A Danger to Herself and Others(13)
I press my bare feet against the linoleum floor. I’m so bored that maybe soon I’ll be lying facedown with my head hanging off the bed, memorizing the floor the way I memorized the ceiling and the walls before it.
The edges of Lightfoot’s lips curve slightly. “You do have a point—this isn’t a normal environment for you.” They probably taught her to smile like that in medical school. Her professors must’ve demonstrated: Smile like this. Let them see that you’re sympathetic to their plight, but not too sympathetic. I imagine Dr. Lightfoot practicing in a mirror until her jaw was sore.
“We’re also interviewing the people who spent time with you before you came here, to get a more fully fleshed picture.”
I don’t like the expression fully fleshed. An image flashes in my mind’s eye: a flap of flesh falling open to reveal white skull bone. I swallow.
“What have you discovered?” Everyone in the dorm knew how close Agnes and I were. Agnes joked we were joined at the hip when we walked to class, to lunch, to the gym, always together. We were best friends, even though we’d known each other for less than two months.
“That your relationship with Agnes was very…unusual.”
She says the word like it’s a euphemism.
“We got really close really fast.” I shrug. “I’ve always been like that. I’ve had a dozen best friends since kindergarten.”
She jots something down on my file, snapped carefully to the clipboard. I narrow my eyes. Since when is there anything wrong with making different friends? It’s not as though it’s a symptom of anything other than a gregarious nature.
“Yes,” Dr. Lightfoot agrees, “I’ve confirmed that you’ve had a number of intense friendships.”
I want to ask, With whom have you confirmed it? but she’d probably list my proper grammar among my symptoms. Hannah Gold is anxious to show off her intelligence.
I can’t help that I’m smarter than my doctor.
“You don’t seem very troubled by what happened,” Dr. Lightfoot adds. “You haven’t asked how Agnes is doing.”
“Maybe that’s because I didn’t think you’d tell me. You won’t even let me talk to my parents.” I nearly stamp my foot on the ground, but it wouldn’t make much of an impact without real shoes.
“Maybe it is,” Dr. Lightfoot echoes, and I realize my error. I shouldn’t have said maybe.
But I’m right: She still doesn’t tell me how Agnes is.
Someone must have made Lightfoot suspect that my friendship with Agnes wasn’t as loving as I say it is. Maybe one of the girls in the dorm noticed Jonah and me standing close, or the way he and I shared blankets on movie night when Agnes was back in our room studying. I chew my cheek. Whoever this nosy girl was, she probably called up the good doctor and used words like intense and unusual to describe my friendship with Agnes instead of close and joined at the hip.
I shake my head. None of that proves anything. Even if they know about Jonah and me—even if they want to shame me for betraying the sisterhood and all that—it doesn’t mean I’m so deranged that I would hurt my best friend to have a clear shot at her boyfriend. But how can I make them see that when I’m trapped in this place with no one but Dr. Lightfoot to listen?
My mother is against solitary confinement in American prisons. She believes it should be considered “cruel and unusual punishment” and therefore unconstitutional. But she couldn’t—didn’t?—stop them from putting me in here.
Suddenly, despite the AC on full blast (as always), I feel hot. Sweat springs up on my palms and the back of my neck. I glance around the room feverishly, as if I might notice something I haven’t seen before. Another window. A trap door. A way out. But the room looks exactly as it’s looked every day since I arrived.
I want to curl my hands into fists, but I don’t because Dr. Lightfoot would probably note that in my file, too.
Wait. One thing in this room has changed. The wrinkled blanket on Lucy’s bed, a stray blackish hair standing out in stark contrast to the white sheets. I have Lucy now, the girl with the sweet name who misses her boyfriend. The girl who got sick because she was trying to have the right kind of body to be a dancer. Just then, Lucy squeezes her way past Stephen, who’s all but blocking the door as usual. Even if I’m trapped in this vomit-green room, it’s not technically solitary. Not anymore. Lucy may not be a test in the way I first suspected, but she is here. She has her own private sessions in an office downstairs and eats in the cafeteria. Surely someone will ask how things are going with her roommate. There may not be a camera in here, but they’re still watching us—listening, keeping track, room checking.
Lucy has to like me.
Luckily, I know how to become someone’s best friend. It’s a skill I’ve honed since kindergarten.
They may not have meant for Lucy to be a test, but I can still pass with flying colors.
Lucy could be the way out that I’m looking for.
ten
“So how long have you been dancing?”
They haven’t come to give us breakfast yet, but the lights are on, and I can tell Lucy’s awake from the way she’s breathing.
“Since I could walk,” Lucy answers. She rolls over onto her side so she’s facing me, but she doesn’t open her eyes.