Chapter Six

"Morning."

Elliott's voice is a hoarse whisper. He wears a curious expression, the corners of his lips curled into a playful half-smile. Sunlight spills through the lofted windows of the living room. Slowly, I sit up from my spot on the couch. There's a crick in my neck from sleeping without a pillow. I must have knocked it off in the middle of the night.

"Hey," I whisper.

Face down on the air mattress, Gemma is snoring. My bangs, which came unpinned as I slept, fall across my forehead. I brush them away. Elliott watches me intently, like every move I make is of the utmost importance, and for a moment, I wonder to myself how many other girls have woken up to the sight of him like this: tired but beautiful, too exhausted to put up a facade. I don't think I want to know the answer.

"What time is it?" Gemma mumbles.

I answer, "Ten."

"What day is it?" adds Nishi.

Nishi rises from her spot on the mattress. She yawns, which makes Gemma yawn, which makes me yawn, which makes Elliott yawn.

"I should probably get home soon," Gemma says. "I didn't even tell my parents that I'd be sleeping out."

Nishi replies, "I texted them for you. Your mom kept calling."

We take turns reminding Gemma of the details of what happened at the party. Nishi explains that Gemma started out the night by playing beer pong but sucked so badly she gave up and took shots.

"Sore loser," Elliott teases.

Gemma snorts. "Like you're any better. I've seen you at parties."

Elliott sticks up his middle finger.

"How's your head?" I ask Gemma.

She presses her hand against her temple and sighs. "It hurts. And I'm starving."

"There's plenty of food. Make whatever you want," suggests Elliott.

Nishi and I wander into the kitchen. The fridge is stocked with unopened containers. We find eggs, milk, and a sealed box of pancake mix. I pour chocolate chips into the batter without asking permission. As Nishi cooks, I tell her about the time my mom and I tried making latkes and almost burnt the house down. It's strange to talk so casually about my dead mom, but Nishi doesn't make it weird, so I don't either.

In quiet moments, I can hear Elliott and Gemma talking from the living room, but I can't make out their words. Something about all of this still feels . . . wrong.

"Yum," Elliott exclaims, his mouth watering at the finished stack of chocolate chip pancakes.

The room smells heavenly, and the pancakes taste as good as they smell.

"This is amazing," I affirm in between forkfuls of syrup and chocolate chips.

Elliott eats an entire pancake in one bite. All of us giggle as he attempts to swallow it down. Breakfast with one of the most popular guys in school was not on my list of potential weekend activities, but I'm enjoying it more than I care to admit.

"Thanks again for letting us crash here," Gemma says.

Elliott waves her off. "You guys are good company. And I can't complain about the breakfast."

Gemma burps loudly. I laugh so hard a tear drips down my cheek. We stand up to clean our plates. Then, Gemma, Nishi, and I head toward the back door.

Elliott unlocks it. He turns to me. "I'll wash your clothes."

Gemma and Nishi raise their eyebrows. I blush.

"Thanks," I reply, for what must be the millionth time this weekend.

"See you at school."

The three of us slip out the back door into the morning air. We cut through the patch of woods in Elliott's backyard, so my dad doesn't see us. The leaves are changing color, creating a beautiful array of red and yellow. Gemma basks in the warmth. We step into the street a few houses down from mine—the opposite direction of Elliott's place.

"That was really nice of him," says Gemma. "Who knew Elliott King was a halfway decent person?"

I shuffle to a stop. "You don't think it was weird at all?"

"I mean, I guess it's a little weird he helped us, yeah. But I think he likes you."

"No way." I'm not the type of girl Elliott crushes on. Anyone crushes on. Unless they're interested in social suicide. So why risk it?

"Shopping tomorrow?" Gemma asks.

"Sure," I reply. "After therapy."

Nishi and Gemma both hug me when we reach the bottom of my driveway. Reaching for the handle on the front door, my dad answers before I can open it. He waves to Gemma and Nishi.

"Where are they going?"

I lie, "Walking to breakfast."

"Don't you want to go with them?"

"They're on a date. And I have homework."

He watches as they disappear over the hill. I walk through the door, dropping my dirt-covered boots on the mat.

"Clean your room while you're up there," he orders. "I can't see the floor."

He's right. My bedroom looks like a tornado hit it. Clothes, including the thin black dress that I've been too afraid to touch, litter the ground. Half-read books form stepping stones from my bed to the bathroom. As I'm reaching for the vacuum, my phone vibrates with an Instagram notification. I open the app to twenty-seven new comments on my profile from Harris Price. Beneath all of my pictures, he's typed the same thing.

@hprice13 Psycho Bitch.

I throw my phone onto the bed.

Pressure builds in my chest.

My grasp on the world around me slips away suddenly. I pause at the sight of myself in my full-length mirror.

My reflection is unrecognizable. She smiles knowingly at me. Then, the scene from Elliott's bedroom fills the mirror. Harris's calculated movements play in slow motion. I open my mouth to scream at him to stop, stop it now, but all that I can get out is a whimper.

Her face returns to my reflection but quickly changes shape; it looks like Harris instead of me. His long brown hair blends with my dark curls. His eyes narrow. His fingers reach out to touch my shoulder. And his taunting smirk transforms into a new one that I can't bear: my mother's.

She's beautiful—alive—but impossibly cold.

Her skin cracks like ice.

Reality is slipping from my grasp, shaking my body, destroying my sanity.

I punch her image, my reflection, whatever it is, it has to stop.

She shatters into an array of small pieces that crumble onto the floor. The pain is searing as my torn knuckles scream at the bits of jagged glass sticking out of my skin.

My trembling slows. The dizziness stops. Pain is so much easier to understand when the source is real. Tangible. Not some bizarre hallucination.

I can breathe.

I can breathe.

I can breathe.

"Rose?" My father shouts from down the hallway. "What was that?"

I sprint from my room into the bathroom and grab a roll of bandages from under the sink. Blood oozes through immediately, but I keep layering the cloth around my hand until the roll runs out. Then, I take the closest object to me, an old water bottle I had left on the counter, and chuck it into my bedroom on top of the mess of shattered glass. My dad's lips part with shock as he takes in the scene of the crime.

"I was aiming for the bed," I state, pointing down at the water bottle. The false words come out smoothly, but I'm not sure if he believes my unlikely story.

"Are you hurt?"

My hand is tucked into my jacket pocket. He doesn't notice it.

I shake my head. He inches closer to the mess, brown eyes dripping with worry as he picks up a large piece of glass.

"I'll clean this up," he says. "Why don't you go pick up some food from Simone's?"

He doesn't want me in the vicinity of sharp objects.

I nod. "Okay. Vegetable fried rice?"

"Sure."

He passes over his wallet. I grab it with my left hand before escaping down the stairs. Once I'm out of sight of my house, I take a seat on the curb. The bleeding has stopped, but moving my knuckles sends a wave of pain up my arm.

In the months before her death, my mother became confused. She didn't know what was real and what wasn't. Derealization, Dr. Taylor calls it.

Punching that mirror wasn't an impulse. It was instinct. Survival.

First the nightmare, and now this. I should tell Dr. Taylor, but when I bring up the similarities between myself and my mother, he tells me the same useless spiel about how we aren't the same person. But I see the way he twitches uncomfortably when I talk about my panic attacks. He's afraid I'm getting worse.

Focus, Rose.

I think of Midtown Ring and the control I felt when I stood over the bag, and my racing heartbeat slows.

I use my left hand to delete all of Harris's comments. There's no telling how many people saw it, but for now, at least it's gone. Then, I force myself off the curb and shift my focus to the walk ahead. The pain in my hand worsens with every step that I take, but I ignore it. I ignore everything except my own two feet.

Because I'm fine. Totally normal.

Simone's restaurant probably should've been torn down years ago for health code violations, but they survive on the glowing recommendations of locals. My dad and I became frequent customers after my mom died. We spent every night there in the week following her death when neither of us had the willpower to cook. Mr. Lin, the old man who owns the place, has been giving us the family discount ever since.

When I walk through the door, Mr. Lin smiles from behind the wooden counter.

"Rose! What can I get you?"

I order enough food for leftovers. He puts in my order then asks about school. I give him the short and easy reply that everybody wants to hear. "Pretty good. Lots of homework."

"College?"

"I'll be applying soon," I assure him. "Georgia State is at the top of my list."

"Great! You can still come to see us then. What would we do without our number one customer?"

I laugh. We make small talk until the food is ready. I grab the paper bag with both hands, forgetting to hide my wound. Mr. Lin shoots me a concerned stare. I raise my brows, silently challenging him to ask about it. If I can lie to my father, I can lie to anyone.

He turns away without questioning me.

My walk home is uneventful. I try to focus on normal things. Shopping with Gemma tomorrow. Pancakes this morning. Finishing my poetry assignment.

Before calling my dad downstairs to eat, I wipe away a trickle of blood dripping out from beneath the layer of bandages.

*

"I've been thinking about my mom a lot recently. She was around my age when things started to get bad, right?"

Dr. Taylor studies me. He pushes his glasses farther up his nose. "Late twenties. Much older than you are."

My mom had me at twenty-four and died at thirty-eight, when I was fourteen. For a few months after her death, I felt physically fine; just mentally terrible as I tried to cope with teenage life without a mom. But then the panic attacks began, and the nightmares. The first night that my father woke me up from one, his skin turned as white as a sheet. I thought his expression was one of terror or confusion. Then, I realized it was recognition.

The bad dreams became less frequent after I started seeing Dr. Taylor, but last week was worse than all the previous combined. I saw her for the first time in years.

Mom . . .

"I'm afraid," I admit. "What if my anxiety gets as bad as hers did? What if I start feeling like I'm not really here?"

My grip on the chair handles tightens, but my right hand remains hidden inside of my jacket pocket. If he finds out I hurt myself, he won't let me leave this hospital.

"Rose, if your symptoms worsen, we'll learn to manage them."

"Nobody managed my mom's symptoms."

"That's different."

Dr. Taylor speaks slowly, consciously choosing his words so as to not anger me, but that pisses me off even more. Heat rushes through my cheeks.

"She was prescribed medication," he continues. "She stopped taking it."

"So, it's that easy?" I challenge him. "She decided to give up, so everyone else did too?"

"Of course not."

"Then why did nobody stop her from killing herself?"

Dr. Taylor doesn't have the answers I need. If he did, I would've stopped coming to this office a long time ago. He leans back into his chair, resting his mop of gray speckled hair on the wood. His steady gaze doesn't falter.

I hate when he watches me like this—like I'm a specimen rather than a human.

"Anxiety and Derealization are difficult to treat. They manifest in unique ways and require unique treatment. I don't know exactly why the hospital staff didn't watch her more carefully," Dr. Taylor explains.

"Is it really that hard to keep somebody in a locked room?" I growl.

When my mother checked into inpatient, we were promised that she would receive the best of the best care. Yet, she somehow made it out of the facility and walked back home. I found her lifeless on our bathroom floor holding an empty pill bottle. The coroner said the plastic bottle was dented; she had squeezed it so tight.

I've always wondered why she had squeezed that bottle. Maybe she was afraid of what she had done. Did she regret it in her final moments? Did she think of me?

"No, Rose. It isn't hard to keep somebody locked up. But the system failed. It's infuriating and wrong, but there's nothing we can change about that now. All we can do is focus on you and make sure you're healthy. Just being in this room with me, talking about your feelings, shows how strong you are. I will not let what happened to your mom happen to you. You can have my word on that. We won't let the bad stuff win."

I think it might be winning.From within the pocket of my sweatshirt, my hand throbs violently.

"Okay?" he asks.

"Alright," I respond. "I'm sorry."

That seems to appease him. Dr. Taylor scoots his chair closer to mine. He takes out his notepad and scribbles something on it.

"Did you go to the gym that I suggested?"

"Yes!" I exclaim. "I went twice last week, and I really liked it. I told my dad I want to take it more seriously."

Dr. Taylor tilts his chin. "Yeah? Why?"

I swallow. I'm still not sure what it is about the gym that I'm so attracted to, so I speak the first thought that comes to my head.

"The bag moves when I want it to."

He nods like he understands. That rush of power that I felt when I punched—something physical to prove to me that I still have control over my own body—is what I've been searching for ever since my mom died.

"Then keep it up. We can discuss your progress during our appointments."

After the session ends, I text my dad to let him know that I'm taking MARTA to the mall. The speeding train passes by patches of trees in a blur of green, yellow, and red. Therapy, boxing, Harris, my mother—all of it feels far away when I'm speeding through the sky.

Gemma's waiting for me when I reach the station near my house. We race to the next train, diving in right as the doors close. I pant against the cold orange seats.

"I really shouldn't be this tired from running up one set of stairs," Gemma heaves. "Maybe I should get into boxing."

"You could, but I'm as exhausted as you are."

"Good point."

Gemma points at a man a few seats down from us. He puts on a pair of bright yellow sunglasses as the train dips underground. When he opens his mouth to yawn, he reveals a startling lack of teeth. He's the perfect subject for a game Gemma and I love to play calledguess their story.

"He lost his teeth in a carnival accident," Gemma whispers.

"What the hell is a carnival accident?"

"He was running the Ferris wheel and got a little too close. Some kid's foot knocked all of his teeth right out."

"You're right. He despises that kid. He has a vendetta against him."

We giggle, so distracted by our complicated story that we almost miss our stop. The station platform leads directly into the shopping mall. It smells like cinnamon pretzels and expensive perfumes. Gemma goes straight to her favorite store, a boutique with cute blouses.

"What exactly are we searching for?"

"Something that brings out my curves. Nishi likes them," she says with a wink.

We split up to conquer more ground, but I quickly get distracted by the athletic section. I pick up a handful of leggings and tank tops in my size. I have to admit, I'mmotivated to look better than I have at the gym. The clothes are on sale, so I feel less guilty about buying something I'm going to sweat through. By the time I find Gemma again, her hands are full of dresses. She chooses a purple satin dress and a silver chain link necklace.

We celebrate our shopping victory with ice cream in the food court.

"We haven't talked in forever," Gemma says as I pile a spoonful of mint chocolate chip into my mouth.

"What do you mean?"

"We haven't really talked in a while. What's new? How are you?"

"I'm okay."

Gemma is open minded, but she's never fully understood what goes on in my head. Whenever I try to explain my anxiety to her, she asks more questions than I have the answers to. It's not fair to either of us that I'm keeping secrets, but it's so difficult to tell the truth when I know a panic attack might come on at any moment. I take another bite of ice cream. "Actually, I need to tell you something."

I say it before I can talk myself out of it again. Gemma puts down her spoon. One of my favorite things about her is that she's never pretending to listen. I inhale a deep breath of perfumed air.

"At Elliott's party, I tried to find a bathroom and got lost. Harris took me upstairs into a room with some people. He made comments, like he wanted to . . ."

"What?" Gemma leans in. "He didn't touch you, did he?"

"Well, sort of but not really . . ." I shake my head remembering. "Elliott stopped him. Threw him into a table, actually."

Her mouth falls open. She seems to go through every emotion that I did that night: fear, shock, then anger. "God, I'm so sorry, Rose. He's such an asshole. If you want to tell the principal—"

"No," I say. "No way." They'll never expel the star quarterback based on my word alone. Besides, telling the principal means everyone finds out, including Dr. Taylor and my father, and I'm not ready for that. "Boxing is helpful."

She half smiles. I continue, "There's something else, though. When we were sleeping at Elliott's house, I heard him talking on the phone. He was acting super secretive. And the next day, Harris commented ‘Psycho Bitch' on all my Instagram posts. Do you think Elliott is in with Harris?"

"I don't think Elliott's like that," Gemma murmurs. "Why would he kick his ass if he was?" But there's unease in her voice. She adds, "Maybe you should keep your distance."

Elliott has been approachable, even nice to me at Midtown Ring, but he's nothing like that at school. Why would he choose to be kind to me, out of all people? The more I think about it, the more I doubt him. If I let myself trust Elliott only to find out that he's playing me, I might lose whatever fragment of sanity I have left.

I huff. "We go to the same gym. He's in my class. I can't avoid him forever."

"That doesn't mean you need to be his best friend."

"Yeah. I don't want to quit boxing," I confess. "It would be stupid to leave when I just started."

"Then don't. It's your place as well as his. Show him that he should be scared of you, not the other way around." Gemma grabs a hold of my arm. "There's somewhere I want to take you. Come on."

She doesn't let go of me until we're halfway across the mall. Gemma stops in front of a sporting goods store on the second floor. My eyes widen at the racks of leggings, sports bras, and equipment displayed in the window.

"Let's find you some cute gloves!" Gemma squeals.

She must have guessed that I would never go into a store like this alone. I smile as Gemma walks up to an employee, unafraid, and asks about boxing gear. He leads us to a rack of gloves, wraps for hands of all different sizes, punching bags, and more. I pick out a pair of pink gloves. The white stitching is strong, and they don't reek like the communal pair at the gym.

"Try them on," Gemma suggests.

I shake my head. I can't try them on without using both hands, and Gemma's had enough heartache for today. She can't find out about my shattered knuckles.

"I don't need to," I state. "They're perfect."

She beams. I grab a pair of black and white checkered hand wraps, so Elliott won't need to lend me his again. The last item I pick out is a mouthguard. It will be a while until Andre lets me spar, let alone in a way that requires a mouthguard, but I'm too excited not to buy it.

"Trying out a new sport?" the employee asks as he rings up my items.

I nod.

"Great. You look like a fighter."