February 2nd 1997

"Skye, go upstairs and tell your brother dinner's ready." My foster dad ordered, taking another large huff of his cigarette.

"He's in the bathroom," I said, scribbling down notes in my green notepad.

"Then get him of there. I didn't ask you just to make conversation,"

I held back the death stare I had longed to give him and held my head up high heading upstairs.

"Trent, dinner's ready." I called, rapping my knuckles on the bathroom door.

"Dad keeps cyanide in the cabinet," Trent called back as if he wasn't even afraid if Dad heard.

"What's cyanide?" I asked.

"Poison, we need to get rid of it. No wait, I've got a better idea. Let's feed it to him."

"What? Trent, open the door!"

"Think about it, he treats us like nothing but shit and we just let him do it!"

"Trent, open the d–"

He suddenly pulled me into the bathroom abruptly and locked the door behind us as if we were desperate to hide from someone. I guess we sort of were.

"Trent, what are you talking about? Put the bottle down!" I said in a loud yet hushed voice.

"This can change our lives, Skye." He held the small bottle close to my face. This didn't even sound like Trent anymore. He was never this loud or passionate about anything. "If we give him this our lives won't turn into shit and we can live happy."

"You can't talk like that. If Dad hears he'll beat you to a pulp,"

"Then when he comes up here we can throw it in his face."

"Stop this! Listen to yourself, you're really talking about killing him? Just please put the bottle down and we can go downstairs and have dinner and pretend this never happened."

"Skye," he sighed deeply. He then looked at the bottle disappointingly and pulled the cork off. He raised the bottle as if he was making a toast. I couldn't believe what he was doing. "If he won't take it, I will."

"Put it down, Trent!"

"You would agree with this solution in the future. You'd know it was the only way."

"Stop it, Trent!"

He shrugged like he didn't care and raised the bottle to his lips.

"TRENT, NO!" I shrieked.

I pushed him to the ground causing the bottle to spill and roll out of his hand. I forced him away from the liquid as he fought against my hands pinned to his wrists. He tried kicking me a few times while screaming that this was the only way for us. But then, he stopped fighting and it looked like he went somewhere else for a moment. Then he blinked a few times and looked around him confusingly as if he didn't know where he was.

"W-what happened?" he asked. I knew he was back to his old quiet self again.

I got off him quickly. He stared around the room scared and confused and pushed himself away from the spilt cyanide all over the floor.

"Skye, what happened to me? I was talking to you in the lounge room just before and…I was just somewhere else!" he stuttered, panicking. "What happened?"

"You said you wanted to kill Daddy," I mumbled.

I helped him up and he just kept staring at the bottle. "I don't remember,"

"It's okay," I assured, hugging his shivering body tightly.

And that's when I realised. Trent had what I had. I wasn't the only one who suffered from the blackouts. Did I really do things like that when I had a blackout?

"What are you two doing in there? Get downstairs now!" Dad growled, making both Trent and I jump.

"We'll be there soon, we just spilt water on the floor!" I called.

"Well hurry the fuck up or I'll give your food to the dog!"

We waited until we knew he was gone to talk again. Trent's breathing started becoming heavy and fast as he stared at me wide-eyed and his body still quivering.

"Trent, Ssh, it's okay. You didn't hurt anyone you just scared me a little. Let's just clean this up, go downstairs and we'll talk about this later. I promise, everything is going to be fine." I declared, holding his face securely between my hands.

"I–I…I," Trent choked, crying hard now. "I d-don't remember,"

Present Day

I assumed Trent didn't want to see me again for a while. I could have been sad about it but was still getting over the fact that who I saw was in fact Trent. He was just so different from the Trent I remembered. I didn't even get the chance to ask him how long it had been since he had a blackout. I wanted to know if his stopped like mine did or if he could remember anything. But after everything today, I knew it was the last thing he wanted to be reminded of.

I threw my bag on the living room chair and sunk lazily in the couch, drawing out a long huff of breath. But I didn't relax for long when I noticed a suitcase at the corner of my eye.

"Gramma," I called, jumping up from the couch and commencing to the kitchen. "There's a suitcase at the front door."

"Yes, there is." was all she said.

"Well, whose is it?"

"You seriously have to ask?" a voice said from behind me. The girl with long black hair tied in a neat ponytail smiled at me cheekily.

"Amelia?" I exclaimed as we ran into each other's arms laughing.

Amelia is my pen pal from New Orleans. When I started writing to her, I just chose a random name from the phone book and didn't hesitate to write everything I felt down. I wasn't worried that she would tell anyone because I didn't give her a return address until I was out of the mental institute. That's when I really wanted an answer back because I didn't have Trent to talk to anymore. We became really good friends and this was only the third time I had seen her.

"Bitch," she said teasingly, shoving my shoulders. "Why have you stopped writing me?"

"Hey, don't bite my head off, I go to college."

"Yes, reading crap about how the first president got a hangnail. Fine, I guess I can let that slide but you still forgot that I was coming."

"I can explain…I made plans to see Trent and I guess I just got distracted by that."

"Well, how is he?"

I opened my mouth to say something but pursed my lips closed. She seemed to have gotten the picture. When Amelia was serious, she was a really understanding person.

"Did you…bring my letters?" I asked in a whisper.

She looked as though she was expecting me to ask this and gestured upstairs and we both sprinted for the guest room. I sat on the bed and she glanced over at the door while searching through a bag as though to check to see if anyone was coming.

"Every single one of them," she replied, handing me a large file.

I widened my eyes. "All of them?"

"Mm-hm," she nodded, sitting beside me. "Thirteen years of letters just like you asked for."

I started searching through the file but I hesitated and thought hard about what I was doing. Was I really ready to look back at my childhood? Did I really want to risk remembering things that gave Trent and me nightmares?

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Amelia asked.

I finally came to the conclusion and nodded. "Choose one for me. I don't think I can start from the beginning."

I closed my eyes as she picked one of the letters at random and read it quickly before handing it to me.

"This was only a few years ago when you were in the institute." Amelia explained. "Just take a deep breath. Remember, no one's forcing you to do this."

"I have to read them sometime. Either I'm going to start now or I'm never going to read them."

"But what good is it going to do you?"

"I don't know. Maybe if I read these I can just try and remember. I can't talk anymore, I have to do this now."

I began reading before I could change my mind.

"November fourteenth two-thousand-and-four," I started reading aloud. "Dear Amelia, I thought I was going to be put in a straightjacket today. Because when I had my last blackout I was attacking Jena for a reason I can't remember. It's a weird feeling being–"

Things around me began to shiver, but it stopped as soon as I noticed it. I looked up and Amelia to see if she had seen anything. But she was still listening to me intently.

"You okay?" she asked.

I nodded and continued to read. "It's a weird feeling to be really happy at first and then at the blink of an eye you're so mad you could kill someone."

Things started to shake again, rougher this time, but I kept reading. "Everyone looked at me as if I had done something really terrible, including Trent. I hear whispers around the hospital saying they can't believe what I said. I wish I could remember what I said but in a way–"

Now everything was shaking violently. But the odd part was the words on the page were shaking unevenly to everything else.

"What's happening?"

"Are you okay?" Amelia asked again, she was still sitting casually looking at me concerned.

Everything happened in a blink, and I was sucked into the words of the letter and suddenly I was sitting at a table with a 'connect four' stand and there were two hospital bracelets around my wrists. There were noises here and there around the room from low cries to sudden barking. I'm in the hospital.

"Skye," Trent said in front of me. His black hair was longer like I was used to and he looked a lot happier. "So, do I win?"

I thought of every possible explanation. Oh my god, it's happened. I've actually gone insane. This is some kind of weird mental breakdown. Or maybe I overdosed on meds. Can you overdose on ventolin? No, I've been in the mental hospital this whole time, and the three years ahead were just an alternate universe I made up in my head.

"Are you okay?" Trent asked.

I forced myself to calm down and think clearly. "W-what's going on?"

"Hey guys," Jena greeted as she approached our table, twitching her shoulders and scrunching her eyes. "Can I play?"

That's when I realised why I attacked her (or was going to attack her). I had thought in the past that maybe it was because of her annoying tics or the fact that she wanted to be my friend when I wanted to be left alone for a little while. But I finally got it. I knew her from the foster home I came from. Trent's parents were originally going to take her under their wing but Jena didn't want to go so I went instead. It was her fault. My life wouldn't be so screwed up if it wasn't for her. Neither would Trent's. Because of her, our lives were now being lived in an insane asylum. I was so angry it began to scare me.

"You…" I mumbled.

"What?" Jenna asked, knotting her eyebrows in confusion.

"FUCK YOU!" I screamed, smacking the 'connect four' stand across her face.

As soon as she fell to the floor I didn't give her time to breathe. I pinned her down and began punching and slapping her harder than I thought I could.

"Fuck you! You fucking ruined us!" I screamed in her face followed by other insults that involved the word 'fuck'.

As Jena kicked and screamed under me while others just stared, I could see at the corner of my eye that one of the teenage patients was filming me on their phone. I didn't care. I was already in a mental home, what more could be done to me?

Abruptly, I scraped my nails down Jena's face just before a nurse picked me up and spoke to me calmly as if I was only stressing out.

"Now Skye, calm down, calm down!" the nurse urged me, pulling me off Jena. "It's okay, let's go to Doctor Michael, alright?"

Suddenly, as quick as a flash, I was back in my room bolting upright as if I had woken up from a horrible nightmare.

"Thank God," Amelia sighed in relief, putting her hand to her chest. "I thought you were dead."

"What happened?" I asked.

"You were reading the letter and you passed out. Skye, I don't think you should read it anymore."

"I need to get on the computer," my mind was racing. I jumped on the spinning chair in front of my computer.

"No Skye, what you need is to rest. I saw it, your eyes were rolling back."

I wasn't listening. I was too busy looking at every internet video under the words 'mental patients breakdown', 'mental patients fight' but it turned out my video was listed 'mental patients bitch tackle'.

There I was on the screen tackling Jenna who was crying under me while I screamed 'fuck you' in her face.

"Oh god, it actually happened." I mumbled, snagging my bag from the end of my bed. "I have to see Trent!"