This is my favorite chapter, I swapped a few things around though, this chapter is in first person from Jess' point of view, sorry about the change but I really wanted to get what Jess was feeling. Enjoy and review if you like it.
I received 57 days, the minimum for attempted murder and assault and battery in the first degree. I suppose I should it be grateful, maybe its something in the way the judge looked at me, as my lawyer, discussed how I was crazy and incapable of controlling my actions. I felt like that man on the bench could see right through me. I think I felt guilty because I knew, in the back of my mind, that I was crazy, although crazy is a very loose term. But I knew that if I hadn't been pulled off I would have killed that man, and that was my choice, I chose to get out of the car, pull him out of his car and hit him as hard as I could over and over again. I lay awake at nights, wishing that it really had been Derek, imagining the look on his face as he recognized me and realized he was going to die all in the same thought. I'm still so angry, so hurt I guess. Now according to my lawyer I have 57 days to get back to a normal state of mental health, a term I find hard to understand, pretty sure I've never been at a normal state of mental health. I am the stuff juvenile delinquents are made of. Most of the people here figured it out. Although I still refuse to say it aloud, I probably never will. It makes it real, it makes it scary and it makes me feel sick to my stomach and dangerous. I hope that Luke doesn't find out, I don't want him to think I'm weak, I don't want him to think that I was incapable of fighting back. It seemed in those years all I did was fight, with boys at school who gave me a sideways look, with my mom screaming curses and horrible things I truly meant. But when I truly needed to fight I didn't, I just took it. At ten, I reasoned with myself maybe it was fear and confusion that stopped me, but at 14, I was a teenager, a jaded, angry, bitter teenager who had enough height and weight to throw around in a pinch. I didn't. I was scared shitless of him, I was scared of what he did to me, what he could say. I never wanted anybody to ever find out, so I just took it. The thought of it, still turns my stomach, contracts it in knots. I never tell my counsellor this. I can barely tell myself this. Life here is harder than I thought it would be. I take so many medications, there are sometimes I wake up in the morning wondering who I am, where I am, and why I feel such a horrid pain in the pit of my stomach. They moved me to a different ward when I was sentenced, a ward mostly with young men, my age and older. I hate them, despise them, and try to stay away. They have an underground circuit of drugs, that may take them away from this ward on a subconscious level, but I know they will never truly get out of here. I have higher hope than that. Most days I spend reading, or writing. Sitting by a window, or in my room, trying to make this place go away. Because as the sun shines, 57 days seems an eternity. Sometimes I'm allowed to go outside, but since I'm no ordinary crazy, I'm criminally crazy those visits are far and few in between. The air seems so sweet, the grass seems so soft, I just wish I could stay there, reading with my back against a tree, allowing myself to think that I was somewhere else, somewhere I was happy. I rarely sleep, I lay awake at nights, sitting by the window, thinking and dreaming. Most nights I lay awake, thinking. Sometimes I think of my family, sometimes I think of New York, sometimes I think of Stars Hollow, some days I think about Rory and some days I think of Astoria. Despite all the pills I take in the morning, all the hours I've spent with a young Korean man who asks me imprudent questions about my past, present and future. I still feel nothing, sometimes I feel so desperate, desperate enough to buy a homemade knife from my fellow crazies I hate so. But I never do. Instead, I lay awake at night, digging my fingernails in my skin, digging my teeth, just praying to break the skin. Scratching until I bleed and trying to hide it the next day. Luke comes to visit me sometimes and I think he has accepted it as common knowledge that once my time is up I'll come back with him, to Stars Hollow. Sometimes the thought makes me happy and sometimes the thought makes me break out in a cold sweat. I am confused most of the time.
"Jess." Ira was speaking to me, a tone of anger in his voice that I had faded out on him once again.
I looked up at him. "Ira."
"I hope you realize that you need my signature on your discharge papers, and if I don't sign them, you will go back to the judge and the next one may not be so lenient. You could get years here. Years Jess." The time seemed almost unfathomable, if 57 days could stretch out to eternity, what could years do?
"Years." I repeated. I had 21 days left, less than a month, I could see the end of my 57 days on the calendar, and the thought of more time made me near suicidal.
"So, what do I have to do, to get out of here?" My voice was flat, but a touch of desperate.
"You have to talk to me. Start interacting, start acting like you can survive out in the world."
"I can survive, I did for 19 years, it was no picnic, but I did it."
Ira nodded, patiently, a nod I'm sure he learned in college, in a how to deal with the criminally insane seminar.
"You did, but not well enough, when you came in here, you had over 50 self made scars on your body, some of which were so deep that they will never heal. You uncontrollably beat a man, thinking he was someone else. You lived alone in a basement, where you barely had to interact with anybody. That's not life, that's not surviving."
I could feel anger burning up in my chest. "It was my life! I couldn't do a damn thing about it; my Dad left me, and made it perfectly clear 19 years later, that he didn't give a damn about me. He never thought about me, the way I thought about him. My mom got so sick of me, that she shipped me off, because for most of my life she turned a blind eye to me. She picked drugs, booze and men over me. She didn't care because for four years she knew what Derek was doing to me, and she didn't say a fucking word because he supported her, paid her bills and bought enough booze to put her into a stupor." I sat down, not even remembering standing up.
"What did Derek do to you?" I slouched in my seat, angry with myself that I had let the door open to this.
Ira looked at me, through his frameless glasses, his mouth set evenly, not showing anything, simply waiting for my response.
"You know." I said barely audible.
"I want to hear you say it."
In that moment, I wanted to say it, I wanted to scream it from the rooftops, sick of keeping a secret that was ripping me up inside. I couldn't meet Ira's eyes.
"For four years my Mom's boyfriend snuck in my room and made me have sex with him." I could feel my lips moving, could hear my own voice in my ears, still unable to believe that I said. Also aware of a small weight lifting off my chest, just enough, to that I could breathe. I took in a deep breath, feeling like it was my first feeling of fresh air in my lungs for years.
Walking back to my room later, I almost felt guilty for saying it, felt ashamed. Now I knew it myself, that it had happened, but I also knew that it would never happen again.
Twenty-one days later I left that hospital, I walked out the door, breathed in the fresh air of autumn, my feet crunching on red leaves beneath my feet. I had a bag full of pills with detailed instruction, a number for my parole officer, a book filled with shrinks I didn't intend to call. I knew I wasn't better, but I also knew, that I could survive, maybe not just survive, but live. It was forty-eight blocks to my apartment and I walked them, the best I could. There was still a feeling in my chest, a feeling of hurt, of pain, of pure hatred. A want to see my own blood still rustled in my own head, but I felt better about it. Felt better about going to see Luke, about seeing Astoria, about seeing life.
