Laura
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Group therapy gives me the creeps. I sit there and listen to people talk in strange voices about voices they hear, and then they get taken out of the room when they get too agitated to be shot up with drugs. This has happened to me only once. Once, and I care not to repeat the experience. I don't know what was in those drugs, but whatever it was made me understand why all of them talk like they do. The drugs slow down all your reactions, even your voice, so it sounds a little like the way a deaf person talks: garbled, vowels running together and a very round sound to your words. In short, I sounded like I'd just learned to speak for two hours.
There was one girl who liked to sing. She was pretty new. Really new, in fact. I was shocked when I saw her there. I thought Maggie was the only youthful girl, but this girl was...well, a girl. She was beautiful. Her skin was pale, almost as white as the walls and it looked like she could fade into the drywall and disappear forever. Her eyes were wide and a very lovely blue. She was tall, leggy and possibly as beautiful as Rachel. Well, probably more. I guess Rachel would be the most beautiful thing to me because I – never mind. Anyway, she was ethereal. Frail, thin, ethereal, like she wasn't going to be here long. By here I mean on earth, not in this hellhole. I think from the way she kept instinctively brushing at her shoulder that she used to have long hair. What she did have now was pale, almost white blond. It freaked me out that even the orderlies, the male ones, would check her out. I never found out what was wrong with her, but every day she would sit in her room and sing. Slow, sad folk songs that rang out through the halls and made everyone listen. They made Maggie cry. She pressed her hands to the sides of her head and fisted big handfuls of her short black hair and cried. It wasn't a sort of chest-heaving sobbing, but she shut her eyes tightly and let the tears ooze out. The girl was singing that day, a slow, melancholy song that, surprisingly, I knew the words to. Every time she would start singing, I would quickly start to talk to Maggie about anything, so she wouldn't hear it. She usually did listen, but at least she didn't screw up her face, she just listened to me with tears streaking down her face.
"I know that song," I said desperately. Maggie looked at me blearily, her eyes filled with pools of tears.
"Song?" she asked in her heavy, drugged voice. I nodded. Jesus Christ.
"Yeah. It's a pretty one, isn't it?"
So pretty it's making her cry. Change the subject! She nodded and wiped the back of her hand against the soft line of her jaw where little teardrops were clinging like rain on the edge of a roof.
"What's it called?" she garbled, the query in her voice unmistakable.
"Shenandoah," I said. "I can play it on the guitar."
"You play guitar?"
I saw the tears hesitate for a moment, and her interest seemed completely diverted for a moment. "You play guitar?"
Grateful to have found a subject that I could distract her with, I plowed forward, wishing I hadn't mentioned my former guitar playing days.
"Yeah. I learned it a long time ago, but haven't played for a while."
My little rebellious artist phase. When I was sixteen I felt like the world hated me, so I learned to play the guitar. I started smoking and I played rock songs. Maggie's attention was wavering.
"I bet I can play any song you can name."
Shit.
"Really?" She tilted her head like a child. "Um...Old Time Rock and Roll?"
"Sure," I said. Sure. Sure. Sure I can. Sure I'll play that song. Argh...
"Blaze of Glory?"
"Yeah."
"Your Song?"
"My song- oh. Yeah."
"Pink?"
"Sure."
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds?"
"HahahaaaAAAAAhaaaaa," roared one of the other patients at Maggie's irony. I hate this place. I really hate this place.
"Yeah."
Maggie apparently couldn't think of any other songs she might want me to know how to play, so she stood up without saying a word and walked out of the room. The girl kept singing, her voice lifting up and swelling in the air like the sound of an angel. I wondered what was wrong with her.
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Note to Avanova: You cannot imagine how much your one little review has meant to me! I swear, that review has made me more happy than any other review in the whole of fanfictiondom! Pal, it's on to the favorites list for you! (On my real account, ID:174967) (Eeek, pal, Young Guns, if you've seen that one.) YEEEEP! I thought no one at all had noticed this! *bounces up and down* And I'm so glad you like Maggie. I was trying to keep her creepy, crazy but sympathetic. Aiiie! Thankyouthankyouthankyou. Ooo, on my other profile, Lea of Mirkwood, there's a couple more Kiefer-movie-based fics, if your craving for Kiefer extends into Lost Boys and Young Guns... WEEE! Another Kiefer fan! Another Flatliners fan! (By the way, the other two moderators of this account, Becky/Zeech and Molly/Kadama are Kiefer fans too, but Molly's more of an Emilio gal. Becky has a Young Guns fic. Okay, I'll shut up now.
