Whisper to Me(111)

“No!”

“Yes. Because I … I cannot. Lose. My. Daughter. Too.”

“You’re not losing me!”

“Oh yeah?” He kicked the pile of drugs so that blister packs skittered over the floor, loose pills, the meds jumbling together.

THE VOICE: “He’s right. You’re already lost. You’re a slut. That’s why this is happening.”

I put my head in my hands. “I hate you,” I said, to both of them.

Dad shrugged.

“He’s just a boy,” I said. “He doesn’t have anywhere else to stay. He’s just—”

Dad closed the distance between us and leaned in close, the anger seeming to bake off him, shimmer in the air, like desert heat. “He’s eighteen,” he said. “He’s a man. And you’re a girl, with a ******* mental illness, which you have not even told him about so that he can make a responsible decision, and which you’re NOT TAKING YOUR DRUGS FOR. Seriously, Cass, I don’t know what else to do here. You’re giving me no choice. I’ve tried setting rules, and you’ve broken them, over and over.”

I felt like I didn’t know who he was anymore. Punishing you for my mistake. “If Mom were here, she would—”

“Don’t you dare talk about your mother,” said Dad, practically spitting the words. “If it weren’t for you, she wouldn’t—”

Then he stopped.

He held himself very still, his eyes strange and wide, shocked by his own words. He actually took a step backward, like he was trying to physically reverse from what he had just said.

And something in me snapped.

I mean, those things happened at the same time. Dad started saying that sentence, and something in me snapped. But I can’t put them side by side on the page.

Anyway.

I have learned that when people snap, it can be very quick.

“If it weren’t for me, she wouldn’t be dead, right?” I said. “That’s what you were saying.”

“No. No … I …”

“That’s what you were going to say. That it’s my fault she’s dead.”

“What? N-n-no,” he stammered. “****, Cass. I was going to say—”

“But it’s WHAT YOU THINK,” I shouted. “It’s what you think, so why don’t you say it?”

“What do I think? What are you talking about?”

“You think because I moved her, she died. Because I lifted her head.”

Silence.

“I don’t think that.”

“Yeah? Then why did you wait so long before saying anything?”

“I don’t think that, Cass.”

“Oh please,” I said. “It was a head injury. You don’t move someone with a head injury. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT. That’s why you hate me so much.”

“I don’t hate you,” he said wearily.

“You do.”

“Cass, seriously, I’m warning you—”

“YOU HATE ME AND I DESERVE IT.”

“I don’t—”

“It was my fault. Admit it. It was—”

And then it was his turn to snap. I said that it can happen very suddenly.

“I don’t ******* know, Cass!” he shouted. “I don’t know. One of us was there and one of wasn’t, okay?”

“What are you saying? You’re saying because I was there and you weren’t, that’s why she died? Right?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying,” he said.

We looked at each other.

“Go to your room, Cass,” he said.

And then he walked out.





Here are some things that happened after that:



1. I had to go and see Dr. Rezwari, and she went kind of ape**** by her standards, which actually just means that she raised her voice a tiny bit, and she asked me a load of questions and said that I had “taken my treatment into my own hands” and it was incredibly dangerous.

2. She made me stay in the hospital for two days. They gave me drugs; they made me take part in group and make a jewelry box out of wood. I don’t have any jewelry, but whatever.

3. The voice went away.

4. Paris and her dad and the whole alibi thing went to the back of my mind.

5. Dad kicked you and Shane out. Made up some bull**** about needing the apartment for a relative who was coming to stay.

6. I broke your heart.

7. I don’t know if I broke your heart. That might be overdramatic. I hurt you though. I know that.





Actually, with Dr. Rezwari, it wasn’t too bad.

After the initial blowup, she kind of softened. I went to see her at the end of my two days in the hospital, sitting at her weirdly blank desk, and she smiled at me.

“How are you feeling, Cassie?” she asked.

“Oh, super,” I said.

“You don’t like the drugs?”

“No.”

She sighed. “I’ve spoken to Dr. Lewis. On the phone.” She indicated the phone on her desk, as if I needed to have the concept explained to me. Illustrated. She steepled her fingers. “He tells me you have made some breakthroughs, in dealing with the voice.”