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I don't know how, but my stay at All Saints is completely covered.
It's a free week of being told I'm sick, that it's not my fault, that I need to develop better coping skills.
I sit in a circle and listen to everyone's sob stories and do all the necessary shit they expect from me.
This is my third time in one of these places. The third time I've tried to…end it. The first time, I'd swallowed a bottle of aspirin at my job stocking the grocery store. Threw up right there in the frozen food section. I was sixteen.
The second time was on my 21st birthday. A friend dragged me out to a bar, got me drunk, and ended up leaving me there. Some poor girl found me in the bathroom, slumped over in the handicap stall with my wrists open and bleeding all over the place. At the hospital, they kept asking me what I used to do it-they didn't find anything on me sharp enough. I'd shrugged. I didn't remember—still don't remember-but I think I flushed whatever it was down the toilet.
No one picks me up from All Saints. I walk the fifteen blocks home in the early morning three days later and take the stairs to my apartment slowly. It's a depressing square of a room, the walls a flat white. The only furniture is a mattress without a bedframe situated in one corner and it's the only evidence that someone lives here aside from the peanut butter and moldy bread sitting on the kitchen counter.
I sigh at the idea of going to the corner store, and settle for a spoonful of peanut butter for breakfast, knowing that I need to eat something before I take my meds. I still have twenty minutes until I need to leave for work, so I take my time eating and changing into something presentable enough to take phone calls in an office all day for rich men who don't know my name.
Then it's time for meds. An antidepressant. An anti-anxiety. A beta blocker. A smattering of vitamins.
I take them at once, washing them down with a handful of water from my kitchen sink, relief working its way into my bones at the quieting of whatever it is that ripples under my skin at any given time. That thrumming of nerves, that itchy feeling of wrongness.
Anxiety, the doctors say to me now. Psychosis? they'd whispered, confused, to my mother when I was small. Psychosomatic, they insist as a means to explain the violent migraines that threaten to swallow me whole so often that living becomes pain and fear and hell.
Hence the suicidal tendencies.
Hence, the medication.
My walk to my job at Cullen Industries is cold, the January wind biting through my threadbare jacket. I stand too long outside, gazing up at the spot where the tip of the skyscraper meets the clouds. I glance to my left, to the bit of sidewalk I would have gone splat on if not for the Vigilante's meddling. Orange cones and yellow caution tape surround the decimated concrete that forms a human shape.
I work on the 34th floor at a desk outside some VP of Something's office. Mr. Cheney hardly gets any calls I have to field except for ones from his wife, Angela, and his mistress, Ashley. It's very easy to mix them up.
"You're late," The receptionist for the President of Something, Jessica, snaps, the lights on my call panel blinking red with alarming frequency. She's a little older than me, already in her thirties and I think she's getting permanent frown lines around her mouth just by working near me.
I don't bother apologizing.
Not that there's anything to say sorry to her about. Except for maybe my whole being-alive-thing. My mere existence seems to irritate her. Probably because I'm a shitty receptionist. The Angela-Ashley thing is the only reason Cheney hasn't fired me. Too much blackmail material.
The morning is slow, after I deal with calls from salespeople and other Very Important People from other Very Important Companies, I play solitaire on my computer and count down the minutes until lunch.
That's the best part of working for Cullen Industries-free lunch every day. If I didn't have this gig I'd be living on peanut butter and stale bread exclusively.
The highlight of lunch, aside from the salad bar, would be the daily appearance of Edward Cullen in the cafeteria.
He doesn't eat with us, though why would he? His time is spent talking to the people who work under him. He's a multi-billionaire and the most beautiful man I've ever seen so all the girls do is titter over him. He's endlessly charming, though I can tell it's tiring for him to be so on all the time. He's all sensual smirks with his unfairly full lips and smoldering jade eyes.
But I can see right through him.
He's a fraud. There's nothing sincere in his smile. There's no conviction in his voice. He's playing a part. Just like the rest of us.
So, I watch him every day as he makes his way through the mass of tables full of his employees, waiting for the inevitable moment that he snaps.
Because everybody is just on the verge of breaking-even him.
Today, he hesitates in front of my table. For the first time ever, his eyes meet mine and there's something like recognition there. He frowns, not bothering to try to charm me and it's disappointing as he moves quickly onto the next table of beautiful saleswomen batting their long eyelashes at is returning grin.
My cheeks flame, that feeling under my skin flaring with heat and I know that if I don't get out of here right now I might do something stupid like cry.
I splash cold water on my face when I get to the bathroom, my lunch half eaten in a trash can outside and I make myself look at my sorry reflection.
Too pale, too thin, too messy. My hair is a wreck, pulled into a limp, tangled ponytail, my so-dark-brown-they're-almost-black eyes are underlined with the bruise-like coloring that comes with exhaustion. My lips and hands are chapped from the cold weather.
I know I look bad. I've always known it. But seeing Edward Cullen look at me with such...disdain stings.
Plus, there's a headache building behind my eyes.
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