by Angel Lawson
Instead of being creative, he rips the paper into tiny strips before folding them back and forth into little accordions. I don’t care what he does with the paper, as long as he has something to busy himself with.
“Yeah, but you’re on probation right? If you screw up won’t they send you back to juvie?” One misstep and Dr. Cross can revoke Max’s residential plan. Then he’ll have to finish his time in long-term detention. I’m not really sure what Max did to get in here. I know he has ADHD and some impulse control issues. He mentioned a traumatic brain injury at one point and how it affects the way he makes decisions. I get the feeling he likes to fight and basically can’t stay out of trouble. Although his wide grin and good looks probably take him further than he’s ever admitted. Whatever it is, his record was big enough for him to barely get accepted into this type of residential program to begin with.
I start my sketch. First the eyes and a small nose. I’ve just started shading the chin when Max asks, “So what do you think about that new girl?”
Without looking up I reply, “I think she’s dangerous.”
“Yeah, she seems like trouble.” He stops folding the paper and rubs his hand over his buzzed, white-blonde hair. “After that fight I thought she might throw a fit in group, but she was pretty calm.”
I’ve started in on the hair, curly and long. “Maybe she’s smarter than the rest of us and sees what it took me months to figure out. Things are easier if you play by the rules.”
“Fuck that.”
“Fuck you.” I glance up from my paper. “You’ll be in here forever if you don’t get it together.”
He throws a wad of paper at me. It arches overhead and falls through the air like streamers. He smirks and lies back on his pillow. “Who says I want to go home?”
And then there’s that. For some kids, it’s pretty obvious that living here is way better than what’s on the outside. If I’m honest, things have been better for me here as well. No visitors. No cool, shadowy spirits begging me to help them. The constant stream of medication in my system seems to keep them at bay, but then again, maybe it’s just this place.
The weird thing is how as much as I wanted them gone, now that they’re gone, I sort of miss them.
*
Since this is a hospital and not a prison, we have some freedoms that wouldn’t be allowed in detention. First, we don’t wear uniforms, like jumpsuits, but our clothes have to fit strict guidelines. No holes in our jeans. No low-cut shirts for the girls. No shorts except at recreation. Also, the male and female populations are allowed to mingle. With supervision.
Always supervision.
We also have work detail. The job changed weekly, on a rotating schedule, based on when we entered the program. I’ve already had my turn at grounds keeping, kitchen duty, and bathroom cleaning.
I’m mopping the hallway when Charlotte bumps into me. Literally.
“Watch it,” she snaps. We’re back to back at the corner where our hallways meet. She has her own mop and I see a visible trail of dirty water down the girl’s corridor floor.
I cut my eyes at her, not appreciating her tone. Sure, she has that crazy girl thing going on, but I’ve been here longer. Plus, in our own levels of seniority at the facility, I outrank her.
Fire starter > Runaway.
“They’ll make you do that again if you’re sloppy,” I tell her.
The look she gives me could cut ice, but after a second she relaxes. She leans on the top of the mop. “Good job in group today.”
“What do you mean?”
“That whole ‘figuring it out’ thing. Good work. Totally snowed that counselor.”
Not liking the scrutiny, I dip my mop back in the bucket and run it over the green tile, ignoring her comment. When I look up to wring out the mop, a tiny grin lifts the corners of her mouth. “What? You don’t plan on sharing your methods with me? Like how to get out of here a little faster? How to get a little extra now and then?”
I shake my head, because really, I have no intentions of sharing this or anything else with her. How is this any of her business? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
We stare at one another for a moment, in a battle of sorts. I notice the three holes up the side of one ear where, outside of this place, she wore earrings. I see another empty one in her nose. Rebellion is in her nature, which is not part of my plan.
“Have it your way,” she says, dragging her mop and bucket back down the hall, leaving dirty shoe prints on the kind-of-clean floor.
“They’ll make you do that again,” I yell.
Without looking back, her response echoes off the hard walls and floor, “We’ll see.”
Chapter 4
“I need a couple of volunteers to carry some towels down to the desk in corridor G,” Paul says while standing in front of the TV, arms at his hips, blocking the movie.
“Dude, move!” Max shouts.
“Thank you for volunteering, Mr. Johnson. Anyone else?”
Max curses under his breath and gives me a pleading look.
“Fine,” I mutter to him and then say louder, “I’ll do it.”
Fifteen minutes later, we each have a hand in the handle of a huge canvas bag filled with clean towels. We’re hauling them down to the main desk of the girls’ dorm. “Jesus, how many towels do these girls use?” Max grumbles.
We pick up the laundry bag down in the basement and ride the elevator up to the fourth floor where our residential hallways are located. Girls on the right. Boys on the left. Security in the middle. Each side has a supply closet behind a second security/nurse’s station. We take the towels down the girl’s wing. Just as we round the corner, I see one of the staff pushing a mop across the floor. He’s down by the other end of the hallway.
“What’s he doing?” I ask Max.
“Looks like.” He stops to take a breath. The bag weighs a ton. “Looks like he’s mopping. BFD.”
“It is a big fucking deal, because that new crazy chick was mopping the hallway earlier today. She did a shitty job and I told her they would make her do it again.”
He offers me two sarcastic thumbs up. “You were right.”
We drag the bag down the hallway, nearing the desk. “Yeah, but she should be doing it, right? If I crapped up my job, Paul sure as hell wouldn’t come clean up behind me.”
“Well, you’re not a hot chick. Even the guards have a soft—or err, hard spot for girls like that.”
“You really think she’s hot?” I ask, ignoring the pedo comment.
“Dude, we’ve been in here for months. No sex. Zero porn. All girls are hot.”
True.
We drop the bag by the desk and the nurse on duty points to the closet behind her. “Fold them neatly,” she reminds us.
“Yes ma’am.”
She makes a face and I bite back a smile. Her name is Eleanor and she’s about thirty. Cute with short dark hair and curves visible under her scrubs. She doesn’t like it when we call her ma’am or when I stare at her lips too long.
Max is right. All girls are hot when you’ve been in here long enough.
“Ugh, now we’ll never see the end of the movie,” Max complains, breaking my overanalyzing of Nurse Eleanor.
“You’ve seen that movie six times.”
“Yeah, but it’s my favorite.”
“Because you have a hard-on for Blake Lively.”
He grabs the front of his pants and laughs. “You know it.”
*
There are days when I wake up and think, just for a second, that I’m in my bed at home. Just for a flicker, I feel like I did before all this happened. Before the ghosts and the drugs and the fire.
Back then life was good. My parents are pretty great. My dad has an important job that made us a lot of money, but he isn’t a neglectful ass like a lot of my friends’ fathers. We live in a great house in a cool neighborhood. My younger sister is the best. I love her. I’m not even embarrassed to admit it.
Thin
gs went south when I was thirteen. I’d navigated puberty and middle school pretty well, but then one night everything changed. The voices and visions took over my life, and while I tried to sort it out, it was impossible. To the outside world I was losing my shit. In my personal world, I was barely hanging on by a thread.
Most of my dreams at Brookhaven—the good ones—are about home. If I keep my eyes closed long enough, I can almost smell the detergent my mom uses on the sheets. But then something breaks the spell, either a hard fist on the door, banging to wake us up or Max taking care of his morning wood, or something vague, like the scent of disinfectant or the squeak of shoes on the tile floor. Most days, my first sight is the industrial tiled ceiling or worse, Max scratching his ass.
The other dreams—not nightmares exactly—push me in a completely different direction. I wake bathed in sweat. Gasping for air. I feel the heat from the fire. I hear their voices in my head, pleading for my help. Sometimes it’s so real I sit up and reach for them, unafraid but connected all the same.
Today the banging on the door wakes me with a jerk. I prop on my elbows, disoriented until I blink awake. Whatever I’d dreamed of is just out of reach, like tendrils of black smoke.
Max groans next to me, trying to wake himself up and yeah, it’s time for another day at Brookhaven.
Days at the hospital generally keep the same routine and schedule. The doctors think consistency is good for us. They’re probably right, assuming their goal is to keep us mind-numbingly bored.
Wake Up
Clean Room
Morning duties
Breakfast
Counseling (individual, boys’ group, coed group)
Classes
Blah, blah, blah. The day is tedious on purpose, with the intent to present us with stability and comfort. It’s boring as hell and makes me itch with the desire for teen-angsty rebellion.
In the cafeteria, I scrape the dried scrambled eggs off my plate and into the compost bin before passing it through the window to the cleaners. I’ll shift over to the job of dishwasher next week but for now, I’m assigned dormitory clean-up. I happily leave those guys to the steam and funk of the kitchen and head toward the counseling rooms. I’m a little early and Dr. Murphy hasn’t shown yet, so I pull out my notebook and sit on the floor, using the time to work on my sketch.
“What’s all this?” Charlotte slides down the wall and sits next to me.
I turn the paper away. “Nothing.”
“It’s something,” she says. “What? Naked chicks? Guns and bombs? Afraid I’ll turn you in?”
I’m not one of those guys with an art journal filled with my feelings. I’ve got talent—no one denies that. In fact, it’s probably the one thing that got me yanked from juvie and into this place. My legal advocate and letters from my art teacher all requested leniency from the judge and screening committee so I can pursue art school one day. I toss the notebook at Charlotte and wait while she flips through the pages.
“These are really good.”
“Thanks,” I say, shrugging.
“I’m impressed, not a single naked chick.”
I give her a tight smile. “I keep those under my bed.”
“I bet you do. But there are girls in here.” She turns a couple of pages. “Who’s that? Sister? Girlfriend?”
Ah, the girl. Of course she picks the girl. I know nothing about her except that she came to my room every night when I was fourteen and cried all night long, begging me to help her. Freaked me the fuck out.
“No one,” I reply, taking back the book. “I made her up.”
I didn’t, though. Maddie was real. Dead, but real. Eventually I figured that out, but not until after I thought I’d fully lost my mind. I helped her, which eased my concerns about my mental health a little and provided her with safe passage. Unfortunately, once she left another one quickly took her place.
Charlotte reaches in her pocket and pulls out a piece of gum. She pops it in her mouth. I smell the burst of mint and stare at her mouth.
“What?” she asks.
“Where did you get that?” Gum is one of those ‘things’ here. Off-limits.
Her chewing slows and she narrows her eyes. “I brought it with me.”
I shake my head. “No you didn’t.”
Without blinking, she retorts, “Yes I did.”
“No way. They search your stuff. All of it.”
She juts her chin out in defiance. “Are you calling me a liar?”
Dr. Murphy walks down the hall, coffee cup in hand, and unlocks the door to the meeting room. I stand and looked down at Charlotte, the lies twisting in her cold blue eyes.
“I’m calling it like I see it,” I say, following the rest of my group into the room.
*
That afternoon, I’m collecting trash from the boys’ rooms when I see her again. She has her own bag of trash, filled to the top.
“The dumpster is this way,” I tell her. I stand by the stairwell and open the door so she can pass through. See? I can be a gentleman.
She looks around. “We can go off the grid?”
“No way.” I point to the camera perched in the corner and then to another one at the top of the stairwell. “Smile.”
She doesn’t smile.
“Why do we have to do all this stuff?” she complains on the way down the stairs.
“It gives us character. Hard work keeps the minds and hands busy, you know, all that BS.” She doesn’t look convinced so I add, “Because we could be in jail right now, dodging gang members and shivs. You shouldn’t bitch about a little work.”
She rolls her eyes at my jailhouse description. Maybe she isn’t afraid of prison, but I had a healthy fear of lock-up. The three months I spent in juvie was enough for a lifetime. She rests her bag on a step. “But garbage detail is gross. Do you even know how disgusting these girls are?”
“I’m pretty sure they don’t compete with twenty-four foul-smelling boys.”
She makes a small grunt muttering, “That sugar and spice thing is inaccurate, you know.”
I look her up and down. “Yeah, I kind of figured that out.”
She picks up her bag and heaves it down a flight of stairs. She’s been dragging it since we got in the stairwell and I’m worried it’ll split the bag and spill all over the place if she’s not careful. When I see how close she has it to a nail on the edge of the landing, I pick it up for her.
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to clean up the mess that was about to happen.”
She flashes me a grin but there’s something to it that doesn’t seem friendly. I push open the door to the loading area behind the laundry. A bird caws overhead and lands on the fence. The hospital property has a tall, razor fence surrounding it and acres of property the building sits on. We’re allowed to go outside the building with permission, but there was little chance of escaping the property itself. I hold up the dumpster lid and throw both bags in. Charlotte studies her nails like they’re the SATs and frowns.
“Mother-fuck. I chipped one.” She holds up a jagged nail.
This girl is un-freaking believable.
“So are the stories true about you?” she asks.
“What stories?” We still stand by the smelly dumpster because it’s better than being inside.
“That you burned down your house.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Oh that? Yeah. I didn’t burn it all the way down, but yeah, I started a fire.”
“And that you hear voices and see things?”
Again I shrug. No one here knew the truth. No one knew about the lies. To them, I’m just crazy. Well, maybe I am crazy, but not the way they think. “Crack is whack.”
“That’s the truth,” she laughs. “One girl said you were a psychopath.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know her name. She’s fat with dark hair.”
I think for a second. “Meg? Ha, talk about crazy.” Which is the truth, but no one around here shoul
d throw stones. Pot meet kettle and all that. “Come on, it reeks out here and I don’t want Paul busting my balls for slacking off.”
I open the door and hold it open. Charlotte passes under my arm. “You still like to smoke?” I stop short and she continues, “Yeah, I heard about that, too. Sounds like you had all kinds of vices.”
“You can’t get that shit in here.”
That same dangerous smile flitters across her mouth. “Wanna bet?”
She brushes past me, deliberately pressing against my body. She’s up the stairs before I have the chance to say, “No.”
Chapter 5
A coffee cup from Starbucks sits on Dr. Cross’ desk today. I can smell the sugar and caramel from my seat across from him. That’s what deprivation does to you—makes your senses stronger. My parents sit on the small green couch against the wall. My father looks like he’s on his way to a business meeting. Suit and tie. Slicked-back hair. His eyes hold concern for me, but also fear. He’d been the one that found me during the fire. He understands what I am capable of. What he doesn’t know is why.
Next to him, my mother looks picture-perfect against the industrial gray wall. Her hair and make-up expertly done, like she’s ready for lunch at the club. I don’t hate my mother, but I hate seeing her here. I hate having brought her to this tainted, terrible place. I hate what I’ve done to my family. Again, I considered how much it would suck if I jumped out that window. I’d probably come back and haunt myself.
“Mrs. Jacobs, why don’t you share some of your concerns about Connor returning home,” the doctor says, pulling my thoughts away from suicide missions.
My mom gives me an apologetic glance. “Obviously I’m worried about safety. The house and Emma. I have to know he has this…whatever it is, under control.”
“No drugs or skipping school,” my father interjects. “Except the ones prescribed, of course.”