When I wake, Fang's not in the room. If he is, he isn't visible. I blink hard and force myself to slip out of bed, flinching when my feet touch the cold floor. I look around the room. My barely touched dinner is still sitting on the table. The walls are still bare, and for once there is no black feather sitting at my side. Nothing has changed since last night, but I feel like a completely different person. I'm not a schizophrenic. He's real. I allow myself a small smile.
A sharp rapping breaks me out of my thoughts. Before I even have time to wonder what's going on, a hoard of staff and nurses barge into my room and surround me, demanding an explanation to the "devil" that appeared last night in my room. Apparently the girls had told. I force myself to keep my face blank and unknowing.
They throw question after question at me, as though drowning me in words will motivate me to give them answers. I keep quiet, wiping the emotions on my face clean.
One of the kinder nurses sits down next to me, far enough for me to not feel threatened. "Max, we need to know what's going on." I like her. She's straightforward and doesn't make me feel pitied, but at the same time, she's not dismissive of us. Us. The mental patients. I just blink at her.
"Max, did those girls come into your room?" she asks. I hesitate the slightest bit before nodding once.
"Did they threaten you?"
I nod.
"Did they hurt you?"
Another nod.
"Other than the girls, was there anyone else in the room with you last night?"
I blink and shake my head.
"Vanessa says that there was a boy with wings standing behind you, and threatened them."
That was a statement, and no question was asked, so I just shrug. A statement required no answer.
Quiet murmurs start at the back of the room, and I look behind me to see two nurses shooting frowns in my direction. I turn back around.
"Max, you've gone without an incident for months now. I think that's quite the improvement." I sense a smile in her tone, but I don't look up. "Incident" was the word nurses used to refer to an episode, whether it be a stage of depression, cutting, burning, or in my case, seeing people. It wasn't that I hadn't been seeing Fang, obviously. It was just that I never let anyone know anymore.
A few seconds pass before she tries again. It really is commendable, her effort, but statements didn't require answers.
"Maybe you can even get off your medication." I blink. I don't bother letting her know that I had been flushing my medication down the toilet. After all, I didn't have schizophrenia.
"A doctor is going to come in and assess your condition, and whether we need to change your medication or remove it completely." Of course I wouldn't get a say. But then again, what would I say? Sorry, it seems there's been a mistake for the past 10 years of my life. I don't suffer from schizophrenia. I genuinely see a boy my age with large black wings every so often. He can even turn invisible if he stays still for long enough.
Yeah, right.
If I had said that, they would've locked me up in the isolation room for God knows how long. I can't say anything, so I just dip my head slowly in a nod. I hope she recognizes my reluctance in letting a doctor examine me again.
These doctor visits never ended well.
He steps inside the room. I've seen him before, twice. Once to diagnose me with schizophrenia, and another time to add to my medication. His voice is soft, but his eyes are cruel. I watch him silently, completely tensed. He's tried to touch me before, during our first meeting. I had left teeth marks on his hand, and he's regarded me with disdain ever since. I see that disdain now, but he doesn't try to touch me.
There are no exchanges of pleasantries, not even half-assed ones. He inspects me without a word, checking my eyes and ears with a light for a while.
"Have you been seeing those people since my last visit?" he asks. I hesitate before shaking my head. I don't need a clarification to know he's referring my "schizophrenia". I don't tell him anything about Fang.
When he's satisfied after interrogating me, he signs off that my "schizophrenia" has somehow cured itself. The nurses are overjoyed. Another patient is cured. I don't realize it until they leave the room and the door closes behind their murmurings. I don't have schizophrenia. So I don't have a mental illness. I won't be able to live here for much longer. When I leave, Fang won't be able to find me. I won't ever see him again.
The emotion that comes along with that thought sneaks up behind me and hits me so hard I can't breathe for a moment. Fang's been my only source of happiness, my only solace for as long as I permit myself to remember.
And now I'll have to leave him. Will I have enough time to let him know? Will he visit before I have to leave?
Turns out the answer to that question was "no". I leave the next morning, having not slept at all throughout the night. They release me back to the orphanage the next morning at 9 am. I frown as I look around my single room for the last time. I don't even have a black feather to take with me. For all I know, I'll never see Fang again.
The car ride to the orphanage is completely silent. My mind still lingers in the now empty single room in the mental hospital. Will he visit tonight? He would be waiting for nothing. Will he visit the next girl who takes over the room? My eyebrows pull together in displeasure at this and force myself to blink hard.
The orphanage is familiar, but not at the same time. I vaguely recall the curling paint on the white walls, and the creaking beds they have lined up in a room.
"Welcome back, Maximum." Maximum? I frown at the name. My name is Max, not some made-up alternative. But I don't say this out loud. I merely let the old nun show me around for two hours.
After all the introductions have been made, I lie down on my new bed. I don't feel springs digging into my back, and for some reason it makes me feel anxious. I've been sleeping on those harsh springs for years, and am reminded that I am once again in a foreign place where I know nobody.
Even after everybody else has crawled into bed and fallen asleep, I keep my eyes open. My bed faces a large window, and through it I can see the night sky. There are stars blinking down at me, past the pitch black night sky. I wonder where Fang is. I can almost feel the dip at the edge of my bed where he would sit. I shake myself out of it and curl under the thick blankets. These blankets keep me much warmer than those of the mental hospital, but I can't keep the thought of Fang out of my mind, and how his wings chased the last bits of cold away from me.
The thought of him soothes me though, and I pretend that it's his wings that are enveloping me, and not the thick blankets. It helps me fend off the nightmares that night, barely. I spend the next week walking around the place, sometimes joining silently in the games that they play in the orphanage. I didn't recall the children here being so cheerful, or friendly.
Despite my unwillingness to speak and be touched, I had made careful and tentative friendships with a few others. There was a small girl named Angel. The name fit her, and she had the sweetest personality. Her older brother Gazzy was a joker and was always getting into trouble with another boy, Iggy. He was blind, apparently having been born that way. I didn't know Iggy very well, but he seemed to be nice. Nudge was the last person I had made acquaintances with. She was talkative and made up for my tendency to be silent.
They all seemed to be so cheerful together, and I let their voices lull me into a sense of security. As the weeks passed, I became closer to all of them, though I stayed silent. They brought out my small smiles often, and for that I was grateful. When night fell though, I would always fall back into my mind, where Fang resided.
Night after night, I would wonder and hope that he would visit, having miraculously found me. But it was all wishful thinking. 20 nights had passed, then 40. 63. 88. Soon, I was at the 100th night since I had last seen him.
I didn't know whether or not I should celebrate, so I don't. I just lay there in bed, staring into the black sky that reminded me so much of him, and let my mind wander. I think of the last time I had seen him, the memories still so fresh in my mind. It was as though no more than a week had passed.
112 nights after I last saw Fang, Angel and Gazzy get adopted by a happy couple in their mid 40's. The next day, Nudge is taken in by an old couple. I suddenly remember why I hated this place. You finally get to know some people, finally make some friends, and they all get adopted. They all leave you. My final friend count had gone down to 1. I spent more time with Iggy, and eventually became close enough with him to speak in his presence. I don't speak often, but the silences that reside between us are comfortable.
Day 237. The orphanage allowed us to go out for a few hours today because it was the first snow. I walk around the city with Iggy, never straying too far from the orphanage. For a blind person, he can navigate very easily. I had always thought that it was because he had lived in the orphanage for so long. I voice this to him, and he laughs softly.
"Being born blind develops your other senses a lot better," he tells me, and then goes on to explain how he can sense objects around him. I hum quietly to show that I'm still there and listening.
We've been walking around for an hour, sometimes in silence and sometimes in short conversations, when I freeze. Iggy senses this and stops next to me, turning his head to look at my general space. He cocks his head to the side in a question, but I don't speak. I can't. My voice gets stolen from me, and I don't mind that. Because even if I had my voice, I wouldn't know what to say.
I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek. Once. Twice. Three times. My nails dig into my palm, leaving small crescent-shaped marks. I close my eyes and hope that my eyes have somehow failed me, that my brain is imaging things. But I know that I don't have schizophrenia. I've never had schizophrenia.
So when I open my eyes, I don't know what to feel when I see what lies on the ground ahead of me. It's a black feather. I don't move for the longest time, until Iggy speaks up. "Max?" he asks tentatively. He's confused. Even if he did have his eyesight, he still wouldn't understand. Nobody would.
But it's his voice that shakes me out of my stupor. I take two steps and crouch down to pick up the feather between two fingers. My hand shakes uncontrollably. It hasn't been this bad since I left the mental hospital.
I run my fingers along the feather, and I whip my head once way, then another, trying to find that comforting figure in the distance. Nothing. It's his feather. I've run my fingers along too many of his feathers to know that without a doubt, it is his.
"Fang."
It's barely a whisper, and is carried off with the wind before Iggy can even catch it, even with his sensitive hearing. I clutch the feather in my hand, convinced that if I let it go, that I will lose him, too. I can't lose him.
Eventually, we find ourselves back at the orphanage, and I've been silent the whole way back. Iggy sends one of his small smiles in my direction, and heads back to the boys' wing. I watch his back as he walks away, completely numb.
Back in the girls' wing, I collapse onto my bed and loosen my fingers around the feather. If I lose it, I will lose him. With my right hand holding onto the end of the feather, my left travels along the edge of the metal bedframe and finds a sharp edge. It digs into my pointer finger until I can feel it cutting into my flesh. It takes away the numbness that I've been feeling since I found the feather. If I become numb, it will be easy for me to lose the feather. And I can't lose it. I can't lose my guardian angel.