Chapter 13: Aria
Thursday was a special day. It meant that the only person other than the one with the hopes to extract what was incomprehensible about her illness was visiting: the only person who shared the same blood but hadn't abandoned her in this soul-sucking place.
"Mike," Aria sighed as she encased him in a very much needed hug. "It's been way too long."
"Boarding school has been way too long," Mike replied, and Aria's exuberance and elevated heart rate deflated. "How is that?" she asked, uneasy.
"Terrible," he scoffed. "It's just a bunch of spoiled kids who had nothing better to do but light cars on fire and steal from convenience stores. Ironic, since they can get whatever they want. I'm the only 'poor boy.'"
At the reminder of her family's financial situation, Aria realized that even though her parents no longer visited her, they were still paying for her to be treated. A twitching twinge of hope warmed Aria's chest, and she grabbed Mike's hand. "I don't want to talk about that anymore." The corners of her mouth lit up. "Tell me about what you're studying."
After Mike left, back to boarding school for another three months, Aria slunk back to her room, that growing hope burnt out. Alone again, it seemed. Abandoned by parents and brother. She guessed she looked forward to Ezra's visits, but Ezra wasn't Mike. Ezra was the guy writing down what she said word for word for the world to read, and learn. What he was writing she wasn't sure; she barely gave him any useful information. Shouldn't his interviewing process be completed by now?
Before Aria went to sleep that night, she snuck out Spencer's copy of Jane Eyre and flipped to the dog-earred page. The vivid portrayal of Thornfield caused Aria's spine to convulse, and she sunk deeper into her bed covers. While turning the page, a folded sheet of paper slipped out, and Aria picked it up. For some reason, her fingers were trembling.
Smoothing out the creases, Aria saw the familiar red ink and cursive scrawl:
Light, light, go away, because in the dark I come. Nighty night, sleep tight—hopefully I won't bite. –A
Cheeks inflamed, Aria shredded the note and stuffed the pieces under her mattress; that way she won't even see its remnants in the trash can. It was steadily killing her, this cryptic A. She'd tried to find out more and ended up with nothing but pure, flammable frustration.
Suddenly the chilliness of Thornfield and Mr. Rochester being a jerk for tricking Jane as a gypsy no longer felt appealing, so Aria retired for the night and snapped off her lamp; Spencer still read her physics textbook furiously for a couple more hours.
Usually, Aria didn't dream. But when she did, it was so incredibly lifelike, it wasn't a dream at all. The door handle Aria touched was clammy. The crisp, white nurse's uniform she wore in pristine condition was scratchy against her skin. A badge dangled from her chest, bumping her left breast. The bleep of the ID sensor paused until giving a longer, approving beep.
When she laughed, it was the most euphoric laughter in human history. The cameras peeking at her didn't blast an alarm, as the uniform was enough to trick her position in this place. The outdated iron bars of the gate encasing the asylum numbed Aria's fingers as they curled around the rusting metal surface. She pushed, and the hinge creaked as the turn picked up pace under her grasp. Letting go, she crunched the fresh gravel. Step, step, step—she approached the woods.
Once beneath the cooling effect of the bushy pine trees' reaching branches, Aria's steps turned into a skip, and broke into a run. She kicked the bulky shoes off her soft, un-calloused feet and let the leaves, grass, and broken wood scratch up her ankles. The dark led her nowhere, but she knew she was going somewhere.
This was the true definition of freedom.
The moonlight barely penetrated the pine needle roof, and Aria paused, letting her heart and lungs catch up to her inner child. Her fingers pushed fabric to bare her shoulders, her chest, her hips, her legs, until there was only a white pile glimmering on the cold dirt, and a pair of dirtied feet scampering away.
This was what Artemis must have felt like, in the tranquil kingdom of this forest. No waiting bottle of pills or trained experts in white coats, pens poised and eyes prodding. It was just Aria and the calm silence between the windless paths of the trees.
Eventually child-like Aria needed to break, and she curled up on a bed of crisp leaves and freshly dropped pine needles. Don't go, she cried to herself in this dream state. I don't want to go back.
Yet the image drifted without her permission, the lasting image in the photographic part of her memory that of the starlight seeping through the crevices of the protective layer above her.
…
But when Aria awoke in the morning, the dream was revealed as a nightmare.
Naked, alone, and bleeding, Aria sat up on her pile of what she dreamt were soft, recently deceased leaves but were actually itchy, shriveled crisps. The tiny scratches that were supposed to go up her legs and down her arms were riddled with larger gashes, probably from a splintered branch. Her blood soaked the soil. What had she done to herself?
A whooshing honk drifted to her ear from somewhere not too far. As she stood on clanking knees, she crossed her streaked arms at her chest and padded over the moist ground, following the path of the sound.
She wasn't sure which body part to cover. What made her more vulnerable? What did she not want others to see? These questions were supposed to matter to normal people, but to Aria she covered with her limbs only to keep herself warm and possibly from slipping into shock. Even coming upon the road made her no more aware of her nudity; instead, she was drawn by the deteriorated phone booth.
Did she know any numbers, though? Only one, she realized. She didn't think she had memorized it. Dialing it, she kept one hand rubbing up and down her torso as she shivered. When the voice answered, she wasn't expecting any emotion but urgency to well up—but she cried.
"Ezra," she sobbed in relief, "I don't know where I am, I… I woke up in the woods, and I'm naked, and… C-can you come get me? Please?"
Within a few minutes Ezra, who suspected Aria had to be somewhere near Radley, was braking next to the dilapidated phone booth with no Aria in plain sight. "Aria?" he called out as he stepped out. Just like she asked, he went to the side of the forest opposite of the booth and placed the neatly folded pile of clothes on the bordering grass. Then he turned away and smashed his human instinct to spin around at the rustle behind him.
"Thank you," she murmured as she appeared from behind a trunk, his old clothes draping on her small body.
"It's no problem. I'll drive you back—"
"No!" she interrupted, and an awkward pause ensued. "I mean… I don't want to go back right away. I'm out in the world, and I…I want to see it. Please let me see it."
Of course Ezra was conflicted with the questionable situation at hand. What were the consequences of not returning a mental patient at the moment of capture?
But how were they to know when Ezra "found" Aria? They wouldn't, which led to his prompt agreement of showing her the world: the world of Rosewood, through a calmer lens untainted by rowdy parties. However, as each monument—the ice cream parlor, the library, the high school—passed by, Aria was silent, as though traumatized by her mischief in the woods. How could her exuberant traipsing…not be what it was?
"How are your arms feeling?" Ezra casually asked without much thinking beforehand. He meant to ask how she was doing, but that felt more thoughtless.
Consciously Aria skimmed her fingers down the raw, tender gashes. "Swollen." She was honest, and chose to not overhype the pain. After all, if she thought hard enough, there was no pain: only dried blood and puffiness.
"Don't worry too much about it," he reassured her, and forced a smile. "I'm well equipped with medical emergency supplies back home."
The reason for the fake grin was this: the red veins gouged in Aria's skin was a reminder of how Ezra's own brother attempted to rip away his other life. Something about reading about how in older times, they would bleed people for everything: headache, exhaustion, possession. Wes was only nine years old; Ezra was sixteen, and the first time he had witnessed Wes's demons. It was also the first time he ever had to call 911: "I think my brother tried to kill himself."
The gray circles bruised under Aria's eyes was yet another reminder of Wes; the further Wes's other personality consumed him, the less sleep he got until the bullet took away all of his agony. It made Ezra wonder how he would react if Aria ever did the same: how Mike would feel, how Spencer would feel—how her parents would feel, if anything at all. Or worse: if they felt relief, like his mom had over Wes being put to rest, not admitting that she couldn't handle a son who—
"You're swerving."
Aria's voice tugged him back to reality and Ezra's grip tightened on the wheel and readjusted what could have been a nasty road bump. "Sorry," he apologized, and the silence encased them the rest of the way.
In Ezra's home, Aria found the roomiest, homiest space was the living room, and she pointed out any source of Ezra's life she was curious to hear about. "Is that your mom?" she asked about a picture of him in a graduation cap and gown and a woman on his side. "Can I flip through this yearbook?" "Can I look at this album?" "Can I look at your books?"—all while Ezra wrapped her wounds.
Questions flowed through Aria with no other explanation but idle curiosity: though Ezra didn't know that deeper down, to the core, Aria was only fulfilling what she would never get to see: herself in a graduation uniform, her parents with her, happy for her; her baby albums; a home to make her own. Her life ended in the third grade. Why did she ever think she could reincarnate?
"Most people my age have dated, gone to school dances, embarrassed themselves in front of their crush, possibly had their first kiss… And I haven't had any of that. I'm still stuck here—," Aria tapped her head while her other finger went over the crisp pages of Ezra's high school prom, "—as much as I'm stuck in Radley." She wanted to add "And it isn't fair," but Ezra more than anyone else she knew understood that.
When Ezra returned from the kitchen with some snacks and water, Aria was curled up on the couch, sound asleep. Like many nice people, Ezra draped a blanket over her and left her to be. Once his footsteps faded away, Aria let the tears she'd trapped escape.
It wasn't like he would care that much anyway—and she didn't want him to. Not if all he saw in her was the sibling he no longer had, the chance of redemption. She didn't need to be saved. The only chance she had of being saved was if she met Ezra's brother formerly and shook his hand.
And she couldn't do that to her friends or Ezra. She couldn't even do it to herself, even if it killed the monster inside her.
…
"Aria," a teasing voice whispered. "Come play with us!"
Sometimes dreams felt like reality, and others drifted through completely aware that none of it was real. Aria understood that about this new dream. She was in the forest again, following a disembodied voice that pulled her towards its nonexistence. The forest dispersed into a field, and Emily, Hanna, and Spencer sat cross-legged on a blanket in the grass, giggling about something.
And though Aria understood that reality was nonexistent, she sprinted over to them anyway. "Hey, guys," she said involuntarily. She meant to ask what they were doing here, but it was too late for her to recognize that she was the disembodied voice separating from the body she thought she attached to.
It was a trick straight from the book of her dual self. Aria didn't have friends; A did. Aria didn't find the simple beauty of dancing naked in a shadowy forest; A did. Aria felt alone…and maybe A did, too. But A was too cunning and sinister to uncover her true emotions. After all, that's not what villains did.
Awaking from her dream, Aria wiped the sweat on the back of her neck and felt a cool object clatter from her other hand. The wetness spread around her hairline like a watery halo. Standing over her was Ezra, palms up in defeat. "What happened?" she croaked, and noticed the gashes on her arms were reopened.
Swallowing the ball that had grown in his throat, Ezra picked up the knife and set it on the bookshelf away from her. "I came to check on you, and you were humming something and you had the knife…"
"What is life without pain, without blood?" Her pupil-dilated eyes reflected off the stainless steel. It was like nothing he had experienced with Wes: this was truly a possession. She held the knife out to him, the red dripping on the carpet. "Want to try? It's only a pinch."
"Oh no…" Aria placed her hand over her chest; she thought her heart might give out. "Oh…" She furiously wrapped the blanket over her arms. "I'm sorry…" And she denied Ezra's reassurance. In fact, she was too embarrassed to look in his face and see what she always dreaded: that people would fear her.
After washing the knife, Ezra returned to his sanctuary—his bedroom—and picked up the notebook Aria was used to seeing her thoughts be immortalized in every week. The notes were neat, preserved, eager.
He dumped it in the trash.
Many people feared themselves. But for Aria, it was more than just the fear of her subconscious, or her capabilities of what she could to others. It was a dread of what she was able to do to herself when she wasn't even aware of who she was.