Chapter 8: Emily
For two sessions, Emily had been getting "treated" for her sexuality. Two sessions, and Emily thought she was going to scream.
"This is how your treatment is going to go," her doctor had said on their first meeting. "It's mostly hypnotherapy followed by behavioral adjustments. For example, we'll put you in a room with another woman who will approach you, and every time you'll have to say no until you don't feel the urge to say yes."
Like she was sick and needed curing. Emily had only been in Radley for a couple weeks, and she already knew that her "illness" was not some chemical imbalance in her brain. However, her doctor talked it up like it was some curable disease.
"Lie down," the therapist now instructed her, and Emily sat still, rigid. What was she doing here exactly? She had no clue—but she knew she had to get out of here. Whipping up onto her feet, she walked toward the door, but the knob didn't budge.
It was locked.
Her hand slipped to her side, shaking, and she felt something chilly—a calloused hand with a pill cozied in in—lead her back to the couch, and her spine shivered from her tailbone to the base of her neck. This time she didn't ask questions when the pill was handed to her and she gulped it down dry. Some calming medicine, or something. She didn't care. She would take anything to get through another homophobic session in this insane place.
When she was ordered to lay down again, she didn't hesitate or make a dash for it. She rigidly set her back on the sofa and stared at the white ceiling, the blinding light making her eyes water. It would have been no different if they had propped her on a surgical table and prepared to cut her brain open. If homosexuality was a disease uncured by lifetime bottles of pills, then maybe they'd just remove the part of her brain capable of feeling romantic towards others and end this now.
Though she felt completely shut down, her mind subconsciously listened to the instructions of the therapist, and her eyes were closed. Slowly her thoughts and feelings were overcome with disgust towards any woman who flirted with her or asked her on a date. Her brain watched and listened, but her heart felt sick at what the brain was suppressing.
Once the session was over, Emily walked out like a zombie. Why couldn't she just get the One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest ending and get a part of her brain lobbed out? Or maybe she didn't need to. She walked to the cafeteria in a zombie-like state, the fluorescent lights straining her eyes and making her head pound.
"Whoa there."
A pair of hands flew out and knocked Emily backwards. Rapidly Emily blinked, and just like that her post-therapy trance was gone.
A familiar blonde stood in front of her in a spotless white robe. "Alison…?" Emily trailed off, confused. Spencer had informed her and Hanna at breakfast that morning about the current investigation into Alison's disappearance and Aria's strange connection to it.
"Why would we believe Aria?" Hanna had snapped at Spencer. Emily had hushed her, since Aria wasn't that far away, at the same table, alone, as yesterday. This time Spencer hadn't advocated her sitting with them.
"Because maybe the institution wanted to protect Mona and keep her out of the report—after all, Aria was easier to protect than Mona was," Spencer had muttered under her breath. "Aria doesn't remember when she becomes this person. She couldn't control it. Easy explanation. Mona, on the other hand, was aware of what she was doing, or at least that's what Aria was told. Case closed. The police don't need to get involved and cause media attention."
"What was Mona being treated for, anyway?" Emily had inquired, absorbed in the case. It was a lot more fascinating than her one-on-one therapy. Everyone else got to interact with groups, but if lesbians and gays were put in a room together, chaos would ensue, Emily ranted in her mind sarcastically.
Spencer had bitten her lip and swirled around her applesauce. "I have no idea."
"Then ask her!" Hanna had jabbed a finger at Aria. But by the look on Spencer's face, Emily had known Spencer most likely wasn't going to interrogate her roommate just yet. Sleuthing first, cross-examining later.
"No," the blonde currently in front of her responded, puzzled.
Emily's vision of Alison in the flesh and there with her morphed into someone she didn't recognize. "Sorry," Emily mumbled, rubbing her head. "Drugs are…weird."
"Drug addict, huh?" the nameless blonde rashly stated, like it was just a normal chat with a stranger in front of the locally frequented froyo shop.
Emily's nose wrinkled as a twinge of pain shot through her skull behind her eyebrow. "No, no, just…" But she didn't want to say it—she couldn't. "It doesn't matter. I'm sorry again for getting in your way."
A warm, smooth hand caught hold of Emily's elbow as Emily attempted to continue on her way. "Wait, you seem upset. Want to talk about it?"
Wow, this girl is audacious, an astounded Emily thought. "To a stranger? I'm not comfortable with that."
"Then let's not be strangers." She held out her hand to shake. For the first time Emily noticed how glowing this girl's smile was, almost as sparkling as her eyes. However, Emily felt a tiny ball of dread in the pit of her stomach, like those eyes were hiding something much darker underneath. Emily avoided it and shook her hand anyway. "I'm Bethany."
"Emily." She then cocked her head in recognition. "Bethany… Did you ever have a roommate named Hanna?"
Bethany's permanent smile didn't even twitch as she confidently replied, "Nope! It's just been me and Sara!"
Emily's curiosity in this Bethany person was interrupted by a growl, and she knew she had to eat something before her stomach ate itself. "Well, it was nice to meet you, but I really should get going."
Though that phrase sprouted frowns on most people's faces, Bethany, again, didn't lose the impeccable grin. "That's fine!" She waved it off. "It was nice to meet you!"
Bethany didn't even cross Emily's mind as Emily swooped into the dining room like a gravely peckish seagull and grabbed a tray. She barely greeted Hanna and Spencer when she plopped down at her seat and inhaled some mashed potatoes.
Hanna watched in disgust. "Hello to you, too."
"I'm starving," Emily muttered between bites—well, more like swallows. "Anything new since this morning?"
Spencer sighed. "No. I haven't even seen Aria all day."
Emily started on her steak, almost snapping the knife's plastic neck—because plastic knife equaled safety, and so did metal fork. Forks weren't weapons, too; just knives. She took a gigantic bite out of her apple. Within eight minutes, she had cleared her tray and was verbally debating with herself whether to get another apple or a brownie.
"The brownie, of course," Hanna chimed in despite it being a private conversation with Emily and…Emily. "You could use some more weight."
Awkward tension stifled the air around Spencer and Emily as they clamped their mouths shut in case they said something stupid in this terribly ironic situation. "I'm thinking of going back to Rosewood High soon, too," Emily explained. "That means still watching my diet so I can be in the best shape I can be for swimming."
Swimming. Emily had forgotten in this Radley madness that she'd been voted captain. She probably lost it now, to Paige or Sydney. It was her long-term high school goal, and because of one slip up at one party with one girl, she was shipped off. What were people going to say when she returned—when they returned?
Just imagining the comments and stares she was going to get in the hallways of Rosewood made her stomach knot together. It wasn't that all her classmates were homophobic; it was just the reputation of being in a mental institution. Once people found out she was there for her sexuality, they'd say even more disgusting things in the hallway. Like she was such a nymphomaniac who couldn't control her urges or something, and the girls didn't feel safe.
Despite it all being conjecture, Emily could feel her stomach gurgle and churn. "I think I'm just going to go to my room," she uttered while standing up, abandoning the brownies and apples.
Hanna sighed and picked at her fingernails. "Me too. I need to see if Prudence will pass by so I can get some nail polish." She showed them her peeling neon green tips. "I don't think my nails have ever been this ugly."
But before Hanna and Emily could make their escape, Emily was prompted to sit back down when a short, yet intimidating, figure cast a shadow over the table. "Hi, Spencer," Aria weakly stammered. There was a chip in her index fingernail that she nervously picked at. Suddenly Aria had transformed from an unapproachable scary figure to nothing more than a messed-up, lonely individual. Her lips twitched anxiously as she darted back and forth between Hanna and Emily, like looking at them long enough would steal her soul. "I was just going back to the room, and I was wondering, where's that Brontë book you told me about?"
Spencer smiled, though Emily could see the doubt flickering in Spencer's eyes. "In the second drawer of my nightstand."
Aria nodded her head and licked her cracking lips. "Thanks." She waved shyly to Hanna and Emily. "Nice to meet you."
Hanna shuddered. "Well, now I'm going to wait until she's farther away to get out of this seat."
"Hanna!" Emily berated her.
"What?" she exclaimed.
"You can be a little sensitive!"
"Not to her," she stated firmly. Then, changing the subject, "How's your gay therapy been going?"
Aria, who'd heard everything but took none of it personally anymore, whipped around and stormed back to the table. "You're being treated for homosexuality here?"
The draining of color on her face caused Emily's heart to start pounding against her chest cavity. "Yeah… Why?"
In a whisper, Aria cryptically warned, "Never let them take you to the third floor," shivered, and darted away before Emily could ask anymore questions.
"The third floor?" she panicked. "What's on there besides the really crazy ones?"
Spencer had also paled dangerously. "The operating rooms."
A hot flash passed through Emily, and everything was woozy and she wanted to vomit. "They wouldn't…really cut my brain open, would they?" She thought it was the best solution before, but mostly because she believed it wouldn't happen.
In an attempt to calm down Emily, Spencer reassured, "I know it seems scary, but those practices are so outdated, especially with the advancement in the understanding of homosexuality. And even back then, it was more likely to get electroshock therapy."
"Electroshock?" Emily almost screamed, and Hanna jumped in her seat at the increase in volume. "As in an electric chair?"
No longer able to breath, Emily darted out of the dining room and sprinted all the way to her room, where she collapsed on her bed and stuffed her face in her pillow. Maybe this was all a nightmare, and she'd roll away from the darkness provided by the pillowcase and she'd be back home, her mom calling her down for dinner as she wrapped up her homework.
But when Emily peeked an eye out every five minutes, she was still in Radley, stuck in gooey, inescapable fear.
…
The clock struck one o'clock in the morning and Emily still couldn't sleep. She could barely shut her eyes. How could Hanna sleep so peacefully, when she was close on the brink of death? Emily was on the edge of being electrocuted and she was having heart palpitations. If she knew the doctors were planning on giving her a shot in the middle of the night to make her fall into an endless sleep because she had an incurable sickness, she'd probably be vomiting all over the place and passing out every five seconds.
The window. Emily hopped out of bed and grasped the bars surrounding the dirty pane until her knuckles were white. She yanked, she struggled to move one bar, maybe break one off. They weren't budging. Tears overflowed and dripped helplessly off her chin. Maybe if she pulled harder, motivated herself that she was stronger than this…
A pair of hands draped over Emily's. "Em."
Hanna was out of bed and gently coaxed Emily out of letting go of the bars. Her hands, previously over Emily's, were placed comfortingly on Emily's shoulders. "They won't budge," she explained. "Believe me, I tried every day for the first week before you got here."
Wiping her wet face with the back of her hand, Emily felt her knees going weak and got down on the floor. Hanna followed on her knees. "Why did you stop?" Emily sniffled.
Smiling slightly, Hanna reached out and tucked a loose strand of hair behind Emily's ear. "I met someone who seemed so strong and normal, that I felt like I didn't need to attempt a break out every night to feel better about being here. Seeing you be treated here for something so normal and unchangeable, and how you go in with your head up and pride intact… I realized that if I want to get out, I have to be more like you. Trick them into thinking you're getting better, the sooner I'll be out of here."
As Hanna encased Emily in a hug, she murmured in her ear, "And if anyone tries to do anything to screw with your head, I will karate chop them in the face."
Though what Hanna had learned from Emily was not right in her case, Emily squeezed Hanna's shoulders and smiled anyway. "I think we both will."
Hanna pulled away and grinned back. "And it'll be fun."