Julian looks doubtful, and it pisses me off.
“Hey!” I say sharply, and he flinches. “I don’t lie to you.” Julian’s eyes are like saucers, shocked and a little wary. I’m still frustrated, but it’s dwindling, or maybe it’s splitting. Locking onto Russell. Onto Emerald. Onto me. “I don’t lie.”
SITTING IN A circle in the room with too many windows, I wait for the day to begin. As I watch the other kids talking and hugging, it reminds me of the concert I went to with Adam last fall, when I saw the intimacy of his friends. All these kids were once confined together, and they all love and hate each other like family.
Annie, the girl with round red cheeks and no hair, takes the empty seat next to me and asks without warning, “Who put you in the wheelchair?”
Over the past couple of days, she’s the only person who’s tried to talk to me other than the staff. While the other kids have a hard, almost-scary toughness about them, she’s soft and sweet. Like Shirley Temple, if Shirley was a teenager who fell on hard times.
“N-no one,” I say. “I’m just…weak. Because I haven’t been eating.” I can tell she doesn’t believe me, and I know what I must look like with all the cuts, bruises, and broken fingers. It’s humiliating.
When the counselor, a woman with short spiky brown hair and a white coat, takes her seat, we start as usual by setting goals, then checking in. I hate it. It’s worse than school, where the teachers actually prefer it if you never speak.
After an hour of this we’re allowed to write in our journals. I use my hands to spin the wheels of my chair, propelling myself into a corner of the room.
At lunchtime, trays of food are delivered from the kitchen. Mine is the only one with a name taped to the lid, since I have a special diet of bland foods. I study the baked chicken, brown rice, sliced carrots, and yogurt. I can’t imagine eating anything, but I know Adam will ask, and I don’t think I’ll be able to lie.
I open the container of plain yogurt, taking a cautious bite. It has a strange texture, not quite solid, not quite liquid. It’s like…toothpaste. I gag and spit into my napkin.
Back inside the circle, I fiddle with the hem of my T-shirt. My pajama pants are long, but when I cross my legs I can see dark hair sprouting on my shins. It looks strange. I’m wearing hospital socks and I want to wear shoes like everyone else, but my sneakers are still somewhere inside Russell’s house.
The woman who’s running group pulls a question from a plastic box. What would you like to change about your lives? No one wants to answer first, so we go in order around the circle.
The group leader pulls out another question. If you could confront someone who has harmed you, what would you say? Around the circle again.
When she stops at me, I shake my head. She looks unsatisfied, but turns to the boy with all the piercings. He tells us again why he hates his mother and why he still thinks she deserves to die.
Annie is next, and she says in her soft, small voice that she’d confront her stepbrother Chris. She tells us that she and Chris always fought, and sometimes it got physical. One day, she was so frightened she ran and hid beneath the car in their neighbor’s driveway. Chris found her and took hold of her ankles to drag her out. She reached up to stop him, not realizing that beneath the car, the engine was still hot.
Annie lifts her arm to show us the long shiny burn. She tells us about the pain, how much it shocked her, how she cried and told Chris that she was hurt, but he didn’t care. He crouched down, reached under the car, and dragged her out by her hair.
Annie looks away from us, ashamed. I imagine her stepbrother, someone bigger, stronger. Then I imagine her, burned and afraid. “The things that went on in our house,” Annie says, “you wouldn’t believe. I feel sorry for him really. I was the stupid one who…” She goes on, insulting herself, pitying him, explaining away everything he did as if it’s okay for him to hurt her.
It’s not.
IT’S OFFICIAL—MY MOM’S been granted temporary custody of Julian. Delores comes into the room to say her good-byes, and then I follow her out into the hall. She gives me a strong hug. “I’m going to miss you, Adam, you know that?”
“I’ll miss you too.”
“I know as soon as you all get out of here, you won’t want to think back on any of this, but if you ever do, you come see me.”
“I will.” I hug her again. “Delores, before you go—has there been any word on Russell?”
“No.” She sighs. “The police did their interviews. They know he was fired last year after some incident with a woman at work, but no one there seems to know anything about him.”
“It’s so weird that he wasn’t working. Julian said he was always gone on business.”
“The last job he had that required any sort of travel was four years ago. He was fired from that one too.”
“How was he paying for everything?”
“Julian was paying.”