“How’s John?” I asked without thinking.
A look of surprise came over her face. She seemed like she had to think before she answered. She looked me in the eyes, like she was searching me to make sure I had really meant to ask that question.
“We are great!” Lexus said happily.
I looked down at my hands, because she kept looking down at hers. I felt sick inside again. The silence was making it worse. Whatever was gnawing at me wanted to burst out and just bite Lexus’ head off. I swallowed until that ball in my chest slowed down. It was spinning too fast.
“Kristen, there is something that’s been bothering me. We are supposed to be real friends, right? Well, I feel like we should talk and be real with each other.”
“What is it?” I asked her. I somehow already knew. I had a feeling that inquiring further would damage our short visit, but I had to hear her. I wanted to know what she was really thinking.
“Why did you do it?”
I'd known she was going to ask eventually. I just hadn't known that she would ask me while I was still at Bent Creek. I didn’t look up at her. I just kept staring down at my hands as they rested on my lap.
“Was it because of that night?” she prodded on.
I didn’t answer. To vex her, I raised my arms to pretend I was stretching, and I rolled up my sleeves. Her eyes grew big when she saw the exposed stitches and the scars on my arms. She looked down at the table and shook her head. It was all too real for her perfect world, I thought.
“Kristen, please,” she pleaded. “I need to know. I need you to tell me, because I’ve been beating myself up over this. I don’t want to think that you did this, and that it’s my fault. If it could have been prevented because I-”
“So you think it’s about you?” I growled at her. “You think this is all about you.”
“No,” she pleaded. “I didn’t say that. That’s not what I meant, Kristen.”
“Yes, it is what you meant,” I told her. “It’s always about you, Lexus. Isn’t it? That’s why you didn’t answer your phone. That’s why you didn’t want to talk to me.”
“Kristen, the reason I didn’t answer my phone was not because of you. John didn’t want us to answer our phones that night. There was a good reason for us not to answer our phones. John, he-”
“What did he tell you?” I asked her. “Did he tell you not to answer the phone because he didn’t want you to be burdened with all of my problems? Did he tell you not to talk to me because all I do is talk about depressing things and make you depressed and sad, too?”
“No,” she said. Lexus sounded like she was going to cry. “It was not like that. If you would just listen, I will tell you. We were trying to plan our future together. You are right. We didn’t want to be burdened with any problems. Not that night.”
My eyes shot up from my hands to her fake, sympathetic frowning face. I was gazing at her, hard. I kept silent as she continued to speak.
“I love you, Kristen. I really do. You are like a sister to me. I mean, we have been through a lot together, especially when your family went through all of that mess. I could never just let you hurt. If I had have known that you had hurt yourself, I would have been there for you. But that night, I just wanted to be happy and enjoy that night with him. Everything was perfect. I didn’t want to ruin that.”
“Then it’s a good thing you didn’t answer your phone,” I said to her in a calm, but stern, voice.
“It wasn’t like that,” she pleaded.
“Yes, it was!”
“Kristen, no...”
I shook my head. “Yes, it was. It’s okay, Lexus. You, your Prince Charming, and your perfect family were having the perfect evening together. Your phone rings and you guys see that it’s me trying to call. You think to yourself, ‘Oh, God, I don’t want to ruin this night by answering Kristen’s call, because I already know it’s going to be depressing and sad, and Kristen will ruin everything. That girl, Kristen, she’s just full of problems. She’s nothing but a burden!’”
I was breathing hard. The metal ball in my chest was turning so hard that I could hardly get the air in and out of my lungs fast enough to catch my breath.
I looked at Lexus as tears fell from her eyes. She shook her head angrily.
“That’s not fair, Kristen. Not after everything that I have done for you. Not after all this time I’ve been your friend.”
“Fine,” I said coldly.
“I can’t be like you!” she screamed. “I like being happy. I like being in love with a man who loves me! I like living! Being alive!”
“I said it’s fine!” I screamed back at her. “Maybe you should stay away from me. I make you so unhappy. I make everyone feel so burdened and disgusted. Everything is so depressing with me. Maybe I’ll even drive you to want to kill yourself. Go on! You deserve to be happy. Why don’t you let the doctors deal with me? You don’t have to worry about being my friend and being there for me anymore. It’s not your responsibility. I shouldn’t have real friends anyway. I’ll ruin them, just like I’m ruining you. I’ll make them check their caller I.D. every time the phone rings. And when they see my number, they won’t pick up the phone. Just like you. Just go! Go before I ruin your happiness and your perfect life!”
I had never seen Lexus’ face so sour. It felt rather good to see that hurt look on her face. For the first time in a long time, Lexus and I were being real. I knew that this sadness would not last too long for her. All she had to do was run into John’s arms. Then she would tell him everything. That would make him hate me even more. John would comfort Lexus. She’d forget about our argument, and everything about me. She’d move on and never look back. She wouldn’t remember that terrible, sick, and depressing friend who'd burdened her.
Truth be told, I wasn’t angry with her for not answering her phone that night. I wouldn’t have answered my call, either. It would have ruined her night if she had answered the phone, because I had already taken the pills. I had gotten scared, and I could only think to call her. When she hadn’t answered, I’d grabbed the knife and had run it across my wrists to finish. I didn’t want to be scared anymore.
Lexus gathered her purse and grabbed her sweater off the back of the chair where she was sitting.
“I don’t know why I thought I could come here and talk to you,” she said to me as she dug into her purse to find her keys.
She was very upset. I started to feel bad, but it was too late to stop her or to take back anything I had said.
“I thought I could come here and tell you the good news,” she said.
“What good news?” I asked.
Lexus stayed silent as she swung her sweater over her shoulders. She slipped her left arm through the sleeve. As her hand slid out of the other end, I saw the diamond on her ring finger. I took a deep breath. I couldn’t move.
“I’m leaving,” she said. “I have nothing more to say to you. Call me when you are out of here. Maybe you will learn to listen to yourself when you speak. Right now, I don’t think you do. Bye!” She left.
I sat, stuck to my seat. When she’d said that she wanted to tell me the good news, I’d had no idea what it could be until I’d seen the engagement ring that had not been on her finger when I had last seen her. Lexus hadn’t had to say a word. That terrible metal ball turned tirelessly in my chest, making it get tighter and tighter. I squeezed my eyes shut. It hurt too badly. Tears began to fall out of my eyes.
I heard Geoffrey call out to me. I looked back at him. He called for me to come over to him because he was concerned. He asked me what was wrong. Without answering him, I got up and ran to my room before he could ask any more questions.
CHAPTER 45
Mena looked up at me, startled. She was lounging back on her bed, twisting the wings of my sterling silver butterfly pendant between her fingertips, and playing with Mr. Sharp. At first, I was shocked to see her because of what had happened in Anger Management yesterday, and because she was touching my butterfly.
I stood in front of her bed and looked down to make sure it was my pendant. I saw the silver wings shimmer in the sunlight that was coming through the blinds hanging from the window.
”What are you doing?” I scolded her.
Mena silently smiled at me while she teased me with the pendant.
“Don’t smile at me,” I said to her. “I am so sick of you.” I leaned in close to her, not scared if she tried to hit me.
Mena took me by the hand and yanked me down. I flopped down on the bed next to her. She leaned over to me and pushed my hair out of my face. She kept her grip on my hand. She wasn’t hurting me, but she was confusing me. Then she lifted my sleeve on the arm of the hand that she was holding.
“Did you know,” she said, “that more than forty percent of people who attempt suicide become a statistic when they are released from a psychiatric hospital?”
“No,” I told her as I tried to shove her away. She kept a tight grip.
“They become a statistic of people who succeed in killing themselves when they get out. They attempt suicide again, and then they actually die.”
Scared, I tried to push her away again, but she held on tighter.
“Mena!” I cried out. “Please. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me go.”
She shoved my hand away from rejecting her. I tried to pull away, but she had a good grip on my hand. She got my sleeve up to my elbow, and we both looked down at the stitches on my wrists. I began to calm down as I stared at the reality written in my skin. I saw the red stitches rooted in my skin. I saw the ugliness that I had created.
Mena loosened her grip on my hand as she saw me begin to accept it.
“It is really sad, isn’t it?” she asked me.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re born into this screwed-up world, and this is the place you end up. Or you end up in your grave.” She shook her head as she continued to look down at my wrist. “Rocky knew what to do. He knew exactly what to do to make it happen. He knew he wanted to be free and never turn back.”
“What are you talking about?”
She looked seriously into my eyes. “If you really want to die, there are ways to make it happen, whether they come to try to save you or not. There are ways that make it impossible to turn back, even when you’re scared. Rocky snapped his neck. He cut his lifeline. He was dead when those losers got here to try to save him. It’s like jumping off of a bridge onto a highway, shooting yourself in the head, or cutting your wrists the right way.”
She gestured up and down with her fingers, running them down my exposed wrist. I watched her. She then ran her fingers across my wrist where I had cut the wrong way, and she shook her head at me.
“You didn’t do it right.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I didn’t want to. What she said made sense to me. I looked down at my wrist again, then back up at her.
“No repair,” she said. “No tears, no time for regret. Just die.”
“I was serious about it,” I told her.
She nodded her head. “Maybe,” she said. “But you knew you could be saved. You probably even got scared. Rocky didn’t want to be saved, and he wasn’t scared. He wasn’t scared because he did not leave his edge, even after they locked him up in this mind-bending place. They just want to pump us up full of pills that blind us to reality. They want the sun to keep shining, and they want us to like it.
They want us to be like your pretty, little friend out there. The one that came to visit you today.”
I looked at her, shocked.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “It’s obvious how different the two of you are. You were getting so loud. I thought you were going to really let her have it. You should have. Let me guess, she’s the pretty and successful one that your mom tells you to look up to, and you’re the one that reminds her every day of how great she is. Man, she’s lucky to have a friend like you.”
I swallowed hard at what she said. As the silver butterfly wings twisted between her fingertips, I could see Mr. Sharp’s smile. He hadn’t left me.
“Don’t take it the wrong way,” Mena said. “I’m not trying to make you feel bad. You just need to know the truth. You need to think openly with the gift that you have. You are so much smarter than she is. She’s blind. You are not in here because you did something bad. You are here because you know what other people can’t accept. So they make us feel like we need to be alive and ignore the truth that is inside of us because they don’t want us to know it. They want to keep being blinded from everything. You already know, don’t you?”
Mr. Sharp was there. He nodded through me. “Yes, I know,” he said through my lips.
“Don’t let your edge go,” she said to me. “Don’t let it go for them. When you can finally move, that’s when you will make them see that this is all you have.” She held up the butterfly.
The silver, sharp wings made Mr. Sharp excited.
I knew what they wanted me to do. I took the butterfly from between her fingers.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t say anything. I have my own.” She reached into her pillowcase and pulled out a thin, naked razor blade. “I broke the plastic part from around one of those razors you buy from the grocery store and took this out. It’s amazing how the cheaper ones are so much sharper than the more expensive shavers are. It’s not as cute as yours, but it does do the job.”
She lifted her pant leg, and I saw the fresh bruises on her legs.
“When did you do that to your legs?”
“My arms would have been too obvious. Last night they put me in that dark room. It’s a good thing they didn’t tie me down. They left me in there all night, after what had happened with Dr. Bent. I hate the dark. I needed to stay calm, so my razor saw to it.” She pressed the razor to her lips roughly and kissed it.
“What happened yesterday?” I asked her. “You just went crazy.”
“I didn’t go crazy,” she said with serious eyes. “I didn’t do anything to that woman that she couldn’t go home and drink off. It’s like I said before. They want to blind us. Dr. Bent’s no different. Why would they want to hide that Rocky did kill himself? Think about it.”
I could see that she was beginning to get upset again, so I didn’t say anything else. I began to get up, but she grabbed my hand again. I sat back down next to her.
She smiled deviously. “Do you want to?”
She held up her razor and gestured to my butterfly pendant. Mr. Sharp smiled back at her through my face. I tried to push back through. I shook my head, but she wasn’t buying it. I knew that she could see Mr. Sharp clearly.
Mena calmly took the butterfly pendant out of my hand. She pressed the tip of the wing to my arm gently. My heart began to race. She pressed it hard onto my skin, and a sharp pain went through my veins.
“No,” I moaned, but Mr. Sharp wouldn’t let me pull away.
She continued to press. “Shhh,” she shushed me. “We’re almost there.”
Mena pressed the wings harder to my skin until it broke though. The pain pushed through, and a rush of adrenaline flushed out of me. She dragged the wing down and made a bloody line on my arm. The warm redness gushed out from the wound as she pressed the wing deeply into my skin and dragged it down my arm. When the blood came through, Mr. Sharp burst inside of me in relief. He sighed softly with my breath and he let a moan out of my throat.
A tear came out of my eye while the tingling sensation ran through my skin. I looked down at the blood. It was exhilarating. Breathing heavily, and with that amazing feeling that I missed, I looked at Mena wide-eyed. I was amazed at what she had just done to me.
Mr. Sharp made me take the butterfly pendant from out of her hand.
“No one has ever done that to me before,” I told her.
I looked down at my arm again. I saw the blood and remained calm. Mr. Sharp embraced me warmly through the blood. The anger caused by Lexus seeped out from the fresh wound.
Mena was smiling. She leaned in close to me. “That’s good,” she said. You’re satisfied.” She touched my hair again. This time she moved my bangs completely from my face.
I started to feel too strange. I moved slightly away from her.
“You’re okay,” she said. She scooted closer once more.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m fine.” I was a little confused.
“Kristen,” she said as she gently touched my face with the left palm of her hand. “Have you ever…”
“Kristen?” A man’s voice called out to me with a knock on the door.
I jumped up off Mena’s bed, startled and still a little confused. I pulled my sleeve down and shoved the butterfly pendant into my pocket.
“Yes? Come in!” I called out.
Mr. Anton entered the room. If Mr. Anton hadn’t knocked, I wondered, what would have happened?
Mr. Anton stood halfway through the door and said, “Kristen, come with me. I am going to take you to Dr. Pelchat’s office. It is time for your session.”
The pain in my chest swelled back up.
CHAPTER 46
When I entered Dr. Pelchat’s office, he was already sitting behind his desk with his legs crossed and my chart open with his pen in hand. As soon as Mr. Anton left me and shut the door, Dr. Pelchat insisted that I take a seat. He was completely serious and used a professional tone. His demeanor worried me.
“Is there something the matter?” I asked.
Dr. Pelchat leaned back in his chair, realizing that I had caught on that there was something going on. He took off his glasses and looked at me.
Wiping the sweat from his brow, he said to me, “The matter is your test results. They came in this morning.”
I gasped. I felt my heart jump.
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