September Rain Bk 2, Savor The Days Series (44 page)

But he kept backing away, like he only
wanted out.

Avery saw the fear in his
eyes as the blade slashed across his forearm, but she didn’t stop.
She moved faster, plunged deeper. She couldn’t think of anything
except,
what if I keep going? When will
Jake stop me? How?

The blade was sharper than it looked
and she wouldn’t let go of it. Not when Jake tried to take it from
her, not when his back hit the wall, not even when he fell to the
floor, begging her to stop. When he cried out for help, she just
kept trying to make him be quiet. She didn’t stop trying until Jake
did.

And then, she took a deep
breath.

Before she could gather her thoughts,
before she felt that surge of peace she desperately needed there
was another knock.

It was the busiest night ever, like
Grand Central Station or something. Avery never had so much company
in her life. When she began turning the knob to see who was
outside—she wasn’t going to let them in. She was only checking—but
Angelica must have seen the door handle move and anticipated. She
tried to barge in, probably desperate to get away from the orgy
that had formed in the room three doors down and she wasn’t going
to spend another minute waiting to celebrate being the newest
member of Analog Controller. It was the greatest night of her life.
They were going to be huge. She was sure of it.

But Avery kept her body behind the
door, wedging her foot so it barely opened enough to peek
out.

“There’s a chubby black lady looking
for you.” Angelica chuckled, her face falling when the door did not
give way to her pressure. “Don’t you feel any better?”

Avery’s heart was racing. She knew it
had to be Deanna. “Go away.” She slammed the door in the girls’
face and locked the chain bolt at the top.

As Avery paced, her
confusion and anger grew. Angelica’s message—
‘a chubby black lady looking for you’
—verified Jakes warning.

And what the hell?
Avery stomped her foot, enraged and impatient.
Why was it taking so long? Why hadn’t she felt the rush like
before? Why was there no release this time? What was different? And
what was she supposed to do about Deanna? Had the Foster called the
police? She looked at her clothes, at the knife still in her hand,
at the red-stained room, and realized she had messed up.

While trying to think what to do next,
Avery noticed Angel standing in the doorway of the bathroom,
staring down at the mess she made in the far corner.

“I’m sorry,” Avery mumbled and dropped
the knife back into Angels purse. Then apologized again. And again.
Angel didn’t respond, though. She crouched on the floor in a haze,
hearing and seeing nothing but what was in front of her.

Avery had to fix it. She left Angel to
her quiet panic and began thinking. Pacing again. Trying to match
up the scene with a plausible scenario. Mid-way through planning
what Avery hoped would be a plausible lie, came another knock on
the door. And then a voice boomed through the wood. “I know you’re
in there!” Angelica squeaked.

Avery hesitated, but then thought
better of it. If her plan was to appear desperate, she’d have to
act like a desperate person and answer quickly. So she did. She
opened the door wide and threw herself into Angelica’s
arms.

But, then as Avery tried to explain,
the girl saw the mess in the corner, what was left of Jake, and
backed away. Avery tried to look as weak and broken as Angel did,
leaning over, faking a cry, and gasping as if her world was over.
And then she gave the story she thought someone like Angelica would
believe.

“He—” she cut off,
thinking,
would it seem too rehearsed to
come right out and say it?
Took a breath,
the way Angel often did, and finished, “—he wouldn’t stop! He tried
to kill me!”

And that was as far as her plan had
formed. But she’d said it and she couldn’t back down when Angelica
leaned out in to the motel corridor and called out for the
police.

Not
help
, Avery noted, she said
police
. Avery did not
want to involve authorities but reasoned if Angelica believed the
accusation, calling the cops was the next logical step. And then
Avery knew why Angelica had used that specific word, because she
heard the sound of heavy boots in the cement corridor.

The room was suddenly a flurry of
noise and activity as two, then three, then five officers rushed
into the room. They were holding their weapons and shouting
commands. Angelica was the first to put her hands up and so Avery
did likewise. But the moment she gave an inch, Angel woke up from
her stupor and began screaming for help. She was subdued
immediately, just like Avery.

On the way out of the motel room, as
Avery was shoved into the back of a waiting patrol car, she looked
for the one person she knew had brought them there:
Deanna.

She was across the lot, near the
office. Her face was covered in bruises, and though she did not
look at Angel, she begged for the police to be gentle with her,
told them the girl was sick, that she didn’t know what she was
doing.

Avery thought,
how ironic.

Because she thought she’d killed
Deanna. Now Jake was dead and Deanna—who was supposed to be—was
pleading, her eyes were filled with tears. After everything, she
was still trying to protect Angel.

+++

I am out of tears. The tank
is on
E
.

“I’m done now.” I say, and wait to be
taken back to my cell.

49

—Angel

The thing about
crazy
that most people
don’t understand is that from my perspective, nothing has
changed.

I don’t feel any different just
because the doctors’ diagnoses flipped. More accurately, it only
confuses me. It makes me wonder why I am the only one who knows
what’s really happening.

I kept company with figments of my
imagination?

That means that I continually sought
comfort in an abandoned house that I could swear belonged to Avery
and her mother. I sat in their mismatched dining chairs. I ate
grapes and cookies from containers on the counter and raided their
refrigerator.

Or did I?

My mind cannot fathom the deep level
of duplicity.

Still, even after all the years I have
spent in lock-up, seeing the video recordings of myself speaking as
if I am the very person, the liar I loved like family, I can’t
change the memory of sitting at that table, conversing, and eating
those cookies. Drinking and dancing with Avery on the hill, even
though I’ve been told that I was actually alone, dancing in the
dark.

I was alone in the parking lot when
Jake approached me. I went to all those Analog Controller shows by
myself.

All my memories are some form of lie.
But I still feel as if I had a lifelong friend that betrayed me.
That doesn’t change because no one else sees or hears her. Not one
bit.

And after I accept my complicated
diagnoses, then what? What the hell am I supposed to do? It’s my
brain. It’s not a computer with a virus. I can’t reprogram myself.
It’s not a rash. A cream or simple change of diet, might help a
little bit, but won’t clear it up. I can’t take a pill to make it
stop. I am currently taking about twenty and I still have to deal
with . . . her.

Did I block out the warning signs? Did
I chalk up the missing time to nothing more than a side-effect of
the accident or my meds, and other people’s quirks?

They say I was told on more than one
occasion, but my short-term memory has always had a very
take-it-or-leave-it quality. Most times, unpleasant things never
make it into my long term memory because I don’t remember long
enough for it to make a difference and sometimes, won’t let it
because the truth is too difficult to carry around.

While I take full responsibility for
what happened to Jake, I am somewhat—forgive the expression—of two
minds about it. It’s not my fault that my genes are infected, but I
still live with the guilt.

I did it, but I didn’t do it. I was
Avery’s marionette. She was the one, but do those strings of
responsibility absolve me? Is none of this my fault or is all of it
mine and mine alone? Whose fault is it that I’m a broken down
factory reject—an ill-conceived, poorly constructed tool that
cannot pass inspection—a puppet—a misfit toy?

I was never given a diagnosis of
schizophrenia but my mother was, and her mother, too. Just like
Marilyn Monroe, minus the beauty and talent.

My current psychiatrist at Canyon
View, Doctor Punta, tells me that because of my head injury, I
suffer migraines. Because of my family history, I suffer psychosis.
And lucky me, there is no cure for the maladies of my brain. Only
drugs to try to control the symptoms of delusions, mood stabilizers
help too, and therapy—which hasn’t worked that well, so far.
Without serious, long-term intervention, I will deteriorate. I used
to worry about what that would be like—to totally lose my
marbles—but living these past six years without Jake has me
convinced that losing self-awareness would be a gift.

The brain heals slowly or not at all.
And it can’t feel pain. It only processes the signals from the
body’s pain receptors—like a pin prick on the tip of your finger,
or a pencil to the thigh—but poke the brain matter itself and you
get nothing.

It controls everything, yet it can’t
feel. What a fundamentally screwed up organ.

So what difference does any of this
make in the long run?

Just let me fucking die
already.

5
0

—Angel

The showers are free and I’m on my way
to get cleaned up. I don’t much care about washing my hair or my
ass, but its part of their routine. Gotta keep up the ruse: if you
act normal, than you must be normal. Right?

As I step onto the tiled floor of the
shower bay, the female guard that went ahead to check the area for
any lingering inmates, appears from around a corner. “Clear.” She
announces and nods to me.

I’m not shackled. They only chain me
around outsiders. I’m holding my stack of supplies: a towel, wash
rag, shampoo, and a small bar of soap. The soap sucks. You can’t
use it to wash your private parts because the lye in it
burns.

“Fifteen minutes.” The guard waves me
forward.

The shower bay is huge. It houses
three wide aisles that make up six rows of showers. There are no
dividing walls, no privacy of any kind. The same guard follows me
in, keeping her distance as I disrobe and turn the lone knob all
the way down to start the shower. The water’s one temperature: a
little too hot in the summer and a little too cold in the
winter.

I turn, letting the warmth wash over
me, and find Avery standing a few feet away from the edge of the
spray line. She’s in the typical orange jumpsuit, but her sleeves
are hitched up and the loose material around her legs is tapered
and rolled up, too. The ends of her long black hair curls from the
moisture as her bright green, predatory eyes burrow into
me.

My focus stays on the drain at my
feet.

“Why do you get to wear a white
jumpsuit when I have to wear pukey orange?”

I haven’t uttered a word to her since
that night I fell asleep in the bathroom. Time has done nothing to
curb her desire to interact, though. She’s the only prisoner that
can get around quarantine.

Leaning my head back, I thoroughly wet
my hair and commence washing.

“You’re losing too much weight.” She
sounds her usual bitchy self.

I really couldn’t give
less of a shit.

My short fingernails dig into my
scalp, working in the shampoo.

“Why aren’t you eating?”

To torture you.

I start humming a new song I heard on
the radio the other day. I didn’t mean to listen, but when I heard
the singing guitar, I had to take it in. It was brilliant. The
front man was doing this new kind of rap-singing and talking about
the gift of feeling alive. Not that I have a right to, but the song
made me feel a little better for just a few minutes.

“You’re wasting away.”

I know by the sound of her voice that
she’s crossing her arms and step back under the hot spray to rinse
my hair.

“You can’t ignore me forever.” She
promises, as I keep my wandering gaze averted. I still have a
tendency to want to look at her.

The shower timer runs out, shutting
off the water. When I step around my company to reach for my towel,
Avery shoves her shoulder into me. My feet slip across the slick
floor in different directions. I catch my balance for a
half-second, but fall anyways.

The sound of my butt slamming against
the tile catches the guards’ attention. Avery is in the dry stall
opposite me when the plain uniform woman stalks over, unaware.
Looming above me, her eyes take in my wet, exposed
state.