Cut (6 page)

Tara stops a few feet in front of me. My feet drag to a stop, too. “Here,” she says. She disentangles one flower from the bunch and holds it out toward me, the way Sam did when he gave me the “Hop your feeling beter” card. Then, before I can take it or not take it, she places the flower on top of my geometry book.

She breezes past, humming. It takes an enormous effort for me to start walking again.

Sydney and I are sitting on our beds after dinner studying when the new girl knocks on our doorless door frame. She’s wearing a tank top, cutoffs, and flip-flops; I feel cold just looking at her. “It’s for you,” she says, cocking her chin in my direction.

I don’t understand. Is her outfit for me? To make me look at her? To make me feel cold?

“The phone,” she says. “It’s for you.” She turns to go, then pauses. “Hey, how do you give someone the silent treatment over the phone? I mean, how do they know if you’re even there?”

My cheeks flame. I put down my geometry book, get up from my bed, and follow her down the hall, counting the number of times her yellow flip-flops thwack against the glossy green linoleum.

She pauses a moment before turning in to her room, which is right next to the phone booth. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I won’t listen to you not talking.”

I sit down on the little curved seat in the phone booth and reach up to close the door. But there is no door. I forget sometimes that there are no doors here. I pick up the receiver, still warm from the grip of the last person, and stare at the concentric circles of tiny holes in the mouthpiece.

My mother’s voice comes out of the other end, puny and hopeful. “Callie? Is that you?”

I hold my breath. There are kitchen sounds in the background, the thrum of the dishwasher, the closing of a drawer.

“Oh, dear,” she says, the volume in her voice slipping down a notch, as if she were talking to herself. “How do I know if you’re even there?”

My back stiffens; those were the same words the new girl used. I shift around on the little seat, then cough.

“Well, I hope you’re there, Callie, because I have something to tell you.” She waits a minute, then sighs. “OK. They say you’re resisting treatment.”

I switch the receiver to my other hand and wipe my palm on my pants leg.

“Oppositional something or other, they’re calling it. Oppositional behavior.”

Oppositional behavior. It sounds so premeditated, so on purpose.

“Are you listening?”

I forget not to nod—and forget my mom can’t see me nodding.

“They say they might send you home.”

The door frame of the tiny booth quivers. It narrows, then expands.

My mom is saying something about how the people at Sick Minds might want to give my bed to someone else. Someone who’s willing to work. Someone who wants to get better.

The floor of the phone booth pitches up, then swims away.

Now she’s saying something about school. “They won’t let you back in school either,” she says. “Not until you’ve had treatment.”

I hold the receiver away from my ear. My mother’s voice grows small, long-distance—costing us good money …going to give your father a heart attack …don’t understand why …—until finally the phone goes dead and all that’s left is a faint clicking in the wires.

The floor isn’t where it’s supposed to be when I step out of the phone booth; it’s like when you step off a curb without knowing it and put your foot down into thin air. I grab the door frame, then force myself to walk back to my room. But the hall shimmers like a paved road on a hot summer day. Slick green squares of linoleum heave up in my path, then sink away underfoot. There’s an incline, a linoleum hill, a surprisingly tiring hill that gives way, without warning, to a valley, a long, low trench in the hallway between the phone booth and my room.

The lights are out and Sydney’s already in bed when I finally get there. I climb straight into bed and pull the blanket up to my chin even though I’m sweating from the walk back from the phone booth. My shirt and pants bunch up under the covers. I wrestle my shirt back into place, give up on the pants. I listen for Sydney’s breathing. It’s no good. I roll over; my shirt gets twisted around my chest. I turn back the other way and yank it straight.

I roll one way, the room rolls the other. I picture my bed, the bed that Sick Minds wants to give to someone else, falling through a giant trapdoor.

Then I hear Ruby’s footsteps coming toward our door. The rolling stops, the furniture snaps back into place. Then she moves on.

Before the floor can start pitching again, I throw off the covers and crouch down next to the bed. I lift the mattress with one hand, grope around with the other. The mattress is surprisingly heavy. My arm shakes, bows under the weight of it. Then I feel it. Way down near the foot of the bed is the pie plate. I stretch, grab it, and let the mattress come down with a plop.

“Huh?” Sydney sits up in bed, her eyes half-open.

I freeze.

Sydney falls back onto her pillow, sighs, and settles into her steady breathing.

I get back into bed, moving calmly and efficiently now, lie on my stomach, and pull the covers over my head. Inside the dark blanket tent, I fold the pie plate in half, press it flat, bend it back and forth, back and forth, like I’m following a recipe, back and forth, until the fold is crisp. When I rip it, it gives way easily and I have two neat halves, each with a jagged edge.

I lay my index finger lightly on the edge of one half testing it. It’s rough and right.

I bring the inside of my wrist up to meet it. A tingle crawls across my scalp. I close my eyes and wait.

But nothing happens. There’s no release. Just a weird tugging sensation. I open my eyes. The skin on my wrist is drawn up in a wrinkle, snagged on the edge. I pull it in the other direction and a dull throbbing starts in my wrist.

I hold my breath and push down on the piece of metal. It sinks in neatly.

A sudden liquid heat floods my body. The pain is so sharp, so sudden, I catch my breath. There’s no rush, no relief. Just pain, a keen, pulsing pain. I drop the pie plate and grasp my wrist with my other hand, dimly aware even as I’m doing it that this is something I’ve never done before. Never tried to stop the blood. Never interfered. It’s never hurt like this before. And it’s never not worked.

I take my hand away a minute and wipe my wrist on my shirt; the blood pauses, then leaks out again. I go back to gripping my wrist and trying to ignore the throbbing and the pinpricks of sweat on my lip and forehead, then I look down and see blood seeping out between my fingers.

A sizzle of electricity white-hot energy, courses through me. And suddenly I’m up, out of bed, walking out of the room. There’s no thinking now, only walking. Down the hall, around the corner to Ruby’s desk. Holding my arm out, like an offering.

“Oh, child,” Ruby says when she sees me. “Oh, honey child.”

She goes into action, reaching up to the First Aid cupboard and taking my hand in hers, all in one swift motion. She unwinds a roll of gauze, wipes away the blood, then washes the cut with some kind of solution. It burns, but for a moment at least, the throbbing lets up. I can see then that the cut isn’t that deep, that it’s no worse than the others, and I wonder why it bled so much, why I showed it to Ruby.

“It’s a bleeder,” she says, pressing a square of gauze to the cut. “But it’s not deep. No need for stitches.”

She closes both her hands around my wrist, as if she were praying, and pulls them to her chest, so close I can feel it rise and fall as she breathes. She presses with such a sure, steady force that after a while the bleeding stops and the pain begins to drain away.

She lowers my hand finally, puts another bandage over the cut, wraps gauze around my wrist with a dozen or so quick twists, and secures it with a couple of pieces of tape. We stand there a minute regarding her work. Then Ruby lowers herself into her chair, using one arm to support her weight. She drops into the chair with a sigh.

My body feels light all of a sudden, so light it might float off. I imagine myself as a giant Macy’s Parade balloon, floating up, away from Ruby’s desk, high over Sick Minds. I have to sit down.

Ruby leans forward, takes my hands in hers, and pulls them into her lap.

“Scared yourself, did you?” she says.

In the brown-black center of Ruby’s eyes is a tiny, scared reflection of me.

“Why do you want to do a thing like that?” Our hands—ashy white and deep mahogany—are intertwined in Ruby’s lap, the fabric of her dress soft from so many washings.

“Hmmm?” she says, as if I’d said something she hadn’t quite heard. “Why don’t you tell us what’s bothering you?”

I consider pulling free of her grasp, but it would take too much effort and I’m tired now, very tired.

Ruby sighs. “Whatever it is, baby, it can’t hurt worse than this.”

Ruby walks me back to my room, her arm around my waist. This time, there’s no question of how much distance to keep between us; I let myself sink against her. She tells me I’m lucky, that the cut wasn’t deep, that I might have to get a tetanus shot, and that she’ll have to file an incident report. “Standard operating procedure,” she says. It occurs to me that I could be sent home or to Humdinger, and I wish Ruby would tell me one of her home truths or even just what standard operating procedure is, but when we get to my room she seems distracted. She lets go of my waist, reaches into the closet, and pulls out one of the nightgowns my mother bought.

“Put this on, child,” she says. “And give me those clothes to wash. I’ll be right out here waiting.” She steps out into the hall.

I change into the nightgown, gather up my clothes, and start walking to the door to give them to Ruby. Something holds me in place halfway between the bed and the door, some vague sense that that I’m forgetting something. Then I walk back to the bed, pick up the two jagged pieces of the pie plate, turn, and bring them to Ruby.

The green neon numbers on Sydney’s alarm clock say 6:04 a.m. Last time I checked, it was 5:21. I brace myself on my arm and a dull pounding starts in my wrist. There, at the foot of the bed, is a neat bundle of clean, folded clothes. Ruby must have put them there before her shift ended.

I push back the covers, get up quietly, put on my clothes, and slip into the still-dark hallway. I tiptoe toward the bathroom, sneak past Marie’s empty chair, past the phone booth, past the new girl’s room, past the dayroom, the Group room, down the hall, past the Emergency Use Only door, until finally I’m sitting outside your office waiting for you to come to work.

I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here, but finally you’re standing in front of me in your blue coat and scarf. You don’t look surprised. You don’t even say hello right away. You pull your keys out of your purse, bend down and turn on the UFO outside your door, and say, “Would you like to come in?”

I take my usual place on the couch while you hang up your coat and scarf, put your purse in a drawer, open the blinds. Finally you sit down.

“Callie?” you say. “Is there a reason why you’re here?”

I shrug.

“Can you tell me what’s on your mind?”

I start counting the stripes in the wallpaper. A dog barks in the distance. The sound rings in the air for a long time, then it’s quiet.

“I can’t.” My voice surprises me. It’s so puny.

“What? What is it you can’t do?”

I clear my throat, but it doesn’t do any good. Now there’s no voice in there at all. I shrug.

“Callie.” Your voice is firm. “Try to look at me.”

I sneak a peek at you. Your eyes are amber. Like Linus’s. I look away.

“What is it you can’t do?”

The radiator clicks on, drones for a while, clicks off.

“Talk.” The word, finally, comes out of my mouth.

Your chair groans and I notice then that you’ve been sitting on the edge of your seat. You lean back and tap your lip with your finger, the way you did the other night in the game room.

“Is it because you’re scared?”

I trace a square on the couch, nod yes, once, and watch, stunned, as a tear makes a small dark circle on my jeans.

You slide the tissue box across the carpet to me.

“Do you know why you’re scared?”

I shake my head.

“Callie.” Your voice comes at me from far away. “I think if we work really hard together, we may come up with some answers.”

I rip the tissue in my hand. It’s become a soggy useless mess. I grab another one.

“Would you like to try?”

I nod.

“Good.” You sound pleased, really pleased.

I blow my nose. “What will you do to me?” The words seem to come out on their own.

You smile; tiny wrinkles fan out around your eyes and I wonder if maybe you’re older than I thought. “To you?I won’t do anything to you. We’ll just talk.”

“That’s it?” My voice cracks. It’s a weak, unreliable thing.

“That’s it.”

I grab another tissue from the box. “I feel …” I clear my throat and will the words to come out. “I feel like I’ll be losing.”

“Like a game or a contest?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What do you think you’ll lose?”

“I don’t know.” I check your amber cat eyes for signs of impatience, but you don’t seem mad. Just curious.

“I’ll never make you tell me anything you don’t want to tell me,” you say. “But you are right, Callie. Sometimes it will feel like you’re losing something.”

I reach for another tissue. Wet, wadded-up tissues keep piling up in my lap.

“But Callie,” you say. “If we work hard, you’ll find something much better to take the place of whatever you give up. I promise.”

I nod. I’m tired now, awfully tired. I’ve got that headachy feeling I get in the summer when I step out of the dark, air-conditioned house into the too-bright sunlight.

I watch you as you stand up and say we’ll get started later on, at our usual time. Then you call for someone to escort me to the infirmary, where they give me a tetanus shot and make me sign a form. Then I go back to my room. And even though it’s still morning, I go back to bed. And sleep. And sleep.

II