We’re never in darkness. Every room has lights in the walls that ping on at four p.m. and ping off at six a.m. They’re small, but bright. Louisa doesn’t like light. Scratchy curtains cover the windows and she makes sure to pull them shut, tightly, every night before bed, to block out the squares of yellow from the office building next door. Then she drapes the bedsheet over her head for good measure.
Tonight, as soon as she’s asleep, I kick the sheets off and pull the curtains apart. Maybe I’m looking for the salt stars. I don’t know.
I pee in the metal toilet, watching the silent lump of Louisa beneath her pile of covers. In the weird mirror, my hair looks like snakes. I squeeze the mats and dreads in my fingers. My hair still smells like dirt and concrete, attic and dust, and makes me feel sick.
How long have I been here? I am waking from something. From somewhere. A dark place.
The bulbs in the hallway ceiling are like bright, long rivers. I peek into the rooms as I walk. Only Blue is awake, holding her paperback all the way up to the ping-light to see.
No doors, no lamps, no glass, no razors, only soft, spoonable food, and barely warm coffee. There’s no way to hurt yourself here.
I feel jangly and loose inside, waiting at the nurses’ station, drumming my fingers on the countertop. I ding the little bell. It sounds horrible and loud in the quiet hall.
Barbero rounds the corner, his mouth full of something crunchy. He frowns when he sees me. Barbero is a thick-necked former wrestler from Menominee. He still has a whiff of ointment and adhesive. He only likes pretty girls. I can tell, because Jen S. is very pretty, with her long legs and freckled nose, and he’s always smiling at her. She’s the only one he ever smiles at.
He puts his feet up on the desk and pops some potato chips into his mouth. “You,” he says, salty bits fluttering from his lips to his blue scrubs. “What the fuck do you want at this time of night?”
I take the pad of sticky notes and a pen from the countertop and write quickly. I hold up the sticky note. HOW LONG HAVE I BEEN HERE?
He looks at the sticky note. He shakes his head. “Uh-uh. Ask.”
I write, NO. TELL ME.
“No can do, Silent Sue.” Barbero crumples the chip bag and stuffs it into the trash. “You’re gonna have to open that fucked-up little mouth of yours and use your big-girl voice.”
Barbero thinks I’m afraid of him, but I’m not. There’s only one person I’m afraid of, and he’s far away, on the whole other side of the river, and he can’t get to me here.
I don’t think he can get to me, anyway.
Another sticky note. JUST TELL ME, YOU OAF. My hands are shaking a little, though, as I hold it up.
Barbero laughs. Chips clot the spaces between his teeth.
Sparks go off behind my eyes and my inside music gets very loud. My skin numbs as I walk away from the nurses’ station. I’d like to breathe, like Casper says, but I can’t, that won’t work, not for me, not once I get angry and the music starts. Now my skin isn’t numb but positively itches as I roam, roam, looking, looking, and when I find it and turn around, Barbero’s not laughing anymore. He’s Oh, shit-ing and ducking.
The plastic chair bounces off the nurses’ station. The container holding the pens with plastic flowers taped to them falls to the floor, the pens fanning out across the endless beige carpet. The endless, everywhere beige carpet. I start to kick the station, which is bad, because I have no shoes, but the pain feels good, so I keep doing it. Barbero is up now, but I grab the chair again and he holds out his hands, all Calm down, you crazy fucker. But he says it really soft. Like, maybe he’s a little afraid of me now. And I don’t know why, but this makes me even angrier.
I’m raising the chair again when Doc Dooley shows up.
