Author's note: Hey guys, sorry it's been so long since the last update. So, I'll be able to update this summer because my school let us keep the chromebooks over the summer. You can also expect more chapters because I'll be working on this story for camp nanowrimo. As always, please write any constructive criticism in the reviews, thanks.
Lapis was lying on her side on her bed, staring at Peridot as as she read. She looked so familiar, it was driving Lapis insane-or even more insane than she already was considering the fact she was a patient in a mental hospital-but she could not place where she had seen her before. She went on like this, racking her brain for the answer, for what felt like an hour but in reality was less than five minutes, when something in her brain finally connected and she shot up into a sitting position, glaring at Peridot.
"That's how I know you!"
Peridot looked at her, surprise painted all over her face. "What?" She squeaked.
"Your Jasper's cousin!"
"I-I uh," Peridot stuttered. "You should calm down, we'll get in trouble for yelling."
Lapis lowered her voice. "You're Jasper's cousin. You two used to always bully me."
"Well technically I would cower behind her as she bullied you."
"That's not the point!" Lapis struggled to keep her voice down. "The point is that you did nothing. You just watched, you watched as she pushed me down, embarrassed me, ugh!" Lapis stood up and walked towards the door. "I can't share a room with you." She walked out of the room, not bothering to let Peridot say anything else.
oOoOo
Not knowing where to go, Lapis went down the hall, she was walking as fast as she could without running. Not paying attention to her surroundings, she fell to the ground when she turned a corner.
"Oof"
Lapis looked who she had run into, to see a young bow with curly, dark brown hair on the floor next to her. "Uh, sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going."
"No, it's fine, don't worry about it." He said as he stood up, holding his hand out to Lapis so he could help her up. "Are you new here?"
"Yeah, just got here today. I'm Lapis."
"I'm Steven." He smiled. "Why were you going down the hall so fast? You might want to be more careful about doing that here, I can think of a couple patients who wouldn't react so well if you ran into them."
"Oh, my roomate and I we, well, we didn't get along that well." She looked down at the floor.
"In that case I'll take you to my mom's office." Steven started walking towards the stairs.
"Wait, I thought we weren't supposed to leave the floor, and who's your mom?"
"Oh, I'm Rose's son, so people won't care as long as you're with me."
"Your her son? Does that mean you aren't a patient?"
"No, I'm not a patient. I just like to spend my time here." He said, as the walked down the stairs, still smiling.
Damn he's a cheery kid. "You like to spend time here?"
"Yeah, I like to spend time with my parents and I'm friends with most of the patients here." He looked at her, "By the way, who's your roommate?"
"Oh yeah, it's Peridot."
"Really? I know she's a bit stubborn and sometimes she can be a bit self absorbed, but she really is a great friend once you get to know her. I'm sure if you just spend a bit more time with her you'll be great friends."
"No, Steven, it's more than that." Lapis sighed. "We used to know each other, and it's just, I can't share a room with her. I'm here to recover, and I don't think I can do that if i have to spend more time than necessary with her. Although, I guess I should consider myself lucky that she's here and not her cousin Jasper."
"Jasper?" Lapis noticed how Steven sounded nervous when he said that. "Um, you wouldn't happen be talking about a Jasper that's really tall, has long, orangish-blond hair, very muscular?"
"Uh yeah, I am. How did you - shit, is she here too?" Lapis began to panic. "God damn it. I really need to speak to Rose."
"Y-yeah we're almost there." Steven said as they reached the bottom of the stairs.
When they reached the front room, he called out to Lily, "Lily is my mom with a patient?"
"No, not at the moment."
"Okay, good. C'mon, Lapis."
They reached Rose's office and Steven knocked on the door.
"Hi Steven. Lapis?" Rose greeted when she opened the office door. "Is something wrong?"
"Um, Rose can I talk to you?" Lapis asked
"Yes, of course you can."
"Sorry Steven," Lapis looked down at him. "This is sorta something I need to talk to Rose about privately."
"Okay, I'll see you later." Steven waved, a concerned expression on his face, as he began to walk back down the hallway. "See ya, mom."
"Bye Steven." Rose waved back before turning to Lapis. "Come into my office." She held the door open for Lapis as she walked into her office and sat on the pink couch. She closed the door and sat down behind her desk before asking, "So, what's wrong? You both seemed very rushed when I opened the door."
"Well, my roommate, Peridot, and I know each other. We used to go to the same school and we weren't exactly the best of friends." Lapis explained.
"Okay, can you please specify your relationship with her?"
"Her cousin, Jasper, who apparently is here too-"
"I'm sorry to interrupt but I want to make sure we're thinking of the same Jasper, hold on." Rose got out of her chair and walked over to a shelf with multiple picture frames on it. The pictures in the frames of Rose with what Lapis assumed were patients. She picked up a picture of her with three girls and brought it over to Lapis. Pointing to the tall girl in the middle, she asked, "Is this her?"
"Yeah, that's her."
After putting the picture back where it was and sitting back in her chair, Rose said, "Okay, you're right. Jasper is here. Please continue where you left off."
"Well, Jasper would bother some of the quieter students, including me, and Peridot was always by her side. How Jasper treated me, it sort of, I don't know, I guess it affected me. I mean, I didn't make me any happier. I just don't think that I can share a room with Peridot."
"Okay, well, I think we should call Peridot down here and let her tell her side of the story. I've known her for a long time, and while she sometimes does lack empathy, it isn't her fault."
"Okay, we'll call her down." Lapis agreed. It's not like it'll do any good, but lets humor her.
Rose held a button down on the phone on her desk and spoke into the speaker, "Petunia, please bring Peridot down to my office."
"Alright, Rose. I'll be there with her in just a minute." Said a voice through the other end of the line.
"Thank you." Rose said before lifting her finger off of the button. She then said to Lapis, "Petunia is one of the nurses stationed on the fourth floor, so this won't be the last time you see her."
Lapis just hummed in response. As they both sat there, waiting in silence for Peridot and Petunia, Lapis took this as an opportunity to look around Rose's office. It was easy to tell that it was Rose who decorated it. The couch Lapis was sitting on, along with many of the folders, pens, and other tools on the desk were a pastel pink. The floors, desk, and shelves were built out of a dark wood, with a white area rug covering most of the room was bright, with a large window behind Rose. The only other source of light in the room came from the cloudlike lamps covering the ceiling. Many of the shelves were home to a variety of plants, a small vase of different colored roses was sitting in the corner of Rose's desk. Other shelves held books that ranged from Shakespeare to Harry Potter to guides on different mental illnesses. The shelf that Rose had taken the picture of Jasper from was full of other picture frames; pictures of Rose with kids of all ages, some smiling, some not. The room itself was comforting.
Her train of thought was interrupted by a knock on the door.
"Come in." Answered Rose.
Lapis watched as a young woman almost as short as Peridot opened the door. She had tan skin and black hair styled into a pixie cut. "I've brought Peridot." Peridot walked into the room, visibly nervous, and sat down on the couch, as far from Lapis as she could.
"Thanks, Petunia. You can go back to whatever you were doing."
"Alright, Rose. See you later." As Petunia closed the door, Lapis noticed how she eyed her curiously.
"Okay, Peridot, do you know why I wanted you to come to my office?"
"Yeah, I do." Peridot said, avoiding eye contact.
"Good. I want you and Lapis to talk this over." Looking at Lapis she said, "Just switching your roommate won't solve this issue. I need you two to talk this over. Lapis, I've heard your side of the story, it would be helpful if you went into more detail but we'll listen to Peridot's side of the story first. Okay?"
"Okay." Lapis and Peridot agreed.
"So, Rose, you already know this but Jasper sort of forced me to hang out with her. Since we were the same age our parents encouraged it and since we shared multiple classes it wasn't easy to get away from her." Peridot started fidget with the hem of her t-shirt. "She bothered, well, not just bothered, she bullied a lot of the kids at school. She was always trying to get me to play along but for the majority of the time I would just hide behind her." She began to speak louder. "It's not like I wanted to bully my classmates. I didn't have a choice."
"Okay Peridot, let's let Lapis speak now. Thank you for sharing."
Lapis didn't know what to say, she never payed attention to whether Peridot was actually harassing the students like Jasper was. She only focused on the fact that she was there, with Jasper at the time. But that didn't stop her from wondering something else. "Okay then, so you weren't partaking in the harassment of your fellow students. Why didn't you tell a teacher or guidance counselor about how Jasper was treating us?"
"Why didn't you?" Peridot asked.
"What?"
"I said, Why didn't you? Why didn't you talk to a teacher or guidance counselor?"
"Because-because...I don't know, because I couldn't!"
"Why not?"
"Because I was scared! Okay? I was scared, just like how I was scared to talk to anyone about how shitty I was feeling, and In case you were wondering, I'm still feeling pretty shitty, which is why I'm here." Lapis stopped suddenly, realising that she had stood up sometime during her outburst she slowly sat back down on the couch.
"Okay, well I'm sorry about forcing that out of you, but you basically answered your own question." Peridot said. "I didn't tell anyone because I was scared. What would our parents say, what would the faculty say, when I accused the star of the football team to be a bully?"
"Well crap." Lapis let out a halfhearted laugh. "Guess I never realised that others were scared about that type of shit too."
"Lapis," Both girls looked over to Rose. They had been so engrossed in their rants they had almost forgotten she was their. "I'm glad that you're beginning to understand each other's side of the story, but could you please watch your language?"
"Ha, yeah sorry 'bout that." Lapis began to laugh, but she stopped short when she remembered something important. "Um, so there's still one other issue now that I'm not as pissed off-sorry Rose-at Peridot. What about Jasper?"
"Oh, yes. I'll make sure you two are never grouped together and that she has no reason to be near you. Usually, in a situation like this I would want you to talk it over with her like you and Peridot did. But Jasper is...hard to reason with. I already have to keep her separated from certain patients." Rose sighed. "At this point it's just easier on the patients and me if we just keep her separated from them."
"Does she do what you tell her?" Lapis asked.
"Yes, for the most part. She'll follow directions if she's at risk of having any of her privileges taken away."
"It's true." Peridot spoke up. "At first she still tried to hang around me, but Rose noticed how uncomfortable it was making me and got her to keep a distance."
"Okay, good, that works, it'll be fine." Lapis said, mostly in an attempt to convince herself that it would, in fact, be fine.
-"Great." Rose smiled. "Do you think you'll be able to share a room with Peridot?"
She still didn't completely forgive Peridot, but seeing her side of things, she didn't hate her. "Yeah, I can share a room with her."
"Really?" Peridot asked, eyes wide. "Because I understand if you still wouldn't want to…"
"Really, it's fine. Sharing a room with you won't be as awful as I thought when I first came down here." Lapis joked.
"Okay girls, I'll have to ask you to leave. I have a private session that I need to finish preparing for. If there's anything else you need help with you can either come down here, speak to Greg, or speak to Peony."
"Alright, bye Rose." Peridot said as she stood up from the couch.
"Thanks." Lapis said and waved goodbye as she followed Peridot out of the room.
After Lapis closed the door behind them, Peridot spoke. "Listen, Lapis, I really am sorry. I don't want you to think I just said that stuff because Rose was there."
Lapis held her hand up, signaling Peridot to stop talking. "I said it's fine. I understand now. You were just as scared as I was. Plus, you guys are family, and I'm sure that made it even worse for you. Most of my anger was for Jasper but I was directing it at you. How about we leave it at us both being cowards."
Peridot let out a small laugh. "Yeah, that's fair." She began walking back to their room, away from Rose's door. "We should go back now, it's almost time for lunch."
