I stare out of the window, watching the dim glow of the sun fade over the forest on the other side of the hospital parking lot, trying to unravel the mess I find myself tangled up in. When did we stop supporting each other? When did it become more important to bow and scrape to the likes of Jake Weaving than to have each other’s backs? When did our friendships lose their value so dramatically that we were willing to overlook heinous, brutal crimes simply to maintain our status in the pointless, short-term eco-system that is high school?
Halliday sits on the edge of the chair by the desk, watching me intently. The weight of her gaze on my back burns through the fabric of my cheer uniform. I know she wants to talk to me, but I’m not interested in a catch-up session. Not right now. My mind’s racing, too full, too many thoughts chasing around one another in a maddening dervish; it’s taking all my strength just to stand quietly at the window without screaming at the top of my lungs.
A long time passes. I grow numb as I watch the dusk creep over the horizon. All of a sudden, it’s fully dark outside and there are pinpricks of flickering white light scattered across the clear night sky. “Beautiful, huh?” Halliday murmurs beside me. God knows when she came and stood beside me, but I get the feeling from the way she’s dejectedly resting her forehead against the glass that she’s been there a while. “Remember when we were little? We used to try and count them all. We thought, if we closed one eye and worked our way from left to right, we’d be able to keep track.”
“I remember.” The croaky voice on the other side of the room startles both of us. I must have been really zoned out, because Zen is awake and she’s sitting up in the bed, hugging her knees to her chest.
“Kacey used to laugh at us,” she says quietly. “She said we were stupid for even trying, but we never listened. We used to sit outside in our sleeping bags in middle of winter and stuff our faces with marshmallows.”
Four young girls, still children, huddled together for warmth and laughing up at the sky: those memories seem so distant now that it comes as a shock to even recall them. We were innocent once. We weren’t always this selfish, unkind, lost.
“Othello pooped in your hoody,” I say, smirking a little. Othello, Zen’s old family dog, had come with us on a number of trips up to the cabin. He always looked like he was grinning, tongue lolling out of the side of his head. Usually meant he’d shit somewhere he wasn’t supposed to. The hoody shitting incident had been particularly unforgettable, because Zen hadn’t noticed the present Othello had deposited in her clothes and had put on the hoody in question. It’d taken at least half an hour for the smell to become unbearable, at which point we’d discovered the smeared dog shit caked deep into the back of Zen’s tightly curled hair.
She huffs sadly, rubbing her hand over the back of her bare skull, her eyes gazing unfocused out of the window. “Yeah. I guess I don’t need to worry about getting shit in my hair anymore, huh? I’m going for a more minimalist look these days.”
“I think it looks cool,” Halliday offers very seriously, heading over to sit on the edge of Zen’s bed. “Edgy, y’know. Very Demi Moore in G.I. Jane.”
Zen hides her face behind her legs, so only her eyes are peeking out over the tops of her knees. “Come on. We all know it’s more of a Britney, post meltdown look.”
“No. No way.” Hal shakes her head firmly. “Britney was fucking crazy.”
This elicits a hard, derisory bark of laughter from the bald girl in the bed. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m being held captive in a hospital psychiatric ward. That’s usually where they put the crazy people, Hal.”
Halliday growls, shoving at Zen until she grudgingly shifts over in the bed, making room for her. Once she’s settled and she’s made herself comfortable, her back bolstered up against the pillows, Halliday puts an arm around Zen’s shoulder and forces her to snuggle. Zen—always loud, always confident, always brash and larger than life—looks like a broken and frail little girl tucked into Halliday’s side. “There’s a difference between crazy and sad. You haven’t lost your mind,” she whispers.
“Feels like it.” Zen’s eyes close. She folds her arms into her chest, curling up tighter against Halliday, and for the first time I notice the white dressings wrapped around both of her wrists. I assumed Zen had taken a bunch of pills or something. I imagined herself getting comfortable in bed and relaxing, tossing a bunch of Vicodin down her throat and polishing it all off with a bottle of Malbec. Seemed like a very Zen suicide attempt. Slitting your wrists is another level. From the way her dressings are taped, she cut vertically, not horizontally. She meant business. This wasn’t a cry for help. She wanted to purge her blood, like letting it out would release all of her pain and the poison inside of her at the same time. Holy shit…
Zen takes a shuddering breath and opens her eyes, slowly turning her head to look at me—the first time she’s looked at me without open hatred on her face in nearly a year. “What did she have to say to talk you into this? Or was the chance to say I told you so too good to pass up?” she asks stiffly.
I have to push around the block in my throat in order to speak; it isn’t an easy task. “I only came for the food. Wednesdays are meatloaf night in the cafeteria.” Zen pulls a face, smiling a little, but the wariness in her eyes lets me know that my presence here is putting her on edge. I’m right there with her. Suddenly, this all seems too much, and I’m too tired and rundown by everything to stand up a second longer. I slump down into the chair Halliday was occupying before, sighing heavily. “I’m not here to make you feel bad, Zen. I’m not here to make you feel better, either. I’m just…here.”
That’s what I needed, back then. To not be alone. I didn’t want the fuss, and the blame, or the pity and the questions. I just wanted to feel like I wasn’t tumbling down into the murky black depths of a bottomless pit all by myself. It would have been comforting to know that I could have reached out at any point and somebody would have taken hold of my hand.
There have been many wrongs committed over the past twelve months. Zen’s far from free of blame, but it serves no purpose to cling onto that at the moment. If she needs me, then I’ll be here for her, because right here, right now, that’s the right thing to do.
At seven, a nurse busts us in Zen’s room and shoos us out before evening visitation hours. She could cause a real stink, since we broke into the ward and flaunted a number of the hospital’s other rules in the process, but she does the kind thing and advises us not to do it again. Halliday and I hurry away from the psychiatric ward like there’s a fire licking at our heels.
As we cut through the emergency room to make our way out of the hospital, a familiar face halts me in my tracks. The woman smiles broadly at me, weaving her way across the crowded E.R. “Hi, Silver. Great to see you up and on your feet. Tell me you haven’t been performing any split lifts, though,” she says, eyeing my Sirens uniform. “’Cause that would not be smart.”
“No, Dr. Romera. I’m starting off slow. Keeping my feet on the ground until I get the all-clear from you guys.”