I spend the rest of the hour staring down the clock.
Study Hall is a completely different place at night. Everybody has to be there from seven till eight, since we all have to keep up with our schoolwork during our stay at Sick Minds. We’re supposed to be silent, but people whisper and pass notes all the time; whenever the attendant steps out, the room erupts.
Right now, though, it’s quiet. Tara’s painting her nails, Tiffany’s writing a letter to a friend out in the real world, Becca’s asleep, and Debbie’s tracing a magazine picture of a model in a ball gown. Only Sydney is actually doing homework.
The new girl, whose name is apparently Amanda—I checked the chalkboard—is stretched out in a chair in the last row, doing an imitation of being asleep. Her head is leaning against the wall, her eyes are closed, her mouth is curled in a half-smile. I know she’s awake, though, because I can see her bumping the inside of her wrist against the edge of the chair in a rhythmic motion.
Watching her bugs me, so I go back to my French assignment, which is to memorize vocabulary words that might come in handy on vacation, words for things like bikinis, rental cars, and restaurants. Since we aren’t allowed to use pencils here, even for math (they’re considered “sharps”), I have to write with a felt-tip pen, which smears; I crumple the page and start again.
The attendant gets up and says she’s going to take her empty soda can to the recycling bin down the hall. She says she expects us all to behave.
She leaves; instantly, the room comes to life.
“Can I have the nail polish when you’re done?” Sydney asks Tara
“If I can borrow your Walkman,” says Tara
While they’re busy making the switch, Tiffany turns around to check out Debbie’s drawing. Debbie cups her hand over it, too late.
“Why do you do that all the time?” Tiffany says to Debbie.
“Do what?”
“Draw pictures of thin people?”
The attendant comes back, clearing her throat loudly. Tiffany whips around in her seat; everyone goes back to what they were doing.
Debbie’s stunned. She pulls back the tracing paper and studies the model in the magazine. Then she thumbs through her notebook. Pictures of tall, slender women in fancy clothes go by. She gets to the last page and looks up. No one sees but me. Debbie has tears in her eyes.
I turn away, quickly, but Debbie knows I saw. When I look back a few seconds later, she’s draping her sweater over Becca, tucking the fabric around her, the way a mother would. When I first got here, Debbie tried to talk to me; she even offered me a piece of cake her mother sent her. By now, though, I’ve probably scared her away.
Debbie pulls the sweater up around Becca’s neck, which is unbelievably white and fragile, closes her notebook, and stares into space until the attendant says we can go.
Rochelle, the bathroom attendant, is bent over her magazine when I go in to brush my teeth that night. Someone in the toilet stall behind me jiggles the handle. The toilet wheezes, then roars. The sour smell of vomit fills the air.
Becca comes out of the stall, wearing a bathrobe with puppies printed on it and brown furry slippers that are actually shaped like puppies. The stall door bangs in her wake. Then her face is next to mine in the mirror. She dabs the corner of her mouth with toilet paper.
As Becca breezes out, I watch Rochelle out of the corner of my eye. Her lips are moving as she reads; she doesn’t even register Becca going by.
Amanda’s missing at breakfast the next day. This is a big deal because meals are mandatory, even if you’re not a food-issues person. Debbie’s gone over to the cafeteria attendant to find out what’s going on.
“Debbie should butt out,” says Tiffany
“She’s just trying to help,” says Becca
Tiffany rolls her eyes; I run my finger along the metal strip at the edge of the table and notice that it’s ever so slightly loose.
The chimes sound; breakfast is over. There’s a lot of clattering and complaining as people nearby get up to go wherever they’re going. Our group stalls, waiting for Debbie. She hurries back to our table and everyone leans in to hear what she has to say.
“She got caught,” Debbie whispers. “Cutting.”
My cheeks flame. I pull my sleeves down and stare at my lap.
“Eeuww,” says Becca “That’s so gross.”
“Shut up,” says Sydney I don’t look up, but I think she said that for my sake. “So where is she?”
“Hammacher, probably,” says Debbie.
“How do you know?” says Sydney.
“I heard she had to get a shot,” says Debbie. She lowers her voice dramatically. “A sedative.”
The cafeteria attendant comes over and tells us we better get moving, that she’s handing out demerits today. We gather up our trays and head toward the dishroom. I’m by myself, as usual, tagging along behind Tiffany and Sydney.
“They say we’re nuts because we like to get wasted,” Tiffany says, shaking her head. “What that new girl, Amanda, what she does, is crazy.”
Sydney turns around to see if I’ve heard; I turn back to the breakfast table, pretending I’ve forgotten something. Getting a demerit for being late would be better than having to see the worried look on Sydney’s face.
You sit down in your chair, a fresh sheet of paper at the ready.
“I don’t feel like talking today,” I say
You nod. “All right,”you say.
We sit there a while, me studying a shaft of weak winter sunlight, you studying a file.
“Is that mine?” I say.
“Yes.”
I go back to looking at the patch of sun; I decide it’s a rhomboid. “What’s it say?”
“Your file? Not a lot.”
I sit very still.
“There’s some basic information about you, an intake evaluation, a school report.”
A cloud passes by outside; the rhomboid disappears.
“Who wrote the school report?” I say.
You open the file. “A Miss Magee,”you say. “The school nurse.”
“She was a sub.”
“Oh.”
Sun pours in through the window again; the rhomboid is now just a basic parallelogram.
“She was the one who discovered that you were cutting your arms, wasn’t she?”
“She called me sweetie,” I say. Immediately I wish I hadn’t said this.
“Sweetie?”
“Never mind.”
I look for the rabbit crack on the ceiling, but I can’t quite find it.
“She wore socks and sandals,” I say.
“What else do you remember?”
“She said her regular job was at a drug rehab. She said, ‘We let it all hang out there.’She was sort of a hippie.”
You wait to see if I’ll say more.
“I used to get these stomach aches. The regular nurse always sent me back to class.”
“And this substitute nurse? This Miss Magee?”
“She said, ‘Is something bothering you, sweetie?’”
You smile ever so slightly.
“I just kept staring at the eye chart behind her after that. I can still remember the first line: E F S P D.”
