she says. “I won’t listen to you not talking.”
I sit down on the little curved seat in the phone booth and reach up to close the door. But there is no door. I forget sometimes that there are no doors here. I pick up the receiver, still warm from the grip of the last person, and stare at the concentric circles of tiny holes in the mouthpiece.
My mother’s voice comes out of the other end, puny and hopeful. “Callie? Is that you?”
I hold my breath. There are kitchen sounds in the background, the thrum of the dishwasher, the closing of a drawer.
“Oh, dear,” she says, the volume in her voice slipping down a notch, as if she were talking to herself. “How do I know if you’re even there?”
My back stiffens; those were the same words the new girl used. I shift around on the little seat, then cough.
“Well, I hope you’re there, Callie, because I have something to tell you.” She waits a minute, then sighs. “OK. They say you’re resisting treatment.”
I switch the receiver to my other hand and wipe my palm on my pants leg.
“Oppositional something or other, they’re calling it. Oppositional behavior.”
Oppositional behavior. It sounds so premeditated, so on purpose.
“Are you listening?”
I forget not to nod—and forget my mom can’t see me nodding.
“They say they might send you home.”
The door frame of the tiny booth quivers. It narrows, then expands.
My mom is saying something about how the people at Sick Minds might want to give my bed to someone else. Someone who’s willing to work. Someone who wants to get better.
The floor of the phone booth pitches up, then swims away.
Now she’s saying something about school. “They won’t let you back in school either,” she says. “Not until you’ve had treatment.”
I hold the receiver away from my ear. My mother’s voice grows small, long-distance—costing us good money…going to give your father a heart attack…don’t understand why…—until finally the phone goes dead and all that’s left is a faint clicking in the wires.
The floor isn’t where it’s supposed to be when I step out of the phone booth; it’s like when you step off a curb without knowing it and put your foot down into thin air. I grab the door frame, then force myself to walk back to my room. But the hall shimmers like a paved road on a hot summer day. Slick green squares of linoleum heave up in my path, then sink away underfoot. There’s an incline, a linoleum hill, a surprisingly tiring hill that gives way, without warning, to a valley, a long, low trench in the hallway between the phone booth and my room.
The lights are out and Sydney’s already in bed when I finally get there. I climb straight into bed and pull the blanket up to my chin even though I’m sweating from the walk back from the phone booth. My shirt and pants bunch up under the covers. I wrestle my shirt back into place, give up on the pants. I listen for Sydney’s breathing. It’s no good. I roll over; my shirt gets twisted around my chest. I turn back the other way and yank it straight.
I roll one way, the room rolls the other. I picture my bed, the bed that Sick Minds wants to give to someone else, falling through a giant trapdoor.
Then I hear Ruby’s footsteps coming toward our door. The rolling stops, the furniture snaps back into place. Then she moves on.
Before the floor can start pitching again, I throw off the covers and crouch down next to the bed. I lift the mattress with one hand, grope around with the other. The mattress is surprisingly heavy. My arm shakes, bows under the weight of it. Then I feel it. Way down near the foot of the bed is the pie plate. I stretch, grab it, and let the mattress come down with a plop.
“Huh?” Sydney sits up in bed, her eyes half-open.
I freeze.
Sydney falls back onto her pillow, sighs, and settles into her steady breathing.
I get back into bed, moving calmly and efficiently now, lie on my stomach, and pull the covers over my head. Inside the dark blanket tent, I fold the pie plate in half, press it flat, bend it back and forth, back and forth, like I’m following a recipe, back and forth, until the fold is crisp. When I rip it, it gives way easily and I have two neat halves, each with a jagged edge.
I lay my index finger lightly on the edge of one half testing it. It’s rough and right.
I bring the inside of my wrist up to meet it. A tingle crawls across my scalp. I close my eyes and wait.
But nothing happens. There’s no release. Just a weird tugging sensation. I open my eyes. The skin on my wrist is drawn up in a wrinkle, snagged on the edge. I pull it in the other direction and a dull throbbing starts in my wrist.
I hold my breath and push down on the piece of metal. It sinks in neatly.
A sudden liquid heat floods my body. The pain is so sharp, so sudden, I catch my breath. There’s no rush, no relief. Just pain, a keen, pulsing pain. I drop the pie plate and grasp my wrist with my other hand, dimly aware even as I’m doing it that this is something I’ve never done before. Never tried to stop the blood. Never interfered. It’s never hurt like this before. And it’s never not worked.
I take my hand away a minute and wipe my wrist on my shirt; the blood pauses, then leaks out again. I go back to gripping my wrist and trying to ignore the throbbing and the pinpricks of sweat on my lip and forehead, then I look down and see blood seeping out between my fingers.
A sizzle of electricity white-hot energy, courses through me. And suddenly I’m up, out of bed, walking out of the room. There’s no thinking now, only walking. Down the hall, around the corner to Ruby’s desk. Holding my arm out, like an offering.
“Oh, child,” Ruby says when she sees me. “Oh, honey child.”
She goes into action, reaching up to the First Aid cupboard and taking my hand in hers, all in one swift motion. She unwinds a roll of gauze, wipes away the blood, then washes the cut with some kind of solution. It burns, but for a moment at least, the throbbing lets up. I can see then that the cut isn’t that deep, that it’s no worse than the others, and I wonder why it bled so much, why I showed it to Ruby.
“It’s a bleeder,” she says, pressing a square of gauze to the cut. “But it’s not deep. No need for stitches.”
She closes both her hands around my wrist, as if she were praying, and pulls them to her chest, so close I can feel it rise and fall as she breathes. She presses with such a sure, steady force that after a while the bleeding stops and the pain begins to drain away.
She lowers my hand finally, puts another bandage over the cut, wraps gauze around my wrist with a dozen or so quick twists, and secures it with a couple of pieces of tape. We stand there a minute regarding her work. Then Ruby lowers herself into her chair, using one arm to support her weight. She drops into the chair with a sigh.
My body feels light all of a sudden, so light it might float off. I imagine myself as a giant Macy’s Parade balloon, floating up, away from Ruby’s desk, high over Sick Minds. I have to sit down.
Ruby leans forward, takes my hands in hers, and pulls them into her lap.
“Scared yourself, did you?” she says.
In the brown-black center of Ruby’s eyes is a tiny, scared reflection of me.
“Why do you want to do a thing like that?” Our hands—ashy white and deep mahogany—are intertwined in Ruby’s lap, the fabric of her dress soft from so many washings.
“Hmmm?” she says, as if I’d said something she hadn’t quite heard. “Why don’t you tell us what’s bothering you?”
I consider pulling free of her grasp, but it would take too much effort and I’m tired now, very tired.
Ruby sighs. “Whatever it is, baby, it can’t hurt worse than this.”
Ruby walks me back to my room, her arm around my waist. This time, there’s no question of how much distance to keep between us; I let myself sink against her. She tells me I’m lucky, that the cut wasn’t deep, that I might have to get a tetanus shot, and that she’ll have to file an incident report. “Standard operating procedure,” she says. It occurs to me that I could be sent home or to Humdinger, and I wish Ruby would tell me one of her home truths or even just what standard operating procedure is, but when we get to my room she seems distracted. She lets go of my waist, reaches into the closet, and pulls out one of the nightgowns my mother bought.
“Put this on, child,” she says. “And give me those clothes to wash. I’ll be right out here waiting.” She steps
