Chapter 6: Hanna

When it came to being awake at nine o'clock in the morning, Hanna did not do it. But if she wanted to get out of this hell hole ASAP, she had to go to the offensively early therapy meetings.

It wasn't so bad the fourth time around. The last few sessions had been led by some cranky, pinched-face, middle-age woman, who actually made Hanna feel worse about herself. Who hired these people? Maybe she didn't believe she was anorexic, but Hanna understood, by common sense, that if people with any illness were to get better, people who reminded them that it was all their fault and they only had themselves to blame only made things worse.

That was Dr. Agnes. Obviously, she was terrible for pointing fingers at mental patients' life choices. But this new guy—oh my God. He was hot. Hanna couldn't believe she was admitting it, but he was hotter than Sean. When she got there five minutes late, she was more than shocked that there was an open seat next to him.

"You must be Hanna," he said, adjusting the clipboard on his lap so he could balance it and check something off. "We were waiting for you."

Even though she was a patient at Radley and he was probably an orderly, Hanna sat down and then loosened her ugly, plain white robe so that her expensive, light pink silk pajamas peeked out. She sat taller, straighter. "Might as well make the most out of my time here" had been her motto for the past two weeks. If a guy was hot, she was going to hit on him.

But this man didn't notice her sneaky, flirtatious glances. Instead, his attention was on the entire group. "My name's Caleb Rivers—"

"Are you a doctor?" Hanna interrupted, a cute grin on her lips. "Can I call you Dr. Rivers?"

"I was just about to get there," Caleb explained, and Hanna could tell he was a little intimidated by her by the miniscule scoot to the opposite side of her on his chair. "I'm an intern here while working for my degree in computer science at Drexel." He then pointed to a person in the corner Hanna hadn't noticed before because her eyes were too blinded by Caleb's jawline. Of course Dr. Agnes hadn't completely left, she was just watching them with her hawk eyes now. "This is my first time leading a therapy session, so Dr. Agnes will be helping me with that. Some background information about me that you might care to know: growing up, I was put in a lot of foster homes, but the one I stayed in the longest had a daughter a few years older than me. To put it simply, she was suffering from an eating disorder. I think we can all relate to not wanting to get help from our parents and believing we can fix things on our own, or talking to a friend instead of a parent. However, not everyone is as fortunate to have friends or family that close, and many just don't seek help, and there are parents who don't want to believe the signs and reach out despite their child's protests. I don't really talk about it much, but Cecelia's parents wished she, or they, had spoken up before it was too late." He set the clipboard between his and Hanna's chairs, and now she was the intimidated one. This guy meant business. "I'm not here to tell you you need help or you don't. But none of you would be sitting here if there wasn't even an inkling inside of you that you want to get better."

After that, Hanna's mind drifted off. She didn't think she needed help, so why was she here? Oh yeah, that was right. Her mother just wanted to ruin her life, her senior year, her final weeks of high school popularity she'd worked so hard for that would dissipate like smoke in the sky after she threw her cap in the air.

"Now, I want to go around and talk about what, in your life, overwhelms you the most, to the point that you feel like screaming. That's right," he addressed the confused faces. "I'm not going to force you to talk about why you're here and your eating disorder. I just want to get to know you, and maybe, together, we can alleviate these pressures in our lives and see that hope at the end of the tunnel. Everyone has their lows, and everyone deals with them differently. But, since we're being honest, just looking at your faces, it doesn't seem like you see the hope."

"We don't," a girl who was nibbling at her nails spoke, and her eye twitched. "At least I don't…"

Caleb sat back casually. "Why not?"

"Because," she croaked, and her bony hands were visibly shaking. "My mom and I work so hard to provide for my little brother after my dad left, she can barely afford to send me here but I… We were so hungry, I decided I didn't need to eat if it meant Robby could eat more, I swear I don't need it…"

"Slow down," Caleb calmly requested. "Take a deep breath and start from the beginning. Can you remember when you started feeling this way?"

"Yeah. It was a couple months before my dad left, when I walked in on them arguing about Dad losing his job…"

Again, Hanna drifted out of the conversation and her brain started churning. The girl who was talking, Elizabeth, hadn't spoken a word since Hanna got here. But then Caleb barged in and suddenly every person was confessing. Elizabeth's issues were so much more severe than Hanna's, which is why, Hanna kept telling her mom on their nightly phone calls, that she was fine. Being fat at one point in your life didn't equate to raising your little brother with your mother.

"Hanna."

Snapping out of her trance-like state, Hanna shook her head and stared into Caleb's face. She knew that look. It was the look of sympathy and empathy in one. He must have thought she was thinking about her own problems, her own worries, when really she was scoffing over why she was here because she lost some weight to be healthy and skinny like her friends. She crossed her arms defensively over her chest. "What?" she grumbled.

"Your worries," Caleb said so gently. "What worries you?"

"Nothing," Hanna mumbled in response. "Stupid things."

"Nothing is stupid. All of the people in this room face problems every day, but what counts as a worry or a moment of anxiety is dependent on the person." Then he added, "You're in a safe place. All of the others have shared."

All of them? Hanna didn't realize she'd drifted off that long for all of them to speak. But she still didn't have any worries whatsoever. "I'm being honest," she said, more calmly and less angrily. "Nothing pokes at me until I want to scream in my pillow. I was voted homecoming queen and Peppiest Girl in the yearbook last year." To prove her point, she forced a glowing smile. "My life couldn't be more perfect."

But Hanna knew that Caleb didn't believe her despite being convinced herself.

At the end of the session, Hanna felt glued to her spot, and she wasn't sure why she was staying behind. Once the last person had filed out, including Dr. Agnes, Hanna stood and tapped Caleb's shoulder. "Can I ask you something?"

Caleb slung his bag over his shoulder and continued to collect his things. "Sure."

Chewing her lip, she asked, hesitantly, "Do you know what happened…to Bethany?"

"Um… I just got here, and I don't know a Bethany. Is that your question?"

"Well, no, it's one of them." Could this conversation be any more awkward? It would be so much easier if he wasn't so attractive. "Bethany was my roommate when I first got here. She was being treated for an eating disorder, but something scary happened…"

"Hanna, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to be hearing this…"

"Trust me, everyone has heard about it. I'm just keeping you in the loop." Caleb reluctantly nodded. "Anyway, she stood over me with a knife while I was sleeping. It looked like she'd slashed her stomach. While she was rushed to the third floor, some of the patients heard what she was telling the doctors. Something about she was done vomiting, so she was just going to make it impossible for food to stay in?"

Wow, that sounded a lot worse when Hanna put it out in words. "I don't mean to just share some disturbing story with you," she explained. "But she seemed so nice when I got here, and the nurse told me how much better she was. So how does someone go from nearing the end of the path to recovery to…having some mental breakdown?"

For the first few seconds, Caleb just processed the story and headed for the door. "Honestly, it must have always been a part of her. They might have been treating her for the wrong thing. The eating disorder might have stemmed from her dominant illness. Is that all you wanted to know?"

"Yeah." Hanna gulped and clasped her hands behind her back. She'd gone from the possibly unbearable flirty girl to the frightened child. "I've just been scared that if I'm in here long enough…I'll turn into her."

The longer Caleb stared into her eyes, the more flustered Hanna became before the tension made her break the gaze. "I don't think you have to worry about that," Caleb reassured her. "Most people are like open books, and I don't see it in you. You'll get out of this place and recover. I promise." The warm, murky brown of his eyes sent a shiver down Hanna's spine and relaxed her tense muscles. "But I have another session to get to, so…I'll see you next time."

"Okay," Hanna murmured. "See you later."

Once Caleb's shadow had disappeared out the door, Hanna collapsed into a chair to calm her shaky nerves. She hadn't admitted her fear to anyone, not even to herself, but somehow that oppressed part in her brain lunged out and took control of her mouth.

She wouldn't lose her mind in this place. She couldn't—because maybe Caleb was right, and it just had to be inside the person, a part of them.

But it could very well be injected.

…

When Hanna went to lunch that day, she was surprised to see Emily laughing and chatting with some other girl at their table. "Hi," Hanna greeted cautiously and in alert. She'd had friends stolen from her before; she wasn't about to lose her roommate, one of the only sane people she'd met, to some frizzy-haired freak.

But when Hanna sat down next to Emily and saw the girl's face, Hanna recognized her. "Spencer?"

"Guilty," she replied jokingly. She was eating a turkey sandwich and a bag of chips that made Hanna want to vomit. "Rosewood kids have to stick together, right?"

"Hey, remember that time in sixth grade when John Kim brought his pet lizards to school and released them on purpose?" Emily reminisced with Spencer. Hanna wished she had food in front of her just so she could jab at it. She asked Emily if she wanted her apple, and took it off her tray. She allowed herself a piece of fruit every day, though the idea of "natural sugar" freaked her out as much as processed sugar. To her, sugar was equivalent to growing fat pockets on your abdomen and thighs.

A girl around their age, who was hiding behind her long, dark chocolate hair that Hanna was a bit jealous of, entered the dining room and grabbed a pasta salad and a banana. Quite a few people stared at her before darting away their eyes, like looking at her long enough would turn them to stone. Hanna had heard of her like she was a Radley legend, and watched as she passed them and sat at an abandoned table in the back.

"Can Aria sit with us?" Spencer asked, knocking Hanna out of her thoughts. When she realized she'd unknowingly taken more than five bites out of the apple, Hanna set it down in disgust. It was another quirk of hers: she barely finished anything when it came to food, even before she stopped eating it.

Hanna pointed to the girl sitting alone behind them. "Who, her?" Aria. Why did that name sound familiar? She looked at Spencer in surprise, speckled with fear. "I don't think so."

Spencer frowned. "Why not?"

Emily bit her bottom lip and could barely look Spencer in the eye, as though she was betraying the girl who she'd barely conversed with before today. "I have to agree with Hanna on this…"

"But why?" Spencer reiterated, more frustrated.

"Because we hear things, Spencer," Hanna explained in her defense. "I've already woken up to one crazy girl in this place, the last thing I need is another one standing over me in my sleep and claiming she doesn't remember getting there."

Standing up, Hanna stormed out of the room. She shook her head the entire way back to her and Emily's room, then collapsed on the bed and shoved her face in her pillow.

First the Bethany incident, and now Spencer, who was most likely going to easily persuade Emily, thought she could squeeze into Emily's life, which ultimately affected her life in Radley, and lug around some girl who was known for being dangerous and unreliable? Hanna wasn't lying: she'd heard the stories about Aria. One of them included a girl falling off a roof, and another included a blinded roommate. Nope, Hanna was not going to let Emily allow Aria into their lives.

It'd only been two weeks. How had she not gone crazy yet?