Burn

Fifteen

Label

Here at Lyle House for the Mentally Disturbed, we have all sorts of kids. Crack heads, eating disorders, self harmers, suicides, depressed, bipolar, multiple personality, schizophrenics. You name it, we have a kid for it.

Nate's in here for bipolar disorder.

Amber has anorexia.

Mila's bulimic.

Brady has anxiety.

Peter's tried to kill himself tejce.

Ramon had clinical depression.

I'm here because the docs think I tried to kick the bucket, which totally isn't true…at least, partly. I'm actually here because I'm a human skeleton now. At least they don't know that my ex is haunting me and he tears into me every night and fills me with poison.

"So, like, this is paradise, basically," Amber says finally as she sips her water, her eyelashes fluttering every second. She looks pale in the harsh lights, her hair brittle and dry, a washed out, green-blonde color like oats. Her breakfast sits in front of her, a cup of fruit with whole grain Cheerios and a banana. When she reaches for her spoon, I can see the hollows of her collarbone and wonder how much rainwater could collect in them.

"So you have overbearing parents?" Nate's tearing into his cinnamon roll with an absentmindedness, too focused on Amber, his big, round eyes staring up at her; he looks so very fresh and pink faced in the sunlight streaming in; it's obvious he doesn't belong. The docs could pile pills down his throat and he'd waddle out and never have to deal with us crazies.

I pick at the loose thread on my sleeve and twist it around my finger, staring down at my food.

Mila's scarfing down her food with an animalistic ferocity, hardly glancing at any of us as she sucks down two huge, gooey cinnamon rolls, three bananas, and three pancakes, drowned in sticky syrup. Her long black hair hides her gluttony from most eyes but, since AI'm sitting directly across from her, I use my hair to watch rabid eating under the guise of invisibility.

Ramon's got his head down, sleeping quietly as his empty tray sits.

Peter has therapy in the morning with his doc, Dr. Talbot, so he isn't here right now.

"Yeah," Amber drawls out, licking a bit of yogurt from her bony finger as she squints at Nate's grinning face. Her muddy grey eyes are searching his, trying to find some sort of ill intent no doubt but, when she doesn't find any, she just gives him her sharp shoulder and eats her food in small bites.

She looks translucent under the light, an ocean of paper thin skin, rivers of blue crawling underneath like a virus poisoning her.

I lick my lips and taste syrup from my waffles.

A burst of noise from the other kids here make me tense up; the noise is bouncing off the walls and stabbing my ears, painfully loud, painfully shrill; someone has a whiny laugh.

"You really should've stayed home," Royce says to me, scowling.

I shrug my shoulder at him and try to focus on holding my fork right, without my hands trembling so badly that I can't hold it.

When I glance up, Brady's watching me with curiosity. He doesn't really talk during group therapy and if he's called on, he turns red and hides in his shirt until only his big, brown eyes show but, right now, he's staring straight into my eyes, holding them with a steady stare.

"What's your story, Chloe?" he whispers and his soft voice floats to my ears on dried leaves, no louder than a fresh leaf falling during summer, when it's too hot and everything is dry and burning.

I look around me, finding all eyes turned to me except Mila's. Her food's almost gone.

"I got screwed over by Life," I say because that's the only thing that pops into my head and I really don't want to tell these strangers with wide, gaping mouths that spew secrets like common day facts and hungry eyes, begging to watch me pull off my clothes and show off my bird wing ribcage and carves out collarbone and the black stitches holding together my arms.

I don't say anything else for the entire breakfast, even when Mila starts to cough and hack on her food and the nurses perform the hymlech on her.

Dr. Gil gives us all composition notebooks during the next therapy group.

I turn the book round and round in my hands as she scoots her chair forward, moving into the center of a patch of sunlight.

She looks almost pretty, despite her bubble-gum pink glasses and frizzy, red hair and her pinched expression, the light haloing her hair and making it shine.

I blink and she looks like herself again, all beady eyed.

"This is for your thoughts," she says, waving a hand through the air. In the shadow of her fingers, I can see Royce, sitting cross legged like he has nothing else better to do, making a flower crown from roses. His head is tilted down so I can't see his face and all I can see are his curls, shiny and black but the color looks off; they look bluer than I remember.

He's weaving the roses together, his fingers moving efficiently, threading the stems over and over each other. His hands are flying. I watch his fingers and remember how they felt on my skin, digging bruises deep into my bones, breaking my hips when he clung too hard.

"Chloe?" It's the doctor, watching me. Everyone is jotting something down; when had we begun to write? Where we supposed to write?

I feel my stomach roll. "I-I—" I stop, midsentence as Royce lifts his head to the sun.

I can see why he's had his head down.

His face is different, paler than I've ever seen him, dark bruises under his eyes, three long scratches running across his cheek; he looks deranged, a bruised smile gracing his handsome, angular face.

"I've missed you," he whispers, smiling wider and I notice the blood on his teeth. When we head out after group, my notebook is still blank and I notice the blood pooling on Royce's lean hands.

He'd slashed his hands open on the thorns.