September Rain Bk 2, Savor The Days Series (46 page)

5
2

—Angel

Canyon View is a big facility, but my
wing—the one for criminals—is small and plain. I’m inside a ten by
twelve foot room at the end of a long, pale green hallway,
restrained to my bed just like I was those first few months after
my initial placement here. Staring at the wide strap over my wrist,
I get an odd feeling like returning home and it makes me want to
claw my eyes out.

Why does it take so
freaking long to starve to death?

My efforts feel useless, like I’m
stretching out towards the only hand that offers to pull me away
from my ledge. And I’m falling short.

I have not missed the rigidity and
uniform routine that infects every inch of this place. I wasn’t
watched so closely so at the regular prison. My food was delivered
to my cell and I could choose what not to eat, more or less. What I
was doing the three weeks I was away will not work here. They
monitor everything that goes in and out of our bodies because they
slip sedatives into the food.

My nose itches. I have to turn my head
to one side and rub it against the thread of my pillow to
scratch.

“
I’m not leaving.” Avery
promises from the corner, her arms set defiantly at her
sides.

I keep my eyes fixed on the ceiling
and tell myself that I am alone—over and over, desperate to
believe.

She’s been on a tear the last few
days, hoping to make me start eating. I keep drinking and taking my
pills and playing the part, but the weight loss is seriously
noticeable.

In the quiet intervals between Avery’s
ranting, I notice the sounds here are nothing like the other
prison. There are no inmates grumbling or whooping over a fight.
Just us loons, stuck in our medically induced haze, trying to
scratch our noses without using our hands.

It is a terrible, painful truth—one I
cannot entirely put to rest as I try to ignore her. We live inside
the same body, operate within the same skin. There is no place she
has been that I have not because she is a part of me. We occupy
different rooms in the same brain and that makes us one entity; the
before and the after. Different parts of the same play. Opposing
sides of a seriously fucked up coin.

Because of that, my life isn’t ever
going to get better. I’ve spent these last six years trying to
pretend there is some sort of future in my past, when I know I
can’t live there.

Thinking about my room; the plain
walls, my single-size bed, and one bland chair, and the unwanted
guest, I know I can’t continue to live here, either.

I have no say in my treatment, no
control over what’s put into my body. I can voice my opinion, but
that will only get me a needle in the arm, or another physician or
nurse or orderly in my face telling me what’s good for me. Nobody
really gives a shit. They only care about sticking to the course of
treatment.

Drugs. Pills. Injections. Liquid
opiates. Doped up food. Carefully monitored therapy in any and all
forms. Meditation. Relaxation techniques.

Bullshit.

Incarceration.

Why can’t they just put me out of my
misery? I mean, they’re giving me all of these things; these pills,
treatments, this therapeutic methodology. For what? What is the
purpose?

No matter where I might go in
life—which is actually nowhere—I am never going to get away from
who I am. So what is the point? Lobotomize me. Put me out of my
misery.

They do it for dogs. Why can’t they do
it for me?

I wish I could just wake up one day
and have Avery be gone. I think then, I could keep going. If I knew
she would never hurt anybody again, then I could do the
time.

But she’s so fucking selfish. She
knows I need to let go. Why won’t she let me?

I’ve been thinking lately, that if I
can find the point where our lives joined, the place where her mind
meets mine, I bet I could cut her out. Like the buds of a branch
growing from the trunk of a tree, I could snip her off.

“If I can find that,” I
whisper into the dark of my room,
then I
can find where we split. The doctor will help me fix it. I can glue
myself back together. Like a broken jar.

Six years ago, while I was waiting to
be sentenced, I’d hoped they’d give me ten life times. No amount of
time seemed like enough. Not for what I let happen. But even so, I
never looked beyond twenty-one years. That’s how old Jake was, and
some part of me assumed that once I hit that benchmark, I would do
something—an elusive something—to end my life, too. That seemed
fair. But honestly, it is an unfathomable amount of time. I’m only
six years in and I can’t . . . I can’t deal.

“I’m never going to leave. I’m always
going to be here.” Avery promises, tapping her forehead like she
has heard my thoughts. “You can’t get rid of me. Not with
medication, not with therapy. I’m here to stay, Princess. I’m
waiting, ready to live your life better than you ever
could.”

She paces the opposite side of the
room, trying to goad me into acknowledging her, but instead, I hum
to myself. It’s a parched melody from my dry throat and
cotton-mouth. A broken song from my shattered heart; aiming to
block her out.

She needs to know what will happen
next and I am at the point where the only way to stop her, to make
her pay for what she did to Jake, to Deanna, and to me, is to make
it so she can’t push anymore.

There is only one way to do
that.

To stop Avery, I must stop myself. And
if starving myself doesn’t work, then the very first time I have
the opportunity to grab a ballpoint pen. A sharp pencil. A real
fork. A needle. I’m going to take care of her.

5
3

—Angel

Off-white cushions. No pictures. No
furniture. Only me and four padded walls, a soft floor, and no
shoes. The room is a blank canvas. My mind needs to fill it with
something, that’s all. It wants to create things that aren’t there
to help pass the unforgiving time.

“It was all you, Angel.” Avery stops
pacing the room and points an accusing finger at me. “You said you
loved him. Then you screwed that troll, Troy Bleecher! All the
time. If I had any food in my stomach, I’d fucking
puke.”

That’s the tender point of my raw
nerves and she knows it. I fall to my knees. It’s not true, I tell
myself, but I am the one who created Avery. She was born to take
the pain for me. She did. Now, she hates me for it.

“You can’t ignore me forever. I won’t
let you.”

I want to argue with her or punch her
in her stupid pointy face, but that would mean acknowledging
her.

Along the blank wall, I imagine Doctor
Williams is sitting in her armed chair in the corner opposite
Avery’s. I try to hear the soothing ocean sounds that filled her
office at each appointment and think of how—if she were really
here—the two would stare at each other. Avery, all bird-like and
wild. Doctor Williams, mature, patient, and clueless as
ever.

She eases back into her seat like she
used to in the early sessions and slides her glasses up the bridge
of her nose. “Violence is never the answer, girls.”

5
4

—Angel

From my plastic chair, I pretend not
to watch Avery walking in circles around the common room and
rolling her eyes at the conversations some of the other patients
are having.

Avery
. Bane of my existence. Her name makes my face hot. She
seems
so
sure of
herself as she strolls around, eyeing everyone but me. Does she
even care that I am the one everyone sees—the one with the
body?

My shrink says that she has
no more power than what I give to her.
I
control
myself
, not her.

They changed my meds, I think, because
I’ve leveled out. I’ve had a whole week of continuity, where I can
think through the haze. I can even make Avery keep her mouth shut
for a few hours at a stretch. Sometimes. Even with the clarity,
though, I still feel like the second-cousin to a drooling monkey.
My haze is non-existent the inside, but on the outside, my
reactions are delayed. I stumble around like a drunk after they
dose me.

I wonder if
she
feels the mental
clarity and the sluggishness like I do as the plastic spoon I’m
holding dribbles pudding down my shirt. My hands feel so alien, I’m
not sure it’s actually me holding the spoon. I let the little cup
of brown goo fall onto the table and leave the blob of chocolate to
dribble down my chest. I was just going to puke it up later
anyway.

I’m filthy. A useless invalid. This
isn’t living!

Avery takes a seat in a far corner of
the cafeteria. When her hands perch over her growling stomach, I
find encouragement. Keeping a determined gaze on her, she turns to
meets my stare. It’s a risk, but I’m feeling lucky.

I can’t actually talk to
her without anyone noticing, but speak the threat with my
eyes:
I am going to kill
you
.

55

—Angel

A nurse had an orderly escort me from
the common room back to mine. I’m too weak to pretend to eat and
puke it up later. I feel too sick to move.

The nurse is demanding I eat a
Styrofoam bowl of thin applesauce. That’s how I know all the food
has drugs in it. They don’t let you refuse anything that has meds
in it. That and every food item they bring me has a bitter
tang.

“Temperature’s normal,” the nurse
says, as she examines the thermometer she’s just taken from under
my tongue. Her eyes shift to me. “You’ve lost fifteen pounds during
the three weeks you were gone and another four since you’ve been
back. If you don’t start eating and keeping the food down, they’ll
put in a feeding tube.”

I don’t respond, but take a spoonful
of applesauce because it is what I’m supposed to do.

Avery’s pacing in the far corner with
her arms crossed over her stomach. “Ha! I told you. It’s not going
to work.”

“Can I go to sleep?” I ask the nurse,
after a few bites. “I’m sure I’ll feel better in the
morning.”

“After you finish that applesauce.”
She and an orderly wait until the bowl is empty and I can barely
hold back the tears until they leave.

Avery’s hands are crumpled into fists
at her sides.

I turn to face the wall.

“Angel,” she whispers my name. “I
never wanted to hurt you, I swear.”

A hot feeling passes over me and my
stomach contracts. My throat widens. I swallow down the applesauce
that’s trying to come back up.

“Am I such a bad person? Have I taken
so much . . .” her breath sounds shaky. “You keep taking from me,
when all I have is what you gave me. I had nobody. My mom didn’t
give a shit about me. No dad, no family. No other friends, Angel.
Just you.

“I know it was a mistake. Okay, a big
mistake, but why does this thing with Jake have to hang over
us?”

I want to scream at the mention of his
name, but hold my tongue.

“I was only trying to have my own
life. Why does that make me a bad person?”

The shuffle of footsteps pacing the
floor fills the silences in her monologue.

“Seriously, I know I’ve said some
terrible things, but so have you. What makes us so different?
You’re the good one, I’m the bad one. Boo-hoo. I was not the one
with a boyfriend. You were. And yes, I was sleeping with Troy.
Because he paid attention to me.”

My fists clench. I feel the pecking at
my throat that makes me want to scream.

“I was only with Jake when
you couldn’t be. Not because I wanted to be. And he never
saw
me
. He only
ever held you. I was just . . . a placeholder. Your dirty secret.
And you hate me for that? For being what you made me?”

There’s a long stretch of
silence.

“You keep asking why I did it . .
.”

My ears perk up at that. The last time
I spoke to her, I asked her why she hurt him, why she wanted to
take him away from me, and she lied. She said she didn’t. I cut her
off then and there, because I know that no one ever made Avery do
anything she didn’t want to.

“I don’t have a reason that’s going to
satisfy you, but I will say—I didn’t know it at the time—but I
guess I was jealous. I hated what was happening to us. You were
getting everything you wanted and I . . . hated that you left me
for him. I was lonely. But I still tried to give you what you
wanted.”

She waits. “It doesn’t make sense, I
know. But that’s . . . whatever.”

I hear a shuffling sound, the creak of
the single chair in the corner. “Do you remember kindergarten? Our
teacher, Mrs. Schilling, was nice. She used to have those
anti-smoking posters on the walls. All bright colors and the people
in them were set in groups of good and bad. The good guys—the
non-smokers—had nice smiling faces and clean clothes. The bad guys
held cigarettes in their hands and they had those short, downturned
brows that made them scowl and holes in their jeans. But smokers
don’t really look like that. Lots of people smoke, does that make
them all bad people?” She sniffles. “I don’t smoke. What makes me
so irredeemable?”