Day Twelve

Day Twelve

I'm almost asleep after my ritual forty laps up and down the hallway when I hear Charlotte shift in her bed and whisper my name.

"What?" I ask in a quiet voice. Moonlight is ribboning the floor through the window. Brandy, Gideon, and Holly are quiet in their beds. Gideon reads herself to sleep every night, thick fantasy paperbacks with intricately designed covers.

"That thing," Charlotte says in a low voice. "You with the cup the other day and breaking it. That was impressive, but you gotta watch out for Tracy. I saw you two yesterday. She's zeroing in. She's…she's an instigator."

I roll over to face her. I can make out her bright pink hair, the sharp bones of her shoulders poking through the thin fabric of her T-shirt. She's sitting up in bed looking in my direction.

"A…what, now?"

"She's an instigator. She picks at something you say and when you get real defensive or sad, she'll pretend to move on to something else, but then she'll zap right back to it when you least expect it and crush you until you snap."

I blink at her, my eyes still fuzzy from sleep. "But isn't that…kind of her job?"

"Partly, but—"

Gideon's voice, raspy with sleep, cuts her off. "Can you give it a rest, Char? What are you doing? Just because you and Tracy had your little skirmish doesn't mean—"

"Oh my god," a voice calls out faintly. "Why don't you all just shut up? My god, I'm so sick of being with all of you twenty-four-seven and I was just having the best dream about chocolate cake. You do not know how much I miss chocolate cake."

It's Brandy. She rolls over on her side toward us.

"And I miss the tamales Mary gets from La Estrella," she murmurs. "And the champurrado."

Her voice sounds wistful.

"Who's Mary?" Gideon asks. "That your mom?"

"No," Brandy says. "She's our maid. She's knows all the yummiest places."

"A maid, " Charlotte says. "No wonder you can't even cook an egg. You've never done anything for yourself in your life, have you?"

"I do plenty of things, thank you very much," Brandy shoots back.

"What skirmish?" I ask, pinning my eyes on Charlotte. "Did you go to Seg? What happened?"

She just smiles at me in the half moonlight. "I did what I had to do. She just would not stop talking."

"I miss getting high."

I don't think any of us even noticed Holly sit up in her bed. Her knees are tucked under her chin.

"I miss holding the foil in my hand and lighting the foil and watching everything get liquidy and snorting it up through a straw and dying a million warm deaths. I miss walking on First Avenue and waiting for the right person to come and not knowing what I'm going to get when I give them my money. Is it going to make me feel like cotton candy or am I going to die? I miss being on my bed or someone else's bed and not knowing how much time has passed, hours or days."

Her voice is filled with longing.

Charlotte sighs. "I miss counting out Valium and Xanax and planning what my day would be like with them in my body. Is it the mall? Is it TV? Is it actually making it to school, only now school is so much better because it's all rounded and not sharp edges anymore? Am I topping off my day with some cognac from my dad's extremely wonderful bar? Yes, yes, I am."

Gideon sucks in her breath and leans back on her pillow, thin arms behind her head. "I miss everything but I miss nothing. I'm here, but when I get out, I have nowhere to go. That was the deal. This was the last thing my parents said they'd do for me. The last time." She pauses. "I can't afford to get nostalgic. If I relapse on the outside, there's nothing to lift me back up. Not after what I did."

"What did you—" Brandy asks, but Charlotte lifts a finger to her lips and says, "Shh."

"What do you miss, Bella? Out with it," Gideon says. Her voice sounds sleepy.

"I—I…," I stammer. "Mine is just…I mean, I liked vodka with Sprite. We—my friends and me—called it Sprodka."

Gideon bursts out laughing. "Oh god. The starter drink for babies."

"I'm not a baby," I say defensively. "I drank NyQuil, too. And the one night, I got really stoned and drank a lot of stuff I'd never had before, so—"

Charlotte pulls her blankets back up to her chest. "Oh, Baby Bella. What I wouldn't do to be like you again, new and fresh and thinking booze was the best. Let's talk in a few years when you're back here and have a little more under your belt."

"I'm not coming back here," I say. "I'm never coming back here."

Charlotte and Gideon exchange looks. Brandy has fallen back asleep.

"Me neither, Bella," Holly says, giving me a small smile. "I'm never coming back here, either."