A Danger to Herself and Others(18)

I can’t imagine wanting to stay here a second longer than I have to.

Then again, that girl wasn’t sent here because of a misunderstanding like I was.





thirteen


The attendants line us up like first graders to bring us back to our rooms. It’s noisy in the stairwell and the hallway, but gets quieter as each pair of roommates disappear inside their room. The hallway is long, with eight rooms on each side, enough for thirty-two girls if it’s two girls to a room, though it looks like some of the girls don’t share a room. I hadn’t realized how thick the walls between our rooms must be. I’ve heard sounds coming from the hallway (sound travels more easily through the metal door) but not from the adjacent rooms. I wonder what kind of sounds are muffled by the walls each day and night. Screams? Moans? Laughter?

Our room looks smaller than it did this morning. They’ve barely shut the door behind us before I’m counting my steps.

“What are you doing?” Lucy asks, but I don’t answer.

Eight steps across, seven steps long. It’s the same size. So why does it feel different?

Lucy sinks onto her bed. “Sucks they make me eat with the E.D. girls.”

“Edie girls?” I echo.

“Eating disordered. Like that’s the real reason I got sent here.”

She doesn’t say what the real reason is, and I don’t ask. Instead, I say, “Ask Dr. Lightfoot to let you sit with me.” It’d be better for me that way.

“Lightfoot?”

I sit on my own bed, twisting my greasy hair around my fingers. “That’s what I call her. ‘Cause of her shoes.”

Lucy shudders. “I hate her shoes. Some days I want to rip them off her feet and put them on to show her what they’re really for.” Lucy stands and kicks off her slippers, then turns in her bare feet: once, twice, three times. Her hair spins out around her head. She lifts her arms overhead, using them to propel herself around before stopping with a smack of her bare foot. “If I had the right shoes, I could keep going.”

“Wonder what she’d say if you asked to borrow them.”

“‘You’re not here to dance, Lucy.’” Lucy’s high-pitched, singsongy voice sounds nothing like Lightfoot’s.

“That’s the worst impression I’ve ever heard.”

“You think you can do better?”

I cock my head to the side, considering. “No,” I deadpan. Lucy bursts out laughing, and so do I.

When we finally stop, I gaze at our metal door. I wish the walls were thinner. I wish they could hear us.



Later: Lights out, under the covers, not even the slimmest bit of moonlight coming in through our tiny window. Too much fog. Despite the darkness, I yank my (thin, smelly) pillow out from under my head and cover my face with it.

The words fill my head: Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

If Lightfoot had told me how Agnes was doing when the subject came up the other day, I’d be able to picture her in the hospital more accurately.

Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

But it’s impossible to imagine her because I don’t know whether her eyes should be open or closed.

Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

I don’t know whether she’s still in the coma. I don’t know whether the tube is still taped to her mouth.

Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

I don’t even know whether she’s in a private room or whether she has a roommate.

Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

Her mother is probably sitting at her bedside, holding her hand.

Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

Before I was brought here, her father told me that they wouldn’t leave California until Agnes could leave with them.

Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

He said it would be hard, with their younger daughters back home. Maybe he and his wife would take turns going back and forth.

Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

Of course, they weren’t going to leave Agnes alone, he said. Even if the doctors weren’t sure she could tell they were there at all.

Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

I wait to hear Agnes’s voice telling me, We’re getting too old for these games, but instead, I hear laughter. I peek out from beneath my pillow and glance over at Lucy’s bed, invisible in the darkness, but I can hear her breath, steady and calm. She’s fast asleep.

Besides, it wasn’t one girl’s giggles that I heard but a whole gaggle of them. And not only girls. Boys, too.

Eighth grade. Rebekah’s fourteenth birthday party. She called it her first ever boy/girl party, oblivious to the fact that referring to it like that made her sound younger than fourteen.

Rebekah with a K. She used to introduce herself like that, as though knowing how she spelled her name would affect your pronunciation. As though she thought the K made her cooler, more interesting, less the plain Jane she so clearly was.

Rebekah with a K. Three—no, four, counting Agnes—best friends ago. Her parents’ apartment was on 94th and Park, but during the party there were no parents in sight. It was a Saturday night, after all. They had their own places to be. I think her housekeeper was there, silently cleaning up after us, clearing paper plates soaked through with pizza grease, sliding coasters beneath our drinks so we didn’t ruin the heirloom coffee table.