Her (6 page)

The nurse finally finished poking at me.  She listened to my breathing through a stethoscope and then she wanted me to drop my gown.  Nervously, I did what she asked.  There I stood, in nothing but my cotton, white underwear.  She did another search of my legs, back, chest, and arms.  She seemed to be counting under her breath.  She asked me how old some of the fresher looking scars were.  She even asked how some of them got there.  I wanted her to take a wild guess.  She knew, but she was being like Dr. Cuvo, trying to make me think about it. 

She stretched out my arms and squeezed my heavily bandaged wrists.  I shuddered in pain.  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she apologized.  Then she stopped and looked at me.  “What happened?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“You don’t know what happened to your wrists?”

I stayed quiet and stared down at the floor.  I just wanted to go home.  Getting frustrated, the nurse gave up on me and told me to get dressed.  She left the room. 

I started putting my clothes back on.  I bent over to put on my shoes, and something fell out of my pocket.  It was something shiny.  As I looked closer, I realized what it was.  It was my sterling silver butterfly pendant.  I picked it up off the floor, and stared at it closely. If I had been caught with this, they would have definitely taken it away. I used to have a lace string that looped through one of its sharp wings so I could wear it around my neck. I’d just started carrying it in my pocket so that no one could see how sharp I had kept its wings. It was easy to sharpen on any hard rock.  The wings were so sharp that I could run the pendant across my skin without pressing, and a line of blood would break through.  I loved it. I could always keep Mr. Sharp near me.

“Who’s Mr. Sharp?” Lexus had asked once, when we were kids.  Lexus had been my best friend for a long time.

We had been sitting in my bedroom for hours, trying to figure out what we wanted to do with ourselves until Lexus’ parents came to get us.  They were letting me come over to Lexus’ house for the weekend.  I was so excited.  I loved going over to Lexus’ house.

Lexus and I became friends when I was in the sixth grade.  She was in eighth grade. We both didn’t really like each other at first because she used to be popular in middle school, and I was more like a social reject.  She was two years older than I was, and at that age, we thought that two years was too big of a gap for us to have anything in common.

Lexus was beautiful. She had long, flowing hair that she always wore out, and her mom let her wear make-up.  I kept my shorter hair in a ponytail, and Mom didn’t let me wear make-up in middle school.  Not many boys paid attention to me, and the girls made fun of me for not looking like them.  It just so happened that one day, at a company picnic for the advertising company that Mom worked for, Lexus and I spotted our parents greeting each other.  It turned out that Lexus’ dad was on the same work team as my mom.  They found out that Lexus and I went to the same school. Days after the picnic, our parents used Lexus and me as a good excuse to meet up and have play dates. 

It was a forced, play date thing at first.  For about the first year or so, Lexus pretended that she didn’t know me at school, but she was nice to me when our parents were around.  I didn’t care.  We didn’t have anything in common.  She was too boy-crazy, and I was too tomboyish.

When Lexus’ dad got promoted to team leader and her family moved uptown, our families still remained close, but Lexus started to warm up to me after we didn’t go to the same school anymore. She started private school.  She said she hated going to private school, and that some kids were mean to her.  I told her I knew how that felt.  She said that she was sorry for being mean to me in school, and from then on, we were best friends.

“Who’s who?”  I asked Lexus, as I walked back into my room with two sodas. 

“Mr. Sharp,” she said.

“Where did you get that from?”  I asked her.

She held out a sheet of paper.  “I read it in one of your notebooks.  See?” Lexus held out my notebook. I had often written poetry and stories in it.

She continued, “It says, ‘crimson seeps out of wounds as Mr. Sharp can remind me again of my doom.’ Ha! Ha! That rhymes.  Is this one of your poems that you wrote?  What is this?”

I snatched my notebook from her and gave her the soda that I had brought for her.  I ripped the poem out of the notebook and into pieces of confetti.

“It’s nothing,” I said.  “It’s just mumble-jumble that doesn’t mean anything.  It’s stupid.”

She looked at me with concern. I smiled at her and shoved her shoulder as she went to take a drink.  When the soda splashed on her and she laughed, I knew she had let it go. I was off the hook.

“Do you miss our old school?”  I asked Lexus.

“Yeah, a little,” she said.  “I’m going to be in high school next year.  Dad said I don’t have to go to private school anymore, since it was too hard.  I’m glad about that.  Besides, I want to be on the cheerleading squad. I already know I am going to like this a lot more than middle school.”

I stayed quiet.  I knew I wasn’t going to like high school any more than I liked middle school.

“Do you wish we were going to the same school?”  Lexus asked.

I shook my head.  “No, actually I don’t.”  I was being honest, but I guess she thought I was joking.

“No, for real,” she laughed.  She shoved me playfully.  “I bet you’ll like it.  Are you looking forward to it?  Hey, maybe you could join the cheerleading squad when you get to high school, and we can cheer against each other at competitions!”

“Yeah, sure, Lexus,” I told her as she kept laughing.  I knew she was kidding.  She had to have been kidding.  Then again, Lexus was always trying to get me to be like her by wearing make-up and taking my hair out of my ponytail.

“I can’t wait to go to my new school.  I hear it’s gotten pretty hard over at your school, because, of course, they’ve got more guys around here.”  She grinned at me.

I made myself smile back.

She got up and went to my mirror to fix her make-up.  “Want some?”  She held out pink lipstick to me.

I shook my head.

She laughed at me.  “You are so funny.”

“Why?”

“No reason,” she said.

I was curious as to why she had said that, or I could have just been paranoid.  I started to get a little on the defensive. 

“No, why did you say that I was funny?”  I heard myself shout.

Lexus closed up her lipstick and came towards me. 

“Calm down.  I didn’t mean anything by it.  You know, you should change your shirt before we go out.”

She laughed at me and pointed to a large chocolate stain on my brand new white shirt that Mom had bought me.

“Why? What’s wrong with it?” I joked.

Lexus tugged my ponytail playfully.  I got up and went to my closet, and pulled out a new shirt.  As I was changing, Lexus ran to the window. 

“Yay!  Mom and Dad are here!” She was so happy about it.  “Hurry up and change!  I am going to say hi.” 

She ran out of the room and shut the door behind her. I didn’t blame her.  I would have been out of that house even faster if I didn’t have to change my shirt.  Her family was perfect, like my family used to be.

I loved going over to Lexus’ house.  I liked her family’s swimming pool, their nice garden, the fact that they always went out to eat, and that they were genuinely kind people. 

I grabbed my overnight bag and ran out of my bedroom.  I was just as excited as Lexus about her parents being here.  They were rescuing me for the weekend.  I tried not to think about Nicholas and Alison.  I wanted to get away. I had to go, whether I was being selfish or not.  Excited and anticipating, I ran to the edge of the short stairwell that led to the front door and jumped those five steps.  I reached out to push the screen door open.  Breaking my rush and joy, I ran into Jack.  He grabbed me.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Sorry,” I told him, not making eye contact.

“It’s okay.  Where are you going with that bag?”

I looked over at Lexus and her parents as they talked to Mom beside their car.  They were laughing and not even looking my way.  I was just a few yards away from freedom.  I started to panic inside, but I had to keep cool. 

“Lexus’ swimming pool is finally finished.  Mom said that I could go up to Alpharetta this weekend to check it out if Lexus’ parents didn’t mind.” I wondered if he was going to make a scene and fuss at Mom in front of them for saying that I could go.  He seemed to hate it when I was happy about going over to their house.

“Oh, okay,” he said with a smile. “So you’ll be back with your own family tomorrow, right?”

“No, I’ll be back on Sunday.  Mom said I could stay all weekend.”  I was afraid that he would tell me I had to come back tomorrow.

“Hmm.”

“What?”  I asked, afraid.

He looked over at Mom and glared at her.  “Nothing,” he said. “Go, have fun.”  He gave me a peck on the cheek and then pushed past me into the house.

I sighed, relieved.  Alison cried that she wanted to go swim in the new pool.  Mom told her we’d all go next time.  I hugged Nicholas.  He seemed angry. 

“I wanted to spend the night in your room tonight. We can watch movies all night like we always do on Fridays,” he told me. 

I kissed his cheek.  I wasn’t going to let myself get sad. 

“Next time, Nickyroo,” I told him. 

I didn’t say any more.  I got in the car with Lexus as she shouted loudly to her father that she was starving.  Her parents said goodbye to Mom, Alison, and Nick. 

They got into the car, and we were off.  As Lexus began telling them about everything she wanted to tell them, I stared at Jack as he watched us from the living room window.  The look on his face confused me.  I couldn’t tell if he was angry or not.  He seemed distant.  He looked like a little kid who wanted to go out and play, but it was too rainy outside.

“Hmm,” he had said.  His words had come out dark and hard.  He had glared at Mom. 

Nick had said that he wanted to stay with me that night.  He seemed afraid.  I became afraid.  What had I done?  Selfish and stupid Kristen!  I suddenly wanted to go back home.  But it was too late.  We had already made the turn onto the highway by the time I got myself to calm down inside. 

I felt a sharp pain.  I looked down and realized I was twisting that butterfly between my fingers.  Blood ran down my fingers and dripped onto my clothes.  Lexus was so caught up in her conversation with her parents that she didn’t notice.  I didn’t care.  It was better that way.  Mr. Sharp didn’t say much aloud back then, anyway.

I quickly stuffed the silver butterfly pendant into my pocket.  The nurse came back into the room just as I was concealing it. She didn't notice. The nurse said that it was time to go.  When I came out of the room, Mom was gone. 

“Where is my Mom?” I asked.

“She went home,” the nurse told me.

“But I didn’t get to-” I made myself shut up.

“Come on.  I’ll show you where you will be staying.”  Nurse Habersham escorted me out of the examining area and into a different part of the hospital.  It was the residential part. 

The lights were dim, and it was so quiet in that part of the hospital. The nurse asked me to try to whisper if I had to talk, because it was after hours and she didn’t want to wake anyone up.  We passed through the residential area and got on an elevator. She used a key to access and operate it.  I guessed that they had to use key access so that nobody would escape.  When we arrived on the seventh floor, I saw a large sign that read Adolescent Ward. 

We stepped off the elevator, and another person came to meet us.  This woman said that she was a counselor.  Her name was Ms. Mosley. 

Before Nurse Habersham left, she told me, “Your mother told me to tell you good night and that she’ll see you soon as she can.” 

I was still confused as to why Mom had left without telling me goodbye herself.  I didn’t ask Nurse Habersham.  I let her go.  The nurse didn’t have key access to the Adolescent Ward, so she went back onto the elevator and left me there with Ms. Mosley.  The counselor escorted me through the double doors and onto the Adolescent Ward. 

“Let me explain a few things to you,” Ms. Mosley began, as she led the way.  “First of all, I know you are probably wondering why your mother could not come up here with you.  She had to go because, from the point of admittance, you can’t have visitors until the doctor puts it in your chart.  You are what we call a Level One right now.  That means you are restricted to this ward unless you are going to therapy or to your bedroom.  Follow me, and I will show you to your room.”

I followed behind her.  We walked through a large living room with a television, tables, chairs, and board games sitting on the tables.  A large, semi-circular area that was divided from the room by a high counter had a sign that read Counselor’s Desk.  The desk overlooked the living room.  Double doors were to my right with a sign that read Boys’ Unit.  I shuddered at the thought that there could be boys in this ward too.  Through the large living room to the other side was another set of double doors with a sign that read Girls’ Unit. Ms. Mosley held the door open for me as I carried my suitcase and almost struggled to tag along. I felt physically and mentally tired.