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CONTENTS
Cover
Disclaimer
Title
Dedication
Tuesday 3:22 p.m.
A Pruned-up Old Nurse Comes Over
And Here’s the Other Thing You Need to Know about the Baker Act
On My Way to the Ward
When the Door Opens
Then
But I Guess that Figures
Instead
Inside the Ward
The Whole Time I’m Getting Ready for Bed
I’m Having a Nightmare
Wednesday 8:00 a.m.
Have You Ever Tried to Quit?
A Girl Peeps Up from across the Room
Skylar Flits Out of Her Seat
I Get Thirty Minutes of Free Time
Day Nurse Flaps Her Big Bullhorn Lips
Room Check
Drawing for Distraction
I Decide to Draw Instead
My Favorite Place at School
If Only
Oh, and by the Way
One Phone Call a Day
Sometimes I Wish Dad Wasn’t So Clueless
Dad Used To Have A Little Superman In Him
That Was the Last Time
At Least Sean Still Has Dreams
Wednesday 11:30 a.m.
Wednesday After Lunch
Which One Did You Pick?
She Notices Me Staring
Rennie
Six Months Later
And Then
Afterward
I Guess That’s Why I Picked the Word
Wednesday 3:22 p.m.
Donya Catches Me in the Hallway
Speaking of Being Screwed
I Wonder What Rennie Thinks
If Sean Was a Shape
Wednesday 4 p.m.
Tap, Tap, Tap . . .
Waiting and More Waiting
It’s Almost Time
Visiting Hour
Deep, Dark Secret
And That Makes It a Billion Times Worse
But at Least I’m Not an Idiot
By the Time My Mother Leaves
Skylar Notices Me
Skylar Shows Me Her Poem
Jag is Sitting on the Windowsill Nearby
Donya’s Staring at the Moon Too
Jag Hops off the Window Sill
Lights Out
My Dream on the Second Night
Dreams Are Just a Body’s Way of Sorting Things Out
Thursday 7:16 a.m.
Skylar’s Nervous Breakdown
There’s So Much Drama
Before Group Therapy
The Three C’s of Addiction
What I Find in Skylar’s Empty Room
The Rubber Room
I Need to Chill
My One Phone Call
Shower Escape
All I Want To Do
Ten Things Rennie Never Told Me
Bullhorn Brings a Tray to My Room
As If Things Weren’t Bad Enough
Some Friend I Am
I Hate It When People Say
Roger Must Have Some Kind of Radar
Things to Do Instead of Cutting
How Did You Do It?
Thing to Do #826
Ding Dong Tells Me—No Visitors Today
Small Talk
Skylar’s Being Transferred
Skylar’s Confession
There’s a Battle Going On inside My Head
Before Bed, I Make Two Lists
Five Facts that Prove I’m Not Addicted
Five Reasons That’s Total Bullshit
First Prayer in Forever
My Dream on the Third Night
I Wake Up
Friday 8 a.m.
Jag Says He Doesn’t Have Much Choice
It’s So Empty
One Hour Before
Five Minutes Before
The Family Meeting
It All Comes down to This
Friday 3:22 p.m.
Resources
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Author’s Notes
Copyright
About the Publisher
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DEDICATION
To everybody out there
who is aching for the kiss
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Tuesday 3:22 p.m.
So here’s the thing about being Baker Acted.
You lose everything—
your belt,
your shoelaces,
the perfume bottles in your purse.
They take it all away in the emergency room
and make you sit in the aisle with a box of Kleenex
and a gown that doesn’t close in the back.
There’s nothing to do except watch the clock
on the wall and wonder how pissed your mom’s
gonna be when she gets there.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
A cop guards you the whole time,
picks his teeth with a toothpick,
scratches his dandruff,
stares at you like a real creeper.
He talks about you too,
like you’re not even there.
To the nurses and orderlies.
“They caught her in the school bathroom,” he says,
“using a blade from her pencil sharpener.”
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A Pruned-up Old Nurse Comes Over
She looks at your wrists and ankles
and the places high on your hips
where it’s easy to hide the dark cut lines
even when you’re wearing short-shorts.
She’s holding a sheet of paper,
with an outline on it,
like a paper doll with no clothes.
She marks up the paper doll
with her fine-point Sharpie,
across the wrists,
through the ankles,
on each hip.
Slash.
Slash.
Slash.
You watch that nurse,
and while you’re watching
you wish a thousand times
that you’d just waited till you got home
instead of doing it at school where that
Two-Face Tara caught you by the sink—
red drops running down the drain.
You think about the tap of Tara’s heels
as she ran to get M
r. Lane and the whoosh
of the bathroom door as he shoved it open wide,
and the look on faces peeking from the hallway—
smirking,
mouthing,
busted!
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And Here’s the Other Thing
You Need to Know about the Baker Act
Even if
the principal promises
you’ll be home before dinner—
Even if
the guidance counselor says
they’ll release you right after the ER—
Even if
your teary-eyed mother rushes in
and begs the doctor not to admit you—
“She’s only fifteen for heaven’s sake!”
It doesn’t matter.
You’re not going anywhere.
They’re gonna lock you up,
in a psych ward
for 72 hours.
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On My Way to the Ward
Creeper clamps his hand on my elbow,
and it feels rough and prickly as steel wool.
He swipes his badge through keyless locks
and steers me down a pale green hall
where everything smells like fake pine,
and the lights that flicker all look gray.
Then we stop.
It takes half a century for the elevator
doors to open and the whole time we’re
waiting I have to lean away so Creeper’s
disgusting chunks of dandruff don’t
flake off on me.
Inside the elevator it’s smaller than a
coffin and even though I’ve never been
claustrophobic before, this torpedo of
panic launches in my chest and I try to
yank my arm away and say,
Get your freaking hands off me!
But instead, this stupid sob spills out
and a tear rolls down my cheek,
and there’s nothing I can do but
stand there in that flimsy gown
with all my feelings hanging out.
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When the Door Opens
I see a sign overhead:
Adler Boyce Pediatric Stabilization Facility
Someone’s scribbled on the wall:
Attaboys Prehistoric Sycho Farm
Creeper pushes an intercom button.
“New patient,” he grunts. “Kenna Keagan.”
An old woman comes out,
white hair in a bun,
lips tight,
shoulders stiff.
She nods at Creeper
and signs for me on the dotted line
like I’m a package being delivered by UPS.
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Then
I step into the ward.
I thought it was gonna look like jail inside,
with steel bars and silver toilets.
But it doesn’t.
It’s all rainbows and angelfish instead,
painted on the turquoise walls,
glued to the ceiling,
just like kindergarten.
And right away I think,
it’s a good thing Avery can’t see me now.
This is just the kind of thing my older sister
likes to shove in my face to prove that she’s superior.
That—
and the way she looks like
a runway model even in sweatpants.
That—
and the fact she aces every test
with her freakazoid memory.
That—
and the promise that someday
she’ll score 2,400 on her SAT,
go to Harvard,
and win the Miss Universe Pageant,
while I stay home and scoop out
my basic B existence
like the plain vanilla,
no topping,
community-college material
that I am.
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But I Guess that Figures
Because Avery’s only my half sister.
Her dad was some kind of med-school prodigy
who graduated from Johns Hopkins
and probably would’ve discovered
the cure for cancer if he hadn’t died.
My dad’s just the backup dad.
The one Mom married afterward
so she wouldn’t lose the house on Long Boat Key.
He’s an accountant for PwC, which means
he makes good money doing boring stuff
and is hardly ever home.
But I remember this one time
when Dad’s client was in Chicago,
he brought me and my little brother, Sean, with him
to the top of the Sears Tower—103 floors up.
We climbed into this solid glass skybox
and Sean giggled and danced on the invisible floor.
“Look at me,” he shouted. “I’m walking on air!”
And for a minute, I felt like I was too.
We gazed out over the city
where the blue sky meets Lake Michigan
and the sun reflects between buildings
like a cat’s cradle of light.
Then my dad knelt down
and pointed toward Lakeshore Drive
and I wanted so badly for him to say,
“See that building?
The one over there?
That’s our new home.
Just for me and you and Sean.”
Then we’d be so overjoyed
we’d turn into kites
and we’d glide down 1,353 feet
into our new lives.
But that’s not what happened.
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Instead
Dad muttered something like,
“Too bad your mother and Avery missed this.”
Then a cloud passed across the sun
and the city grew suddenly gray
and the cat’s cradle fizzled like
a spent candlewick.
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Inside the Ward
The nurse who works night shift
waves me over to the counter
with her roly-poly arms.
She’s eaten way too many Ding Dongs.
“You’re in three B with Donya,” she says.
“But don’t you act like that rotten girl.
Not if you want to get outta here.”
I see a purple Mohawk poke out of the bedroom
followed by Donya’s pale blue eyes.
She waits for Ding Dong to turn her back
then flicks her middle fingers,
two at once,
double-barreled.
Donya’s the kind of girl I like right away.
She slips down the hall and I follow her
to a room where kids are squished in beanbag chairs
watching a flat-screen TV bolted behind thick plastic.
They turn to look at me and
I can feel their eyes
crawling on my skin like red ants,
measuring,
judging,
labeling,
just like at school.
The Donya pulls me aside
and tells me how she’s been
committed five times
and that the Baker Act
is a giant Epic Fail
just like everything else in Florida.
“I can’t wait till I’m eighteen,” she says.
“So I can ditch this moron state.”
I ask her why she’s here—at Attaboys,
and she gives me one of those
zigzag answers that don’t say anything specific.
Just that she hates life.
In general.
“You can see how that’s a problem, right?” she says.
Then she tells me how easy it is
to hide your feelings around here.
“All you gotta do is pretend to be happy.
These Sunshine Suckers eat it up.”
Then she tells me to say:
Yes
I’ll eat their slimy green Jell-O.
No
I don’t mind sharing my life story
with total strangers.
Yes
I’m feeling so much better now.
No
I’ve never heard voices.
She looks at the bandages on my arm.
“And for God’s sakes,
don’t say anything stupid
like algebra homework
makes you want to kill yourself.
Not even as a joke.
There’s no jokes in here.
Just reasons for them to keep you longer.”
Donya shuts up and motions toward the door.
The night nurse is walking in.
“Lights out, my little bandulus,” Ding Dong says.
And it’s kind of sick,
but everyone gets up,
without saying a word,
and we follow her down the hall.
Like the good little Baker Actors that we are.
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The Whole Time I’m Getting Ready for Bed
Ding Dong stands in the doorway
Kiss of Broken Glass Page 1