For the first time in a while, I wanted to feel something. Anything. I wanted to embed this memory into my brain for a rainy day, just in case I got a wild hair in my ass in the future and wanted to feel it again. As I enclosed the space between us, the voices in my head started their provoking pleas, demanding I shut it off, but I couldn’t. I was too far gone. Kneeling down beside her, I made a mental note to retain this in my memory; her jeans, black flats, and checkered button up blouse. Even the stray hair that had gotten trapped in the corner of her pouty lips—committed to memory. With twitchy fingers I reached forward to brush away the stray strand, but caught myself when Reyes warned from behind, “you’ll lose points.”
I looked around the empty room. “Who is going to tell? The women on my walls? They’re already dead.” Everyone had that one friend, the one who couldn’t live just to live, who couldn’t take risks without evaluating all of the small details. That was Reyes. But Laces, what if you fuck her and she ends up pregnant and births your firstborn in the nuthouse—he’d said that very phrase on a constant loop when I first started inviting women to my room for a little humpty-humpty. He was always worried about the consequences and couldn’t see the worthy opportunities when they presented themselves.
Like now.
I had an opportunity to get up close and personal with a newbie from the outside, and all Reyes was worried about was a few damn points.
A pirate grin crept across my lips.
We weren’t allowed to touch other patients at the asylum. It was near the top of the rules list, right below trying to butcher your wrist with a plastic fork, and calling your buddy on the outside to come up with an escape plan to get your ass out. I’d never given a damn about the rules or trying to obey them, so starting to give a fuck now seemed pointless.
I looked back at Reyes. His curious eyes were trained on me with a hint of confusion I didn’t quite understand. Moments ago he had been urging me to sketch, but now was silent. “You’re not going to try and stop me?” I asked. Out of the three of us—Reyes, me, and Thorne—Reyes was the closest one to sane, according to our charts. He was the paranoid one. The serious one. The one always trying to keep us out of trouble. He was the conscience we never had, and during times like this I depended on him to pull me back to my humanity. But he seemed in no hurry to do that.
Taking another bite of his apple, he chewed, watching in silence as I gave into my urges and stroked a piece of her soft, curly brown hair. It was stupid, needing Reyes’ supervision for what most thought was a basic task, but it was a necessity. The one thing I’d never learned in life was how to stop—how to just throw in the towel and give up, in order to move on. My brain didn’t know how to process the end. It couldn’t accept defeat. All it knew was how to keep fighting, like I had with my mother. It was a trait I applied in all aspects of my life, and this moment was no different. That was part of the reason I was at Hawthorne to begin with, obsessing over stupid shit. And at the moment I was obsessing over the texture of the curly strand in between my fingers.
“Let go.” I heard Reyes whisper. “Don’t think about what you want, think about what she wants. She is unconscious, Laces.”
“It’ll be okay. I can handle it.” That was a lie, but it was a worthy one, nonetheless. At least to me. I wanted to let her go, really I did. I knew letting her go was the right thing, the humane thing. Women like her and men like me didn’t belong together. I was fearless, careless, and above all else, reckless. And yet every time I tried to release a curl, to release the sweet intoxicating scent that eluded her, something would pull me back. The curly strand, the way it was tightly wound around my fingers, forced other urges to come to light.
My eyes fell to her hands clutching her chest, her pale fingers shielding her breasts as if they knew I was coming. Reyes was right: smart girl.
“I want to see her palms.” I said, looking back at Reyes. His eyes had widened to the point I swore they would pop out at any moment. “Her hair is nothing but a tease, alright? If I’m going to do this, I want to fully commit.” Again, obsessive issues.
“Spoken like a true psychopath.” Reyes mused.
I shot him a go-to-hell-look. My ass was never getting out of Hawthorne anyway, so I might as well make it worth my while. It was a terrible mindset to have, one that Dr. Young had spent the last three months hounding me about in therapy, but right then I didn’t give a shit. Like a caveman that had just discovered his first pussy, I spread her arms open and took it all in—her milky, white skin and the bluish veins leading up her forearms. Somewhere along the way to my room she’d cut her wrist and a pool of blood had begun to form in the crook of her elbow. It was then while trying to search for the source of the bleeding that I noticed the branded JE initials on her wrist. “How did you brand yourself?” I whispered to her. I’d seen many cuts and burns pass through the asylum, but never a brand. Branding was for cattle, a permanent way to show what was yours. Trailing my finger over the welt, my heart picked up a little speed at the thought of this petite woman sitting in her room, sock shoved in her mouth, the smell of flesh burning…
Like a loyal hobbit, Reyes piped in, “What are you waiting for?”
“She branded herself.” I murmured.
Reyes sat his apple on the floor and jumped to his feet. Making it to me in two quick strides, he said, “that’s her problem. Let her go.”
Two swift knocks came at my door, followed by Nurse Kline’s voice, “Gambrielle? Come on out, honey.”
Gambrielle?
Reyes cursed.
Ignoring Nurse Kline, I hastily grabbed Gambrielle’s right wrist and turned it over, inspecting it as I had done with her left. There were no markings, which was weird. One arm was beautiful, the other tormented. “Why would she brand herself with JE—it doesn’t make sense.” I shook my head. “Cutters are wild. They don’t give a fuck.”
“Stop obsessing!” Reyes whispered with a hiss. He grabbed a handful of the back of my hoodie and yanked me to a standing position. My brain was still a hazy shitstorm of thoughts from the emotions running through my mind—the stray, my mother, Nurse Kline, the branding. Placing both hands on my shoulders, Reyes squeezed, hard.
“Listen to me. Nurse Kline is outside YOUR door.”
I blinked twice. “Okay.” But the branding…
Reyes tapped the side of my head. “You have a library of Playboy Magazine’s laying around your room.”
My heart stopped dead in its tracks and my eyes widened. “Oh shit.”
“Oh shit is right, my friend.”
My fear of solitary outweighed my need to hold onto to Gambrielle—yes—but I refused to leave empty-handed. As Reyes started shoving the magazines underneath my bed, I snaked a pair of scissors I had hidden inside of my mattress and made quick work of parting Gambrielle’s hair.
“What are you doing?” Reyes whispered with a hiss. Like a conveyor belt, he slung another magazine under the bed. “Solitary is waiting outside your door! We don’t have time for this shit! Fuckin’ crazy ass!” Yes, yes I was.
“I’ve got it under control!” I shot back.
“Bullshit! Let her go!”