Her (13 page)

“Yeah, and you’ll be like Lenni,” Tai said. “She got to go home after her family session.”

Everyone grew quiet and stared at each other. I gasped when Daniel’s large eyes gazed at me. I looked away to ignore him. When I turned back, he was walking away. He sat down at the table where our group sat together. When Janine and I were finished getting our vitals checked, we joined them at the table. I was exhausted from the medicine. I folded my arms across the table and lay my head down.

“Do you really think they’ll let you go home?” Janine asked Daniel.

He responded, “Maybe.”

“It’ll suck if you leave,” she told him.

He laughed as he said, “I’ve got to go home. I’ll go crazy if I stay in here another week.”

“Oh, goodness, ten days without a cigarette,” Tai said. “It’s been hell. I need to go home.”

Daniel said, “Try three and a half weeks without one.”

“And I bet you miss your girlfriend,” Janine teased.

I looked up.

Daniel didn’t say a word. He looked down and started messing with his shoelaces. I heard someone call my name from behind me. I turned around too fast and had to put my hand over my eyes to keep from feeling too dizzy.

“Yes?” I called out to whoever was calling me.

Then I heard Ms. Mosley say that I needed to come with her. She came over to me, and I took my hand from over my eyes. I looked up at her. She smiled at me and helped me up.

“It’ll get easier,” she said as she led me out the double doors.

I began to get nervous as we passed a room with a large, steel-bolted door. The door locked from the outside. I assumed that room was the BCR. It had the look of what I imagined it would look like from the outside. It looked cold, and the door was made of black steel. It had three bolted locks on the outside. A small window also opened from the outside. I couldn’t see inside the room because the door and window were closed.

We were walking too fast. I had to keep up with Ms. Mosley. She seemed to be in a hurry. When we reached the end of the hallway, she stuck her key in an exit door and led me out. I wanted to ask her where she was taking me, but I got too nervous when I tried to open my mouth. I don’t know why I was suddenly shy. It was probably because I had been thinking about when I had first arrived at Bent Creek, and how Ms. Mosley had led me around. She seemed to be the one with whom I should have felt more comfortable, but Ms. Mosley had a look and attitude about her that made me feel intimidated, as if I had to watch every move I made around her.

We stopped at a door that was partially open. Ms. Mosley tapped on the door, and I heard Dr. Cuvo tell her to come in. Ms. Mosley pushed me in first, which made me feel very uncomfortable. Immediately upon entering, I felt a draft of cold air. Ms. Mosley followed me into the room. She smiled when she saw Dr. Cuvo. Dr. Cuvo sat at his desk, wearing that same smile I had seen when we’d first met. Ms. Mosley said that she’d be back to get me when my session was over, and left me alone with him.

Dr. Cuvo kept that smile on his face and said, “Sit down. Stay a while. We have a lot to talk about.”

The room was freezing cold. I had an itch. I scratched the back of my neck and sat down. I looked around the office as he started speaking.

“I know that you started taking the Risperdol last night. Keep in mind that I need to know about any side effects that are bothering you. How did you sleep last night?”

“Fine. Waking up was kind of harsh, though,” I said, not looking at him.

“Kristen,” Dr. Cuvo said.

“What?”

“I’m right here,” he said.

When I turned my head towards him, I caught him staring right at me. A shiver went through my spine.

“Please, Dr. Cuvo,” I began to speak, but my voice just trailed off. I scratched the back of my neck. I felt like there was a piece of string on the inside of my shirt that was rubbing against my skin.

“Why does it bother you if a person looks at you, or if they want you to look back at them, when you’re having a conversation?” he asked, still staring at me.

“You are not looking at me,” I said. I lowered my head and stared into my empty hands that sat in my lap.

“What am I doing?”

“You’re staring at me.”

“Okay. So staring at you is not allowed. Can I look at you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Just do what you have to do.”

“No,” he kept pressing. “I have to understand this. What’s the difference if someone looks at you or stares at you? We are having a conversation. It’s like this, right now.  I am talking to you and you can’t even look at me.”

“It is because I know you are staring back at me,” I said.

“Right, so why is that a problem?”

I couldn’t hold back. I smacked the back of my neck with the palm of my hand so hard that it made a loud noise. It sounded like someone had popped a paper bag full of air. I finally looked up at Dr. Cuvo.  He shuddered.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

My nostrils flared and released hot air because I was annoyed. I felt itchy and dirty.

“I’m fine,” I lied.

“All right. One of the things I would like to talk to you about is your level. You’ve moved up to Level Two. This means that you can make phone calls to your family only. We have a scheduled time for phone calls in the evening. In addition, I am going to allow you to have visitors. Do you think that you can handle seeing your family?”

I looked up at him. He was looking at my chart. My insides felt like they were squishing around. A feeling of guilt rose inside of me. I felt anxiety creeping in. The consequences were yet to come. If I faced them, which I knew I would have to do one day, I would be a mess. I would make my family sad all over again.

“Just my Mom,” I told him.

“You wouldn’t want to see anyone else? Not your brother and sister?” Dr. Cuvo looked up from my chart, trying to catch my eye.

I looked back down at my hands and shook my head in shame. I squeezed my hands together and put them between my thighs to keep them warm. The air conditioner had to have been on full blast. I held back the tears that were begging to fall. I couldn’t get the vision of Nick’s face out of my mind. I kept seeing his tear-drenched face when the EMTs had closed the doors to the ambulance. Nick was the one who had found me in my bedroom. Not Mom. Nick was the one who had told Mom to call 911. He was the one who had pulled the sheets from over me. Nick had seen everything that I had done first. He had seen me almost die.

I couldn’t see Nick. I couldn’t let him see me at Bent Creek. I wiped my eyes as the tears started to fall.

“Kristen.”

I hated when he said my name with such sincerity. No man had ever said my name with that kind of concern except Jack. It was starting to make me feel a way that I didn’t want to feel. It was like when Jack had danced with me. He’d made me feel like he cared for me. He’d made me feel like he wanted to protect me. Dr. Cuvo couldn’t have done any of those things. Anger welled inside of me.

Dr. Cuvo pressed more. “Kristen, why are you crying?”

My knees began to knock together.

“Kristen! Kristen!” Echoes were in my head. “Kristen!” He was shouting. “Kristen! Get back here!”

The monster was chasing me. I wanted him to stop. I wanted him to get away from me. My shirt was suddenly around my neck, and I couldn’t breathe. I was choking. I dropped the cup of water that was in my hand. The water spilled onto the cold, tile floor, and the ceramic mug broke into pieces. My feet were no longer on the floor. I started to see colorful dots as he pinned me back against the wall. My shirt was getting tighter around my neck. He was going to kill me to keep me from talking. I’d seen him. He was going to kill me because I’d seen him. He was hard and disgusting, and he was breathing in my face.

“How long were you watching?” Jack snapped at me.

I couldn’t speak. I was blacking out. Jack saw what he was doing and let go of my shirt. My bare feet hit the tile, hard. I almost fell, but Jack was standing too close to me to let me fall.

“I didn’t see anything,” I lied.

He knew it was a lie. The tears told too much. I rubbed the back of my neck. It tingled, and it itched. I scratched at it, but the itch would not go away.

“I was tucking Nick into bed. Is that what you saw?” He backed me up into the wall. I moved my hand before the back of my head and neck hit the wall, stopping me in place and leaving me nowhere to go. Jack had trapped me.

I nodded my head. “Yes, sir. I saw you tucking Nick into bed.” More tears told a different story.

“Then why were you screaming out to Nick if that’s all you had seen? Why are you crying?”

What had I seen? I turned my head to look into Nick’s bedroom. I just needed to see that he was in bed. I needed to see that he was tucked in. Nick was under his covers. I could see his feet dangling from under the sheets.

“What are you doing?” It was Mom.

Jack quickly backed away from me. I scuttled next to Mom. I wanted to be as far away from Jack as I could possibly be. Mom looked at Jack, and then she turned to stare at me. I looked away from her.

“Kristen,” she said calmly. “Why were you yelling out to Nick?”

“I wasn’t yelling,” I lied. “I had a nightmare and Nick was in it. Therefore, I went to the kitchen to get some water. I got scared because Jack, um, Dad, scared me when I came from the kitchen, and then I dropped the cup and it-”

I was too nervous. I didn’t know whether to tell her what had really happened. Jack was burning holes into me with his eyes. He was staring at me so sternly that it made me choke on my words. The monster was out, and I knew that monster was capable of anything. I believed that monster would have hurt us. He would have killed my family.

“It was my fault,” I said. “I should have been careful. I am sorry for waking you up.”

“Yes. You should have been more careful,” Jack said.

The expression on Jack's face was grim. His stare made me hurt inside. I looked down at the floor. Jack walked over to Mom and kissed her cheek.

“Go back to bed, honey. I will be there in a minute. I just want to check on Alison and Nick. I’ll make sure she didn’t wake them up.”

Mom looked concerned, so Jack kissed her again. She warmed up in his arms. She looked at me and put her hand on my shoulder. She told me to make sure I picked up all of the broken pieces so that no one would get hurt. I tried to. I wanted to pick up all of the broken pieces, but there were just too many. The monster was too powerful. He made it hurt too much.

“Have you been crying?” she asked.

As she looked at me, her eyes began to change. There was concern on her face. She looked at the broken cup on the floor. She stared down at the spilled water, and she then stared up at me. She was not just looking. She saw the shame and fear in my eyes, and at that moment, I felt that this was it. This would be the moment that I had prayed to God for. She’d say something now because she knew. She could see it. Please Mom, I thought. Please, God. Let her do something!

“You must be really tired, sweetheart.” Jack said.

Jack laughed and pushed Mom along to their bedroom playfully. He got her to warm up to him without a fight. I could hear him playfully kissing and nudging on her. She was giggling and seemingly happy in her ignorance.

Hating that monster, I began picking up the broken pieces of the ceramic cup. I only wanted to get a drink of water. I only wanted to look in to see if my little brother was all right. There was nothing wrong with that.  Right? I’d seen what I’d seen. I’d seen what I wasn’t supposed to have seen. He would have killed me. That monster hated me so much that he would have killed me.

As I picked up the pieces, I started to wish that he had killed me. I started to wish that I were not there. I started to wish that Nick was not there. My head felt swollen. The back of my neck itched too badly. I started scratching, but I felt something wet. When I looked at my fingers, there was blood on them. I had scratched too hard, and the itch was still there. It was my nerves. I couldn’t calm down. My hands were shaking. I was shaking. I was cold. I was scared. I thought to myself, was Nick all right? Was he asleep? Had I actually seen what I thought I’d seen?

I let the wound bleed. I felt the blood drip down my neck. I didn’t want to wipe it. I couldn’t cry with the blood running down my neck. It felt like I had missed the last train home. I was stuck in a place that was not familiar. I got all of the pieces up, and threw them in the trash. I wiped all of the water up with a few paper towels. As I went to the kitchen to throw the paper towels away, I peeked in through Nick's bedroom door. I caught him with his eyes open, but he tried to shut them before I could notice.

“I know you are awake,” I said to him.

He didn’t open his eyes. I whispered his name, but he didn’t move. I ignored him, shut his bedroom door, and stood in front of the door. I tried to remember how I had been standing and where I had been standing. I tried to replay what I had done, to see if I could remember to make sure that I was not dreaming. I heard the floor creak behind me. I didn’t turn around. I tried to hurry to the kitchen, but something caught the back of my neck. I felt more blood gush down my neck. He could have squeezed it harder and broken it, for all I cared. I didn’t make a sound because I felt numb inside.