, not them. I don’t need help, I need to be out of this place,” I finish with a snarl.

  “Lace, I know this place sucks, but maybe you should give them a chance. I mean, death is so permanent, you know? I mean, cutting was one thing,” She paused for a beat and shrugged before continuing on, “I figured you would eventually stop. I mean, it wasn’t cool, but I knew it probably wouldn’t kill you or anything like that. It was safer.”

  “Oh, so it’s okay for you to be a popping pills and shoving needles into yourself, even though you know it’s going to kill you one of these days. But me? I can’t decide my own fate at all. That sounds so fair.” I start to get up to leave but she grabs my leg under the table between us, then presses something against it.

  “I’m not on their side here Lace. I just don’t want to lose one of the few people who actually see me as worth something, okay? I’m on your side, even if you aren’t.”

  I slip my hands under the table to grasp at what she was holding against my leg. Feeling my iPod and earbuds, I took them and slipped them into my sleeve so no one would see it.

  “Sand, I’m tired of all this,” I tell her, waving my hand around for emphasis. “I’m tired of trying to make this work out. It’s never going to and I know that. Why should I keep trying anymore? I’m dying anyway.”

  “You should keep trying because you are strong and you are not a coward, that’s why. You think you’re a quitter, but you are no quitter, Lace. You’re tough. Tougher than anyone I know. You just need to see it for yourself and I think this place is probably the only place where you’ll find people willing to push you to where you see that. I can’t give you the push you need.” She stood up and offered me a faint smile with her pale cracking lips. The expression only barely touched her sunken pale blue eyes. “Hang in there Lace,” she said, waving and heading away towards the door that separated me from the freedom I was dying to get.

  I snapped back to the present. It wasn’t right. I mean, hadn’t it been obvious to everyone that she was a user? Why did no one step in and force her to change her ways? She actually had a chance. She wanted to live. She had often talked about trying to quit all the drugs and everything. She didn’t believe she could, but she wanted to get away from it all. She wanted to heal. Why did they allow her to walk away while they forced me to stay? Why didn’t they give me the same choice?

  “Okay, this is the room,” announced Wilkes. “They should be all ready for you. I’ll just wait out here until you are done.” He sat down in a nearby chair. I went to open the door but my hand hesitated on the handle. Two weeks of treatment. They told me by now we could see some changes, whether for the better or for the worse. Thing was, I didn’t know which change I wanted to see. I turned the handle and walked in.

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  “What did they say?” Dr. Wilkes asked me as I walked out of the room. I shrugged and nodded towards the doctor in charge of my physical health, Dr. Marie Catelli, knowing she would tell Wilkes everything anyway. Sure enough, Catelli motioned Wilkes aside. Wilkes signaled for me to wait where I was before joining her. They talked for several minutes before he came back to me and Catelli headed off in the opposite direction down the hall.

  “Well, it sounds like we have some things to work on,” he remarked, resting his hands on his hips and standing in front of me. “Did she talk to you about everything?”

  “Kind of. I wasn’t really paying any attention,” I muttered, looking away distractedly.

  “Okay, well we can go over it all then.” He motions for me to walk ahead of him and we begin to make our way back to the prison we had come from. “First of all, Dr. Catelli has suggested we take a bit more care in what your diet is. So I will get with the kitchen staff and work out a plan. Some of the others require a more special diet as well, so I’m sure they won’t really mind about that. It does mean you need to be cooperative about it though. So be prepared to eat whatever you’re given and nothing else unless you check with me or Dr. Catelli first.”

  I nod. Catelli had said something about changing up what I was eating so it would be easier on my body. She said depending on what they could work out, we might even be able to find some foods that would actually help contribute to the healing process, not simply cause fewer issues.

  “The other thing she mentioned is that you need to start really wanting this to work. Your mindset has a huge effect on the success of this treatment. If it’s going to work, you have to want it to and be willing to do what you can to make it work better.”

  I nod again, starting to stop listening. It was easy enough for them to say and reason out. Wanting to live came naturally to them. That desire was something I had to fight for. It was something I had not felt in almost as long as I could remember. I faintly recalled a time when I was happy to be here and be alive, but it was so old a memory, I could only slightly bring it to mind.

  “Lacey, are you listening to me?”

  I look up to meet his eyes for the first time since coming out of the examination room. He sighs, knowing the answer.

  “Lacey, I want you to live. I want you to beat this because you can. So just try, okay? That is all we are asking. All you have to do is really try to want this to work.” He stopped walking and put a hand on my arm to stop me as well. “Tell me you are going to try.”

  I pulled away from him and started walking again. “I can’t. You don’t understand. I can’t do it anymore.” I felt an urge to escape and it got stronger with every single second that passed. I just had to get away. To run. To not have to deal with any of this anymore. To get away from the expectations and confusing.

  Before I realized what I was doing I took off down another hallway at a dead run.

  “Lacey, stop!” Wilkes commanded firmly from somewhere behind me, but I ignored him and ran even faster. I didn’t hear him following behind me, which was a good sign. I darted down another corridor, now starting to pay attention to all of the signs. I knew we were on the first floor because we had not gone up any stairs or taken an elevator, and I knew the ward was on the first floor. That gave me a fighting chance. Plus, this area was practically deserted for some reason, so the few nurses and medical techs just leapt out of my way instead of actually trying to stop me.

  I saw a sign pointing to an exit down another hallway and took a sharp right in that direction. Getting through the doors and past the desk with the nurses on duty there could prove to be challenging, but I hoped if I ran fast enough it would work. Then it was just a matter of getting out of the lobby area and out the nearest door to the outside. I couldn’t resist the smile spreading across my face. I was going to make it! I would get out. I paused briefly when I reached the double doors and slammed my hand against the button to open them. As soon as they were cracked open enough for me to slip through, I bolted, only to slam into something incredibly hard. Arms wrapped tightly around me and I found myself unable to move.

  “Whoa, what the heck Lacey?” A familiar voice said. I tilted my head back to see Aidan staring down at me, eyes wide. I used my arms to try to push away from him but he tightened his hold.

  “Where are you off to in such a big hurry?”

  “What are you doing out here?” I demanded with a snarl, ignoring his question and pushing again to release his hold.

  “I had to go do some things,” he replied, “Now answer my question: Why are you very suspiciously running out the doors?”

  “None of your business, let me go.”

  “Hold on to her Aidan,” said a voice I recognized as belonging to Tonya, one of the interns from the psychiatric ward. I peeked around Aidan to see her standing a few feet off with a cell phone pressed to her ear. “Actually, we just ran into her,” she said into the phone. “Yeah, we will bring her back with us. No problem.” She paused. “No, you don’t need to send any help. Aidan has her.” She paused again briefly. “Alright, we will be there in a few.” She took the phone away from her ear and nodded to us. “Come on, let’s go,” she instructed.

  Aidan released me, spun me around and linked arms with me. “Well that was interesting. You know you are going to have to tell me all about this little adventure, right?”

  “Not happening,” I grumbled. “Traitor.”

  “Come on, don’t you want to rant to someone about how unfair they are or something? I can be a great listener and supporter.”

  I shook my head and refused to say anything more as he half guided, half dragged me back in the direction of the ward with Tonya close behind us to be sure we went where we were supposed to.

  “Look, I’m all for breaking the rules and rebelling,” he whispered, bending his head down to be closer to my ear so Tonya couldn’t hear him. “But running right out the front door in broad daylight is a bit too much, don’t you think. They would have caught you before you’d even made it off of the grounds.”

  “You don’t know that,” I answer through gritted teeth. I winced a little, feeling a sharp pain in my middle.

  “Are you alright?” Aidan asked, noticing my wince. “Do you pull something running?”

  Tonya came up behind us and looked in my eyes as I worked to suppress showing any signs of my discomfort. “Lacey?”

  “I’m fine,” I say flatly. Tonya studied me for another second, seeming very unconvinced. She knew what was going on with me. She was also acutely aware that physical stress could cause pain for my liver in my current condition. I wasn’t going to admit it though. The last thing I wanted right now was to admit I wasn’t okay and have her rush me off to the doctors again and have Aidan find out.

  “Fine then. Let’s keep moving,” she said, deciding to let it go. I could feel her eyes boring a hole into the back of my head as we began to walk once again.

  “Liar,” Aidan whispered.

  “Shut up!” I snapped back, successfully silencing him for the moment.

  When we made it back to the ward Aidan released me and I rushed off to my room, slamming the door closed even though I knew someone would soon come along who would open the door since I was not allowed to have a closed door. To my surprise however, the door didn’t open. I sat staring at it for at least an hour, my mind blank, waiting for it to open, but no one came. Slowly, I allowed myself to just drift off to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Four

  I woke up a few hours later to a knock at my door. It was quiet, barely loud enough for me to have heard at all. I lifted my head and debated about whether or not to answer it. With a groan, I pushed myself to throw my legs over the side of the bed and get to my feet. I padded over to the door and opened it just wide enough to see who it was. I saw it was Aidan, and the memory of what had happened this afternoon flooded into my mind immediately. I tried to close the door back up but he quickly pressed his hand against the door so I couldn’t push it closed.

  “What do you want?” I growl lowly, giving up on slamming the door in his face and focusing on driving him away instead.

  “Such bitterness! Look, I’m sorry about earlier, but trust me, there was a police car right outside, he would have found it more than just a bit suspicious to see a girl running out of a hospital.”

  “Whatever.”

  “It’s time for dinner. Are you going to come eat or what?”

  “Nope.”

  “How about yes?” he said, pushing harder against the door so it opened more. “Come on, you can tell me how mad you are at me and how much you want to kill me for helping them. How does that sound?”

  I don’t answer, but I open the door. He stepped back to give me room. Without meeting his eyes, I stiffly walk past him and head out into the main room. Upon reaching the counters of food prepared for all of us, I grabbed up a tray of food only to have a nurse who worked in the kitchen shake her head.

  “We put this together for you honey,” she told me, taking away the tray in my hands and handing me another with fresher, milder foods. Not that you could get much more bland than regular hospital food, but this food appeared to be even more health conscious. I frowned but didn’t say a word. I just carried my tray off to a far corner with a table no one usually ever ate at. A couple minutes later, Aidan joined me, sitting next to me rather than across from me as he always had before.

  “Look who’s getting special treatment!” he exclaimed, examining the food before me and stealing one of the thinly sliced carrots. “That looks way better than what they gave me to eat.”

  I shoved the tray towards him. “Eat whatever you want.” Without hesitating, he grabbed another carrot and bit it in half.

  “So, are you not mad at me anymore then?”

  “Oh I’m still mad at you,” I say, glaring at him. “I’m just mad at them more.”

  “So your retaliation is not eating?”

  “Not quite.” I grabbed some of the chips off his plate and dumped them on my own. I began taking deliberate bites from them, relishing the crisp crunching sound and their corn flavor.

  Aidan lifted his brows and watched me for a moment before slowly beginning to eat his own food along with bits of mine. I continued munching on the chips while scanning the room. I spotted Wilkes across the room from us. He was talking to Tonya, not noticing anything going on in the room. I took another bite.

  “So what is with the special diet anyway?” Aidan asked me, breaking into my thoughts. I turned back to look at him next to me.

  “It’s to keep me from seeing ghosts.”

  “Right. Are you going to tell me the real reason? Or how about what you were doing out of here earlier anyway?”

  “Nope. I’m not going to answer either of those questions,” I state with no hesitancy. There’s no reason I should.”

  “How about because I’m your only friend in this place?” he suggested.

  “Friend?” I laugh out the word harshly. “Friends let other friends go when they’re trying to make a break for it, not help the wardens.”

  “Like I said before, they would have caught you again anyway.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You helped them, not me. That doesn’t count you on the friends list or even close.”

  “Okay, how can I redeem myself then?”

  I looked in his eyes, doubting the sincerity of the question. The look in his eyes though told me that he meant it. I considered his request briefly, trying to think of something I could ask him to do that there was no way he would ever actually do. This was my chance to get rid of him, ending my worries about whether or not being friends with him was okay or not.

  “Start a fight with someone.”

  “What? Why would I do that?”

  “If you want to prove to me you’re not their pet then start a fight with someone to prove it.”

  “Lacey, that’s crazy! I’m not going to do that. Come up with something else.”

  “No. It’s that or nothing. So I guess you will just have to decide what it is you want to do.”

  He stared at me, then a look of realization crossed his face and he smirked with sudden understanding. “You don’t think I’ll actually do it, do you? You figured you could just ditch me didn’t you? Well I’ve got news for you. It’s not that easy.” He very purposefully got up and crossed over to the table where most of the drug addicts hung out together. Placing both his hands on the table and leaning in he began talking to them. One of them, Ryan, didn’t seem to like whatever it was Aidan had to say, and he got to his feet. Aidan straightened, pushed away from the table, and smiled at Ryan, saying yet something more. Less than a second later Ryan’s fist connected with Aidan’s jaw and it was all Aidan needed. Before I even knew what happened, Aidan and Ryan were rolling on the group like high school boys, punching, shoving, and slamming at one another.

  In a flash, Wilkes, Tonya and a couple other of the staff were there to start pulling them apart before they could do any real damage to themselves. With growing interest I observed how Aidan fully committed to the role, pulling to get away from the two holding him back just to take another swing at Ryan. I actually felt a bit badly for Ryan and hoped he wasn’t hurt too badly in all of this. It wasn’t as if he really deserved it.

  Wilkes talked to the two men briefly before escorting Aidan back to his room for the night. I sighed, slightly disappointed he had not been placed in to solitary for at least the night. It seemed like if someone started up a fist-fight they deserved more than a slap on the wrist and an early bedtime.

  I looked down at both the dinner trays before me and shoved my own away to pull Aidan’s closer to myself. In just a few minutes I managed to polish off what he had left behind before leaving to complete his given mission. When I was finished I picked up both trays and took them back up to the counters. I dumped the leftovers of my meal into the nearby trashcan and set both trays and dishes on the counter for the staff. As I turned to head down the hall and leave I caught Wilkes’ disapproving look, but I just shrugged it off and walked past him to get to my room. It was early, but I still didn’t want to be around any of these people if I didn’t have to.

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  The next morning at breakfast I got up a bit later and everyone else was already sitting with their food. I wasn’t particularly hunger, but around here, meals were not an option, so I went in search of whatever we were supposed to be eating. Again, I was handed a plate of food that was different from everyone else’s, but this time it was given to me directly by Wilkes.

  “Now, let’s try and see if you can’t succeed in eating your own food this time, alright?” he said as he gave me the tray with a stern look that told me there was no getting out of it. I rolled my eyes, snatched the tray from his hands and found an empty table. It didn’t take long for Aidan to scope me out and relocate to where I was.

  “Hey, we are friends again, remember? I did the required task to prove my loyalty if you will so kindly recall,” he reminded me as he sat down across from me.

  “Just because we are friends doesn’t mean you need to stick to me like glue,” I mumble, biting into the thin toasted bagel before me. I grimaced. It had been smothered in strawberry jelly, but still tasted incredibly dry. I set it aside and took a long drink from a glass of water.

  “Well honestly, what else is there to do? It’s not like this is the most exciting place I have ever been in the world. There is definitely something to be desired entertainment-wise.”

  “I suppose there is plenty of truth to that statement,” I concede. “So, how much trouble did you get in last night? It seemed like they let you off easy given the circumstances.”

  “Not much trouble. Basically it was just a slap on the wrist and not much more. Dr. Wilkes said that because I was new and he thought I would be more help in less trouble than in it, that he would be easy on me this time. He did say though that if I insisted on making a habit of picking fights and the likes then he would have to resort to much severe means of punishment.”

  I took a couple more bites of my food and we ate in silence until we were both almost completely finished. Then I had a thought.

  “What did you say to upset Ryan so much anyway?”

  “Not much really. I just got into his head a bit. I asked them why they got into drugs. Then when they told me to shut up I just started asking things like if they did drugs because they felt like they would never amount to anything and that they knew they were losers. Threw in a few bonus ideas about mommy’s and daddy’s abandoning them and presto! Ryan was all riled up and it was just a matter of pushing the last button before he snapped.”

  “You’re awful,” I say, voice dry, realizing he had done it only at my bidding. “I can’t believe you actually did that.”

  “Well how else was I going to get him to throw the first punch? I mean, it’s not like I was just going to walk up and just start pounding one of them for no reason. I had to build up to that point,” he rationalized. “I happen to be very good at cruel when I want to be, so it came quite naturally to me,” he finished with an evil grin.

  I finish off the last bite of my food and shake my head. Without a word I clear my tray and wait for him to finish doing the same. “I’m headed off to find a book in the pathetic thing they call a library here. If you want, since I know you’ll probably just follow me anyway, you can come with me.”

  “You’re right, I would have just followed you,” he laughed. “I didn’t know we had a library though. Where’s it at?”

  “It’s across the hall from Wilkes’ office. There’s not much in there, and what little there is really isn’t worth bothering with, but I’m desperate so I’m going to give it a try at least to see if there’s something worth reading in there.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Together, we made our way back to the shorter of the two halls in the ward containing Wilkes’ office, another office, a maintenance closet, and the library. I opened the door to the library and flipped the light switch on. Inside was a pair of just above waist-high bookshelves to the left holding a random-looking assortment of books. Next to those was a stiff armchair that looked like sitting on a rock might be more comfortable. To the right of the door were racks hanging on the wall displaying several different magazines on things like hobbies and news. No celebrity magazines though, I noted. Probably because they didn’t want the eating disorder people flipping through them and feeling even worse about themselves than they already did.

  Shaking my head, I look beyond the racks to see a loveseat sofa appearing much more comfortable than the armchair, a coffee table, and a floor lamp near the sofa. The room definitely left something to be desired, but you had to give them some credit for their minimal decorating and painting the walls a soft shade of green.

  “This isn’t so bad,” Aidan commented as he moved past me through the doorway and explored deeper inside. “Personally I’m more of a red fan, but I guess green isn’t so bad really.” He crouched before the bookshelves and started flipping through the books available while I wandered in further. I found on the other side of the armchair was an end table with a CD player sitting on it. Suspiciously enough there was no radio option on it so getting around the music rules that way wasn’t going to happen. I glanced around to see where they kept the CDs and noticed a box stashed away underneath the table. Upon opening it, I saw around twenty different CDs. Several of them were all classical music, but there were also a few that appeared more upbeat. I selected one of the CDs and put it into the player. The music was a soft pop that seemed a bit bland, but it appeared to be my best option, so I stuck with it.

  “Did you find any good books?” I asked, walking over to where Aidan was still crouched before the shelves.

  He shook his head. “Not really. I mean, there’s a couple that might be okay, but nothing great or that interesting-looking. Not unless you are a fan of biographies on random historical figures or about horses.”

  “Not really.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t think you would be. You didn’t really strike me as a history or horse buff. You can try the other shelf. You might have better luck. I’m going to finish looking at this one.”

  I knelt and skimmed over the different titles. None of them looked too promising at all. After a few minutes of looking through them a couple of times over I turned to Aidan.

  “There’s nothing worth reading here,” I say, annoyed to not even have one decent book to get lost in while I was stuck here.

  “Well maybe we’ll get lucky and someone will visit you and bring something in.”

  “Not likely. I suggest you hold out more hope for someone coming to your own rescue in that area.”

  “Why? There has to be someone out there who visits you. How else would you have gotten an iPod inside of this place?”

  “That was from my friend Sandy. I haven’t seen her in forever. She’s scared of coming to this place because she’s a drug addict and she’s afraid of getting in trouble. She came here once during my first couple of days and I haven’t seen her since.”

  “What about your family? Don’t they ever visit you here?”

  “Yeah right. I’m an only child and my parents are divorced. They both have jobs and more important things to do. Like, for instance, my dad’s new girlfriend with a ready-made family who he’s been dating for a few months now. Why visit your messed up twenty year old when you can just forget about her and try again with your girlfriend’s preteen twins.”

  Aidan frowned as he turned around to lean his back against the bookshelf. “That’s rough. Sorry. What about your mom though?”

  “I don’t really know. My parents split twelve years ago because my mom cared more about her job then her family. I mostly lived with my dad because even though they had joint custody, she didn’t have time to be around for me. When I got older I’d spend the weekend at her apartment at least a couple times a month, just to be away and do whatever I wanted since she wasn’t there until late at night except on Sundays usually. What about you? Isn’t there someone who might come see you in here?”

  “Nope. My dad died fighting over in the middle east back when the fighting first really got going over there when I was still a kid. My mom dumped me with my grandparents after that and took off. Both my grandparents died my junior year of college. I didn’t do much to make very many friends, and the few I have and a bit freaked out that I’m in here.”

  “Are you ever going to tell me why you’re even in here? I mean, yeah, maybe you think about becoming a serial killer to bring justice like some kind of weird superhero or something, but I doubt you would actually do it. It doesn’t seem bad enough to lock you up in here.”

 “Maybe there’s more, maybe there’s not. I don’t see you playing things too out in the open, so why should I?” He stood up and reached out a hand to help me up, but I ignored it and got up on my own instead. He rolled his eyes and turned to leave.

  “I think it’s safe to say this was a less than exciting adventure and highly unfruitful. Is there anything else worth seeing in this place?” he asked me.

  “Not really,” I answered, turning off the radio. “And I have to do something else anyway, so you’re on your own from here.”

  “Something else?”

  “I have to meet up with Wilkes for our session,” I explain with a grimace.

  “Fun times,” he observed with a chuckle.

  “Have you had one with him yet?”

  “Not besides my intake evaluation. I think I’m supposed to meet up with him tomorrow maybe,” he told me as we headed out of the library.

  “Maybe? You don’t even know for sure? You should probably find out for sure you know.”

  “Why? As long as I don’t know they can’t fully fault me for when I don’t show up. If I ask then they know I know and my excuse is gone,” he explained to me. I looked up at his smirk, trying to decide if he was serious or not, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

  I shrugged, giving up on trying to decide. “Well that might work one time if you really wanted to do that I guess.”

  “It will work, but yeah, probably only once. Still, might as well go for it.”

  “Hey, I’m for anything that gets me out of a session,” I say.

  “Okay, then skip it,” he replies.

  “And do what exactly? Sit around here until he comes to find me anyway? How exciting.”

  “Well no, that wouldn’t be very exciting at all. You’re supposed to hide and do something fun too, that way it makes the whole experience much more enjoyable for you.”
  I motion around the main room, which we were standing in the doorway of from the short hall. “Do you see anything better to do? Anywhere to actually hide? They’re always able to find you. That’s pretty much the point of this place. It’s a padded prison.”

  “You’re just not using your imagination enough,” he answered, shaking his head in mock-despair. “You have to think outside of their box. For instance, who would think you would be hanging out on the guys’ side of the hall? There aren’t any rules against it beyond night-time stuff, So…”

  “I guess that might work. Maybe. Still, there’s really nothing to do even if I did skip and could stay hidden for a while, or do you have a plan for that too?”

  “I might, I might not. Are you going to skip your session?”

  I bite my lip and look around. Wilkes was nowhere in sight. He probably was out for a bit yet still doing something or other. He’d be back soon though. I look back at Aidan.

  “Alright, I’m skipping, but you better have a good plan because he hates it when people skip out on him like that. He’s going to be miffed.”

  He didn’t seem to need any more encouragement. He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me towards the door to outside, looking around to be sure no one noticed us. Our local anorexic was hanging around with a couple of the druggies, which made me almost laugh. Drugs and not eating was a rather bad mixture and I hoped neither rubbed off on the other with their issues. It was clear that no one noticed us at all though, and that was all that mattered. No witnesses.

  “The door is going to be locked there’s no way…” I stopped midsentence when the door offered him no resistance. We slipped out and quickly hurried away before someone noticed us in the glass of the door.

  “I know I thwarted your plans of escape the other day, and I’m sorry, but I think I might be able to make up for it just a bit,” he said with a wink, heading off to a far corner of the yard I’d never bothered to go to. All that was in this corner was a small shed where they kept things like basketballs and other pre-approved sports equipment. Since most of the games required more than one person and I didn’t ever hang out with anyone else until Aidan came along, I never really had any use for it, and thus, this corner of the yard.

  He went over to the far side of the shed so we were out of view of the building, then knelt down and cupped his hands together. “Climb up,” he ordered. I stand in surprise, not sure what to say and wondering if this was supposed to be some osrt of a test he and Wilkes had arranged.

  “Come on Lace, this is legit. You wanted to get going, so let’s go!” Seeing the genuine look in his eyes mixed with some impatience, I approach his and place a shaky foot into his open hands.

 “Okay, now put one hand on my shoulder and reach out for the roof with the other,” he instructed me. When I had done as he asked he stood up slowly and I was easily able to start climbing onto the roof. “Stay low!” he warned. “Otherwise someone might see you and that would not be good for us.” Once he was no longer supporting my weight, he began climbing up as well. Within seconds, he was sitting up beside me.

  “So what now? Do we just jump off this and on to the other side?”

  “That’s the general idea,” he confirmed, starting to reposition himself so he would be able to do just that.

  “I don’t really like that plan,” I say, not following his lead this time. “It sounds like a bad plan. I don’t really want to get free only to break my leg so I’m just stuck waiting for them to come get me.”

  “Look on the bright side. If you break something you can’t really get much closer to a hospital.” He flashed a grin, then smoothly catapulted himself off of the edge of the roof. Somehow he manages to land, though haphazardly, unharmed, on the ground on the other side of the fence.

  “Do you even know where you are over there?” I hiss down to him. He turns and surveys the lawn and nearby trees along with the building that stretched off from the enclosed area out towards a parking area, then turns back to me.

  “It’s still a part of the hospital grounds, just a far less secure area. Come on.”

  “No way.”

  “I’ll catch you, just sort of ease yourself off the edge and then push off.” He puts his arms out to catch me, but I just frown, not liking the plan at all. I had hated being so close to him the last time he had my arms around me and I wasn’t keen on allowing him do it again willingly this time.

  “Lace, get down here before I come back up there and push you off of that roof!”

  I stick out my tongue at him, but slowly start to follow the directions he had given to me.

  I scoot close to the edge and dangle my legs over the edge. I focus my attention on the ground rather than Aidan, wondering what my odds were for safely landing on the other side unaided. It hadn’t looked quite so impossible when Aidan had done it, so maybe it wasn’t really so hard to do.

  “Lace, just let me catch you. I’ve done this plenty of times, so I know how to do it. I don’t want you to accidentally hurt yourself,” he said, apparently having guessed my thoughts since I wasn’t looking at him as I should be if I were planning to be having him catch me. I hesitate once again, but decide the closeness was just something unavoidable I needed to face if I wanted to get out of here.

  I nodded to him and gave myself just barely enough of a push to get myself off the rooftop. He had me in less than a second and only held on long enough for me to get my feet steady on the ground.

  “See? Not so bad. Come on, let’s get going.” Looking around all the while, he guided me in a line perpendicular to the fence. We came across a few benches and trees with tiny gardens around them, but it only took us a couple of minutes to reach the parking area. I noticed a nearby bus stop and headed off towards it, but Aidan pulled me back.

  “Not a good plan. They’ll probably be questioning people later about where you went and that will be the first place they check out for anyone having seen you. Well, besides the front desk where they’re going to assume we got out through.” He flashed a grin and then pointed in another direction. I think if we start heading that way we should be good.”

  My eyes follow his finger and I know he is probably right. It appeared as if no one really went that way so there would be few to notice our passing by.

  “Okay, we’ll head that way then. Where are we even going to go?”

  “We? Once we get away from hospital ground, you are on your own. I mean, you don’t seem to ever want anyone else around anyway, so it’s probably for the best,” he answered, walking off in his chosen direction.

  My face fell and I considered his words and my reaction to them. For the first time, my initial thoughts had nothing to do with getting to somewhere I could end my life. Here I was, the freest I had been in weeks, and I was hurt that Aidan wanted to split off from each other. I cared about someone else’s presence in my life. Since when did that ever happen? Never. I hadn’t even really considered going to Sandy before. It had been one plan. Get out; get dead. Sweet and simple. So what had changed? I looked up and saw him looking back at me rather than watching where he was heading.

  “Or, we could stick together,” he finally said, “if that’s something you would rather have happen.”

  I could feel the smile crossing my lips, but I quickly stopped myself and only gave him a non-committal shrug. “I don’t really have anywhere in particular to go, do you?”

  “Nope. I just figure I’ll come up with something as we go,” he answered, turning to look ahead of where we were walking. We continued in silence for several minutes, making it out to the streets and choosing a sidewalk to continue on.

  “So, why did you want out of there so badly if you didn’t have any plans for after you got out?” he asked me as we fell into step alongside one another. The city was a mess of people running all over the place, but I felt like we were in our own little world and none of them mattered right now.

  “I had plans for what to do before, now...I guess I’m just not so sure that it’s what I want to do. I’m starting to rethink it, so I don’t really know what plans to make or where to go. I’m a little lost.”

  “Maybe you should have stayed then,” he said, his tone slow and careful. “I mean, why not give them the chance to help you while you figure out what you want at least.”

  “They can’t help me. They’ve tried and they’ve been failing since day one. Not that it’s their fault; it’s just not working out at all. They can’t really help it.”

  “So what are you saying? Is it not working because of you then?”

  “Probably,” I admit to him after a brief pause. “I’m sure it’s at least partly my own fault. Other things cannot be helped though. I mean, what’s done is done. There’s no going back to fix some things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as seeing dead people.”

  “You can trust me you know. You could try actually telling me the truth. You might be surprised by how well I take it.”

  I shake my head and look off across the street at the random mass of people all running off in different directions, totally oblivious to the escaped psychos among them. A serial killer and a suicidal. There was definitely some irony in there somewhere. If only these people knew. But they didn’t, and they wouldn’t likely care much even if they did. People like us didn’t truly matter to people like them. Sure, if they hear about us in some touching conference or whatnot then they feel sorry for us, but few of these people would truly care enough to go too far out of their way to be of any real help. They were comfortable in their oblivion, and most of them had no intentions of trying to change it. A few perhaps, but not many.

  “You slip off a lot.”

  “What?” I ask, snapping my attention back to him and even turning to look at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” he said, drawing out the words as much as possible, “you just get lost in your head all the time it seems like. You’re physically present, but you’re nowhere nearby mentally. You might as well be a hundred miles away.”

  “I was just thinking about all these people. They’re out here, walking around, and going about normally while we are stuck messed up. It doesn’t seem fair.”

  “And what? You don’t think they’re just as messed up as we are? They are. They are just much better at hiding how messed up they really are.”

  I looked around at all of them again, not sure yet if I believed him. “Maybe you are right, but either way, they are still free to live normally.”

  “So are we. We just choose to view our issues, not bury them deep down and pretend like they don’t exist.”

  “I would rather just bury it all like they do.”

  “So would I, but we weren’t wired that way. We were meant to see the issues and care about what happens. It’s just how it is.”

  We fall silent again for a few more minutes. “I tried to kill myself. That’s why I was at the hospital. I overdosed and messed myself up. The first time no one knew. The second time my roommate found me and called 911. When they had me in custody for that they found out my liver is pretty badly damaged and it’s been getting worse. They told me I might need a transplant and they planned to treat it. After I got released I cut my wrists,” I hold up my wrists to show him the dark scars I was sure he had already seen before. “But they found out about that too and that’s how I ended up in the psych ward. I’m lucky enough to get to be doubly treated. It’s like a total makeover deal. Except, now I’m out, so...”I trail off seeing how troubled his face appeared. A deep frown dragged the corners of his mouth far down and he looked almost as if he was in actual physical pain. I wondered if telling him had been a huge mistake. It wouldn’t surprise me. I couldn’t believe I even had told him any of it. It wasn’t like me to do that. Not something I had ever done with anyone.

  “You’re sick? Really sick?” he finally asked me.

  “Yes, I am,” I answered so softly I wasn’t sure if he had even heard me. “I was getting tested yesterday. That’s why I was out in the regular part of the hospital. My doctor was checking to see if the drugs and such she’d been having me take were working or not.”

  “Were they helping?”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t correcting the damage already done, just halting further damage and wearing out.”

  Suddenly, he put his hand on my arm and we both stopped walking. “You have to go back Lacey. If I had known I wouldn’t have gotten you out of there. I had planned on just getting out and having an adventure, then heading back from the start of this, but now we definitely have to go back. You need to keep getting treatment.”

  “Wait, all this time you had always planned to make me go back? It was just a game?” I pulled away from him. “I don’t want to go back there Aidan. I’m not going back.”

  “How about this then. We’ll spend the day doing whatever you want, have an adventure as planned, then you can decide if you want to go back with me or not.”

  “I still won’t want to go back, Aidan. I won’t change my mind.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe not, but maybe you’ll end up surprising yourself and find yourself wanting to go back with me.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “You never know. Come on, let’s make the most of this, okay? I mean, how often do you get to sneak out of a place like that to roam free for a day? Not often I bet,” he said, snagging my hand and pulling back onward once again. “Where should we start out?”

  “Ice cream,” I found myself saying as my eye caught a sign advertising waffle cone ice creams. “But I don’t have any money with me, so I guess that can’t work.”

  “No worries, I planned ahead,” he said lowly with a wink. He pulled a small wad of cash out from his pocket.

  “How do you have that?”

  “They asked to hold on to my wallet for me, they didn’t say I needed to give them all of my money. I decided it was a gray area in my favor and I held on to this.”

  We went into the tiny shop and looked at the surprisingly long list of different available flavors, trying to decide what we each wanted.

  “Some of these just sound kind of out there,” I commented.

  “Such as?”

  “Gee, I don’t know. How about the Red Panda swirl? I mean, what the heck is that even supposed to be?” I say, becoming a bit energetic as I talked about it, incorporating several body motions into my speaking for once. “Or what about the Beanie Baby Blaster? Who even came up with these names?”

  Aidan laughed, amusement written all over his grinning face. “Maybe the red panda has a secret ingredient of ground-up red panda swirled into the ice cream. As for the beanie baby blaster thing, well that one is obvious. It’s ice cream with tons of mini candied beanie babies of all sorts and sizes.”

  I shook my head and tilted it to one side. “I think you are wrong on both counts. There’s no way any of that is really what they are. Just no. No way. Especially the panda one.”

  “Oh no, the panda one is definitely right,” he countered. “There is no other explanation for it. They secretly smuggle in baby pandas to put into their ice cream. I bet if you went into the back there you would find tons of tiny little cages fully of baby red pandas just crying to themselves as they await their inevitable slaughter and grinding into tiny bits and pieces.”

  I wrinkle up my nose with disgust. “That is the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard. I can’t believe you could even think all of that up so easily. I’m not sure whether I should be impressed or horrified.”

  “It’s actually amazing how often that is a problem for those who know me,” he replied. “I think if you wanted you could be both impressed and horrified. Impressed I came up with such a horrifying story so quickly.”

  “Alright, well I take back every thought I ever had doubting your abilities to be a serial killer if you wanted to. I can definitely see it now,” I told him, holding back a shudder as I remembered what he had said. “I think I’ll stick with the mint chocolate chip,” I decided. “What are you going to get?”

  His only response was to smile broadly and go up to the boy behind the counter. “Can I get a single scoop mint chocolate chip in a waffle cone and a single scoop in a waffle cone of the red panda please?”

  The boy nodded, took Aidan’s money and set to work filling our order. Aidan looked back to where I was standing a bit off from him and flashed other smile before turning back to get my ice cream from the boy and then get his own handed to him moments later. He thanked the boy, then came back to me and handed me my cone. He held out his own for inspection.

  “Well, it doesn’t look like any baby pandas were harmed in the making of this cone,” he remarked, “but there’s still a chance.” He took a quick lick of a red swirl, let himself taste it in his mouth briefly, pretending to really be puzzling over what the flavor was. “No, I don’t think it tastes like a panda. I think it is strawberry actually. That’s disappointing.” He frowned exaggeratingly and continued eating his ice cream.

  “You’re sick, you know that?”
  “You’re not exactly all sound and normal yourself psycho,” he threw back at me.

  “I’m not a psycho. You’re the one who wants to eat ice cream with panda bits in it. Anything I have ever said or done pales in comparison to that level of disgusting insanity.”

  “Maybe. So what do you want to do next?” he asked as we stepped outside the shop once again.

  “I don’t know. It’s your turn to pick something. I came up with the ice cream,” I told him, then licked up a huge drip running down the side of my cone before it could fall to the ground. He watched me, then looked around the area.

  “Should we keep walking?” I nodded and he began to lead the way on, this time cutting across the street at a crosswalk, heading in a different direction then before. “What do you say we change up our pattern a bit here? Let’s see what this area has to offer explorers.”

  I followed after him contentedly enough. I wasn’t a leader in the least. Letting him take control worked well enough for me, though it was another first. I never liked to lead, but I also hated to follow someone else’s lead too. I was a rebel at my very core. Usually when someone says to do something, everything within me says to do the exact opposite. It tended to get me into my share of trouble and then some.

  “I don’t have too much more money so we’ll have to keep things pretty cheap,” he commented, counting his money out. “I didn’t think to grab one of my cards when I first got checked in, so what I have is it.”

  “That’s fine with me. I don’t really know of anything else we could want that we’d need to pay for. We just ate.” I finished off the last of my cone and looked around us. We were in a downtown area, so many of the shops here were smaller stores in buildings that looked like they had been here since the beginning colonials had settled in here. I knew they hadn’t of course, but still, many of them appeared to be very old. I had a sudden thought, and hurried to match Aidan’s pace.

  “So I told you my real story, now it’s your turn. Why did you really end up in the psychiatric ward? You seem too alright to be in there with the rest of us,” I say and then quiet down, fully expecting him to tell me what I wanted to hear.

  “You told me some of your story,” he corrected me. “There’s much more to it than what you opted to share with me.”

  “Well it’s not like I’m going to just spill out my whole life’s story in five seconds!” I retort, rolling my eyes at his response. “Come on, you have to tell me. I told you enough to get something.”

  “I suppose you did,” he conceded to me. “So I will tell you this much. I do belong in there with the rest of you. Also, we are more similar than you might think at first. You would be very surprised.”

  “That doesn’t tell me anything!”

  “Sure it does.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “It tells you we are alike in some way or ways. That is quite a bit of knowledge,” he pointed out.

  I squinted my eyes at him to display my annoyance. “That is so vague it isn’t even funny Aidan. Come on, you have to give me more than that!”

  “On the contrary, I don’t have to give you anything. I can just keep my mouth shut and do whatever I feel like doing. Nothing more, nothing less, and there is nothing you would be able to do about it. That’s a fact.”

  “I thought you told me you would share when I shared, and I did. I think it’s only fair that you tell me just as much about you as I told you about me.”

  “You would think that, but it is not necessarily a very equal trade. Yours was easily guessed at, so it doesn’t count for much.”

  “No it was not!”

  He stopped walking and turned to face me. “Yes it was. Cutting scars covering your arms, deeper marks on your wrists, the way you disconnect from everyone, it wasn’t hard to guess. The liver thing got me though, I’ll give you that much.”

  “You still owe me more than a pile of vague descriptions,” I held out. I folded my arms across my chest and stood waiting expectantly.

  He sighed. “Fine. I have tried killing myself twice throughout my life. Both times back in high school. I came to the ward because I started struggling with those thoughts and feelings again and I didn’t want to give myself the chance to make any mistakes.” I couldn’t keep the surprise from widening my eyes at his words. I would have never guessed he would have said what he just did. Not ever.

  “Why?”

  “Lots of reasons. The biggest one being that I felt alone and I just got very tired of it.”

  “So,” I said slowly, thinking about what I was going to say, “you willingly came to get help then?”

  “Yes. I chose to come get help for the most part. I mean, I just talked to someone about things and one thing led to another. It was a bigger commitment than what I had initially planned, but it is what it is I suppose.”

  “I would not have gone willingly. I was mad at them for a long time because they refused to just let me get over with what was going to happen eventually anyway. They chose to be cruel to me and make me hold on and die slowly.”

  “But you’re not going to die,” he stated. “You’re going to get better and be just fine, and you would never have gotten to if they had not chosen to step in and help you out. You should be thankful for whoever made sure you got the help that you needed in all of this.”

  I shake my head and start walking again, headed down to what I could now see was the beach. Given the cool Virginia temperatures currently present, it was void of any other people except for a few lone people wandering through, all appearing very deep within thought.

  “Do you mind get a bit of sand in your shoes?” Aidan questioned, throwing a hasty glance towards my sneakers.

  “I don’t mind, it’s just sand,” I say in a voice almost fully void of emotion. I knew he was right, I should be grateful. Everyone told me I should be grateful and take advantage of my time there so I could get good solid help, but I didn’t want to be thankful. I had not wanted the help. It was forced upon me and I had no choice but to accept it. Even then, I still tended to fight it every single step of the way.

  We left the grass and started out trek through the sand of the beach. The sun’s position resting a bit past being directly overhead suggested it was likely mid-afternoon. It pulled my arms against myself, wishing I had grabbed the hoodie off my bed before we had left. Of course, it wasn’t as if I had any idea this morning that I would be breaking out of the ward with the very guy who had helped them lock me back up yesterday.

  “Cold?”

  “A bit,” I admitted to him.

  He pulled off his dark gray fleece jacket and handed it to me. I shook my head in refusal.

  “No, you should wear it yourself. I should have grabbed my own coat before we left.”

  “It’s fine, just put it on. I don’t mind the cold and you look like you are going to freeze to death out here if you don’t put something warmer on.”

  Grudgingly, I took the coat and slipped it on while muttering a quiet thanks to him. When we reached the waterline, we turned and began walking parallel to it. After several yards, Aidan got down to his knees and began playing in the damp sand, trying to form some sort of mound I suspected was meant to be a castle of some kind. I stood watching him for a while before kneeling down with him and patting a bit of sand here and there to patch up a few crumbling places I had spotted from above.

  “I wish life was this easy to just shape and patch up when something goes wrong,” I said aloud before I realized I was even saying it outside of my own head.

  “Me too, but I think life would be much less interesting if that were the case. We would not learn half as much as we can figuring things out the hard way.”

  “But it would be easier.”

  “Maybe, but in the end it would probably do us more harm than the issues we would face otherwise. We end up growing and learning so much from the experiences we have, whether they are good or bad. They shape us into who we are.”

  “I guess that makes sense. I still wish it was easier though.”

  “You and me both,” he laughed.

  I moved a bit further up to drier sand and sat down, stretching out my legs in front of me and leaning back on my arms for support. After he had completed adding the final finishing touches to his “masterpiece”, he came over and joined me. For a long time we just sat together in silence, watching the waves gently break on the sand. It was calm, peaceful, and almost hypnotic. I felt like I could have fallen asleep right then and there if I wasn’t careful.

  “So,” Aidan began, breaking through the hypnosis, “what do you think about going back to the hospital with me?”

  “I think I don’t want to go back there,” I said, trying to remain as honest as possible for once.

  “I think you need to go back anyways though,” he said gently.

  “And if I choose not to?”

  He sighed and took several moments to think before he answered me. “If you choose not to then I can’t force you to go back with me. It wouldn’t work out very well. I can’t just drag you back there by your hair after all, though, I’ll be tempted to if you refuse to go back,” he warned darkly. “Ultimately it is up to you, but I want you to come back and get the help you need.”

  “I’ll go back with you,” I whispered, “but you have to promise me something.”

  “What?”

  “When you get out the right way, you will come back and see me sometimes.”

  “Deal.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Five

  “Hey, we just need to get back inside of there,” Aidan told the nurse at the desk watching the doors that led to the wing of the hospital we needed to get back into.

  “Get back in? I’ve been here all day and I never remember seeing you go out,” she responded, her voice laced with suspicion.

  “We got out a different way,” he answered calmly, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

  She still looked suspicious, but she asked us for our names to check to see if we really did belong inside of there. As soon as he had given her out names her eyes went wide.

  “They’ve been looking for the two of you all afternoon! Where on earth have you been and better yet, how did you get out?”

  “That’s for us to know. Now, will you let us in?”

  “Yes, of course. But I have to call Dr. Wilkes to let him know the two of you are back. He’s going to like getting that news,” she explained with excitement. As she buzzed the doors leading into the wing to let us in, she reached for her phone and called up Wilkes while we headed back into our prison.

  “I feel like I am going to regret letting you convince me to come back here,” I said softly as we traced our way through the halls to reach our destination. We were about halfway there when we turned down a hall to find Dr. Wilkes hurrying towards us. I groaned inwardly. This was not going to end very well at all.

  “Where have the two of you been?” he demanded, his tone biting. Gone was the calm, tolerant doctor. He had been replaced with a stern father figure who was more than just a little upset that two of his “kids” had snuck out without permission.

  “We needed a break from all of this,” Aidan said, shrugging rather than apologizing to demonstrate an air of indifference about what Wilkes thought about our escapade.

  “If you want to leave you have to talk to us first. You both know that very well. And you,” he turned to me, “Lacey, you and I had a session planned out for this morning. Let me guess, did it just slip your mind?”

  “Possibly, possibly not,” I reply, feeling highly uncomfortable and shifting from one foot to another as unnoticeably as possible.

  Wilkes turned back to Aidan. “How did you even get out of here anyway? We checked security footage and just saw you heading outside together. We went out into the yard and saw no signs of anyone breaking out, so how did you do it?”

  Aidan glanced over at me and I shamelessly pleaded with him with my eyes to not reveal the details of our escape. In the event that I ever needed to get back out again, I wanted it left as an option still. He looked at me long and hard, then set his face in a grim line and turned his eyes back to Wilkes.

  “We climbed on top of the shed then jumped off onto the other side of the fence,” he revealed. I stared at him long and hard, willing him to spontaneously combust. He had cut a huge hole into my one safety net. There was no more outs left to turn to.

  “Ah, I see,” Dr. Wilkes said. I could see the signs of dawning realizations painted on his face. They had built the perfect escape path for anyone with enough brains to think to give it a try.

  “Well, I’m glad you both came back willingly then,” Wilkes continued. “Honestly, I believed I was not likely to ever see the two of you ever again. Your returns speak volumes for both of your progresses.”

  I felt a little badly and bit my lip, looking away towards another part of the hospital. I looked at it with unseeing eyes however. I was too busy within my thoughts. I hadn’t come back because I wanted to come back here again. I wasn’t here to get the help everyone was convinced I needed and that would make me magically all better again. I was here because of Aidan. I was here because despite everything I had gone through in life, this tiny piece of me was clinging to this guy who I knew could hurt me in an instant and completely crush me. I trusted him though for some reason. I had no idea why. I just did. I would regret it later when he left me shattered, but for now, he was a healing balm that soothed me so much I felt myself becoming quickly addicted to him.

  “Come on Lacey, let’s get back and get you some good solid food,” Wilkes told me, using his more familiar friendly and patient tone while putting a hand to my back in what I suspected was supposed to be a comforting and supporting nudge in the right direction. I did not like it very much however, and had to fight the urge to shrug away from the touch. He should not be acting so nicely. I broke the rules. He should be letting me know what the consequences were going to be for what we did, not escorting me to food and not continuing our scolding session. Something was not right here at all. I didn’t like it one bit. If we broke the rules then we had to pay for it. That was how it worked in life, even here. Why was that not happening?

  I let Aidan and Wilkes guide me back to the ward and I felt myself shrink when the card-key secured door slammed shut behind us. I was back, and this time, there was no clever escape to be had through the backyard. I was here until Wilkes deemed me no longer a risk to myself or I died. Whichever came first. Probably the death one.

  Everyone else had already eaten dinner for the night, so when we went to the kitchen, we had to have some things put together specifically for us. Instead of giving Aidan the typical food the others would get though, they just gave him the same as they were giving me for the special “liver healthy” diet I had been put on to. We sat together at a table eating without saying a word to each other. The eyes of several of our fellow patients were glued on us. It was clear that they were all very aware that we had snuck out today. They were probably just trying to figure out where we had been found. After all, there was no way we would have actually come back on our own. That would not make any sense at all, would it? No, of course not. It would be a crazy thing to do. If you’re going to go to the trouble of breaking out then you ought to at least have the decency to stay broken out, right? Not in Aidan’s world. In his world you apparently break out and then go back later.

  “What is it?” Aidan finally said, making me jump at the unexpected sound of his voice just as I was thinking specifically about him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re frowning and you stopped eating,” he said, pointing his fork first at my frowning face, then to my almost untouched plate.

  “Why did you tell him how we got out of here? He’s going to fix it so we can’t ever do that again. That was my last hope of getting out of this place again later on if I needed to.”

  “Which is precisely why I told him,” Aidan announced. “I knew if the going got rough then you would get going. I couldn’t let you do that. You would probably try getting up there and jumping down on your own, and you could get hurt or something and no one would be able to help you. So you see, I did it to protect you from yourself.”

  “You just didn’t want me to be able to leave,” I accused.

  “You are right, I don’t want you to be able to leave. I want you to stay here where you can be safer and cared for.”

  “That’s not your choice though.”

  “Oh well, I made it,” he said, his voice flat and unapologetic.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “I take it back. When you get out of here, don’t bother to come visit me ever.”

  He laughed. “Oh I’ll still come see you. There’s nothing you can really do about that one. I’ll just sit and wait for you to come out of hiding and face me. You will have no other choice.”

  “We’ll see about that,” I said, trying my best to hold back a smile. His laugh, his smile, they were both so contagious it was awful. I wanted to be mad at him but I couldn’t be.

  We finished eating and decided to go our separate ways for the night after that. I went to my room, laid down with my iPod and was asleep only minutes later. I hated Aidan for tricking me into coming back, but at the same time, I found myself desiring to continue growing the bond we had started and had truly allowed to take off this afternoon. As annoying as he was, I knew Aidan would be a gigantic part of my finding healing and a reason to want to keep living if he was around long enough.

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  I had to keep running, that was all I knew. If I didn’t, it was over. Everything would be over. I had no idea where I was going or why, only that I had to keep moving and that I should not look back. Looking back was dangerous, but don’t ask me why. I was tired, but I forced my legs to keep going, my lungs to keep pulling in air, and prayed my heart would just be able to keep up with them.

  My foot slipped and I fell to the ground hard, my right arm slammed between my body and a rock. I winced and blinked back tears, but didn’t cry out. The rock had been sharp and I could feel the blood beginning to seep from a fresh wound. I struggled back to my feet and kept running, clutching my newly injured arm to myself and holding the fabric of my jacket tightly against the wounded area in an attempt to halt the blood-flow. As I ran I felt the sticky warmth creep through my jacket to my hand. I needed to stop. I needed to see how bad it really was and maybe apply better pressure to it.

  My eyes darted around the dark woods all around me and then flew up to the sky. It was little wonder I had fallen. There was no moon to light my way even a little bit through the trees, and the moss covering the ground was slick from a recent rainstorm. The main thing was that I did not see anyone though, so I allowed myself to stop running.

  Slowly, I pulled back my jacket sleeve to view the gash the rock had created. I grimaced at the mess of blood and bruising. It was definitely deeper than I had initially anticipated. It needed something more than my jacket sleeve to stop the blood. I yanked off my jacket and t-shirt, leaving on only my tank top underneath. I balled up my t-shirt and pressed it as hard as I possibly could up against the wound, but it only bleed more. In fact, right before my eyes I watched as other cuts magically appeared on my arms and blood began streaming out of them as well. I felt light-headed and began to panic. What was going on? Why was this happening?

  In an instant, I was transported back to my dorm room back at college and my roommate was on the phone with someone, appearing to be both exasperated and furious at the same time.

  “She freakin’ did it again! You guys told me she was better now, that it wouldn’t be a problem, but she did it again!” I heard her yelling into the phone in her aggravation. I realized she was talking about me and that she must have thought I had done this to myself. I opened my mouth to explain what had happened to her when I saw an empty bottle lying on its side on the floor. I bent over to pick it up. Excedrine, one hundred count. I looked around, beginning to shake, knowing where this was going. Sure enough, there was no sign of the pills which had been in it. I look back up at my roommate with wide tearing eyes.
  “I didn’t do it, I swear! I don’t know where these pills went but I didn’t take them!”

  “Whatever Lacey. Everyone knows the truth. This is who you are. It’s what you do. You are never going to change. Only those idiots at the hospital believed that. Them and that stupid guy, what was his name? Aidan? Only the doctors and him were dumb enough to buy your BS about being different now. Everyone knows this is who you will always be,” she said, making a large sweeping gesture at me. I looked at my arms and the empty bottle and a sinking feeling settled into my stomach. She was right, wasn’t she? This was who I was. I would never be able to change that. Not now, not ever.

  “I’m sorry,” I choked out while fighting the tears flooding my eyes. “I tried to change, I really did.”

  “Lace, you can’t take a piece of trash and turn it into gold.”

  “Lace. Hey Lace, wake up!” I heard Aidan say. I felt myself being shaken and I was confused. What was going on?

  “Wake up already!” Aidan demanded more forcefully, shaking me harder. I felt the dream quickly disappear and saw it for what it had been. I forced my eyes open and took a deep shaky breath.

  “What the heck Lace? What were you even dreaming about?” he asked, his face drawn down in a frown and his brow furrowed in confusion.

  “What?”

  “What. Were. You. Dreaming. About?” he said, pausing after each word.

  “Oh. Stuff,” I shook my head trying not to shudder as I did my best to push the dream from my mind. It had felt so real. I could hardly believe it had not been. I ran my hands over my arms, checking just to be sure there were no new cuts on them. I found nothing.

  “What kind of stuff? You were really upset,” he pressed.

  Immediately I threw up my guard. This was something he really did not need to know whatsoever. It was better for him and better for me. Besides, I needed to sort out these feelings and what had happened in that dream. It made so much sense and yet somehow, it didn’t make any sense at all. I needed time to figure it out.

  “What are you ever doing in here?” I asked quietly with a touch of stiffness.

  “We were going outside to watch the meteor shower tonight, remember? I asked Dr. Wilkes and everything. It’s cold though so I’m doubting that too many other people are going to be joining us, but I think it’s going to be worth it.”

  “Oh.” My brain is still fuzzy from sleep, but his words sound familiar and I vaguely remember agreeing to some sort of crazy idea of his. This was probably it. I roll back over in my bed and pull my blanket up over my head. “I changed my mind,” I tell him through the blanket. “I just want to sleep. You enjoy it though.”

  “Come on,” he said, pawing at me from outside the blanket to try to roll me back over. “You said you would watch with me, you can’t break your promise.”

  “I do not remember saying ‘I promise I will go out to watch rocks fall from the sky with you’ and I’m pretty sure that is something I would remember,” I reply, still holding the blanket securely over my head. “Now go away and let me sleep already.”

  “Maybe you didn’t say the exact word, but it was implied and that is good enough. Come on.” He began pulling at the blanket and managed to rip it out of my clutches. He whipped it off me, exposing me to the chilly room. It had become significantly colder outside in the last few days since we had broken out of the ward, and they always turned down the heat at night to cut costs, so it was much colder than I would have liked it to be.

  “Aidan! Give my blanket back now!” I snapped. He just laughed and shook his head.

  “Nope. Get up and put something warmer on. Come on. I don’t want to miss it!”

  I glared at him for several moments, but he just stared resolutely right back. I groaned, knowing there was no way he was going to budge on this. The sooner I went out the sooner he would let me go back to sleep.

  I begrudgingly dragged myself out of the bed and yanked on a jacket and a pair of socks. He handed me my shoes and I slipped those on as well.

  “There, that’s as good as it’s going to get at this time of night,” I inform him shortly. “Come on, let’s get out there. I thought we were such a huge rush,” I grumbled.

  “Lace I think you have to be one of the moodiest people I have ever met,” he informed me. “I think I need to ask Dr. Wilkes to evaluate you for a bi-polar personality disorder,” he teased.

  “And I think he needs to analyze you for drug use,” I mumbled back. “No one in their right mind wakes back up at three in the morning to watch meteors.”

  “I didn’t. I just stayed up this whole time,” he revealed.

  “Why would you do that? What did you even do for all that time? It’s not like we have a ton of things we can do, especially during lights-out time.”

  He winked and led me out of the room. “That’s a secret. I managed to keep myself occupied, trust me.”

  “Planning murders?” I teased, starting to wake up a bit now that I was moving more. We reached the main room and Wilkes was standing by the door with a couple of the others.

  “Yes, you’ve got me. I was sitting up all night imagining every single way I could kill my next victim. There was lots of different blades, drugs, and large heavy objects involved. Maybe I’ll run some of the different scenarios by you sometime and you can tell me which one you think is the most interesting out of all of them.”

  “Sure, just sometime when Wilkes is not around to hear you,” I whispered. “I don’t think he would appreciate that conversation very much.”

  “Probably not,” he conceded. We joined the others by the door.

  “Well,” said Wilkes, “I think this is probably everyone who is going to come out. Are you all ready then?” He looked to each of us for our nod of consent before continuing. “I made up some hot water for anyone interested in hot chocolate,” he let us know, pointing off to a large container with thermoses beside it. “You are welcome to grab some now or later.”

  “No coffee?” Ryan asked, his voice betraying his obvious disappointment. I was glad he did not seem to mind that Aidan was here. After the fight the two of them had had they tended to keep their distance from each other and Ryan would ever so often shoot a death glare Aidan’s way.

  “No, sorry Ryan. It’s a special night, but still no coffee.”

  I offered Ryan an empathetic smile. It had been weeks since I had last had coffee and I would do just about anything to get my hands on a good cappuccino right now. He offered the faintest of smiles back to me, but it immediately cleared at the sight of Aidan beside me. Without a word he stepped out the door Wilkes had just opened to let us out and his friend followed closely behind.

  “I’m just going to grab a thermos of stuff first,” Aidan told Wilkes, cocking his head in the direction of the hot water pot. “I’ll head out in a second.”

  “Same here,” I tacked on.

  Wilkes nodded and followed the other two outside to keep an eye on them.

  After the door closed Aidan let out a low whistle. “Ryan can definitely hold a grudge can’t he?”

  “Apparently,” I agreed. “I think you picked the wrong guy to mess with.”

  “I think you might be right about that.” He walked over to the hot water pot and grabbed a pair of thermos, dumping generous amounts of powder in each before filling them up with the hot water. He handed me one and a spoon to stir it, and then set about stirring up his own.

  “Maybe you should try to mend fences or something,” I suggested.

  “I am fairly confident that if I open my mouth to say anything to that guy he will throw his fist into it and punch out my teeth,” laughed Aidan, “but I might give it a try before he decides to slip poison into my food one of these days.”

  “Oh come on, he doesn’t hate you that much,” I tell him, rolling my eyes at his exaggeration.

  “If looks could kill I would have fallen over stone dead just now, and it has been how long now?”

  I thought about his question. It seemed like it had been forever ago, but in reality, it had really only been about five days since he had picked a fight with Ryan.

  “It hasn’t even been a week yet,” I tell him. “I guess maybe you should give him a bit more time before you try to talk to him, just to avoid and lingering initial steam.”

  “Yeah. Or, since he hates me anyway, I could try to find out where his stash is and turn it in to Dr. Wilkes so he wants to kill me even more than he already does.”

  “I don’t think that is a very good plan. If you think he’s miffed now, you do not want to see him when he thinks there’s even a possibility he will lose his drugs. They cut him off for a couple days last time and when he got out he almost slaughtered everyone he was so ticked.”

  We finished preparing our drinks and then headed out to join the others outside. We positioned ourselves a bit away from the others so there would be some distance between Ryan and Aidan and so that the others wouldn’t be listening to our every word.

  I set my thermos off to the side and just laid down and looked up at the stars overhead.

  “Aidan, I do not see a single shooting star. Not one. You dragged us all out here for nothing,” I accused.

  He sat down next to me and looked down at my face. I could just barely make out the soft smile on his face as he tugged a piece of my light brown hair.

  “Be patient!” he ordered. “I promise you, there will be a meteor shower tonight and it will be worth every second of being out here.”

  “We will see,” I said doubtfully. “So far, you are striking out. They are all staying right where they are.”

  “What will you wish for if you see one?” he questioned.

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe that I can get out of this crazy place,” I said with a brief laugh. “That would be nice. What about you?”

  “That’s a secret,” he said.

  “Why is it you always keep all of the interesting stuff to yourself?”

  “Because I can. It makes me more interesting when I have secrets which people want to know. If they are bent on trying to unveil what my secrets are, then they will not be in such a hurry to be bored and move on to befriending other people.”

  “I think you would still be just as interesting if you actually told people things. It’s no fun just trying to make guesses or drag the truth out of you.”

  “Maybe, but probably not. It has worked so far. You are still talking to me and wanting to know everything I am not going to tell you.”

  “Well maybe I will get bored with all your cryptic non-answers and go find someone else to talk to,” I suggested, sitting up and making as if I was going to get up. “I bet Ryan does not beat around the bush about things.”

  Aidan wrapped an arm around me to keep me where I was at, laughing. “Okay, I’m feeling generous. I will tell you one thing you really want to know, within reason of course. Full answers, no half answers or being cryptic, just straight up honest hard cold facts. Deal?”

  I shrug off his arm but stay, smiling at my successfulness. “Deal. So why did you try to kill yourself before, and why did you feel like trying again?” I asked him quietly just to be sure the others could not hear me.

  “Oh, that’s in the no go zone. Pick a different question.”

  “Come on,” I whined. “Just tell me.”

  He shook his head. I lifted my chin and start to get up, but he grabbed my hand.

 “Fine. You can be such a brat sometimes.” I smiled and settled back down, giving him my full attention.

  “I did what I did because I felt messed up.”

  “Why? Because you think about killing people?” I asked him, thinking this must be where it all tied in together.

  “That’s just an amusing front I put up to keep people guessing,” he confided with a chuckle. “It makes people think I’m weird but mostly normal when I tell them stories like that. They do not ever take it seriously, but they also don’t try to delve any deeper to learn the truth.”

  “So then why did you feel messed up?”

  He sat quietly, appearing to be deciding exactly how he wanted to answer my question. I watched him carefully, waiting with as much patience as I could manage. I couldn’t see him as messed up no matter how hard I tried. Compared to me, he seemed completely normal. I couldn’t even imagine him deciding one day that he was too messed up to stay alive.

  “I have a problem with letting people in. I mean, I can talk to people and pretend to be relaxed and open with them, but I never let them get beneath the surface. I have always done that because I am too afraid that in the end they won’t like what they see if I let them in, and I will be left alone. I tried changing, but I just could not do it no matter how hard I tried.”

  “It takes a lot of trust to let someone really know who you are beyond the superficial,” I say. “People let you down all the time without even meaning it, and without realizing what they are doing, they can accidentally drop your heart and it will shatter into millions of tiny shards.”

  “Exactly. Anyways, I guess I just thought I would forever be isolated in my own little world and that did not exactly sound like how I wanted to spend the rest of my life. It sounded far too painful, but I also could not see myself as being able to ever get beyond being that way. I felt stuck as a mess and just wanted to end the misery.”

  “But then things got better?” I prompted, knowing there had to have been something that had given him some sort of hope between those dark high school years and now when he was struggling again.

  “Yeah, then things got better. I went away to college a few months after my second unsuccessful attempt and made some great friends. I learned to open up a bit to them and learned it was not so bad after all. Of course, they hurt me from time to time, but the companionship was worth it.”

  “So then what happened that made you start feeling badly again?” I wondered, not wanting to say feeling suicidal aloud. That word still bothered me. Sometimes I felt as if it were haunting me, letting me know it was right there, ready to welcome me in with open arms if I would just open up enough to let it come in. The word always sent a chill running up my spine.

  He shrugged. “Stuff.”

  “That’s all I’m going to get, isn’t it?”

  “Yup. Sorry, but that’s the end of sharing time with Aidan. I feel I was more than cooperative enough for one night.”

  “Yes you were. Thank you,” I agreed softly.

  “Thanks for what?”

  “For trusting me with the truth.”

  “Well I knew you were going to wring it out of me one way or another,” he said, trying to laugh it off as no big deal. “Hey, look!” He pointed out into the night sky and my head whipped around to see what he was pointing at.

  “What? I didn’t see anything.”

  “You have to be quicker than that. These things fly fast,” he said, leaving behind our conversation. I decided to just go ahead and let it drop. He had shared enough to keep my mind busy for quite some time.

  “Yeah right. You didn’t really see anything. You are just trying to cover for yourself. You dragged all of out here for nothing.”

  “No, I definitely did not do that. Trust me. Just lay back down again and watch. I bet we will start seeing tons of them soon,” he said, his tone optimistic. He took his own advice and lay down, pillowing his head with his hands. I followed his example and laid back down resting my own head in my hands so that our elbows just barely touched each other. I stared up at the clear night sky. Watching. Waiting for one of the elusive meteors to fly by. Finally, I saw one shoot across the blackness, leaving a brief tail trailing behind it.

  “Did you see that one?!” I asked him with excitement.

  “Yup. Did you wish on it?”

  “No. Wishes do not really come true.”

  “Sure they do,” he disagreed, “you just have to believe that they can and they will.”

  “Well then I guess I’m thoroughly sunk in that area because I can’t believe that.”

  “Just give it a try with the next one. You never know, it might actually work. Give it enough faith to wish on it and see if it doesn’t work out,” he suggested. “Besides, even if it does not come true, it still keeps us hoping and having some fun.”

  “Alright. The next one I see I will wish on. But it won’t work. I am just going to do it to prove that.”

  “I’m telling you, don’t count it out so fast.”

  “Well did you wish on that last one?”

  “Nope. I already made a wish on the first one I saw. They can only grant on wish each, so I thought I would leave that last one for someone else.”

  “That was thoughtful of you I guess. So what did you wish for?”

  “Not saying.”

  “Fine. Then I won’t tell you what I end up wishing for.”

  “You wouldn’t tell me anyway,” he pointed out, “so it doesn’t really matter if I tell you or not.”

  A few minutes later, I saw another star shoot by and I closed my eyes making a wish I could hardly believe I was making. I had no idea why I had even wished for it. The idea of wishing for it was so foreign to me. Still, I wanted it badly enough.

  I opened my eyes, feeling watched. I turned my head to Aidan and as I suspected, he was laying there, watching me with a strange look on his face I could not quite identify.

  “What?” I finally ask.

  “Nothing,” he replied, still staring.

  I rolled my head back to look up at the sky again. “This really is not much of a meteor shower you know. I have only seen a couple so far.”

  “Yeah, it is rather disappointing,” he admitted. “I was expecting it to be a bit more exciting. But hey, it was still fun coming out here and doing something different, right?”

  I thought about denying it, but realized he was right. “I guess that is true. Thanks for conning Wilkes into letting us do this.”

  “No problem. It really was not that difficult to convince him. I think he tends to believe that doing stuff like this helps give everyone a much needed boost in some way or another.”

  “Well, I suppose in a way, it does. It gives us something to do that breaks routine. I think that tends to be the worst part about this place. You get stuck in the same routine day after day. It gets old fast.”

  “It sure does. I mean, I’ve only been here for just barely a week almost and already I am tired of doing the same thing day after day.”

  “I guess we need to work on coming up with other ways to change things up then,” I comment.

  “Sounds like a plan,” he agreed.

  We stayed outside for another hour or so, seeing only a few more meteors the whole time. Ryan and his friend Caleb headed back inside grouching about how it had not even been close to being worth it to come out in the cold for what little they ended up actually seeing. Wilkes stuck around briefly after them, but he eventually just instructed us to head back inside soon and left us to ourselves.

  “Why do you think he is so lenient towards us?” I asked Aidan after Wilkes had gone inside. “I mean, he never ended up doing anything except close off our escape route after what we did back on Thursday. And now he is just leaving us out here, trusting us to go back in on our own.”

  “I don’t know but I have no intention of complaining about not having it harder. I kind of like having some freedom.”

  “I’m not complaining,” I hurried to clarify. “I just think it is sort of weird and like maybe we are getting tricked or something.”

  “Face it. We probably are,” he told me. “Wilkes is smart. I am sure he knows what he is doing. The guy has his reasons, whether we can fully see what those reasons are or not is a different matter. But I know for certain he doesn’t just act on a whim. He calculates his every move, planning with careful detail.”

  “Now that sounds paranoid.”

  “Really? Good that is was I was going for. Look, yeah, he is going easier on us and yes, he probably is plotting and scheming things up, but why not just sit back and let what comes come? Analyzing it all to death is not worth it. Why not just enjoy it?”

  “Okay, I’ll try to just forget I know he is up to something.” I tell him. “But now, I’m going back to bed.”

  “Okay. Sleep well. Don’t have any more nightmares though,” he directed me. “Those are no good and are a waste of perfectly good sleep.”

  I rolled my eyes at him, making sure he saw me in the glow of the faint moonlight. “It is not as if I can just choose to stop having them. They do whatever they want to do.”

  “Well it is your brain, so just forbid it from thinking up crazy nightmares to torture you with.”

  I shake my head, giving up on the topic. “Good night Aidan.”

  “Night Lace,” he replied. “Don’t let the ghosts bite.”

  I ignore his last few words and carry my thermos back inside with me. I drain out the last few drops of now cool liquid before I placing it to be cleaned in the morning. I head back to my room, kick off my shows while pulling off my coat. Finally, I dive back into my blankets. I thought again about the dream I had before Aidan had come to wake me up. It reflected the feelings I had been constantly trying to suppress in a deep dark hole for the last few days.

  Deep down, I was terrified that even though I was truly trying to get better now, I would not be able to. I was worried I had been this way for so long now that I was stuck continuing to be this way, whether I like it or not. I knew now what it was I had been running from in my dream. I knew why I had not been able to look back. At first, I had thought I was running away from someone. Now though, I knew I was in all actuality, running away from something I could never separate myself from: My past.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Six

  Wednesday morning. I lay in my bed thinking about today. It was once again time for a check up on how I was doing with Dr. Catelli. I was nervous about it more than I ever had been before and it was not too difficult for me to figure out why it suddenly mattered so much more now what was going on. Aidan. It mattered because he mattered. It mattered because last night, my wish had been that today, we would see that the treatment they were putting me through would actually work so well they would see improvements finally, not just see a suspension of continued damage. It still sounded so incredibly impossible to me that what had been done could still be undone, but Catelli seemed convinced at that at least some reversals could be had from the treatment.

  I rolled over to look at my clock. Eight in the morning meant breakfast time was going to be in about thirty more minutes. I considered just going back to sleep, but opted for getting up and starting my day a bit earlier this morning. I got up and dressed a bit more carefully than usual, for once wishing I had more clothes here with me. I always felt as if I were constantly wearing the exact same thing day after day, even though I did have several different options to choose from.

  I pulled on my shoes and left my room. There were a few others up, but most everyone else was still unaccounted for yet. I thought about actually going over and sitting with Kaitlyn, but decided against it when I saw her and Ryan together. Her cheeks were bathed in a deep rosy blush from whatever he was saying and for once he had a genuine smile on his face, something I had yet to see before now.

  Watching them together, a thought suddenly struck me. Was this what Aidan and I looked like together? An uncomfortable knot formed in the pit of my stomach at just the thought of it. We probably did look a lot like this. Was that why Wilkes was acting how he was with us? Did he think something more was going on between us than there actually was? I hated the idea of getting off so easy about things, but I thought maybe it was time I made it clear this was not the type of relationship we had together or would ever have together. There was no way I was ever going to let a guy that far into my life. It just wasn’t worth the inevitable disappointment we would end up having to face later in life. Sure, Aidan was close now. I knew I could trust him, but that did not mean he was anything more than a trusted friend.

  I pulled out the notebook I had brought out of my room with me. I decided to randomly draw some things while I waited for breakfast to be ready for everyone. At first I just sketched out tiny flowers and simple things, but as time went on I saw something starting to take shape. Before I even knew what I was doing, I turned the random flowers and scribbles I had been drawing and tried to tie-in and create a picture from all of it. In a matter of minutes, I had before me a carefully done piece of work that hid the scribbles I had been making inside of an intricate sketch from on the grounds.

  Hearing footsteps approach me, I pretended to be oblivious to their approach. I was confident it was Aidan, but I knew it had the potential of being Wilkes too. I looked down the entire time, pretending I could not see the shoes before me that were waiting to have someone take notice of them. Finally, I lifted my head to see who had come and sure enough, Aidan was standing before me.

  “Today’s the day, right?” he asked me, sitting down next to me. “What do you think they are going to find? Do you think the treatment is going to show up as working better now?”

  “I am not sure. Catelli seemed confident we would find some solutions to the problem before too long. I am not getting my hopes up only to have them dashed.”

  “Alright, I will have my hopes up enough for both of us together,” he vowed. “I believe you are going to see some marked differences in your health and you will find that your treatment is working very well now.”

  “I guess we will see what ends up happening,” I say, sounding as unconvinced as I felt at the time. “But so far it does not seem to have really done any good as far as erasing past damage goes. It brings more damage to a halt, but corrects nothing.”

  “Well there is always a first you know. I guess you will just have to wait and see.”

  “I guess. So what are you going to do today?” I asked him in order to switch the conversation to something more carefree.

  “Me? I’m going to be spending my time doing a whole bunch of nothing. I don’t have anything important which I need to be accomplishing or anywhere I need to go, so I am free to do whatever I want to do.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw some nurses beginning to set out breakfast. I got to my feet and headed over, taking the proffered plate of pre-prepared food from one of the nurses.

  “We should have another stakeout outside for meteors or something again soon. It was a lot of fun,” said Aidan, his voice betraying his enthusiasm over the idea.

  “Maybe, but I think people might start getting bored if it was anything like last night.”

  “Well last night was weird. Normally it does not work like that.”

  “That’s what you say, but I’m not fully convinced.”

  “Well it’s more exciting when there is a real shower and you’re actually wishing on them,” he said.

  “I doubt it honestly. Wishing for something that can’t come true is no use really.”

  “Maybe what you wished for will come true,” countered Aidan. “You never know.”

  “We’ll see I guess. So, what is your next plan for keeping things interesting around here?”

  He shrugged. “Not sure yet, but there’ll be something. Promise.”

  I played with my food for a while, pushing it around on my plate while I thought about what I wanted to ask him, but was afraid to hear the answer to. It took several minutes of silence for me to finally find the courage to voice at least some of the questions thundering around in my head.

  “Aidan, how long do you think you are going to be here?” I asked him, still looking down at the food on my plate which I had been swirling around for what seemed like forever now.

  “I don’t really know,” he answered in a soft, slow voice that made me lift my head to peek up through my hair to see him.

   “Do you really think you will be here very long? I mean, you are probably the best functioning out of us all. I bet you are out of here in another week,” I predicted.

  He shrugged and glanced away. “Maybe I appear to be that way, but trust me, looks are definitely deceiving in this instance. Also, I’m still not taking any of those stupid pills yet,” he confided in a whisper. “I am still spitting them all out and ditching them as quick as I can.”

  “You mean you are still getting away with that?! It’s been a full week though!”

  He smirked his confidence. “I am just that good.”

  “It only took them a few days to realize I wasn’t taking mine. You better watch out that they don’t decide to test you in some way soon,” I cautioned.

  “I’m not worried about it. Pills can’t make you better, they just mask what is going on to make you think you are doing better than you really are. Don’t get me wrong, in some instances I am sure they work wonders, I just do not seem them as helpful in my case. No drug can make this okay,” he said, tapping his head lightly with a finger. “It has to make the choices all on its own.”

  “Which is tough.”

  “Which is extremely tough,” he corrected. “But in the end, probably worth the effort. Otherwise I am just trusting chemicals to make things alright.”

  “Well good luck keeping it up,” I said. “Mark my words, they are going to figure it out sooner or later. Probably not too long off from now.”

   “In the meantime, I’m trying to set a record with this, so shh!” he laughed. I shook my head and forced myself to stop playing with my food and actually set about eating it.

  “When do you see Catelli?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “Can I come too? I mean, not into the exam of course, just you know, walk down with you and whatnot, so it isn’t just you and Wilkes. I can be your human buffer if they all start getting too bossy,” he offered.

  “I don’t know. You would have to talk to Wilkes. It’s up to him really. If he’s okay with it then I am fine with it too.”

  “Well then, I guess I need to go ask him about it,” Aidan announced, shoving the remainder of his food into his mouth and standing it up. I stared up at him as he chewed and swallowed in record timing.

  “You are going to ask him now?”

  “No time like the present. I’ll be back in a couple minutes. I will let you know what he says about it.” With that, he was off to Wilkes’ office, leaving me staring off after his back.

  I found myself almost hoping he would be allowed to come with us. Somehow, the idea of knowing he cared enough to want to show his support by coming touched a part of my heart I thought had died. I knew the rules though. Wilkes would never let him come with us. You were allowed trips out only for medical appointments or if you had earned the privilege through their system. Picking fights, running away, and not participating in group time did not earn you very many brownie points. Wilkes would say no, and that was that.

  I cleared my plate after almost finishing everything on it that I had been given. I received a slight look of disapproval when I turned in my dishes and had to scrape off the leftovers, but I chose to ignore the look, dumped my dishes, and went to get my notebook from my room. When I got back I went straight to what had somehow become Aidan’s and my window during group time.

  As the others began gathering around together I started randomly writing out things that were going through my mind. I generally tried not to, but for once, I could have cared less if people saw me actually complying in some way with the rules. I needed to get these thoughts out. They were driving me insane.

 

I keep trying to tell myself that I could care less if I get better or not. I guess I figure that if I don’t have my hopes up to high than I can’t be disappointed later on when things don’t work out. The truth is though, I am starting to want to get better. I want to see things changing for the better today when they check things out. I am starting to finally care and it is scaring the heck out of me. I know why I am caring, and I know that it is bad. Aidan is going to leave me, probably sooner than later, and when he does, he will take my resolve to keep trying. He is the only one I feel truly wants to see me get better just because. Wilkes wants to because it is his job. Aidan has nothing to gain from wanting me to get better. Nothing. Yet still, he is working to help me. I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve it at all.

 

  My head snapped up when I heard footsteps approaching me. I tried inconspicuously to hurry to flip pages to hide what I had been working on. There was no one here who needed to read what I had been writing. I looked up, guessing that for once, it was not Aidan who was coming to see me, nor was it Wilkes. My thoughts were confirmed when I was met by Kaitlyn’s grey-blue hazel eyes.

  “You know, you should come join us,” she said in a soft voice that rubbed me the wrong way. I gritted my teeth to hold back my immediate distaste. It was nothing against her, I just did not enjoy sweet little girls reaching out to me on a “I want to save you” mission. It always annoyed me, but it was even more annoying coming from this girl who clearly did not even have her own life straight. I mean, she was chatting up Ryan, the guy who everyone knew was still getting high. Still, I had to be polite. She likely had quite fragile feelings and I in no way wanted to be responsible for making this girl spiral out of control by voicing my opinion on her suggestion.

  “Uh, no thanks,” I say as gently as I can bring myself to. “It really is not my thing.”

  “It wasn’t mine either at first, but you never know, you might actually find out you like it after you give it a try. Ryan is even going to give it a chance.”

  “Well, that is great. Good for Ryan. Still, I’m going to sit this one out. But that is pretty impressive that you managed to get him to join in,” I tell her, genuinely impressed by her accomplishment. “I know Wilkes and Tonya have been really working at that for a long time now.”

  She blushed a bit and my thoughts on what was going on between the two earlier were immediately confirmed and I knew exactly why Ryan had agreed to group time. I smiled to myself, wondering how long the guy would last in openly sharing with everyone. A pretty girl would probably only be enough to entice him to try, or at least pretend to try, for so long.

  “I didn’t really think he would agree, but he did. Hopefully he will stick with it. It really is good though. I mean, you really realize how much we are all alike, we just handle everything differently, you know?”

  I could not help the quick once-over I gave her. We were nothing alike, but I chose to humor her. “Yeah, probably, I just don’t think I’m ready for it.”

  “Well if you ever just want to talk the two of us...”

  “I think you might want to get over there,” I broke in, “it kind of looks like they are getting started without you.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “It looks like you are right. Well, maybe we will get a chance to talk later,” she said brightly. I groaned inwardly but nodded.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  She beamed at me briefly and then hurried back to the group. I shook my head. Just great. The little sunbeam was starting to be all happy and better and now she was going to be one of those wonderfully annoying people who wanted to help everyone feel better and who I would have to hold myself back from the urge of trying to shank to death. Great.

  I saw Aidan and Wilkes coming from the direction of Wilkes’ office and tried to read the expression on Aidan’s face. It did not appear to be the happiest, so I assumed I had been right when I guess that Wilkes would refuse his request. Aidan joined me on the window seat, leaning against the ice-cold windowpane.

  “He said I could go with you guys,” he began, “if we both came to the group time today,” he added.

  “Ha, no.”

  “That is basically what I figured you would say,” he said, his tone betraying a bit of disappointment about the outcome of his plan.

  “It just is not my thing, sorry Aidan. I mean,” I paused, trying to decide how to explain before continuing, “they all get together and talk about their issues and bond or whatever and that is just great, but I don’t want any part of it. Talking about stuff and just whining about how imperfect our lives are won’t really help any of us in the end.”

  “Hey, I’m not any more interested in doing it than you are,” he assured me. “I just wish he had not chosen to make that the condition. Doesn’t surprise me much though. He’s all about that group stuff and talking, isn’t he?”

  “Very much so,” I confirmed.

  He sighed and pulled out his own notebook and set about sketching something as always. He always refused to let me see what he was drawing and I could never sneak a peek no matter how subtly my attempts were.

  “Are you ever going to let me see what you are working on?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you before. It is secret serial killer type stuff. I can’t just go around showing it to people. It wouldn’t have the same effect.”

  “You could just show it to me. I wouldn’t give away your secrets to anyone.”

  “Ah, but what if this secret serial killer project is about you? What then? It would ruin my plan by alerting you to my intentions. I would not be so able to take you off of your guard.”

  I roll my eyes. “Aidan, just show me the stupid picture already!”

  “Nope.”

  “Fine. Whatever.” I go back to writing in my notebook and completely ignore him, even turning to mostly have my back to him.

  “Are you pouting?” he laughed, his voice ringing with amusement. I just continue ignoring him. “You are, aren’t you?” Silence. “What if I promise to show you it later?”

  “I don’t care if I ever see it,” I inform him, using my most monotone, disinterested voice I could muster.

  “Sure. I completely believe you. You are very, very convincing.”

  “Believe me or don’t. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Okay, I won’t show you anything since you don’t care. I’ll just let it surprise you later on,” he said, his voice filling with mischief. I chance a brief glance over my shoulder only to find him smirking right at me. I refocus back on my notebook.

  “Whatever. It won’t bother me, whatever you end up doing.”

  We continued on in silence this way for the rest of their group session until we were all allowed to go outside if we wanted to. Usually I jumped at the chance to get out of the sterile white-walled prison, but today, the chilly late-morning out-of-doors held no charm for me. As everyone began their outward shuffle, I remain seated right where I was, writing away.

  “Are you coming out?” Aidan finally asked after everyone else had left. I shook my head without looking up from what I was doing.

  “Not today.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yup, you go ahead though.”

  “Alright then. See you later I guess?” he said, getting up and closing his notebook, tucking it under his arm.

  “Sometime later. I will probably leave for my appointment before you get back inside.”

  “Okay, well then good luck with that. I think you will be surprised by what they find,” he replied with a confident optimism. He gave a quick wave, then headed for the door to outside. I sat there, huddled in the windowsill for a bit longer, than grabbed up my things and went to my room where I hastily deposited my stuff before wandering off in search of Wilkes. We still did not have to leave for some time yet, but I really wanted to talk to him beforehand, which was completely unlike me. Wilkes would likely be speechless. I smiled to myself at the thought.

  I walked up to his door, open as usual, and knocked on the doorframe. He glanced up and I saw that just as I had suspected, his eyes widened slightly in surprise at my early appearance.

  “Hey there Lacey. Did you want to talk before we left today?” he asked in a soothing tone, as if he were afraid that he would startle me and make me take off in a flash if he was not careful enough. As crazy as it first seemed, I realized while standing there it really was not too far from the truth. With hesitation slowing every step, I made my way to the chair across his desk from him. I seated myself, took a deep breath, and nodded.

  “So what do you want to talk about?” he asked outright. I immediately appreciated his approach. Instead of focusing on how unusual this was and blathering on about my progress, he was treating it as if this were a typical occurrence, which it definitely was not.

  “I don’t really know. Things are...”I searched for the right words, “different somehow.”

  He smiled, his eyes gleaming almost as if he were laughing inside. “Oh really? And what exactly do you think is different now? What has brought about this change do you think?”

  “I’m not sure,” I lie, knowing full well it could be summed up in one word: Aidan.

  “Really? Are you sure?” he makes a point of standing up, crossing over to the door, and shutting it. “Would you rather we had maybe a bit more privacy to talk about it? Just in case the wrong people wander by of course.” He was still smiling, and the expression was becoming unnerving. He knew already. Of course, because he knows everything, I remind myself.

  “I think Aidan is what is changing things,” I admit, looking at a picture on the wall, refusing to meet his eyes. This is when it would come. This is when he would reprimand me for allowing myself to build a bond with a guy. Sure, he had been encouraging bonding with people to help keep me grounded and give me some purpose and a sense of companionship, but this? No way could this be good in anyone’s eyes.

  “I figured as much. Why do you think he has been having such a big impact on you? What makes him different from say, Tonya, or me, or the other patients here? I know some of the others tried befriending you when you first got in here, but it did not seem to make any kind of transformation. Why is it different with him do you think?”

  I considered his question, still not meeting his searching eyes that I could feel burning a hole into me. Why did it matter?

  “I guess because it was different with him.”

  “How?”

  “Well, he was more persistent than anyone else except you of course,” I hurry to point out the last part, knowing no one could match the persistence of Dr. Wilkes. “But it was more than that I think. Like, he let me be myself. He wasn’t out to change me necessarily, he just...I don’t know, I guess he inadvertently made me want to change things. He made me want to be better.”

  “That is a very good thing for me to hear,” Wilkes began, “I have been very pleased to observe some of the difference your companionship has made for not just you but for him as well. It is a rare but beautiful thing when two people can come together in mutual but differing brokenness and create a bond that helps protect and heal each other.”

  I cannot help but finally meet his gaze after his words. It was gentle and encouraging. He actually thought it was a good thing. How could he possibly see it that way? Was he blind to the possible outcomes of all of this? Didn’t he realize that with two suicidal people it was not out of the question for one or both to kill themselves and throw off the other even more?

  “That being said, I feel you also need a word of caution in this area as well. You both have a unique ability to help the other heal, but there is also so much potential to break each other as well.”

  I drop my eyes to stare down at my hands in my lap. This was it. I knew he would not overall approve of things.

  “You see, broken people, as fragile as they are, tend to protect their fragileness with strongly reinforced walls to bar entrance to anyone who could hurt them deeply or even shallowly.”

  I gave him a puzzled look to show him I was not following where he was going with this. He held up a hand, signaling for me to let him finish explaining.

  “You both have a lot in your pasts. I do not know how much the two of you have gotten into any of that, if at all, but trust me, there is a huge heap of issues on both sides. There are several different paths you can go down with this, but there is really only one that will turn out well for both of you. Interested?”

  I don’t look up, but I nod, offering him permission to explain himself further, although I had a strong feeling that it was probably not what I really wanted to hear.

  “Okay, well first, both of you could keep a stagnant friendship that only remained surface deep. Spending time together would be beneficial, but in the end, it really wouldn’t be much good. You would find yourselves running out of things to say because you never let each other in deep enough to talk about anything that truly matter, and for both of you, what is going on within your lives has mostly to do with touchy personal subjects. Second, one of you could be very open with the other and become vulnerable only to have the other remain closed off. Whoever remains closed off may not be judging the other or trying to convey a desire for the vulnerable one to leave them alone, but their decision to stay closed off could, and probably will be, misinterpreted by the one who has opened up. The lack of reciprocated trust could hurt them and make them withdraw again, only perhaps deeper so that they won’t make the same mistake yet again. Make sense?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I reply. It was making sense all right. Too much sense. So then, what is the only good way for it to go?”

  “It is when both simultaneously choose to open equally with the other so they can share in their hurts and frustrations and offer their support to one another. It is not easy, and there are enormous risks to failing to make it work, so I would like you to be very careful about trying to share at the same rate with Aidan,” he told me, “but it may be one of the best medicines for you right now. More than anything, I’ve thought you needed companionship so you had something to hold on to. Someone who, when you thought about them, made you want to keep trying. I was very grateful when Aidan singled you out for a friendship in here. Of course,” he laughed, “I would have preferred he was more encouraging in working within the program rather than rebelling against it, but that is between him and me only mostly.”

  “How do we...” again, I searched to find the right words, “How do we share mutually and trust each other enough to get to that point of being vulnerable so we can really help each other?”

  “Well it is not an easy thing to do.” He stopped until I once again met his eyes, which were dead serious, willing me to understand all he was saying and really take it all to heart. “If you really want to reach that point then you have to show him that you trust him and that he can trust you. Share bits and pieces and find ways to make it clear to him that he is free to share as he pleases with you as well. It will be difficult for you both at first, but over time, I think you will discover it gets easier and easier for you both to do.”

  “So, you don’t think this is a bad thing then?”

  “Was that what you thought I would say? Were you hoping to console your mind with me saying you needed to break ties with him so it would be easier for you to disconnect?”

  “Maybe,” I answered sheepishly, looking away, not wanting to admit he had hit it dead on.

  “This is probably the best thing for you, so no, I will not offer you a free excuse to back away and leave it behind. It is likely the hardest thing you will ever find yourself doing, but trust me, it is what you need to do.”

  “What if...What if I start having a feelings for him?” As soon as the words are out of my mouth I inwardly scream at myself at wish I could undone the last five seconds.
  He smiled broadly. “Then there is an increase in the possibility of getting hurt and causing hurt, but it also means an increase in how much it can help you. You just have to be careful to keep up some boundaries so that if anything does happen, you will not be so completely devastated by it all. Honestly though, it’s more encouraging than I can even tell you to hear you even bring that up. You have been so greatly disconnected that it is amazing to hear that your emotions are able to even function enough to have established any kind of feelings for anyone.”

  Things were beginning to become uncomfortable and I shifted in my seat and looked up at the clock on the wall behind him. He followed my direction of sight and note the time.

  “Well I guess if you are all set we can get going now,” he offered, apparently taking the hint that I was done talking about things for now. My brain was now on overload and I didn’t want to think about the whole mess I was now stuck wading through I stand up and move towards the door with Wilkes following my lead.

  “I know it is a lot of things to think through and process, but please try. It really is very important for you to think it all over carefully. Remember, it isn’t just you on the line in this. You also have to consider how some of your decisions will affect Aidan as well. Whether you wanted it to be this way or not, the two of you have begun binding yourselves together and you both have to think about more than just yourselves now. I think you will very soon see the positive and negative affects you have on each other.”

          <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

  “Well there is definitely good news here,” Catelli noted aloud. “There is definitely no new damage being done, and after two weeks now, I believe it is probably safe to say you will not be becoming any worse.”

  “Is it getting any better though?” I ask, showing interest in my health to her for possible the first time. She appeared taken aback, but similarly encouraged by it compared to how Wilkes had reacted to my new interests in things.

  “Well honey, no. There is still a chance though,” she hurriedly added. “As it is, you will be well enough that we won’t have to worry about a transplant any longer, so that is most certainly good news. With a few more weeks I am sure we can get things headed in a direction of actual healing, and then you will be able to live a more normal life again, at least as far as your physical health is concerned.”

  “Do you truly think anything can be corrected at this point?”

  She nodded with enthusiasm. “Most definitely, and especially so in your particular case. I have yet to see an equal to your body’s reception of this treatment. You barely ever have any side-effects and yet you are still doing substantially better with it than any of my other patients. So yes, I really do believe we are going to see some healing soon.”

  We left the room and stepped out into the hall where Wilkes was waiting for us. Again, the two doctors went off to a corner to talk about my progress and left me standing, waiting. This time though, in light of the conversation Wilkes and I had earlier, I was curious about what they were saying to each other. I attempted to inconspicuously watch their mouths to try to read their lips, but I could not quite make out the different words. It didn’t take me long to give up and just wait for them to be finished. When they finally were, I watched their faces for any sign that they were pleased with the exchange of information, and was rewarded by observing relaxed face that even seemed to be smiling just a little. Gone were the worried frowns and disapproving glances.

  As we headed back down the hall, Wilkes cleared his throat. “So, she seems to have very high hopes for your recovery. Did she tell you that?”

  “Yes, she did tell me.”

  “She also was encouraged by your change in attitude about it all. She was happy to see you actively interested in what was going on with your health.”

  “I noticed that too.”

  “You know, you still have a long ways to go with all of this, but in another week or two, I could see myself clearing you with the condition of regular check-ins with an accountability partner of some sort.”

  My eyebrows shot up in surprise and my eyes doubled in size. Had he really just told me what I thought he had told me?

  “Seriously?!”

  “Yes, with plenty of conditions though. There would be more than just the check-ins. You would have to go to weekly counseling sessions and I am not really sure what all else. But if you want this to happen, then you need to work at it to prove it to me. And while you work at it, I’ll work on deciding what kind of conditions we could work within to make it all work out. Deal?”

  “Deal,” I agreed readily. Whatever it took, I would do it. There was a light at the end of the really dark tunnel I had been stuck in for what seemed like forever. Apart from group therapy, I was willing to show that this was something I was willing to work for. Freedom. It meant everything right now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Seven

  “So wait, he has you doing tricks to earn a leash?” Aidan questioned when I told him later about the deal I had made with Wilkes. Instantly, my good mood deflated at his words.

  “Well when you put it like that...” I grouch at him.

  “I am just saying,” he said, raising his hands into a defense position as if maybe he thought I would jump at him and claw at his face. I scolded at him until he returned his hands to resting on the table. “Look, it is good, I’m happy for you. I know you really didn’t think you would ever get out of this place so it is a step in the right direction. I just think you have to see it realistically. He is going to tack on plenty of guidelines for this entire whole thing that you will have to agree to follow.”

  “But it would be worth it. Once I am out I am out.”

  “Are you ready for it?”

  “Of course I am! I’ve been here for too long already. I can’t get out soon enough!”

  He shook his head and looked at me, his eyes serious and demanding me to listen up. “I know you really want to leave, but there’s a difference between wanting to leave and being ready to leave. Do you think you are ready to be back out there having it all thrown in your face again?”

  “So this is about you thinking I can’t handle it,” I surmised, folding my arms across my chest and glaring at him. “You think I will get out there and instantly just totally screw everything up.”

  “No, I mean...” he sighed and ran his hand through his hair before letting it drop down on the table once again. “Look, you are doing good Lace. Even in the short time I have known you, I have seen you change a lot. It’s great. I just know how these things go sometimes and really don’t want to see you rush back out there only to relapse big time and not have anyone to catch you. I think maybe you should really take advantage of your time here to build up your strength for the smack-down you are undoubtedly going to face in the end.”

  “I can do it. Staying here longer is not going to help things be any better for me when I get out.” I waved my hand around the artificial world we had been forced into. “This cannot prepare me any better for being out in the world. It’s all fake. Nothing is real in here.”

  “That’s the point to some extent though. To take you out of reality, so you can hone in on fixing things and getting help. All the people here are very real.”

  “I thought you didn’t really believe in their help. I thought that’s why you do what you do.”

  He shrugged and looked away. “I don’t believe in everything they do here,” he clarified. “That does not mean that I do not believe in any of it as a whole. Some things are good, otherwise I would not have come back to a place like this.”

  “Come back? You mean you were in a place like this before and were crazy enough to choose to come back, knowing full well what it would be like?”

  He nodded. “Yup. Back when things were first bad. My grandparents made me do it. I hated it just like you do now, but it eventually got better and it helped me out a ton.”

  “And yet here you are, back again.”

  “Things happen. Terrible things. They set you off your focus for a while, but you learn to get back up and you fix things so that it isn’t so messy anymore and you figure it all out.”

  “I just want out, okay? That’s all I know. It’s all I can focus on.”

  “And I’m telling you, you have to focus on more than that. It’s not good for that to be your only focus.”

  I shrug and look away. “It is up to me, and I think I am ready. I just have to prove it to him.” I stand up and head off to the library to have some time by myself to think about what all I could do to prove to Wilkes that he needed to give me the chance to leave.

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  “You cannot let her leave. She is not ready,” said Aidan, walking right into the office and shutting the door.

  Wilkes jumped slightly from the outburst, but quickly collected himself enough to pull his thoughts together and push aside the papers he had been working on.

  “I agree. She probably isn’t ready to leave yet, but she wants to badly enough that I think if she thinks there is a chance, she will work for it and get herself out.”

  “She’s focusing on all of the wrong things. Her only goal is to get out, not to get better in any way or learn how to cope.”

  “No, but in order to get out, she has to prove she is trying, so she will have to have sessions that will force her to start working on all of those things. By default, she is going to have to work on dealing with things to get out. She has to work with the system.”

  Aidan sat down, appearing to be thinking through his reasoning. “You really think it will work?”
  “You don’t?”

  “No. I think as soon as she starts digging into things she is going t realize what is going on and dig her heels in.”

  “There is a strong chance of that happening, but this is the best I could come up with to make this work, so it will have to do for now. If you have any better suggestions then I am open to hearing them, but I think maybe we should focus on talking about why you are feeling the way you are about all of this.”

  “What do you mean?” Aidan asked, his voice instantly taking on a guarded tone.

  “I mean, with everything between the two of you, how do you feel? What do you think about it? It has to be difficult for you, given...” he searched for the right words, “obvious reason.”

  “I feel worried about her. I mean, she is definitely not alright, despite her recent decision that she is otherwise.”

  “So you are scared that she is convincing herself she is okay when she is not. Why?” Wilkes prodded. Aidan narrowed his eyes. He knew where this was going and he did not like it.

  “Because I know when you convince yourself you are unbreakable, then that is right when you are actually the most easily destroyed. I want to protect her from that. Somehow.”

  “I think you need to face the knowledge that there is nothing you can do to keep her from going down whatever road she ends up Aidan. She is pretty determined to do things her own way in case you had not noticed. She will run through a million different scenarios where she is in control before she allows herself to listen to anyone else.”

  “Why is she so stubborn about everything?” 

  “Because she is a very independent young woman, Aidan. We have to take the good and the bad in her personality. The things that make you want to know her better and help her come from the very same things that cause her to be so frustrating too. That just happens to be what the tradeoff is.”

  “Makes sense I guess. I just wish I could prevent her from making all the wrong choices first, and convince her to listen to me about making the right ones instead.”

  “Because you care a lot about her.”

  Aidan hesitated, his face taking on an expression of pain. “Yes. I a lot about her.”

  “Aidan, let me say one last thing to you, and I hope you really take it to heart because it is so very important that you do understand it,” Wilkes said, waiting until he was satisfied with the level of attention he was receiving from his audience.

  “You are sitting in a very unique position here Aidan. She trusts you like no one else here. She has allowed herself to build a relationship with you, which is a first for her in this place. When she was first brought into here she sat in a corner, never smiled, barely ate, and the only times she ever talked were when she had a biting remark to make or she was taking the opportunity to let us know just how much she did not want to be here. Now, fast forward a couple of weeks and you arrive on the scene. Instantly she is a different person. Is she still moody, withdrawn, and hell-bent on getting out? Of course, but she smiled, she laughed, and she talked to someone. You managed to engage her when no one else could. Let another week slip by and she is wanting to get better. Do you know how shocked her doctor was just to have her express an interest in healing? This did not just happen on its own. You managed to get her to this point.

  “That being said, you have to be careful. You have the most precious gem in your hands and you cannot even begin to fathom just how easily you can break or lose it. You have to keep yourself responsible for how you are acting towards her and be careful you do not ruin the bond that you built. I have no idea what might happen if things went wrong between you, but I can promise you it would not be pleasant for either of you to go through.”

  “So what exactly are you saying then?”

  “I am saying tread carefully. This is not a forever relationship, but it is important right now for both of you at the moment, and you need to be intentional about all of your actions, even the most insignificant ones.” With that said, Wilkes pulled his papers back in front of himself and began to set to work on them once again.

  Aidan knew that his sign that he needed to get going, but he could not move. Here still had just one more question he had to have answered for him.

  “What do you think is going to happen when I leave here?”

  Wilkes looked up from his papers. “Honestly? I don’t have a clue. You are probably ready to be out there again. I think all you actually needed was just some time to step away from everything and gain some perspective. Normally, I would be meeting with you about now to talk about moving on to methods for coping back in real life and getting you together with a counselor so you would be ready to leave in another week, but I feel like maybe you both might benefit from you staying on a bit longer than that. It is up to you of course, but if you want to stay for two more weeks rather than one, I will allow for that.”

   “I want to stay,” Aidan answered without a moment of hesitation.

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   “This is going to be more work than I thought,” I sulked, sitting next to Aidan the next afternoon after having had a talk with Wilkes.

  “I take it you guys went over what he expected from you?” Aidan said, smirking.

  “We did. I had no idea about all the different weird things they do with people here. It’s crazy! He wants me to work with one of the other counselors going over stressors and ways of coping with stress-related situations. Then there is this set of workbooks I am supposed to get through and meet with him about in addition to our twice a week meetings we already have. And that is just the start of it. He has a lot more he wants to introduce in about another week or so too.”

  “Well you knew he was going to make you work for it,” Aidan pointed out. “So you should have seen it coming.” He went back to drawing and I lean over to catch a glimpse of his work. He tries to pull away but he is not quick enough and I’m surprised to see it is a sketch of myself.

  “You really are acting all stalker serial killer!” I exclaimed, taken aback by what I had seen.

  He flashed a grin. “That’s just one of many,” he promised.

  “Many? Exactly how many?”

  “See for yourself,” he invited, unexpectedly offering me his notebook. I start to reach out my hand, then pause. “Do I really want to look in here?”

  “Probably not, but you are going to anyway because you are dying to see what is in there, aren’t you?”

  I press my lips together and don’t even bother to answer him, knowing he is completely correct in his assumption. I take the notebook and start flipping through. Sure enough, my eyes are greeted by a number of varying sketches, all drawn of me at different angles with different expressions. The one universal thing I notice about all of them is that I am not smiling in any of them. Not one of his pictures depicted me with anything near a look of contentment. I made it to the very first drawing he had done and stopped. I expected to see a hostile young woman completely closed off to the world but that was not the sight that greeted my eyes.

  “Not what you were expecting, was it?” Aidan asked, noting where I had stopped.

  “Not really,” I admitted.

  “Well you did a decent job of pretending you were much tougher than you actually were. This is how I really saw you that first day.”

  I continued to study the picture. The girl looked so vulnerable and terrified. It was as if she suspected that at any moment, everything she knew was going to be completely gone. As if it would just all vanish and she would be left alone. I shake my head to clear the haunting imagine from my mind, snap the notebook shut and hand it back to him.

  “I’m not so sure about how I feel knowing you truly do have serial killer tendencies,” I say, hoping to lighten the now heavier mood.

  “Oh that is easy. You should feel terrified,” he teased. “For all you know I have a bunch more tacked up on my walls back in my room.”

  “I don’t think they would let you have that. I could be wrong, but I am confident that I am right.”

  “Maybe they just have not seen it yet? Or, perhaps I have convinced them I am doing it for therapeutic reasons and they have decided it is harmless enough.”

  “Somehow I really doubt either scenario. Why did you draw so many of these? I think there is almost one fore= every single day in here.”

  “Well in case you have not really noticed, we are really lacking in the muse department here. There is nothing to draw and few people who actually inspire any kind of creativity whatsoever. You were interesting to watch, plus you were always right there. It worked quite well really.”

  “You are creepy, you know that, right?”
  “I know it well, though I am not as bad as some. I prefer to see myself as a happy medium. I am subtlye and can keep things to myself whenever I need. On the other hand, I can draw all sorts of sketches of who knows what all and stalk my prey with ease. You didn’t even know what was happening.”

  “True, I did not know. But now that I do, I feel as if maybe it is my duty to report you so they can get you the proper help for dealing with this tragic issue you seem to be struggling with.”

  “No thanks. I like things just as they are in this area,” he said simply. “Honestly, you should try it sometime. It can be loads of fun and I think you would find it interesting. You can learn so much about a person without them having any idea that you know any more than one or two simple things.”

  “Just because you can draw a few pictures, does not mean you know me any better. You still know very little about me.”

  “Maybe I know more than you realize. I am good at reading people. I could probably even doing fortune telling to earn some cash. I can be very convincing and realistic when I want to.”

  “You do that,” I say, “Let me know how that all works out for you.” I stand up straighter. “For now, I have to go to the stress coping thing now.”

  “Have fun with that one.”

  “You could come too if you want. There is supposed to be at least a couple of us.”

  “No thanks. I think I am good right where I am at, but your invitation is notably touching. Now, go learn lots about stress so you can return and tell me if it is worth doing or not.”

  “I will go, but I won’t tell you anything. If you want to know you will have to go experience it for yourself.”

  “Well fine then. See if I do anything nice for you anymore,” he said, his tone taking on a mock-pain note.

  “When do you ever do anything nice for me?” I ask. When he begins to open his mouth to respond I cut him off quickly by adding, “Without turning around and betraying me in a way that negates the kindness.”

  His mouth snapped shut for a second, and then reopened. “I helped you rebel against your new diet. I let you eat some of my bad food and assisted by demolishing some of your healthy stuff. Un-negated backup and niceness, right there.”

  “That doesn’t count. You wanted to eat what was on my plate. The only reason you shared anything was because you knew it was the only way for you to get what you wanted.”

  “That may be true, but you have no tangible proof of it,” he remarked. He glanced up at the clock on the far wall. “I would get moving to wherever you need to be if I were you. It is probably going to start in like two minutes.”

  I glanced back at the clock to find out he was indeed correct. I turned back to him and narrowed my eyes while lifting a threatening finger. “I’m going, but you need to do two things. First, stop drawing those pictures. It is extremely creepy of you to keep doing all the time. Second, you should go do something to. If I have to be all ‘work to be better’ or whatever, then you do too. So get to it.” I gave him a concluding nod, then whipped around and marched off to the session I was expected to show up for.

  As I walked into the library where it was taking place, I paused in the doorway. Sitting on one of the sofas which had all been pulled together to form a semblance of a wide-spread circle was a young woman who I guessed to be in her mid-thirties. Her hair was a soft, corn silk blonde color and her eyes were a pale blue. She lifted her slight frame from her seat, smiled a greeting to me, and motioned for me to join her. With dismay, I noted that so far, I was the first patient to make an appearance.

  “Hi, I am Dr. Cassandra Yates, but you are more than welcome to just call me Cassie or whatever you would like, ” she introduced herself, stretching out a hand. A left my face straight and accepted the handshake, trying my best to make the contact end as quickly as possible.

  “I’m Lacey,” I tell her, not wanting to but knowing it was what she expected.

  “Well I’m glad to have the chance to meet with and offer you some help Lacey,” she answered. I did my best not to grimace at her too-gentle voice. I felt like perhaps she thought if she talked any differently she might send people running for cover, but I doubted it would.

  “I thought there was going to be more people than this,” I mention, trying to remain neutral yet a little cautious as I made my way towards picking a spot which was the farthest possible one from her.

  “Oh no worries, there is still at least one more girl and a guy who have agreed to come as well. You won’t have to be in here all alone with me, though I promise I do not bite too hard,” she mentioned with a wink. I felt my face redden ever so slightly at the end comment. Obviously she had dually noted my choice of seat. Thankfully though, Kaitlyn showed up right on time and the guy we were still waiting on made an appearance a couple of minutes after Kaitlyn did. When everyone was settled and Cassandra had introduced herself and learned everyone’s names, she was ready to get things started.

  “Okay, so we are all here to talk about a huge factor in all our lives, and work on coming up with solutions as to relieving tension when it shows up. How often do you think each of you, when you were outside of here, faced a stressful situation?”

  “Very often,” the guy who had introduced himself as David readily offered.

  “Alright then, kind of vague, but it will do. Next question. Do you think you dealt with that stress well? Is there and particular times where you felt like you were out of control?”

  David laughed outright at the question, then looked a bit embarrassed by his outburst when we all turned to stare at him. Poor David. He was new this who thing, having just begun treatment here a couple of days ago. He obviously had no idea what being the first to answer the question meant or what kind of questions they would be.

  “Do you have any more thoughts about it David?” Cassie questioned him, giving him a kind yet stern look that told him to take this seriously.

  “Sorry, it’s just that sounded so...sorry,” he collected himself, sitting up straighter and clearing his throat. “Well I don’t think I ever even once handled the stress correctly,” he admitted to her. “But I cannot think of a time when I actually felt like I was out of control.”

  “What about the rest of you?” she questioned, looking at each of us in turn, staring each one of us down.

  Kaitlyn cleared her throat. “Well, I guess I never felt like I had to deal with too great of stress or had it feel like it was what was running my life. I don’t think I can ever say that I handled it all in the right ways.”

  “Lacey? What about you?”

  I shrugged and looked down at my hands. “I don’t know. I guess I never really had that much more stress than your average person, but I did let it get out of control,” I managed to get out, never once looking up while answering.

  “How did you let it get out of control Lacey? What specifically happened that makes you feel like at some point, the stress had the control over you and not the other way around?”

  I look up into her clear blue eyes. I knew my own green ones were loaded with misgivings and fear about continuing. I could see her reaction to that fear, and her eyes were instantly filled with compassion.

  “Lacey, this is a safe time. Trust me, all of us here are here for a very good reason,” she encouraged.

  I take a deep fortifying breath and returned my gaze to m hands. “I suppose it got out of control when I began to start cutting.” I allowed myself to peek up through my lashes at her after the words had left my mouth. It was no secret from these people I was a cutter, but to openly say the words was a million times more difficult for me to do. It was admitting aloud how messed up of a human being I really was, and more than that, I was announcing I had allowed myself to be controlled by something as stupid as cutting.

  She nodded with understanding. “It’s hard sometimes. The thing is, once you allow something like that into your life even a little bit, it roots itself down deep and it becomes so difficult to remove it that many do not even try after a while, they just allow it to have the reins. It is an ugly, destructive, but gaining in popularity coping mechanism.”

 She turned to Kaitlyn. “Kait, what was it that told you at first that you were letting stress have too much say in your life?”

  I tried to pay attention, but I slipped away into what she had said. It was true. It did not take any time at all for cutting to just become my natural go-to for relief. It had been almost impossible to stop before, and there were so many times since being admitted here when I would have given my arm for even a dull blade to ease my misery.

  My mind snapped back to what we were talking about. I had to focus. I had to prove to Wilkes how much I wanted out of this place. I had to convince him that I was ready to be trusted to try on my own. I looked up at Cassie who was taking a couple notes. It was silent. Apparently, I had missed the others revealing their own coping methods. I mean, I was certain I knew what Kait’s was, but it would have been good to know what David’s was since we were all going to have a few of these lovely sessions together. Oh well, I could probably pick up on it later when they discussed it further.  She looked up and smiled at me.

  “Well it sounds like all of you had unfortunate methods that you turned to in order to deal with your own personal stressors. The good thing is that we are all here, and we get the opportunity in a safety bubble of sorts to work on correcting our ways to make healthier choices about how to handle stress.
  “Now, I know we have not gotten so far today, but I would like for all three of you to read the first chapter of this book by our meet tomorrow. Be prepared to talk about it and answer all the questions after the chapter. Go ahead and just write it into the book. I won’t be asking for them back. Thanks for a good first meet.” She stood up and we all slowly did the same, all of us looking at one another. Was it really over this soon? It seemed like it had not been painful enough to get to be released this soon. But she was in fact allowing us to leave, so I took the book from her and left as quickly as I could before Kaitlyn decided to act all friendly again and try to convince me to do the group time tomorrow.

  I got out into the hall and realized it was the time when most everyone was either outside or doing special meetings like the one I had just gotten out of. I decided it was too cold to just sit around outside, so I opted for going to my room and cracking open the book Cassie had given me. I had no idea what to expect. From the looks and sounds of her it could have been anything from calming yoga poses to something completely different such as recommending violent sports and such to relieve stress. I had heard of both ideas, but I had no idea which she would more firmly back. She seemed more of the go-with-the-flow type, but she also had this fierceness about her as well, which made me think it would not be too huge of a stretch to see her firing some heavy duty firearm to relax herself.

  I lay across my bed reading it for longer than I realized. I felt as if it had only been about thirty minutes at most when a heard a knock on my doorframe and saw Aidan awaiting my response in the doorway.

  “Hey,” I greet him, sitting up on my bed. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. Just wondering how it went.”

  I shrug. “It wasn’t so bad, but I got homework,” I say, holding up the book I had been reading. “I thought that was the one good thing about this place. I got to get out of having assignments and homework all of the time.”

  “It happens sometimes,” he laughed, coming over to sit on the edge of my bed. He stared at me, watching with a look I didn’t understand and made me uncomfortable. It was starting to become a habit of his that was getting annoying very quickly.

  “You should stop doing that all of the time.”
  “Doing what?” He smiled. He knew what he was doing.

  “You know what. Stop it,” I commanded, making a point to ignore him and go back to reading my book. After two solid minutes of rereading the same sentence, I look over the book at him. He was still watching with the same irritating look on his face.

  “Do you need something or are you just here to be a nuisance?”

   He stood, laughing. “Okay, okay. I will leave you to it. Study hard! Oh, and don’t forget to eat dinner, they are getting mad at you for not showing up,” he mentioned casually as he was walking out. His words made my eyes fly to the clock beside my bed. Sure enough. My “thirty minutes” had actually been more like two hours. I groaned and got out of my bed and ran after Aidan.

  “You could have just told me,” I hissed at him once I had caught up.

  “It was more fun this way though,” he replied. “Or at least, it was more fun for me. I suppose you did not find it quite as enjoyable as I did.”

  “Not even close.”

  “Oh well. I guess we can’t all be happy.”

   When we got out to the main room, I saw that there were only a couple of people left finishing-up their dinner. The rest had already completed their meals and were sitting around doing this or that before going to their rooms for the night �"if they hadn’t already.

  “Did you already eat?” I asked Aidan, my tone accusing.

  “Yup.”

  “Why didn’t you come looking for me when you ate?”

  “I figured you were busy or mad or something. I decided to give you your space.”

  I rolled my eyes and went to get my food. The nurse had a frown that looked as if it were permanently etched there. She pushed the tray of food into my hands then abruptly turned away. Apparently I was not well liked tonight, but I guessed that being an hour late wouldn’t exactly earn me any points with anyone. I silently took my food over to an empty table and began to eat it as quickly as I could. Aidan followed me over, but made no move to sit down.

  “What? Aren’t you at least going to sit with me?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Not tonight. I have some things to take care of, so this is goodnight. I will see you in the morning.” He paused in the middle of turning away, and briefly turned back to add, “providing you don’t accidently sleep in and miss breakfast that is.”

  I glared at him. “Funny.”

  He smirked, waved, and left. I watched as he retreated down the hall to his room. Even knowing some of the issues he struggled with, it was hard to believe that he was in here with the rest of us. He seemed so out of place. Was he weird? Sure. Did he have issues? Yes, but he seemed to have them under control. It just seemed so unnecessary for him to be here.

  I finished scarfing down my food. Once I was done, I deposited my plate for cleaning and went back to my room for the night. I pulled out a notebook and pen before resettling down with my book, know I had almost hit the part where I was supposed to be answering the questions. When I got to that part, I felt a deep groan rising within me. Questions. Lots of them, and all of them personal. I threw up a quick prayer that I would not have to share this with anyone except maybe Cassie, and set to work on answering each of the questions as honestly as I possibly could. When I was done, I put my things away and turned off m light, even though it was still early for our lights out time. I lay awake for some time as I tried to process all my thoughts about what I had read. It was mostly all things I had already known, so this chapter was not so important, but it did give me time to get myself into that mindset and focus. I closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep.

Chapter Eight

  “No way. You were not in a garage band. I do not believe it,” I say, laughing freely with Aidan while sitting outside on the dead grass. The earth was asleep around us. The tree branches were bare, the grass dead, the leaves decaying, no longer in their lively bright tones. Yet, it was unusually warm, so it was comfortable enough to sit out in the sun and just enjoy the late October afternoon. I would have to go to my stress therapy again today. It would not be very enjoyable, but I would manage somehow. I looked at the young man beside me, enjoying soaking in the warm sunlight just as much as me, eyes closed, head tilted up with a faint smile of contentment gracing his lips. I had to make this work, now more than ever. My list of reasons to be better was growing every day, but they all had one thing in common. Aidan Taylor. Somehow,

  “I was, whether you want to believe me or not. IT doesn’t change the truth.”

  “Okay, well what did you do then?”

  “I played the drums. I was pretty darn good too.”

  “Yeah right.”

  “I’ll prove it when we can both get out of here sometime,” he vowed. “Speaking of which, how is all of that going for you?”

  I groaned and flopped backwards into the grass, closing my eyes. “All this sharing and being friendly and open is exhausting. I’m not sure how much more of it I can take!”

  “Suck it up,” he said. “You can’t quit now. You are doing so much better.”

  I reopened my eyes and stared up at him next to me. “You really believe that?”

  “Of course I do. I would not have said it if I didn’t believe it silly girl,” he replied. “I mean, look at you. You are smiling, laughing even! And you aren’t all dark and brooding or hiding in a corner. You are relaxed and alive.”

  And it’s all because of you, I thought. DO you even know that Aidan? Do you even realize that you are the reason I am doing so much better? Probably not. What would happen if I lost you? I didn’t even want to think about that. I knew he would be leaving first. He had no reason to be here. Everyone knew it. Any day now I was expecting him to announce he would be leaving. Then it would be over. The sun in my sky would be gone, and just like any blossoming flower, I would wilt. I pushed the gloomy thoughts from my mind and beamed up at him, then wrapped my hand around his arm to help pull myself back up into a sitting position.

  “Oww,” he complained. “I am not for pulling yourself up on thank you very much.”

  “Yes you are,” I reply simply. “Now, I have to go talk and be sharing and nice with the other kids,” I announced. “This is our last day, so wish me luck!”

  “No.”

  “Jerk.”

  “Yup. Have fun and don’t mess everything up!”

  “Wow, you are so very confident in me. I think I might cry.”

  “Sarcasm does not become you.”

   I stuck out my tongue at him and got to my feet. “See you later.”

  “Later,” he said with a quick wave.

  I grudgingly made my way back inside and to the library. I was excited for it to be our last day of meetings. It was a rather intensive plan of meet sessions, meeting every single day for two weeks, but I was more than happy to get it over with quickly. After this, Wilkes and I were going to meet up and discuss our next step in all of this. I was hoping the new plan would include a release date in it.

  Remembering I needed my book and notebook, I went back to my room first, then headed for the library. When I got there, everyone else was there and waiting, so as soon as I sat down we started.

  “Well, I want to start by saying that I am pleased with the progress everyone has made in their thought processes in our sessions together. Also, please do not be discouraged if, when you go out and try to put what you learned to practice, it doesn’t go as smoothly as you think it ought to. It takes time and lots of trial and error. You don’t just go to sessions and read a book for a week, then magically handle stress perfectly the next week. It does not work like that, so don’t worry if you make mistakes. All that matters is that you keep striving towards regaining control with the help of some of what you were able to learn in our time together,” Cassie told all of us. Throughout the entire speech, she took turns looking steadily at each of us in turn to be sure she was driving the words home to us. I felt like it was the final test. What she would say about how we had done in the sessions would at least partly be determined by the looks in our eyes at this moment. When it came to be my turn I held her gaze for some time, but eventually I found myself having to look away, hoping this had not really been a test, because if it had, I had just failed it miserably.

  “So, what did everyone think about this last chapter of the book?” she asked, switching gears and regaining my attention.

  “I thought it was interesting, but I felt like there should be more to the story,” David answered. “It seemed to end oddly, you know, like it was supposed to keep going or something? That was my thought anyway.”

  “What about you Kaitlyn?”

  “I think that it offered some good conclusion, but yeah, it seemed like there was this tiny unresolved bit when it started off listing all the questions we likely now had, but then it doesn’t actually answer any of them for us,” Kaitlyn said softly. “I felt teased or as if the last few pages of my book had been ripped out.”

  “I think the author did that on purpose to make us realize that we still had so much more to sort through and learn to handle,” I commented, deciding to take a risk stab in the dark in hopes of impressing Cassie to make up for my inability to hold her gaze earlier.

  Cassie nodded. “You are correct I think,” she told me, offering her typical congratulatory smile to me before she looked around at the other two as well. “It is to keep the readers from thinking the learning process is over not that the book is done. It was his way of drawing attention to all he had left unanswered so people would realize there was still more they needed to dig into.

  “Okay, so today I am not going to ask everyone to tell each other about what they wrote down about the chapter. Instead, I want to meet with each of you individually to go over everything we learned and just see where you are standing with things without having everyone else around,” she announced to us. “So first I’ll talk to Kait, then David, and then it is just you and me Lacey. Everyone understand?” There were nods all around. “Good. Now, Dr. Wilkes was gracious enough to lend me his office, so Kait, let’s go have a chat, shall we?” She stood up and motioned for Kaitlyn to go ahead of her. Kaitlyn got up, shaking ever so slightly as she walked out with Cassie, leaving just David and me behind. David, the drunk who also sometimes did marijuana on the side.

  “How long do you think this is going to take?” David asked me. I glanced over at him and shrugged.

  “However long she wants it to be,” was my only response. He seemed dissatisfied but it was the truth, whether it was what he wanted to hear or not. It made no difference. Facts were facts. He would just have to get over it. I got to my feet and went over to one of the bookshelves and began searching through the titles to see if there was anything that sounded even remotely interesting to me. Now that I was finished with the book, I was forced to read for these sessions, I would have more time to read something else. Plus, it had been an effective way to hook me back into reading books regularly again.

  By the time Cassie came back for David’s turn I had looked over all the titles on both shelves at least two times. Half of them more like three or four times. After David left with Cassie, I went back over to the chairs and sofas, crashed on the biggest sofa, and allowed myself to relax. I just sat there, staring at the wall, mind wiped as clean as a slate while I waiting for my turn with Cassie. Somehow, I doubted the level of fun we would end up having in our talk. I had to appear as relaxed as possible. I could not afford to let on I had absolutely no belief in my being able to successfully learn the correct way for me to deal with all of my stress. It just was not going to happen.

  I felt a slight tap on my shoulder and I jump instantly. Looking up, I see Cassie smiling warmly back down at me.

  “I suppose since you are the last one, we can just talk in here,” she said, moving to sit in the chair across the coffee table from me. “So Lacey, how do you feel about all of our discussions and the book?”

  “I thought all of your points were very good and the subject of the book was interesting,” I told her, smoothing on the flattery.

  Cassie folded her hands together and leaned slightly forward. “Lacey, let me tell you something. Out of the three of you, I knew from the moment I laid eyes on you that you needed the most help in everything, and that was before I had talked to Wilkes at all about it. After I knew your background though, I made you my top priority. So how are you feeling about everything?”

  “I feel like this is going to be a lot of work,” I began truthfully. “I can already tell there are going to be days when I could really just care less about what happens, but I think I now have a better focus on fighting too.”

  “It’s a continuous battle,” she agreed with a solemn nod. “Stress will creep up on you when you least expect it, but if you work at it, I think you really can beat it back.”

  “How do I fight it off once I leave here? I mean, once I get back out there again how do I do it? There will school and work, of course family and friends, getting other help and counseling. How am I supposed to deal with all the stress that all of that is going to create?”

  “It won’t be easy, but you have to focus on seeing beyond our blinders. When you get blinders put on you, then you cannot see what is going on up ahead and you end up having to trust someone else to lead you around. Do you follow me?
  I tilt m head to the side thoughtfully. “I think so.”

  “Okay, when things get rough your point of view narrows and all you find yourself able to actually see is the difficulties you are finding yourself trapped in. It is imperative that you learn how to see beyond the blinders, or trust that there is so much more beyond everything.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” I say slowly.

  “Trust me Lacey, you have got this. I am really confident that you are ready to take things on again,” she encouraged me.

   I feel my spirits rise immediately. “Do you really think so?”

  “Yup, and it is what I am going to tell Dr. Wilkes too. So you just wait and see what happens.” She winked and got to her feet. “Thank you for giving me a chance to help you out Lacey. I appreciate the effort that you put into making this work and I know that because you really did invest into it, you will be helped by what you learned this last week. Good luck to you.” She offered me a parting smile, collected her things, and left me to my thoughts.

   I was ecstatic. She thought I could handle life again. She believed in me. Maybe, just maybe, I would get out of here yet. Maybe I wouldn’t have to be alone here while Aidan took off. Maybe we would get to leave about the same time.

  I cross the hall, and seeing that Wilkes is alone in his office, I stop by and me motions for me to come in.

 “I hear you have done very well in the stress management group,” he says as I walk in. I nod, knowing Cassie must have really moved fast to get the info to him. “I was very happy to receive that report along with others. You are doing incredibly well Lacey. Much better than I anticipated you would be doing two weeks ago. It has been amazing to watch the transformation to say the least.”

  “I feel like I am doing much better as well,” I begin, “And I would like to request to be able to come up with a release date.”

  Wilkes frowned. “Lacey, you are doing wonderfully, please do not misunderstand me. You have come such a very long way, but you still need to be here longer. We have to make sure you can remain stable in this point before we can let you go. On a very short-term scale you are doing fantastically, but what will happen over time? I am not planning to keep you here for forever, but the fact is that sometimes people can be perfectly fine for months upon months only to completely lose it one day. I don’t plan to keep you for months, but I do want to be sure this is not a very temporary thing. I need to see that this is something that can last.”

  “But I thought you said if I did the things that you wanted me to then we would be able to come up with a release date,” I reminded him, my voice sharp and challenging. “Or was that just a lie to convince me to do what you wanted?”

  “It wasn’t a like Lacey. I really did need you to show me it was something that you wanted. I was worried about you. I was trying to find a way to encourage you to keep going.”

  “But you have no intentions of letting me out yet,” I said. “So therefore, you lied.”

  “Lacey, I did what I thought was best for you. I-“

  I didn’t even wait for him to finish talking. I stormed off to my room, fuming. It had been a trick. The whole thing was just one huge trick that I had been gullible enough to fall for. I could shoot myself for having been so stupid.

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  “Lacey, would you please open your door?” I heard Aidan ask gently from the hall. I heard him, but I pretended that I had not. I was done with them all for right now at least. I had been played, and that was going to take a bit of time for me to really be able to get over.

  “Lace, listen, it is really, really important. Please come to the door and let me in. I know you are mad at Wilkes, and you have every right to be, but come on, it’s me, Aidan.”

  I contemplate giving him entrance, than decide that I would at least see what it was that he wanted. I crossed over to the door and opened if slightly. It was just enough to see Aidan’s face, and that was all I really needed.

  “Hey stranger,” he told me, smiling. “Look. I know this is really awful timing, but I have to tell you. I am leaving this place tomorrow. I got a job offer that I cannot really refuse and Wilkes has cleared me as ready to leave. It all happened fairly last minute here, otherwise I would have told you sooner. And, I would wait a while longer before telling you except I am leaving tomorrow, so I don’t really have very many options about when I can do this.”

  “You...you are going to leave?” I can’t hold back the break in my voice. This could not be happening. Everything that was happening was happening wrong. The day had been so incredibly beautiful but now what? I felt like my heart was breaking apart into thousands of tiny pieces.

  “I’m sorry Lace, but I promise, I will still come b as often as I can to see you. Just wait and see.”

  I shake my head vehemently “Don’t bother,” I snap before slamming the door in his face. As soon as the door was shut, I slid down, leaning against it as I just sat on the cold floor. Tears filled my eyes. I had known this was coming, but I still didn’t want to see it happen. I sat there for the rest of the night, crying my eyes out.

 At some point, I had made it off the floor to lay awake in my bed, unable to find rest. Aidan was leaving. The one friend I had in this whole place was going away while I would continue remaining trapped in this place. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t want to stay here. I could not keep staying here and pretending as if I were going to get back out one day. I had let myself believe that before and when reality sank it I was utterly crushed by it.

  The world was closing in on me and I felt the pressure begin to collapse me from the inside out. Even breathing was no small task anymore. It took everything I had in me to make my lungs work. The problem was not the lungs themselves but my chest. When my chest rose with a breath it ached and I felt as if a huge rock was sitting deep within my chest. I could not move it. I could not make it go away. I was stuck with it, and every single hour the rock got heavier and heavier. It was steadily becoming more than I could handle any longer, and I was very quickly running out of options of what I could do.

      Giving up on sleep, I growled lowly and threw my legs over the side of the bed. Remaining in my sweat pants and t-shirt, I slipped from my room and silently made my way out to the main room of the ward. I surveyed the area to see if anyone else was walking about, but everything was perfectly silent and there was no one within sight. I crossed over to the door leading to outside and tried the handle, fully expecting to find it securely locked up. To my surprise however, it was not and I was able to walk right out. The area was still completely fenced off of course, but at least I was no longer stuck inside the suffocating building.

      Instead of heading to my typical location, I opted for going to the center of the yard and threw myself onto the ground on my back. I was so tired of dealing with everything these days. I just wanted not to have to keep trying so hard all of the time. All my efforts, all my pushing myself to keep going just wasn’t worth it. It was getting old quite quickly and I just wanted it to end.

      It was time. I could finally make it just all be over. I never had to face any of this ever again, and that’s exactly what I had wanted for just about forever now. To be able to close my eyes for one last time knowing I would never have to open them to the tortures of life ever again. I would never have to keep battling for every little thing in life. Was it wrong to think this way? Wilkes would tell me yes, but this isn’t about Wilkes. This is about me and what I want. For once, I was the one calling all of the shots.

      As I lay out on the grass, I looked up at all of the stars sparkling above me. I was never going to see them again. It’s not like it would matter to me or anything, it just felt strange thinking about it. I pushed myself up from the ground and went to find the place along the fence with the exposed wire. It seemed like forever ago that I had found this overlooked issue. At one point, I had thought I would never end up using it. I almost had let myself be convinced that I could live life happy and content, but I knew better now. I knew the truth. There was no happy-ending or anything even remotely close to that in my future. I had always known that, I just had been dumb enough to let others sway me into believing that maybe it didn’t have to be that way. It did though, there was just no getting around it. Not for me anyways. It didn’t matter what Aidan said, this was how my life was supposed to end, and I might as well get it over with now.

      I knelt on the ground in front of the exposed wire ends and reached out to feel the sharpness of them. They weren’t even close to the sharpness of even a dulled razor blade, but they could still do plenty of damage if you were to try hard enough. I resolutely bent up the wires enough to get my wrists underneath them, then reached out one of my wrists, preparing to begin scraping it deeply again the wires.

      “I might not know what the best way to go is, but I’m betting that would be an extremely painful one,” said a voice from behind. I whipped around to look over my shoulder, still kneeling, and saw Aidan standing about twenty feet or so away. “I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s a clever idea. I would never have thought of it. But then again, I don’t have a sixth sense for anything that I could hurt myself with,” He started walking over to me, but I shook my head.

      “Stay back Aidan. This is not your choice, it’s mine,” I tell him. He paused, seeming consider the situation in an attempt to decide what his best move would be. “You should just go back inside. Why did you follow me out here anyway? Shouldn’t you be getting ready to leave tomorrow? How did you even know I came out?”

      A ghost of a smile appeared on his face. “Maybe that’s what my sixth sense is. Knowing where you are at. And I am definitely not going to just go inside and leave you to it. Not going to happen, sorry.”

      “Aidan, I’m tired of dealing with all of this. I tried, okay? I gave it all a chance. I worked at it, I cooperated with the doctors. I went to all that stupid extra therapy stuff. And I really did give it all a chance. I know I acted like I was just doing all of it to convince Wilkes to let me leave, but there was more to it. I wanted things to work. I really did try applying what they taught me.”

      “And the doctors say you’re going to be fine. You are not going to need a transplant. Your body is healing slowly, but surely. Wilkes sees your efforts too. He is going to let you go soon.”

      “It doesn’t matter what happens with my liver. My heart is dying and we can’t just patch that up �"no matter what Wilkes thinks.”

      “It can heal too Lace, I’ll help you heal it if you will just let me.”

      “No. This is how I’m going to fix things,” I tell him, motioning towards the wires.

      Aidan took a hard look at my wrist poised at most an inch from the wires. “You really think that is going to work?” he asked, voice laced with rough skepticism. “I wouldn’t count on it. You know what will happen? You will fail. You will get yourself pretty well scratched up, maybe even lose a good share of blood. But then you will pass out or something before you can really finish up right, and you won’t die from it.”

      “I’ll make sure it works,” I promised, my voice hollow now. I was done dealing with him. I was done dealing with anything. It had taken me all this time to realize that all the effort was never going to be worth it. “You need to go.” I turn back to the wire , press my wrist tightly against it, and was just starting to drag it through my flesh when Aidan’s arms wrapped around me from behind and pulled me away. He lifted me up from the ground and I tried to plant my heels into the ground so he couldn’t take me away, but it didn’t work.

      “Let go!”

      “Nope.”

      I struggled against him as much as I could but he just dragged me off towards the middle of the yard. He released me there, but grabbed my arm with the injured wrist and pulled me to sit down next to him. He pulled my arm into his lap and looked to see how deep I had gone before he had stopped me. I glanced down at the wound as well. There was only a small trickle of blood present and it appeared to be only barely bleeding still. He took the hem of his shirt and wiped away the blood. He looked up and met my eyes with his own intense and determined ones.

      “Lacey, if you thought I was just going to sit back while you did that to yourself you are crazy. I care about you way too much to just let you end your life. It’s not the way to go and you have so much more to live for to end it all here and now.”

  “It’s not your choice!” I snapped back vehemently. “You don’t have any right to tell me I can’t end my suffering now! You have tried before. You should be able to understand.”

  “I care about you and I am not going to lose you, not like I lost her. I understand how you feel, but more than that, I understand how important it is right now that I step in.”

  I freeze, confused but understanding all at once. This was it. I knew it had to be. This is why he had spiraled into suicidal thoughts again. This was why he had ended up back in this place.

  “What happened?” I whispered.

  “She died in a car accident. It was awful and there was nothing I could do. She died instantly. I didn’t even get a chance to tell her goodbye. She was just gone.”

  “Her death was an accident, you couldn’t stop it.”

  “Exactly. I could not stop her death, and I had to come to terms with that fact. But with you...with you it is different. I can help you. You are not going to end your life. Not on my watch. If I have the chance to save you, I will always save you.” 
  “Why? Why can’t you just let me go? Aidan, living hurts so much, don’t you understand that? You have to be able to understand how I feel. I keep feeling pressed in on, as if I am suffocating in the slowest, most excruciating possible way. I don’t want to keep feeling this way.”

  “Lacey, listen to me,” he commanded, staring deeply into my eyes. “I know it is hard, but you have been doing so well. You can’t give up yet. You have to keep going. I need you to keep going. Please. Tonight is one of those insanely dark nights that everybody has to deal with. Eventually you will learn how to face nights like this and it will get easier and easier for you to do.”

  I looked at him, I mean really looked. His eyes were pleading, his every feature expressing a vulnerability I had never seen before. I realized I had the potential of completely destroying him by what I decided to do. The thing was, I just did not know for sure that it mattered enough. Did I love him? Of course I did. He had come to mean everything to me quicker than I believed possible. He was the only person in my life who had shown me any real love, not just in spite of who I was, but because of who I was. But was it really enough for me to hold on? Did the hopes of happiness have that much power? What about when he became bored and moved on to another girl? One without the complicated past to deal with? What would happen to me then? Or, what about when he left tomorrow? How long would it take him to stop coming to see me?

  I looked at those dark brown eyes. Would he leave me eventually? Probably, because everyone always left. That’s just how it is, right or wrong. Thing was, I realized that as long as he could be there, as long as his eyes would be there to give me the courage, I could keep going. After they left, well, I didn’t want to think about that. For now, it could be enough, even if after tonight it would be few and far between when I did get to see them.

  “I’ll try,” I heard myself say so softly I doubted he could actually hear me, but he did. A smile broke out across his whole face.

  “I knew you would. You are stronger than you realize Lacey. You are going to get through all of this, and I will be with you every single step of the way. I promise. I will never let you go.”

  “That’s a big promise Aidan,” I point out. “Especially given that you are leaving tomorrow.”

  “But it’s one I intend to keep, however far away I am. I already made plans with Wilkes for visits and talking to each other. I had planned to keep it as a surprise, but I am going to come in as often as I am able to and I convinced Wilkes to give you back your cell phone. He is going to wipe it of contacts and only my number and your parents’ numbers will be in it.”

  “Why? Why would he do that? Why would you want to bother?”

  “Were you not listening for the last however long? I care about you. I will do whatever it takes to keep you with me, even if I have to kidnap you and keep you in a padded room for the rest of your life so I know you will be perfectly safe,” he said, winking. “I would rather not quite go to that extent though. It seems a tad drastic to me. For now, I will let them keep an eye on you here and keep in touch as much as possible.”

  I laugh somehow. I have no idea how it is possible I was planning to kill myself just minutes ago and now I feel happy enough to be laughing now. This guy though, he has a power over me I do not know if I will ever be able to understand. He is the only one I have ever known who could make me feel even a little hopeful in my darkest hour. I had no idea how, but I knew that Aidan was saving my life and giving me hope that one day, I would be a whole person and somehow, life would be alright. My head screeched out a million words of caution and misgiving about trusting him, but for once, I chose to ignore them. I knew I would get hurt because that was just a given. People hurt each other. But I was not strong enough to put m walls back up against him. He was already in, and I could not eliminate him, no matter how hard I tried.

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  “Just wait, I am going to back in tomorrow to see you,” Aidan told me as we were saying our goodbyes the next afternoon. “It will be like I never left. I’ll come by and we will hang out just about every day. Plus, don’t go forgetting about this,” he reminded me, handing me my cell phone. “It’s all cleared off and ready for you to use any time you wish. I’ll do my best to respond as quickly as I can. It might not be the same as me actually being here with you, but it will be something at least, right?”

  I nod. “It’s something.” My one goal is to hold back the tears. I refuse to cry in front of these people, no matter how upset I am to be losing him.

  He hugged me close for a full minute, then released me and stepped back. “I will see you soon.” He offered a wide wave goodbye to everyone, then allowed Dr. Wilkes to escort him out. With a deep sigh, I look around. I have to keep trying. I have to keep working at this. It was what Aidan wanted, and last night I had told him I would keep fighting, so that was exactly what I had to do.

  When Dr. Wilkes came back from escorting Aidan out, Wilkes motioned for me to join him as he walked back to his office. Grudgingly, I went with him. He did not say a word. He walked in to his office behind me and shut the door.

  “Have a seat,” he finally told me. Deciding that something had him quite upset and that I did not want to mess with him today, I did as he asked without complaint. Once we were both seated he stared at me hard. The look in his eyes told me exactly what had him so upset and I immediately threw up my defenses. Aidan had told him about last night.

  “Aidan told me about last night,” he informed me, as I knew he would. “I have to tell you I was rather disappointed, but you have to understand that last night is exactly why I was hesitant in allowing you to leave too soon. It took barely anything to prompt you to reach out for such a drastic solution to your problem.”

  “You’re right,” I found myself saying. “I am not ready to leave here yet. I let myself become so bent on getting out that I completely ignored what I needed to work on taking to heart. But I am truly ready to give this a real try.”

  “Good. I am glad to hear it. You have a lot of work ahead of you, but I think you are strong enough to make it through it all. You are an incredible young woman.”

 

 

 

Chapter Nine

  I stepped outside and took a deep breath. This was it. I was finally getting the chance to prove myself. It was not just about showing all of them I could do this, this was about showing myself that I could do this. It was about telling the world that yes, I seriously screwed up and let myself go, but that things were different now. I was different now. I had hope and a reason to still be here, because someone believed in me. Aidan believed in me. Even when my own parents had abandoned all interest, I had him, and he had showered me with more care in just a few weeks than anyone ever had over the course of my entire life. He was why I was still alive.

  A car pulled up to the curb and within seconds, Aidan had jumped out of the driver’s seat and came around to me. He wrapped me in his arms and squeezed me tightly.

  “Are you excited?” he asked me, still holding tightly.

  “Yes,” I answered, knowing I completely meant it. “I can’t believe I am finally walking out now, and legit, not sneaking out. I’m still trying to register it I think.”

  “Don’t worry, you will soon. It will just take a bit for you to adjust.” He pulled away and grabbed my bag from my hand. “So everything is taken care of with your new roommates and apartment. I didn’t have any trouble working it out for you to get most of your money back from the school for you given the circumstances, so you should see that registered back into your account soon. You will be all set for next semester.”

  “Thanks Aidan, I mean really, thanks,” I said, truly grateful for all his help.

  “No problem,” he replied, tossing my bag into the back seat of the car. “It was pretty easy really. Even the apartment was not a huge deal because they really needed another roommate to help cut the costs, so they were overjoyed to get you.”

  “Even though I happen to be fresh out of the loony bin?” I questioned, doubt creeping into my voice as he opened the car door for me to get in.

  “Oh, I think I left that part out. I wouldn’t really recommend you tell them about that,” he said, face straight and earnest. He held the expression for a moment more as I tried to tell if he was being serious. Finally, a grin spread across his face and he laughed. “Relax Lace, they know and they are fine with it. I mean, hello, they are my friends. They can handle crazy I think.”

  “True. If they can handle a psycho serial killer I should be a walk in the park for them.”

  “Hey now,” he warned with another laugh before closing my door and going around to his own side. He jumped in and brought the engine roaring to life.

  “The nice thing is that you will have your own room so whenever you need a break you can get it. Just don’t forget Wilkes’ rules because they won’t.”

  “What do you mean ‘because they won’t’?” He pulled out onto the road and began our journey to my new home.

  “I may or may not have given them the list of rules you need to follow so they could study it and have it posted. Ready-made accountability right there, bam!”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well thanks for that. I was hoping to leave a couple of those off the plan.”

  “I figured, in fact, I counted on that. Thus, I took things into my own hands. All of those rules are important for you to live by and live by them you must! Becca has already volunteered to be your main accountability partner, besides me of course. We decided you needed a girl for that, so we are sharing the role.”

  “I thought that I got to choose who that was going to be. Yes, yes I am quite certain it said for me to pick an accountability partner, not have self-appointed ones.”

  “Too bad. It has been decided unless you come across someone better whom we approve of.”

  I shake my head and drop the conversation for now. Staring out the window, I watch as we drive my college of two years. Virginia State University. I would be back taking classes again in only about a couple of months or so. I would get the chance at a fresh new start. It would be different. It would be better. I would be able to handle it.

  “You are going to do great for winter semester,” Aidan promised, his voice filled with confidence. “It will be a piece of cake for you, just wait and see.”

  “Well here’s hoping anyway,” I say, not fully convinced and not trying too hard to hide it. My thoughts on it all were confident enough, but they were loaded with so many fears about failing yet again, and those fears snuck right into my voice as I voiced my thoughts on it.

  “You will be fine. Did I ever tell you that this is my senior year? Yeah, I know. It’s crazy. I don’t feel that old. I will be set back a semester by all of this though unfortunately. But it’s all good. Sometimes we just have to take things into stride and not let it bother us too much.”

  I nod, knowing the truth in what he was saying. I knew it was probably at least as much for my benefit as for his. I was going to be set back by everything, probably more like two or three semesters, not just one.

  After several minutes of silence, we pull into the parking lot of an apartment complex I had vaguely remembered passing in town a few times. Aidan went around to the farthest side of the complex a parked a bit off from the building.

  “Ready to meet everyone?” he asked me, appearing to really be checking to be sure that I was ready for this step of the process. I nod and unbuckle my seatbelt. We both got out of the car at the same time, and he reached into the back to grab my only bag. I made a mental note to contact my dad. I had no doubt that he had been the one who had collected my things from my dorm. I realized it would probably be good to actually tell him I was released from the hospital now too. I wasn’t really certain how much Wilkes had been keeping him updated on things, but I knew that even if he was fully aware of it, he would still be expecting me to tell him myself.

  We walked up a flight of outside steps before picking the door on the left of the steps, and Aidan pounded resolutely at the door. In seconds, a petite brunette answered his knock, opening the door widely with an even bigger smile on her face.

  “Hi! You have to be Lacey! We have already heard so much about you!” she said excitedly, moving in to hug me. I quickly step back, almost stepping off the edge of the porch area and falling down the stairs. Aidan’s hand snapped out to grab at me, doing his best to prevent and possible accidents. When he was sure I was safe he laughed.

  “Becca, I told you, give her space!” he scolded lightly with only the slightest undertone of sternness about it.

  Becca made a face of forced apology but her excitement was still very clearly seen. “Sorry Lacey, I didn’t mean to be too crazy. You will get used to it though, hopefully.”

  “It’s fine,” I assure her with a polite smile I force my lips into. It feels so unnatural that it only lasts for at most a full second before they fell back into a neutral line once again.

  “Okay, so Kelsie should be back soon here and then you will get to meet her. She was just grabbing some groceries after class.” She motions for us to come in, and Aidan leads the way, being sure to check behind himself to see that I am following. Once we were all inside I close the door and stop to just look around the main area. To the left is a decently sized living room area, while the right was split into a kitchen and dining area. The dining area was first while the kitchen was behind an island counter right behind the dining table. The whole apartment was painted a soft orange sandstone shade I immediately loved.

  “It is pretty great, right?” Becca said, coming up beside me. “We thought about doing a bit more with the wall colors, but then we got lazy and decided to just pick out a single color that we all really liked. We chose this one because it reminded all of us of a softened sunrise. Then we found a bunch of used sofas that were all browns to go with it. All in all it worked out really nicely.”

  I continued looking around and decided that she was right. It definitely all seemed to fit in well together. From the beige carpets to the orange walls, to the brown sofas and simple coffee-colored curtains, everything worked well together. Apart they might have been seen as unattractive and plain, but together, they formed a beautiful home-like feel that I instantly felt comfortable in.

  “Your room is down this way,” Becca said, motioning off to a side-hall to our left I had not even noticed. She took a few steps before reaching a door and opening it wide, stepping out of the way for me to go in first. I cautiously took a step inside and looked around.

  My first impression of it was that it reminded me of a giant blank slate. Unlike the hospital though, when I took in the white walls surrounding me, and the sheet-less bed sticking out from the far wall, I saw room for possibilities, not a cold emptiness. I saw a canvas ready to receive life on it, welcoming me with open arms.

  “The last girl who was here didn’t need the bed since she was getting married, so she left it here and you are more than welcome to it if you don’t already have one.”

  “I don’t have one, so thanks, I’ll keep it,” I tell her with gratitude, realizing a bed was not something I had even given any real consideration up until this point.

  “You are welcome!” she answered, her voice bright and bubbling with pleasure. It was clear to me she was excited about my coming here, I just really had no idea why. I would have to try to find a chance to ask her eventually.

  I heard a door slam closed back outside in the main room. “Hey, I’m back!” yelled a girl. “Are they here yet?”

  “Yeah, they’re here. Come on in here and meet Lacey,” Becca called back. Footsteps came towards us and a redhead with sparkling green eyes, shorter in height and tinier than both Becca and I, appeared in the doorway. My doorway. There was a red-headed little pixie in my doorway.

  “I’m Kelsie! You must be Lacey. We seriously have not been able to get Aidan to shut up about you. What do you think of the place? Does it feel like a place you can call home?”

  With wide eyes, I turn to Aidan. What exactly was he thinking, sticking me with these overly energetic girls for roommates. I foresaw myself dying from a heart attack before a year passed. I refocus on Kelsie and paste on another uncertain smile, but one that was at last somewhat more genuine than the one I had given Becca earlier.

  “I really think that it is,” I say, looking around what was to be my room once more. “It seems nice here.”

  “Well yeah, I mean, I bet anywhere probably looks pretty darn fantastic after spending a month in lockdown,” Kelsie laughed. I grimaced, but knowing she had not meant it as anything but a innocent observance, I pushed my feelings aside. I still hated the idea of people knowing I was just getting out of a psychiatric ward, but it was what it was. I just needed to get used to it and learn to laugh it off or something.

  “Yeah, that’s true enough. Still, it is a nice place and I’m grateful for you guys being willing to share it with me,” I say.

  “I’m just grateful we get to share with such a cool person and that I can stop paying so much for rent!” Kelsie said, laughing and turning to leave. “I have to put stuff away, but I’ll hang out with you later. Nice to meet you Lacey and glad to have you here.”

  “Well, I am going to leave you all to get to know each other and let Lacey settle in,” Aidan announced. “Lace, just let me know if there is anything you need at all, alright?”

  “Yeah, thanks Aidan, for everything,” I tell him, wishing he didn’t have to leave so soon. These girls seemed nice enough, but I was not sure if I was ready just yet to let go of my one lifeline now that I was back out on my own.

  He waved a little and offered an encouraging smile. “If you need anything I live seriously right next door.” With that, he leaves Becca and me alone and the discomfort sets in immediately. Strangers were never my specialty, and even less so now. I began chewing my bottom lip as I look around.

  “So, I know this probably is not going to be easy for you, especially for the next week or two, but I want you to know that Kelsie and I are here to support you. If there is anything you need, we want you to know that we want to help you.”

  “Thanks,” I say, not sure what else to say to that. I was grateful, but this was a bit overwhelming for me and I was still trying to process it all.

  “Okay, well I’ll leave you to yourself for a bit. There are sheets and pillows in the closet. We weren’t sure if you would have any of your own yet or not.”

  “I don’t. I still need to call my dad, let him know I’m out, and make arrangements to get my stuff back from him,” I explain.

  “Okay, well until then you are set with what we have for you,” she said, “I’m glad you agreed to move in with us here Lacey, and I’m even happier that I am going to get the chance to know you.” She smiled once more, than backed out of the room and closed the door to give me some privacy. I immediately grabbed my phone and flopped across my bed. Time to get the phone call to my dad over with. I dialed the number and waited for him to answer.

  “Hey honey, you got your phone back?” I don’t even feel the slightest twinge of guilt at the surprise in his voice. He had no idea I was out, much less that I had been given the ability to call him over two weeks ago if I had wanted to.

  “Actually, I am out.”

  “What? When did that happen? Where are you at now then?”

  “It just happened about an hour or so ago,” I debate over what all to say, “I actually made arrangements so I am not sharing an apartment with a couple of other girls off campus now, so that is where I am at. I was calling to see if I could come by sometime this weekend to pick up my things.”

  “I can bring them over to you.”

  “No thanks. I have a friend who can drive me over. I want to take my car with me.” There was several moments of absolute silence and I began to worry he would refuse to cooperate. The car was in my name, and I certainly had the right to my own things.

  “Well okay then, but are you sure you are ready for all of this? I mean, it seems like a pretty big leap for you. Are you going back to school?”

  “Yes. I will be registering for winter semester tomorrow. The school kindly refunded me most of the money from this last semester, so I should be more than capable of paying for it with that money.”

  “And you doctors are perfectly fine with you jumping right back in to everything like that?”

  “Winter semester isn’t going to start for at least a couple more months. For now I am just going to find a job and get myself settled into some sort of a routine. I’m going to take my time. I am not just jumping right in on it.”

  “Okay, well if that is what you want. When were you planning to drop by?”

  “I don’t know for sure yet. I will have to talk to m friend about when he is available to take me over.”

  “He?”

  “Yes, he,” I sighed.

  “So this friend that is helping you is a guy?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t remember you mentioning any friends beyond Sandy, much less a guy. When did you meet him?”

  “I met him a few weeks ago, in the psychiatric ward. He thinks he is a serial killer, but don’t worry, he got released free and clear a couple of weeks ago. Okay, I’ll text you later about the details. Talk to you later.” I don’t even give him a second to respond before I hang up and leave him likely shocked by my revelation. It served him right. He had no right to start asking all these questions and playing the role of a concerned parent. He had not taken up that role in years. He didn’t get to take it now. He did not deserve it.

  My phone buzzed loudly and I knew it was probably my father reaming me for hanging up like I had done after what I had said. I checked and sure enough, it was exactly as I thought. I ignored the texts, deciding to worry about them later. Instead, I went out of my room to go see my new roommates in an attempt to get to know them a bit better.

  Upon leaving m room I was greeted by the heavenly smell of cooking steaks with homemade fixing to go with it. I could not remember the last time I had smelled real food like this. It could feel my mouth watering and my stomach reacting with a resounding pang that echoed throughout my entire body.

  “I hope you’re a fan of steak and potatoes,” Kelsie said cheerily upon seeing me enter their kitchen. “Becca happens to be a world-class steak cook and we decided to treat you to a special dinner as a welcome to your new home and a congratulations on getting out of prison,” she laughed.

  I could not resist the grin that threatened to break out across my face, so rather than fight it, I just let it go and tried to relax.

  “Aidan will be over later to eat with us, but for right now, we can have some good old-fashioned girl time,” Becca explained, giving me an inviting smile. “Do you cook at all?”

  “Not a whole lot really.”

  “Well then, now is as good a time as any for you to learn,” said Becca. “Come on, I’ll show you how to make some potatoes, then maybe after that you can help Kelsie with making some biscuits.” I eagerly watch and do everything I am asked to do, grateful for the acceptance and friendship the girls extend to me. Later, when we are finished, the girls send me to go knock for Aidan, and I nervously stand before his door, hand poised to knock. Just as I’m about to pound on it, the door flies open and I almost slam Aidan in the face with my fist.

  “Whoa! Watch it there killer!” he laughs. “What can I do for you Lace?”

  “The girls sent me over to grab you to come eat dinner with us,” I explained.

  “Good. I was wondering how much longer it was going to be. I was starting to think they had forgotten that they had invited me and you had all eaten without me.”

  “Hardly,” I tell him, “cooking just takes lots and lots of time to do.”

  “Only if you are not very good at it or out of practice.”

  “Well I am both of those things, so that is doubly bad.”

   “Don’t worry, a few months with them and you will have become an excellent cook surpassing all others except for them,” he joked.

  “Who knows? May that is what is going to happen? You never can tell you know,” he argued. “I am confident that is exactly what will happen. You will become an amazing cook and then you will have to be careful that they don’t take advantage of you and have you cook for them all of the time.”

  I just shake my head. “Aidan, are you coming or not? Dinner is getting cold just sitting around.”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he complained. “I just am giving it a chance to cool off a little bit so I won’t have to waste any time blowing on it to cool it off.”

  Together we went back over to the other apartment and back to the smell of perfected steaks. As soon as we got in, we all sat down around the table together. I looked around while the others all joked and laughed together. I didn’t fit in here yet, I knew that. But, it was a place I could see myself on one day. Once I adjust to a few things, I would be fine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Ten

  Aidan and I got out of his car at my dad’s house. A knot in my stomach, which had been forming since we had left, suddenly tightened all at once leaving me in pain and breathless. I hated it here. I could not wait until we could leave. For once, I was grateful for my dad’s girlfriend. He had plans with her and her kids, so he had no more desire for this to be any social call than I did. It made things easier, but not comfortable.

  “You ready?” Aidan asked me.

  “Yeah, let’s go,” I say, gathering my courage and heading up the porch steps and going inside of the house. My dad immediately materialized seconds after we walked through the door. My dad attempted to hug me, but I stepped back and turned to stone. He frowned but let it go. Good move dad, I thought to myself. He had no right to try to pretend to be the caring father in front of Aidan. It was too late for that now, and I was not going to play his games.

  “Everything is up in your old room, Lacey,” he said, jabbing a thumb towards the stairs leading to the second floor. “I would help you get everything into your cars, but I need to get going. But first,” he turned to Aidan, “You must be Aidan Taylor. I want to thank you for helping out my little girl. It is very kind of you.”

  Aidan raised a brow, not appearing to know what to make of this. “Well it was really no trouble. I am happy to help her in any way that I can.”

  “Well thank you, whether it was trouble or not,” he said. “If you have trouble finding anything you just call or text and I will do what I can to help you out,” said my dad.

  “I will,” I say, fully well knowing that he knows that I won’t. It is just another part of his game. He didn’t wait around. As soon as the two little words were out of my mouth he was off to his car and racing from the driveway.

  “Well that was interesting,” Aidan noted. “I have no idea what just happened.”

  “Well that makes two of us then,” I responded dryly. “I think you just witnessed my father pretending to care about me.”

  “That is kind of the scenario that I was leaning towards,” he agreed. “I knew It was definitely somewhere along those lines.”

  “Come on,” I sigh, “let’s just go up, grab my stuff, and get out of here as fast as we can,” I suggest to him.

  He nodded his agreement with the plan and we immediately set to work. He set about getting my car out of the garage and checking it over for any possible trouble as a result of sitting unused for so long, but he did not see anything that should be a problem for them.

  After he was done checking out the car and pulling it out so they could more easily load it, he joined me up in my room to help sort out what I wanted to take with me and what I just wanted to leave behind or have donated. There were several pieces of furniture I was dying to take back with me, but I knew neither of us had any room in our cars for them , so I didn’t say a word about trying to fit it into one of the cars to take with is, knowing Aidan would try is hardest to try to fit at least some of what I wanted into his car.

  It took us a few hours to get through everything, but once we had all the boxes loaded up and stuck in the cars, we were all set to go and it had been worth it to have some things back once again. I relished the idea of taking these things back with me and being able to set them up in a space that is completely my own. I wasn’t sure yet how everything would all find a home, but I would do my best to be sure that everyone would be happier.
  “Should we wait around for your dad to get back?”

  “Nope. In fact, I would much rather leave as soon as possible to avoid seeing him again before we leave. It would just help make things a lot less needlessly awkward.” I said.

  “Fair enough,” Aidan said. “Well, you have your car, I have mine. I think we would be best off if you just follow me back and allowed me to lead you back to the apartments so you do not accidentally end up lost.”

  When we got back, Kelsie and Becca helped us get everything unloaded from the car and deposited into my room. After we were finished, we all got together and ate pizza together while watching a movie. I snuggled closely to Aidan’s side and before I even knew what had happened, I was fast asleep. I did not wake up until the movie was over and Aidan gently prodded me awake. I yawned and stretched, but whimpered when he tried to push me away so he could get up and leave.

  “Come on little bitty kitty,” he whispered, “I have to go now, so you need to get off of me.”

  I woke up to find myself hugging him tightly. Moving faster than I ever think I had before, I let go of him and got up. I stretched out my tired back and yawned once again.

  “Why didn’t you wake me up before?” I demanded, my voice slurred due to my still being half-asleep.

  “You were comfortable and I was comfortable. You needed sleep, and until now, I didn’t need to go anywhere. It worked out alright for both of us, so I just left things how they were,” Aidan replied with a wink.

  “You guys were so cute, I even got a couple pictures!” Kelsie gushed. I felt myself turn a bright red at her words and looked around to try to see where she had left the camera, but saw none, so I assumed the aforementioned photos had been taken with a phone.

  “Did you put them up on Facebook?” asked Aidan.

  “Sure did,” she beamed. “Oh, and Lacey, you need to accept my friend request so I can properly tag you in them,” she added.

  “Fat chance of that,” I muttered under my breath, annoyed. Aidan gave me a questioning look, but didn’t push the issue.

  “I have to go, but you girls have a good night,” he told us. In one swift motion, he leaned over and kissed me swiftly on the cheek before running out of the apartment, leaving me standing with my mouth open in shock. By the time I had fully registered what had just happened, he was gone and I could do nothing about it, whether it be positive or negative.

  “I’m going to bed,” I mutter, shaking my head. I was so confused. I had no idea if I was happy that he had kissed me or ticked off and wanting to kill him. I would figure it out in the morning. For now, all I wanted was to fall asleep and not deal with any of it at all.

  “Night,” both girls called after me in unison. As I trekked down the hall I could hear them speaking in animated voices about something, and I had a pretty good guess about what the focus of their conversation was, but again, I chose to push thoughts of that from my mind in favor of focusing on getting the rest I obviously was in much need of. When I got to my room I stripped down and threw on a big loose shirt and an equally baggy pair of sweat pants. I crawled between the covers on my bed and fell asleep the second my head hit the pillow.

            <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

  When Monday came around, I got online and registered for whatever classes I could for the winter semester, wishing I had been released from the ward just a few days sooner when my pickings would not have been quite so slim as they were now. Still, I was able to get enough credits to still count as a full-time student but also have all the credits useful and not just be filler classes.

  As soon as I had finished putting through the payments and getting everything set into stone, I looked into what books I would need. A couple of my classes were the same as ones I had started last semester, so I knew I did not have to worry about buying books for those classes. I set to work on ordering the books I would need for my other two classes however, and was pleased to find out they were not half as expensive as I had been thinking that they would be. When I was as ready as I could be for starting my next semester, I turned to working on setting up my room.

  I surveyed the still-packed boxes lying around the room since we had brought them in back on Saturday. I was definitely lacking in the area of furniture to keep everything. Apparently, my dad had somehow managed to leave behind my bookshelf when he had cleared everything out and my ex-roommate had not been honest enough to have him take it. Also, I had no desk because at school one had been provided for me that came with the dorm. I glanced around my surroundings. I was going to have to figure out something more permanent, but right now makeshift would have to do for things because I just did not have the money to pay for any furniture currently.

  I decided to start with something simply first. On Saturday, before going to get my things, Aidan and I had stopped in at a hardware store to find some paint for the walls in my room. After a careful search, I had chosen a soft, earthy green shade. Deciding to start with the walls before I went to the trouble of unpacking everything, I opened my pain can up, poured some of the liquid into a tray, and grabbed the roller Becca and Kelsie had kindly agreed to allow me to use.

  It didn’t take long before the walls were completely green as planned. Pleased with the results, I packed the painting supplies back up, being careful to clean my roommates’ things thoroughly.

  Up next I decided to grab some lunch while the paint dried. It was supposed to be quick-drying paint, but I had no idea how long it might take before I would be able to start setting up my things throughout the room. So, I went to the kitchen in search of food. I had not yet been able to go to the store to buy my own food yet, but Becca and Kelsie were rather laid back about sharing their own food, so I just promised to buy some things to share when I finally did get out to buy some things. After a hasty look-through, I decided on a lunch-meat and cheese sandwich which only takes me a few moments to put together.

  “Hey I smell paint,” Becca commented, coming from her room still wearing her pajamas. “Is it safe to say you have started your painting in your room?”

  “Yeah, I did get started with that. I am hoping it dries up at least enough fairly quickly so I can begin setting up some of my things.”

  “I saw the kind you got. It is good stuff. I think if you give it a couple of hours, providing you just applied a fairly thin coat, you should be fine putting up some of your other things,” she said.

  “Good, because I really wanted to set to work on setting up some of those things today.”
  “Don’t worry, you will be fine for working on that,” she assured me.

  “Do you have classes today?”

  “Yup, in about...” she glanced over that the clock on the microwave, “an hour. So I guess I better getting moving here. Did you get things set up for your classes next semester?”

  “Yeah, I took care of that this morning before I did any painting.” I poured out a cup of orange juice to go with my sandwich and snagged a banana off the counter. “By the way, I promise I will get out either later today or tomorrow to help replenish some of the food around here.”

  “Oh don’t worry about it. It’s no big deal, trust me. I think you only eat about half of what either of us eat, so we hardly even notice you are eating anything,” she reassured me. “So just get to it whenever you can.”

  “I’ll take care of it soon.”

  “Well thanks then,” she said with a grateful smile. She poured herself a cup of orange juice and stared at me for a long moment, appearing to be searching for the right words to say what she had on her mind.

  “Lacey, how much do you know about Marie?” she asked me finally.

  I freeze. Instinct tells me who it is, even though I have never heard the name associated with her before. I know it is the name of Aidan’s love.

  “Not much. Just that she died in a car accident.”

  “It was a bad accident,” she explains. “It was a freak mess of fog outside and she was determined to go to work. She ended up in the wrong lane and ran headlong into a delivery truck. She died almost instantly. It was horrible and tragic. It destroyed Aidan for a very long time.

  “The reason I am telling you this is because you are the first girl he has really looked at since. The way he watches out for you, protects you, helps you. It is all good, do not get me wrong, but it will likely at some point get suffocating for you judging by what I have seen of your personality so far. When it does, you have to be able to understand he is only acting the way he is because of what happened. He is not trying to be controlling, he just does not want to risk losing you.”

  I think about her words. Some of it corresponded perfectly to what I had pieced together as having been what must have happened. The gist of it was basically what I had guessed it to be.

  “Is he ready? I mean, I don’t have an idea how long it has been...”

  “It’s been three years,” she told me in a matter-of-fact tone. “It is time for him to be ready and I think he really is with you. I know he has done a ton to help you, but what you may not realize is just how much you have done for him. You brought a part of him back to life that I thought we had lost for good when we lost Marie. It’s a beautiful thing to see that coming back with you. “

  “Were you close to Marie?” I asked, feeling awkward about showing up and taking the place of a friend of hers in Aidan’s life.

  “Yes. She and I grew up together,” she revealed. “And Kelsie met her in college our freshman year. She was like a ray of sunshine in a dark stormy world. People could not help but just adore her.”

  “I don’t mean to come in and take her place. I’m sure if you knew her for so long it must be weird for you to see me with Aidan instead now.”

  “It is a bit weird,” she admitted. “But it is too good to be too weird. I know that if Marie were able to talk to us right now, she would be rejoicing and falling all over herself thanking you for helping Aidan. So seriously, Kelsie and I have nothing but gratitude for your presence in his life.” She looked at the clock again, drained the last of her juice, and started backing back towards her room. “Now I better get going here and get dressed or else I am going to be very late to my class, and my teacher will not like me very much for that,” she concluded with a laugh.

  “Okay, well thanks for explaining things to me,” I called out to her. “Have a good day with your classes.”

  “Thank!” She slammed her bedroom door closed and leaving me to my own thoughts about everything I had just learned. Why had Aidan left me with the best friends of his old girlfriend? I mean, what was he thinking? Sure, they might be glad to see him happy, but it had to be more awkward for them than Becca was letting on. I mean, here I was, practically dating their dead best friend’s boyfriend and living in their apartment with them. It seemed wrong somehow, as if maybe I needed to find somewhere else to live.

  I shook my head, not allowing myself to even think along those lines. I had nowhere else to right now. My options were extremely limited right now so I had no choice but to make this work. Maybe the circumstances could be better, but I would just have to live with it.

  I finished eating and headed back into my room to start setting things up. As I unpacked all of my random things I began despairing over my inability to put anything “away” since there was really nowhere for me to put anything. Hearing a sudden loud knocking on the apartment door, I hurried off to go answer it. Checking through the peep-hole first, I saw it was Aidan, and hurried to open the door up wide.

  “About time!” he teased, strolling in. “How is settling in coming?”

  “It’s coming,” I say a bit less than enthusiastically. “I was able to take care of things for next semester at least, so I don’t have to worry about that now.”
  “What is not going good with getting settled in?” he queried, sticking to the topic he had begun and ignoring the info I had offered unasked about my classes to avoid talking about my problems.

  “Nothing really.”

  “Right.” He started heading to my room. “What happened? Do you spill paint everywhere or something? Because if that is all I will just pour paint everywhere else too so everyone just thinks they forgot the color of the carpeting in there,” he said with a wink and smirk.

  “No it’s not that. I just realized I don’t really have anywhere to put my stuff,” I told him as I followed him into my room. He surveyed the items at differing stages of being packed, unpacked, and lying around on the floor. 

  “I think I might have at least a temporary solution to your problem,” he said, grinning and heading back out of the apartment without another word. When he returned, he was carrying a large role of duct tape. “Watch a pro,” he instructed.

  In minutes, he had emptied and pulled apart several boxes. I watched as he folded some and stretched out others. It did not take me very long to realize what he was up to, and I watched with interest as he started “building” tables and shelves from the boxes.

  “That’s not a half-bad idea,” I say.

  “I thought you might appreciate it,” he said, grinning up at me like a little boy as he finished the shelf he was creating.

  After a while, I started helping him make his creations and then he helped me set things on the two shelves and bedside table he had put together for me. All in all, it was really incredible and impressive. The end table by my bed was even put together in a way that allowed me to have four shelves due to how he had stacked up the boxes to for cubby-holes in the front of the stand. It took us the better part of the afternoon, but we got everything set up so that all I was really missing was a desk.

  “Thanks Aidan! That was probably way more fun than it should have been,” I said with a laugh. “I would never have come up with that idea on my own, much less have found duct tape to actually follow through with it.”

  “No problem. It was fun to do. All you are missing now is a desk to get everything done at. But I will be keeping my eyes open, and I will grab any decent desk that I can find that no one wants anymore,” he let me know.

  He stuck around a bit longer but then had to head off to work, so I was once again alone in the apartment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Eleven

  Aidan was shaking his head with complete despair. “You do not honestly think I am going to fall for that, do you? I know what you are. We all know what you are going to do eventually,” he told me darkly. “It is just a matter of time before you screw this all up because you cannot keep on pretending anymore. It’s too late. You decided who you were a long time ago. You can’t just decide to change it now. You will still be the same rotted old soul.”

  There were tears streaming from my eyes at his words. “I am sorry Aidan! I really thought I could be different. I thought if I tried hard enough-“

  He was still shaking his head, only now it was becoming far more violent. “You cannot change who you are Lacey. No one can ever really change who you are. It is inevitable. You are going to kill yourself. That is what you were meant to do. That is your purpose. Sad, but so true.”
  I woke up with a start. These dreams were going to start driving me insane if they did not end soon. I climbed out of bed and pulled on some fresh clean clothing. Today was to be my first day back at school. This semester I promised myself that I was going to keep on trying. I was not going to allow the stress or bad circumstances to get in the way of my mood.

  I was careful to do my hair just right and that I had absolutely everything I needed. When I was just about ready to head out, my phone went off with a text:

 

 

Hey you. Make sure to have a great first day back in classes. Try not to show off too much on your first day back.

 

  I smiled and looked at the name. Aidan. Of course he had sent me a text to tell me good luck. He knew how nervous I was about today. I was still so worried that I was not going to be able to handle the stresses and pressures of being once again back on campus.

  I grabbed my coat and headed out. As I walked out to my car, I chose to respond to Aidan with a thank you and some encouragement for himself. When I arrived at the school I found my way to my first classroom for the day and found a seat in the back. I eventually hoped to be able to feel comfortable sitting closer to the front, but for now, I would play it safe and not place too many expectations for myself by seating myself near the front. That first class was not so difficult to sit through, and the professor seemed to be nice enough.

  There was a brief free period for me between classes for a couple of hours and after the first hour, I knew that it would not be a time I would be very fond of until I started having more in the way of homework I had to have completed for my classes. I listened to music and sketched as I thought about all the things going on in my life.

  I had managed to get a decent job in one of the offices on campus. I didn’t get too many hours, but it was a start, and it was not like I could handle many hours on top of my classes right now. I was still checking in once a week with Dr. Wilkes to talk about how everything was going. It was rough, but I was managing well enough most days. We would have to see how much more difficult things would become as we got deeper into the semester.

  The biggest thing I was still trying to wrap my head around was my relationship with Aidan. A few weeks ago, we had begun to start officially dating. Not that we honestly went out by ourselves that often, but we did still go on adventures together from time to time when we had a chance to. I smiled as I thought back to when I had first met him. I would never, ever have supposed that everything that had happened, would have happened back when I had first seen Aidan. Now though, I could not imagine life without him. That worried me still of course. I knew I was at least to some extent, dependent on him, and I knew that was not a good thing, but I was slowly finding contentment in life that was independent from him, so I was getting better. Even if I no longer counted on him to be m reason to keep on going however, I knew that I would never let him go.

  I went to my last two classes of the day and then returned home for the night. When I got back, I was bombarded by Kelsie’s and Becca’s questions about how my day had gone. Once they were fully satisfied with my explanation of the day, and they were convinced it had been a good one, they let me go to my room, where I flopped across my bed and stared up dreamily at the ceiling. I was a different person now. The girl who had wanted to die now felt so alive. The girl who had pleaded for death to seize her had found reasons to want to keep on living. And finally, the girl who could only feel pain, had learned what love felt like.

 

 

 

 

Epilogue: Three Years Later

  I looked around as we walked side by side through the town. This area was by far our favorite place to go whenever we had dates during our years of college. This area had unofficially become our little pinch of town where we would consistently always be hanging out. I would not trade it for the most beautiful building in all of Virginia because it was so perfect and I loved it so much.

  We walked down the streets where we went out on our very first adventure and I couldn’t help but smile at all the memories we had made together that day. It had been a crazy time and I would forever treasure the memories of that day. It was hard to believe it had been three years since we had first met each other. It seemed like just the other day we had snuck out over the shed by the fence.

  So much had changed since those first days. I had changed probably more than anything else. I had become such a different person that sometimes now when I ran into other people from some of my classes from before I went to the ward, do not recognize me at all. Of course, that did not really matter anymore since we were both college graduates finally. For a long while there, neither of us thought that we would ever be able to make it out, yet somehow we figured out how to persevere enough to push ourselves through it to reach our goals.

  “Lacey, the last time we were here,” Aidan began, pausing on the sidewalk, “we started an adventure together and took our friendship to a new level of trust between us. Today, I want to make another memory for this part of town that we can treasure.  I would like to ask you right here, where our amazing adventure together began, for you to please marry me so we can keep having many more amazing adventures together,” he said as her got down on one knee and held out a simple diamond engagement ring.

  Tears pricked at my eyes as he spoke. I had been waiting for this for so long now. I should have known when he had insisted on coming back here that he was up to something. I had thought that maybe he just wanted to come back to the ice cream place, but I never would have ever allowed myself to dream that he would bring me here to propose. It was so perfect.

  “Yes,” I whisper. “I will marry you.” My mind races back through all our crazy times together and how much of an impact this man had forever made on my life. I owed him so much for everything, even my own life. There was no way I would ever be able to repay him for all that he had done for me, but that was not why I was marrying him. It had nothing to do with a sense of obligation either.

  Aidan had seen me at my best and at my worst. He had reached out and believed in me when he had absolutely no reason to. He had treated me with such love and tenderness that I felt like a treasured princess. He had loved me because of all I was, and that was truly a rarity during these days. He was my knight in shining armor, doing his best to not give himself up too easily.

  He scooped me into his arms, hugging me tightly to show his approval. He spun me around while I just laughed and looked at him. This was what love was. I finally understood.