World Spins Madly On
the best of s

1

The mugshot wasn't pretty.

Not that I don't consider myself an attractive girl. Stunning, even though I've been called cocky just as many times as I've been called beautiful. 

It might be some kind of consolation that I don't remember the events leading up to the arrest, and what happened after is still a little blurry. I suppose the charges speak for themselves: there was the public drunkenness, not to mention being underaged while doing it. Even worse, the possession charge. Cocaine. Not a lot of it, I'd used what I thought had been most of it earlier in the night. There was just enough to get me in trouble, not even enough to score with. A shame, really. And then there was the big one, the reason the cops were even called to that overcrowded and highly expensive club in the first place. The assault charge. Any other day or night I'd just be another girl getting in a drunken brawl outside one of LA's brightest hotspots - well, that's a lie. Not any girl. 

Anyways, the photographer apparently didn't like having his shoulder bitten to bleeding. I can't profess to know exactly why I bit him, or how I even got that close to him. I can't say that I care, not even when I was sitting across from my Mother and her publicist and our lawyer with my arms crossed and a dirty look on my face.

"Whatever."

"Whatever." She mimiced harshly. "Whatever! That's all it always is with you. Why can't you be more like Kyla?"

"Kyla was there too, Mother." I sniped at her, crossing my arms.

"Then why isn't she here, Ashley? I don't see her, do you?" 

"Hmmm." I put a ponderous finger to my forehead, mocking her. "Maybe that's - oh, yeah. The bitch pinned the drugs on me!" I yelled. Mr. Elms looked alarmed.

"Did she force you to bite the poor man's shoulder, as well? He pinched a nerve, you know!" She exclaimed, as if this were the worst thing that could happen to someone. The worst thing to inflict on someone.

"Please don't pretend like you care about this except in the ways it affects you." 

She ignored this, of course. "Honestly, what were you thinking? Were you thinking at all?" 

"Obviously not." 

"Look at me - take off those glasses!" My Mother leaned forward snatched them off of my face, and I glared at her completely. Hate for her burned in my eyes and I prayed that she could see. "I can't believe you would do this to me. Right before the tour. They want you to do time for this, Ashley!"

I lunged at the table, slamming my hands on the metal. It rattled loudly and my Mother flinched a bit. "Then put me in jail. I. Don't. Care." I snarled, then kicked my chair, stood up and started pacing. 

"Oh, Henry." My Mom said, close to fake, attention getting tears. Henry began rubbing her shoulders. They were probably going at it like rabbits, it occured to me for the first time. In a different situation, I would have laughed outright. "What are we going to do, Henry? I do not need this."

I was sickened by her ability to make this all about herself, her ability to turn any situation into the Christine Show. Behind her, her agent spoke. "This has to go away, alright? Immediately. We can not have you locked up behind bars for some piddly shit at this huge moment in your Mother's career, got it?" Henry told me, speaking to me like I was a child.

I didn't say anything. 

"We can sweep this under the rug, we can." He squeezed my shoulder and I, much like my Mother had, shaken him off of me. 

"Don't touch me." I told him, jaw clenched. I didn't like the way they were talking about this. 

He went on, unscathed. "The photographer will settle out of court. He's sleazy, he'll do it. The other charges, well, there are places..." He ruffled his hair and Christine gestured to Mr. Elms, long silent, to speak up.

He settled his grave old eyes on me. "Miss Davies, you are in a very unfortunate situation. But it's not the worst. With money, it can be forgotten about." Atleast he sounded kind when he talked to me, I thought. He treated me like a human being. "There are places you can go, Miss Davies, for an extended amount of time. Facilities..."

"Screw that." I said immediately, not liking the way this sounded at all. I dismissed it with a wave of my hand. "Not doing it."

"It's rehab." Henry urged. "It's a cakewalk. Six months and you're off scot free." Again, he put his grubby hand on my shoulder.

"I said don't touch me." I gritted my teeth. "I'm not going to rehab, no way. Send me to jail, I don't care." I said, dead set against shacking up in some faux hotel for months on end. I was sure I would get less jailtime, and I was sure I could handle it. Life with my Mother was sort of like a certain kind of jail, anyways. Prison, even. 

"Listen, this is a cakewalk, and you are being a spoiled brat." Henry said, sounding desperate. 

"Hey, asshole, we pay you, alright? Don't forget."

"Actually, Ashley, I pay him." My Mother cut in, an exasperated edge to her voice.

"What?" I demanded.

"I said, I pay him. I pay for everything. You're not even twenty one, you have no money of your own." 

I blinked a few times. "So?"

"So, until you turn twenty one and inherit your Father's fortune." She almost rolled her eyes, but pursed her lips and continued. "I control you, honey. And I control that inheritance. If you refuse to cooperate..."

Henry cut in, a little too pleased with himself. "We can stop you from getting that. You'll be a twenty one year old bum by the time we're done."

"No...Fuck you." I look at Mr. Elms. "They can't - Can they do that?"

Mr. Elms sighed wearily, "They can make it hard for you, yes. Especially since you have no income of your own. Yes."

My mouth goes dry but my Mother just sits stock still in front of me. I try to soften my glare.

"You would do that to me?" I asked, peering into her eyes, trying deperately to find whatever it was in there that had made her my Mother once, a long time ago. 

I found none of that, if I even remembered it at all. I couldn't recall what had made the bright lights of life outside seem more appealing than the low lights of home, of security.

She just nodded gravely.

My stomach turned and clenched, and I looked at Henry's smug look and I knew I had lost. 

Something inside of me conceded. "Do whatever you want with me." 

---

I pulled the glasses off of my face and peered at myself hard in the mirror. There were bags under my eyes, finally emerging through the makeup. My pupils were specks in a circle of dark, dull brown. Eyes that never seemed to come alive.

My skin was paler than I liked it to be and my lips fell naturally into a half frown, corners perpetually tugged downwards. I always thought to myself that I shoud smile more, but I never really got around to it.

I used a rolled up bill the snort the line, the second line off of the sink. I breathed deeply, letting myself absorb the feeling I had traded, lost so much for. Then I caught sight of myself in the mirror once again.

"I hate you." I told my reflection. Honestly, I think. If she could have spoken, I'm sure the girl would have said something along the same lines. 

"I hate you, too. I hate you for what you've done to me." 

2

I was crashing through my large and even emptier house, my footsteps echoing off of the wooden floors as I tried to make as much noise as possible. I was pissed off and looking for a target. I found one in Kyla, who was in in the master bathroom, meticulously straightening her hair. She was smacking her gum loudly.

"Did you know about this?" I demand from her.

Her eyes flit from the mirror to me, and back. "What? About what?" I can tell by the tone of her voice and the way she's not looking at me that she was definitely aware of it. I can read Kyla like a picture book.

I snort. "Yeah, right. About what. They fucking blackmailed me, Ky. They're sending me away."

"Well..." She says slowly, not taking her eyes off of her reflection. "It's gotta be better than jail, right? Or did you, like, totally love your cell?" She tries to laugh casually and fails, and stil won't look at me fully.

I peer at her silently, trying to remember the events of that night. Everything is so blurry, I don't know if I'm mistaken about what I do believe I remember. "You never told me what happened that night."

Kyla bites her lip quickly and shrugs. "Nothing. You got crazy and took out a photog."

"Got crazy? I don't think so." Kyla doesn't say anything, just pops her gum loudly. She continues to straighten her bangs, almost ignoring me. "Kyla, look at me." I order her. She pops her gum again, making my skin crawl. I hate that sound. I shoot out a hand and grab her wrist tightly. "Stop popping your damn gum and look at me."

Kyla looks at me and glares harshly. "Psycho." She jerks her hand back from my squeezing grasp. "You were drunk and we were...you know. Some jerk tried to snap a picture up your dress and you just lunged at him. He called the cops."

I watch her closely, and after a few seconds of me not saying anything she turns back to the mirror. "Yeah, but...okay, I get that. But how did they know? How did they find the..." I shake my head, tapping my foot against the floor. I can't stand to still.

She laughs rudely at me, sculpting her hair into perfection. "You were high. They could tell."

"You were high, too." I snap. "How did they get in our car?" I get closer to her to intimidate her. The bright, flourescent lights have turned our bathroom into an interrogation room. There's a strange tension in the air, an explosive tension.

Kyla looks at me like I'm crazy, then shakes her head. "You're high right now." She tells me dismissively, then turns back to the mirror.

"That's not the point!" I yell, grabbing the straightener from her. "How the hell did they know, Ky? How did they magically discover the coke?" I press her. She glares at me and tries to snatch the straightener out of my grasp, but I reach out and push her roughly.

"Calm down, Christ, Ashley!" She cries out at me, but she stays where she is, looking a little conflicted and a little bit afraid. 

I throw the straightener into the sink with a clatter and stand there, feeling like my skin is buzzing. I stare her down. And at the end of the day, she's just a little sister getting pushed around by her big sister, and she folds. 

"He said he knew I was using, and that he'd tell the cops if I didn't show them your stash." She says, appearing defeated. She looks at the floor.

"It was your stash." I tell her through gritted teeth.

"I know, but - "

"You fucking sold me out!"

"I did not!" 

"I have to deal with this now, Ky. This could totally screw my life up!" I say, clenching my fists. She stays where she is, several feet away from me.

"What life?" She counters nastily, and I bite my lip, hard. 

"You're a shitty sister." I tell her evenly, shaking my head like I'm disgusted. 

She almost laughs at this. "I'm the...I'm the shitty sister?" 

I don't say anything. I think of everything she could throw in my face. All those times I dragged her with me, to show her my cool friends, so she could do all the cool things I did. She loved it because she didn't know any better, would trust me to stop her because she believed I did know better. She was younger than me, and softer than me in ways that matter when you're that young. I never protected her as much as I should have, and that's what is floating in the air between us now.

But still, she has a tiny, microscopic amount of that love left in her wouldn't let her throw that back in my face, and I let my gaze fall to my shoes. "Whatever." I mumble. 

"I'm leaving." She tells me, moving to brush past me. I stand where I am.

"Where are you going? Because I'm on my way out in the morning, so..." There's an unspoken request that I would like to spend some time with her, one that I know she gets. I never say these things out loud. 

She pauses for a second, then says, "Out." 

I don't move, and she breezes past me without touching me.

Lying in bed that night, I hear her stumble past my bedroom door at some odd hour of the morning. She pauses outside my room for several seconds, then leaves to hers without so much as a knock.

---

The dark windows of the SUV make the world appear even blacker from behind my shades. I'm tapping my fingers on the leather seat over and over again until my Mother shushes me loudly.

"When the hell are we getting there?" I'm impatient. The smell of exhaust is coming in through the cracked windows, making me want to gag. The smoggy LA freeways do not make for good scenery and my stash is burning a hole in my pocket. I need a bathroom, an office, anything secluded. "Where are we even going?"

"The airport." My Mother tells me. 

"The...the airport? What?"

Henry turns back to smirk at me from the front seat. "Someone didn't read the pamphlet." 

"Fuck off, Henry." I look at my Mother, panic flooding my veins. "Where the hell am I going?"

"Arizona, Ashley. I told you to read the papers."

"I didn't read any papers!" I yell, and that's when I catch sight of the off ramp leading to LAX. "Shit. Let me out, I'm not going to Arizona. No freaking way."

"Sit still. We're almost there. When you get off the plane, there will be a nurse waiting for you, and she'll take you to the hospital." My Mother stated curtly.

"No!" I scratch my arm hard, shaking my head frantically. "Pull over. No - no way am I going to Arizona! I never said I'd do this!" I cry, until my Mother grabs my face with a single hand, digging her nails into the flesh on my chin.

She looks straight into my eyes. "You will do this. And you will act like a lady, do you understand? This was our agreement. It's final." She says in a steely, determined voice. 

The SUV is getting smaller and smaller every second, with Henry chuckling in the front seat and the other cars flooding into the airport next to us. "Shit!" I scream, kicking the driver's seat in front of me, over and over. "Shit shit shit!" I scream again, louder and louder. I thrash and pound on the windows. The driver yells expletives at me, the car swerving. 

"Stop that!" My Mother says, jerking roughly on my arm and slapping me lightly on the cheek. "You will act like an adult!"

"I'm never coming back home after this." I tell her hatefully, hoping to convey all my anger and desperation. "You can't make me forgive you, and I never will."

My Mother purses her lips at my vitrol, shaking her head like she might be sad. But when she looks at me, all I see is selfishness and irritation. 

Without a second thought, I reach into my pocket and pull out my powder. There's a compact mirror in my purse and I pull it out, making swift work of it and soon I have two long lines in front of me. I begin wrapping up a dollar bill.

"What the hell is she doing?" Henry peers in the rearview mirror. My Mother reaches over, but I stop her with a single look.

"Don't you dare touch me." I growl at her like a rabid dog, baring my teeth.

"You don't want to do this." She sounds like she might be pleading with me, and I just give her a stare with blank eyes. 

"You don't know what I want." I curl my lip at her, leaning down to suck the cocaine into my body. I watch out of the corner of my eye as my Mother watches in sickened fascination, and when I wipe my nose I grin sardonically at her. 

"Enjoy the show?" 

She looks away.

We pull to a stop, and Henry jumps out to grab my bags. "You will not give Henry any trouble. You will board the plane." She speaks to me, but she's not looking at me anymore. "And you will thank me for this later."

I open my door, hop out and look back at her. "Fuck off, Mother."

And then I'm on my way. 

3

I was a little shaky on my feet when I touched ground in Arizona, and I felt completely abandoned and angry. I clenched and unclenched my hand around the grip of my suitcase, my one Louis Vuitton bag that I didn't really want to touch the ground of the filthy airport.

The scenery outside was flat and depressing, so I busied myself with glancing around the see if I could spot anyone in a nurse's uniform. I ridiculously thought she would be in a white outfit with one of those hats, a giant red cross on it, maybe. I was still tired and my eyes were a little hazy when I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder.

"You Ashley Davies, honey?"

An old black nurse with a soft voice and broad shoulders turned me around to get a look at me.

I swallowed, but my voice was still raspy. "How'd you know?"

She laughed slowly, sizing me up in a way I usually would take offense to. But she had a no nonsense air about her and just chuckled politely. "Never seen a girl look more lost."

"Oh." I don't quite know what to say to that, and she just pats me on the back and uses one strong hand to grab my suitcase.

"Now it's just right this way..." She leads me down the corridor, and I let her without any fuss. There's a quiet strength about this woman I definitely don't want to test. "I'm Nurse James, honey, but you can call me Jeanie. Or whatever you want, if you ever find yourself needin' something." She nods. "Now this van here is gonna take us to the Saint Humbeline Rehab and Detainment center just up town, understand?" I found her voice soothing, and I just nodded.

"Now look at me, honey."

I do so, just as we reach the outisde of the airport, with people bustling around us. We just stop and stand there, and then Nurse James tries to peer through the glasses at my eyes.

"Take 'em off."

I pause, but take them off, squinting at what little sun is filtering through the giant Arizona clouds.

"You been usin' today, Ashley?" She asks me, not a hint of judgement in her voice. I blink a few times, wanting to look away, and eventually, I do.

"Yeah." I admit.

"Alright." She doesn't sigh, she doesn't admonish or yell or even give any indication of disappointment. "No more of that, understood?"

I clear my throat, but I don't speak. I almost feel embrassed, and I put my shades back on.

Nurse James opens the door to a large blue van with a driver already in it and throws my luggage onto the floor. I wince. "Uh, that's - uh, Louis Vuitton."

She looks at me, deadpan. "And it's very nice."

I blink at her, and she motions for me to get in the backseat. I crawl in with a scowl on my face, and she gets in the front.

I cross my arms and am silent the entire ride.

---

"This is Thomas, and Maria, and Laurie. Orderlies, and they work the day shift. You'll see most of them while you're here." Nurse James says, introducing me to the group of people standing there, waiting to meet me at the door in their crisp white uniforms.

Saint Humebline's Rehab and Detainment center is a drab building in the midde of nowhere, and my brain is so jumbled at this point that I'm not sure I could find my way back to the main road if I escaped. Large brick walls broken only by the occasional barred window showing glimpses of the flat, boring Arizona landscape.

The heels on the orderlies click clack annoyingly against the morbid, candy colored tiles and makes me bite my lip. Nurse James eventually leads me away, taking me away from the lobby and down the corridor to a much larger room that smells so sterile I can hardly stand it. The lightbulbs are bright, too bright, and there's a large glass window up high on one of the walls, dead trees scraping against the windows.

There's couches, seats, tables and one single TV. I spot something that might even be Ping Pong, and a pool table. A large glass shield stands in front of the nurse's station at the head of the room. I sigh to myself, hating every second of it, and Nurse James shows me around the community room, pointing things out in her soft, gravelly voice.

"Where are the people?" I ask, my first words since getting into the van.

"Oh, they at lunch. Lunch should be endin' any minute now, so you'll get to meet some of the people here." She says, putting a hand on my back and guiding me into a hallway that I guess hold the individual rI stand in the corner of the room, arms crossed tightly around myself, and watching the people mill about without purpose. Some play pingpong, some read, and some talk to each other. There's a crowd gathered around the TV. Everyone is dressed in normal clothes, some are wearing a facility issued white robe over their clothes, but I can't shake the overwhelming feeling of being surrounded by the unwashed, psychotic masses.

Rehab and Detainment facility, apparently, meant that not only addicts were here. I could see the crazy in the eyes of the people, and I was scared and angry beyond belief at the same time.

"You're not gonna try to mingle?" Thomas, mopping the floor, sidles up next to me. "It'll be good to get social interaction. The other patients are interested."

It's true. I can feel them staring, and it's making me feel like a freak. I'm already starting to feel it, to feel the overpowering need for some coke. "Do you have any gum?" I ask, shifting from one foot to the other. And again, then again.

He shakes his head, understanding completely. "It'll get worse. We have doctors here, they'll treat you, but it's...it's just the first day."

"This is a fucking nightmare. I hate this." I tell him. He's a tall guy, big chested and with blonde hair and greyish eyes. He'd probably be cute if he didn't have snaggled teeth in the front. "There's no way I can do this for six months." I shudder at the thought and can't let go of any of my anger for anything.

"They all say that." He continues mopping, but he's easing his way away from me. I have that effect on people, and I don't really care.

"I bet they do." I grumble, shoving myself further into the corner and regarding everyone in the room with hateful eyes.

---

Eventually, it was time to go to bed, but within minutes I had stormed out agains the waves of people heading to bed and was pounding on the nurse's station door. The orderlies were closing windows and locking various doors.

"My sheets are dirty!" I told Nurse James, who was approaching the glass from the other side with a tired look in her eyes, about to give up the night watch to some anonymous doctor in glasses. "They stink - I want them changed. Right now."

"Quiet down, right now, Miss Davies." She says quickly and with authority, glancing at the orderlies, who are beginning to look alarmed. "People are trying to sleep."

"The sheets smell like shit!" I yelled. "They stink like shit and I want them changed!" I hit the glass once again for emphasis. Every muscle in my body was clenched.

"One more, Ashley." She warned. "You're a firecracker, I can tell, but believe me, I can crack much louder!"

I shrink back a tiny bit at her tone, that's all I allow myself. I take a step closer. 

"Those sheets are completely clean." She tells me slowly so I'll understand. "Now go to bed right now or I'll have you escorted, and the night orderlies are not gentle."

I stand there for a second, breathing deeply and with a pained expression on my face. "Change them." I almost growl at her. She picks up the phone, ready to call for security, and my shoulders slump. "I - I haven't had any coke in two days." I blurt out quietly, scratching my arm.

She look at me with something mixed with pity, and I look away immediately, not wanting to see that.

I kick the wall loudly and turn on my heel, stomping my way back into the room and slamming the door. When I turn around, I jump back almost a foot when I see a blonde girl with quite possibly the widest, bluest eyes sitting up on the other bed, peering at me.

"Who the fuck are you?" I demand, rushing to my bed and violently tearing the sheets off.

"You shouldn't slam the door." Is all she says. She looks like she's on the verge of a smile, but one never comes. Her face betrays nothing.

"Can you smell these, too?" I ask, looking disgusted, throwing the sheets roughly at the ground. 

"What's your name?" She ignores my question.

"You don't know?" I don't look at her, throwing the pillows back onto my bed and blowing the hair out of my face. 

"Should I?" She asks innocently.

I give her a single glance, trying to glare at her, before I switch off the light. "No, you shouldn't." 

4

The next morning.

I stood in the bathroom, trying to brush my wet hair with a single shaking hand. I pressed my lips into a thin line, then sighed and dropped my hand. I looked into the mirror and tried to understand what I saw there, why I had to be here now. Did it really start with a bite to a photographers shoulder? A drunk girl with a chip on her shoulder?

The pale girl in the mirror with dark curls falling around her eyes shook her head at me, and suddeny, a loud ring pierced the air. I flung the brush out of my hand and against the wall, trembling all over for a split second. "What the..." I whispered to myself, and felt overwhelmingly tired and in need of a fix. I slid onto the ground, pushing my face into my knees. I heard someone enter. 

"Breakfast bell." The blonde girl told me, but I didn't look up. I dug my nails into the skin on my legs. "Did you hear it?"

"Of course I heard it, it scared me half to fucking death." 

"You say that a lot." I hear her pad across the tiles and walk right by me. 

"What?" I ask, still keeping my face buried against my knees, rolling myself up tight. It feels safe like that, atleast as safe as I can get.

"Fuck." She says, with the voice of a teenage girl supressing a giggle. I feel something on my head and I twist away immediately, and look up to see Spencer holding the brush.

"What are you doing?" I ask in a low voice, looking straight at her.

She returns my stare unflinchingly. "Brushing your hair."

I take a second to ask my next question. "Why?"

At this, she just shrugs. "You threw the brush." Her eyes trail down my arms and see my hands gripping at the soft skin of my calves, my knuckles white. "You look like you're hurting yourself."

I snatch the brush away from her. "Don't ever touch me again." I stand up, my back aching. I ache all over. 

"Spencer." She says suddenly, not even moving an inch away from me. It's like she has no concept of boundaries. 

I take a step back. "What?"

"My name is Spencer." And before I know it, she sticks her hand awkwardly inside mine, hanging at my side, and gives it a quick shake. And then she leaves without another word.

"Freak."

---

"Don't talk to me." I set my tray down across from Spencer, at a table somewhere in the middle of the lunch room. It's small and dim and I don't want to sit at any table full of chattering nitwits, not when I feel like this. Spencer was sitting quietly by herself at a lone table, and I figured it was my best choice.

She looked at me, a tiny wrinkle in her brow and a pout on her lips, like she didn't understand. "You're talking to me."

I stik a fork in my soppy french toast. "I'm not eating this crap. Do you want this?" 

"You're still talking to me." She appears a little confused, and I noticed she hasn't touched her food at all.

"Listen, I'm just saying don't initiate conversation, alright? I'm not in the mood for talking." I sit back in the chair, rubbing my arms like I'm cold. I have to sit in this room until breakfast is over, and I'd like to do it in relative peace, despite the battle my body is putting up against me. "It's so fucking cold in here."

"Don't talk to me." She tells me in a monotone voice, almost lost in the loud voices talking all around us, the clattering of trays and silverware. 

"What? Why not?" I demand, sitting forward a little and peering at her. I can't quite get any kind of read on her, and it bothers me. She's unnerving, something about her stare.

"It isn't nice when people are mean without having a reason to be, is it?" She cocks her head at me.

"Is that - what was that, like a lesson or something?" I bark out a laugh and manage to shake my head at her in disbelief. "You are way in over your head, little girl."

"I don't understand." She says, and the head tilt comes back. "Why are you so angry?"

"Why do you ask so many questions?" I shoot back.

"You never answer any." She tells me simply. 

I stare at her for a long time after that. She doesn't seem to be trying to start a fight, she doesn't seem to be aware that she's frustrating me at all. She seems perfectly genuine, I realize, and I look away from her gaze. "Spencer, huh?" I poke at my toast, with no intention of eating it. I couldn't stomach food if I tried. "I think I have an idea why you're sitting alone." I say meanly, almost casually.

"Was that suppose to be as rude as it sounded?" She asks me, and I begin to fidget. I don't enjoy her sincerity, not at all, and I realize at this point that she probably has real mental problems. So I look at her again and - she doesn't look like it. She looks like a perfectly normal, pretty girl. A mystery.

"I don't know." I say, sighing loudly. I run a hand through my hair, and she watches.

"Your hand is shaking." 

"Why are you here?" I aks her suddenly, changing the topics and tapping my foot wildly on the floor. "What's your problem?"

Her lips twitch almost imperceptibly, but still, she gives nothing away. I feel myself shake, and bumping my knees together under the table over and over again. I envy her perfect stillness. "We all have problems." She says quietly, and looks at the table for a second. 

I feel a quick tug of something in my stomach, but that's quickly overtaken by the more powerful pain radiating from my body. I huddle in closer to myself and follow her gaze out the window, into nothingness.

---

I glance hesitantly at the orderly, Laurie, a short, squat girl with painted on eyebrows, before I answer the phone in the nurse's station, where the patients take their rare calls from home.

"Who is it?"

"Who do you think?" It wasn't until I heard my Mother's voice that I realized how much I wished it were Kyla. 

"You seriously need to get me out of here." I tell her urgently, holding the phone close to my face. "It's not like you said, there - "

"It won't be that tough, Ashley."

"There's crazy people in here! Like, actually crazy fucking psychos. I can't stand it, I really can't." I say, and let my voice waiver into a beg, something I hate doing. "Please. It's horrible here."

"You made a promise, Ashey. A promise to me. I need you to follow through - "

"Fuck you! I'm not doing this for you, I'm doing this because I have to, because you made me! Don't think I forgot what I said to you, I still - " The nurse pokes her head in. "Get lost, I'm having a conversation." I snap at her.

"Keep it down." She orders, and I glare at her murderously until she leaves. 

"Mother?" I put the phone to my ear, "Listen. I'll die in here, seriously. You don't understand..." I cringe and put a hand to my side, hurting all over. "It's torture. It's...I can't do it."

"This is something you have to do. I'm sorry, there's just no - "

I hear screaming coming from the other room. Not a scared screaming, not the cries of someone in help. Someone is deliberately screaming loudly, over and over, and then I hear windows shaking. I'm unable to hear anything my Mother's saying.

Anger courses through my body and I stand up and rush out of the station, adrenaline pumping through my blood, to see who's making all the noise. Spencer stands by the large, barred windows, yelling very loudly nothing at all at the birds sitting on the outside windowsills. I'm shocked for a second, at the primal sounds coming out of her throat, scared even. Then I snap out of it.

"Shut her up!" I holler at the closest orderly, Maria, a tall brunette girl who I'd never spoken to before. "Shut her the hell up, I'm on the phone! Jesus Christ!" But Thomas is already closing in on Spencer, getting her in a bearhug while Nurse James rushes over with a needle of some kind. I look away before I can see it, but I can hear Spencer's muffled screams, and then they die down, and then I shake off my strange urge to tell them not to hurt her while doing it and head back into the room.

I pick up the phone to a dial tone. "Mother?" I hit the buttons, getting nothing. She's hung up. I break a little bit on the inside of my aching, upset body. "Fuck! Fuck!" I scream, just like Spencer, over and over again, slamming the reciever down against the table until it splinters in my hands, cutting the flesh. "Fuck!" 

I feel strong arms close around me, and then I don't remember a thing. 

5

I open my eyes a blink a few times, rolling over on my bed and feeling completely out of it. My right buttcheek stings a little bit and my body is tight all over, way down deep into my muscles. I try to sit up and do so only after monumental effort. I rub my hands over my face, trying to recall how I got into my bed and got what I assume was a shot in the butt with a tranquilizer. 

My right hand is bandaged around my palm and when I flex it, it burns with pain. I do this several more times, and enjoy the fact that it detracts from my much deeper pain everywhere else. I hear a rustling on the other side of the tiny room, and turn to see Spencer staring at me blankly. My heart leaps a little when I see the restraints on her hands, tying her to her bed. I remember her screaming at the birds, her eyes looking wild, and I shiver a little. I know what it feels like to need to scream like that.

I lick my dry, cracking lips and try to speak, but it only comes out as a low rasp. "Are you alright?" "Are you okay?"

She shows no signs of surprise on her face that we spoke at the exact same time, and I think that maybe she doesn't register it. I shift in my bed, swing my legs around to set them on the floor and wincing a little. "Why are you tied up?" I ask softly, mostly because my mouth is completely dry.

She doesn't say anything, and just for a second looks extremely sad. She looks at the ceiling, away from me. She looks so small, on that bed, tied up like some kind of animal. She couldn't hurt anyone, I don't think. Those stupid bastards, tying her up... I sigh, standing to my feet. 

I wince at the pain, and burrow my nails deep into the palm of my hand, taking a deep breath. I take a step toward her. "If I untie you, are you gonna hurt me?"

Her eyes meet mine, and she glances at my clenched fist, the look of barely controlled pain on my face. I try to force my features into a neutral expression and find that I can't. "You hurt yourself." She whispers, eyes still locked on my hand. She's right in more ways than one, and I take another step toward her, slowly letting my fingers relax. 

I touch the buckles holding her down, and they're tight on her wrists and ankles. I pick at them until they're loose, a tough job as my hands seem almost arthritic. One hand is almost completely free when Thomas pushes the door open, and looks a little surprised to see me standing.

"Davies, you're up." He says, peering down at his clipboard. "And it's your turn to - whoa, what are you doing?" He sees my hands hovering above Spencer's shackles.

I glance at Spencer quickly, then back to Thomas. "She wants to get up."

"You don't have the authority to undo a patient's restraints." He shakes his head at me, hurrying over to tighten them up. 

I put a hand over the tightener before he can reach them. "Not that tight. They're - they're hurting her." I say without thinking, then immediately drop my hand when Thomas looks at me strangely. I go and sit on my bed and squeeze my hand over and over again, avoiding Spencer's big blue eyes as Thomas tightens the straps securely around her wrists and ankles.

"Dr. Marlow wants to see you now, Ashley." He takes me gently by the arm and leads me away from the girl on the bed.

---

Dr. Marlow is a kind looking bald man with a very slow, deliberate way of speaking that sets me at ease. He takes my heartbeat, my blood pressure, and one look at my demeanor. "You're in pain?"

"I need something. I need - I can't handle it. I can't sit still but my body screams at me when I move." I croak. "I need...just a little." I say, hoping my eyes will do all the pleading.

His eyebrows raise. "You might be surprised, but a lot of addicts think that their pain warrants more drugs. We won't supply them to you, Miss Davies."

I take a breath, wishing the office were darker, dimmer. Something, so he couldn't see my face and all that was twisting it into a pathetic, pained expression. "Please."

"We can give you medicine." He writes something on the tablet in front of him, frowning. "But that's all. You're not through the worst of it, but it will end soon."

"I want cocaine." I say quietly, looking straight into his eyes. "I'm only here because my stupid fucking Mother blackmailed me." My voice gets progressively louder. "I don't plan on getting better, and I do plan on getting out of here and burying my face in a giant pile of white powder." 

"That's unfortunate." He says, not really affected by my words. He scribbles something else, not interested.

I hit the table loudly, flat with one palm, to get his attention. He looks up at me.

"I'm in pain." I grit my teeth.

He surveys my face. "Drugs are the least of your troubles, Miss Davies."

---

I'm sitting in a giant circle, hunched over and holding myself, not really caring what anyone is saying. Nurse James is sitting on the other end of the circle, listening to everyone take their turns speaking. They speak stories about hope, how they found whatever light they were desperately looking for, were on a path that they were grateful for. 

They all looked at me expectantly when it came to me. I stayed silent. 

"This is Ashley, everyone. Some of you might recognize her off of the pages of those tabloid magazines." Nurse James chuckles warmly. "Tell us a little bit about yourself, Ashley."

"I don't want to."

She looks on patiently. "Well, try and think of something, this is how group therapy works." 

Everyone waits. After a few seconds, I groan. "My name is Ashley, and I think this is bullshit." I blink a few times at their murmurs, but Nurse James says nothing. "Can I go back to my room?"

"There's twenty minutes left, dear. We'd all like it if you stayed." Everyone nods at her words, and I slide lower in my chair, wincing. 

"She looks like she's hurtin'." Someone calls out, some girl with a side ponytail. I don't know any of their names. I haven't remembered any. "We were all there once."

"You been in to see Marlow yet?" The man next to me asks. 

I nod mutely.

"You ain't even in the clear yet." The side ponytail girl calls out.

"The clear?" I pipe up, attempting to sit up a little. "The clear? You're all here because you're addicts, right?" Some of them nod, some of them stay completely silent. I laugh. "Well, take it from one addict to another. There is no clear. There's never a clear for any of us, not anymore. We'll always want whatever it is that we want, and it will never get better."

Nurse James tries to shush me, but I keep talking. "Sitting here talking in a circle isn't going to make you want to drink less, and it's not going to make you want to what, shoot up less? It sure as fuck doesn't keep me from wanting enough lines to make me stop thinking about my shitty life." I nearly spit on the ground, looking around at all the sad faces, and I can't believe they're taking what I'm saying to heart, but I can tell it in their eyes.

Nurse James looks at me, extremely disappointed. She shakes her head. "If that's how you feel, dear, the door is that way. All of us here, we have someone to fall on. You take that door, you have no one."

I move my stiff legs as fast as they can carry me, worried that the worst is still yet to come. 

---

I enter my room and see Spencer in the exact same position she was left in earlier, but this time, her eyes are glossy and she's staring out the tiny window in the far side of the wall.

I walk over to her numbly. "Are they going to leave you like this through the night?" I ask her, looking down at her and holding myself tightly. 

She nods silently, but she doesn't look away from the window.

"Why?"

She parts her lips before she answers, training her eyes on me. "I'm crazy."

This quiets me for a second, and then I look down at her small pale hands in the straps. "Well..." I say, trying the first smile on I've attempted in what seems like years, because she's been in this bed all day, and those big, baby blue eyes are bringing me down with them, it seem. It feels foreign to my face. "The crazy must bring out the blue in your eyes, then." I tell her quirkily.

This earns me the first smile I've seen from her, and I realize there aren't really a lot of those around here, that they're rare. I decide that I like her smile, because it reaches all the way up into her cheeks, and her nose scrunches and that makes her eyes sparkle, just the tiniest bit. I think Spencer might have been really good at smiling once, before whatever happened that landed her here.

Before I can think, and I've never been good at thinking, anyways, I'm unstrapping her with swift fingers, as fast as my sore hands can move. "So you can sleep better, okay?" I tell her, looking down at her.

She nods fervently, bringing her now free hands up to her wrists and rubbing them, trying to soothe the red marks that have appeared there. Trying to hide my shaking hands, I undo her feet straps as well. 

"You good now?" I ask her, and she reaches down to pull her covers up to her chin, so that just her little nose and big eyes are peeking out.

"Yes." 

I turn the light off, just catching a quick glimpse of her returning her stare to the window. 

6

There's medicine on the tray. One cup with my label on it, patient's name: Ashley Davies. Some doctor scribbled the name of the medication but I don't particularly care, nor do I take the time to read it. I swallow the pills, the pain pills, in one gulp and drink my water without being told. I pray they work quickly, my bloodshot eyes and headache reminding me I got little to no sleep last night. 

I take a look into Spencer's cup, actually, her two cups. Brightly colored pills, some large, some small, almost spill out onto the table. I watch as Spencer throws them into the back of her throat like a handful of candy, dry swallowing them. It looks painful and I cringe at her blank eyes. Maria, the orderly, checks off our names on the chart and makes Spencer drink her water. And then the breakfast bell rings, making me almost jump outside of my skin. 

Spencer leaves to go to breakfast without as much as a glance at me, and when I get up a lot slower, feeling like an old woman because of the pain all over my body, Maria puts a hand on my shoulder. "She's in those straps for a reason."

I look at her with tired, squinted eyes. "Why?"

"She isn't in them all the time. When she gets like that - how you saw her yesterday, yelling at the windows?" She explained.

"The birds." I say dully.

"She can be explosive. It hasn't happened recently, but just...don't take her straps off or we'll put them on you next time, as well, Miss Davies." Maria explains impatienty. She's just a harried orderly not wanting trouble from a patient, but I decide at that moment that I don't like her and I brush past her, out into the lunchroom. The walk is far too long for my body to make without becoming exhausted. I've never felt more fatigued, more like a hobbling corpse than I do now. I don't know how long this will last, and the pills offer little to no comfort. The only thing I can see, even when I close my eyes, is the white powder. It plagues my thoughts, even as I sit down next to Spencer, my tray that feels like a hundred pounds hitting the table loudly.

"You got me in trouble." I tell her grumpily. The lunchroom is depressing this morning, the gray sky allowing no light to filter through the small openings in the window, and everyone seems more hushed than usual today.

She looks at me questioningly, but doesn't ask for an answer. 

I busy myself with trying to open my juice, the only thing that appetizes me at all on my plate. "I untied you last night. You never even said thank you." I say crankily, my creaking, shaking hands fumbling to open my orange juice. It falls from my grasp and hits my silverware with a clatter. "Fuck!" I cry, swiping it off the table and onto the floor, where it drips orange liquid.

Spencer watches me breathe deeply and erratically for a few seconds, then speaks softly. "I didn't ask you to."

I want to accuse her of begging and pleading with her eyes, but that sounds stupid even to my own ears. I don't tell her there's no way I could have let her sleep like that, not ever, for some reason. "Whatever." I grumble, looking away and crossing my arms.

She grabs her own juice, using her nimble, steady fingers to open the spout and then she takes my straw, sticking it in the opening without a word. She sets it on the table in front of me, and then sits still. My eyes fall on the juice, then on her. She's sitting expectantly, waiting for me to drink it.

"For you." 

"I don't want your juice." I tell her, pushing it towards her.

She glances at the leaky box on the floor, then back to me. "Can't have your juice. Take mine, I owe you."

"You don't owe me anything." I look out the window, but I can't look away too long. I'm drawn back to her unwavering gaze.

"I know I don't." She says simply. "I want you to have it."

Sighing, I pick up the juice and take a long sip through the straw, and she doesn't take her eyes off of me. I set it back down. 

"Good?" She asks, and she cracks the smallest of smiles. Just a tiny curl of her lips, but the affect is not lost on me. 

I'm not sure Spencer is aware of what kind of weapon she has there. I pick up the juice again, shoving the straw in my mouth to hide my grin. "Great." I say, in between drinks.

Spencer looks satisfied.

---

The Saint Humbeline Rehab and Detainment Center Hospital Wing. That's where I spent the majority of my day, completely unprepared for the excruciating pain of detox.

"It hurts so bad." I whimper, holding my side like it's about to burst. My shoulders ache, my stomach is burning, and my head is throbbing. An IV drip in my arm is giving me something, some name I can't comprehend, but it doesn't seem to be helping at all. "I've never felt this much pain before." I say in a low, deeply pained voice.

Nurse James uses a damp cloth to wipe across my forehead. "I know honey, I know."

"You don't know!" I say sharply, squeezing my eyes shut. Rolled up dollar bills, mountains of cocaine, a rush of ecstacy headed straight towards my brain. It seems daydreaming and wishing only make it worse. "You don't know shit." I wheeze weakly, anger coursing through my body but finding no outlet in my weakened state.

"I do, Miss Davies. More than you know, I do. And I do know better than yourself that you will get through this." 

"I won't." I moan, shaking my head back and forth. "I won't, I won't. I'm not strong enough." 

Nurse Jones looks at me with soulful eyes. "Oh, honey..." She shakes her head strongly. "You're really feelin' it now, aren't you?"

She places her hand in mine, pries it open and squeezes her own in. I clamp down on it, crushing it with all the might in the body.

"There you go." She tells me encouragingly. "Squeeze the life out of it, darlin'. Squeeze all the pain you got away..." I close my eyes, concentrating only on the hand in mine, and grit my teeth as hard as I can. My hand is thumping, I can feel my heartbeat in my fingertips. For a second, I actually think the pain went away.

"There it is." She removes her hand from mine, speaking gently. "There it is." She smiles. "You plenty strong enough."

---

It started raining when I was in the hospital wing. The rainwater slams across the building, leaving streaks across the windows. I can hear it dripping on the roof in my heightened state of agony and awareness. My tremors shake my entire body, and I wrap my arms tightly around myself in bed, unable to stop myself from shaking. My jaw is rattling, my bones are aching like I've never felt. The pills did nothing, and I'm alone in the dark, wishing I'd never heard of anything called coke, wishing I knew enough to know what was good, and what was bad back when it mattered.

Now, I definitely knew that this wasn't good. This pain, this intense, overwhelming pain was a shock to my body and I knew that it was bad. So bad that I prayed it might kill me, so maybe I could just get some sleep. I'm muttering to myself, cursing myself for having no one else to bame but myself, no one else to take this crucifixion in my stead. 

The relentless pain hammers at me just as the ugly, gray rain is hammering at the windows. It's so silent in the room, but it's defeaning inside my head. So loud that at first I can't feel the person standing beside my bed, can't feel Spencer take a quiet seat next o me.

"You're shaking." She peers down at me. She wasn't tied down today. No birds had been screamed at, I suppose. I was too preoccupied all day to really pay attention to her. And yet, here she was. 

I shiver, unable to stop myself, over and over again. My legs are wrapped around each other, and my arms form a pathetic shield in front of my chest. My fetal position is doing nothing to stop the constant waves of pain coming from nowhere.

"Leave me alone." I manage to say, through teeth grinding so hard they might break apart in my mouth. 

"You need someone." 

"I don't need..." I have to take a deep breath before I can get out the next word. "Anyone."

"Saint Humbeline was a dancing nun." Spencer tells me, leaning in close so I can hear her. I avoid her eyes, not wanting her to see my own muddled, weak browns.

"What?" I breathe in, out, trying to control my body. The violent quakes.

"She was just a woman, who loved to dance and have fun. But she came from a family who told her that her fun was bad." Her voice is almost hypnotic, and I tried very hard to concentrate on her story, her story of the woman our current home was named after.

"Why was it bad?" I ask, urging her to go on with my strongest voice, barely a whisper carried in the dark. She takes her dainty, tiny hand and wipes the damp hair out of my eyes, uses her finger to wipe away to trickling sweat from my forehead. I close my eyes against the feeling, only the suggestion of touch. 

"They lived in a monastery, and they were a very kind of religious family who she was different from." She says in a voice that soothed me more than anything had recently. My lips are trembling and my eyes are still closed, but then I feel her hand on my back, touching the hard, sore muscles there, and then they open to see her blue eyes, a beacon in the darkness, looking down at me. "She didn't want to be different."

"Why?" I ask, almost a whimper, lost in her quiet, lilting voice. 

"It was bad. So she went home, to the monestary, and told them she'd do whatever they wanted from her." My stiff back relishes the contact of a soft hand, the muscles softening under her touch. She rubs them, up and down, over and over again and before I knew I had the power to move, I've put my head in her lap, wanting all the comfort she could offer me. "So she lived with them, there, with the rest of the nuns, and the monks, and her family loved her."

My hair is matted to my head and she's smoothing it out, and I'm still shaking but not as much as before, because Spencer's lap is warm and soft and even better than my pillow.

"They loved her, even though she danced, and nuns aren't supposed to dance. But she loved to do it, she told them, and so she did. She danced and danced, Saint Humbeline, and they let her and loved her, not in spite of it, and maybe a little more because of it." 

I don't feel so cold anymore, and I can take steady breaths now. Spencer's little hands are still on my face, and I'm staring up at her while she talks, but she's just staring out the window. I watch her jaw, the way her neck pulsates, the way her lips move when she speaks. How I think she can see the story she's telling, like she can see that dancing nun right outside our window. 

Her hands are on my face and I'm not trembling anymore. I feel like she might be holding me together right this second. I'm not thinking of white powder, not thinking of coke anymore. I can only see Spencer, the way her eyes get lost, and my jaws relaxes enough for me to speak. "What happened to her?" 

She looks down at me, making my heart jump into my throat when she trains those eyes on me. They shine their blue right into mine, and my chest tightens. "She died. She died in her brother's arms. He was a man of God, a monk. He held her as she took her last breath."

I don't feel like that's a very happy ending, and I don't think Spencer thinks so either, so she looks away. I want her to look back at me again, show me her eyes because I feel like I might be drifting off to sleep, finally, in her lap with her small white hands still holding my face. "Why is this place called St. Humbeline's, then?" My fuzzy brain can't connect any dots, and I feel myself drifting off.

The last thing I hear is Spencer tells me that really, she doesn't know. She just likes the story. And then she laughs and laughs, like this is the funniest thing that could be said. 

I fall asleep to her laugh, which sounds to my ears like the laughing of the mad. 

7

I'm sitting on the ground near the corner of the community room, listening to the steady rain pitter patter against the windows. People are playing ping pong loudly, others are yelling at some stupid gameshow on the TV, and I flinch everytime someone breaks a rack of balls on the billiards table.

Thomas is slopping water around on the floor where I'm sitting idly, staring blankly at the wall and trying not to look like I'm too much of a sad, helpless case. Roberto, the loudmouthed meth head that drools a lot, has been yelling at the TV for quite some time now and has been getting increasingly louder.

"Shut the hell up!" I yell from my corner, yards away from the TV station.

"Hey - fuck you!" He cries back, along with a rude hand gesture. 

I would get up if I had any kind of energy, but I don't. So I find myself slapping the sides of the radiator and making them ring loudly. "Go smoke some fuckin' rocks you crackhead!"

He starts to yell something, but Maria, the other orderly on duty, puts a hand on his shoulder and sits him back down, telling him something to calm him. She then glances at Thomas, gesturing to me.

"You've got to stop yellin' like that, Miss Davies." He tells me cordially, shaking his head. 

"This place makes me yell." I say, cringing at the dull ache in my body that's still present. Is always present. "Bunch of loons." 

He just sighs at me, then drops the mop down onto the floor inches from my feet, splashing my legs with bits of water. I glare at him. "Have some goddamn courtesy, will you?" 

Thomas doesn't say anything, just scowls at me showing his overlapping teeth in the front. He's not really a mean guy, and doesn't say anything. I look away and get up with some effort, walking away from him slowly but it's as quickly as I can go. 

I hear Laurie's voice crackle over the intercom noisily. "Ashley Davies to the front, please. Phone call from home." She taps on the glass of the Nurse's station, beckoning me over. I make a beeline straight for the office and she lets me in and shows me to the phone.

I stretch out my joints and settle into the chair, sighing loudly to myself and then I hold the phone to my ear with a slightly shaking hand. "Hello?" 

"Ash?" Kyla's voice floods me with a strange kind of mixture - relief and disappointment. I don't know what I want to say to her, but I'm glad to hear my sister's voice.

"Hey. Uh, why - why'd you call?" I don't want her to believe I've forgiven her for what she's done to me, though I find that I have to remind myself she's why I'm in this mess.

"Just wanted to see how you were doing..." She asks, almost timid.

"Awful, Ky. I'm doing real shitty." I say honestly. "So spread the word around, okay?"

"Are you alright?" She asks, sounding concerned.

"No, I just fucking told you I'm not fucking alright. Are you deaf? I'm in the worst possible pain ever, every second I'm awake. They're shoving pills down my throat. And in between all that I have these touchy feel, stupid ass doctors telling me it's not as bad as I say it is!" I holler into the phone, my own words making me angry. "So no, I'm definitely not alright."

"Sorry." She squeaks out.

"Well, I'm glad to hear it." I tell her gruffly.

"We all really miss you." She tells me in a breathy voice, and I realize she's probably about to cry. "I - I really miss you, Ash. It's not the same without you around here."

"They're killing me in here." I tell her, my voice cracking. "Because of you, this is my life for the next several months. How much - " I hold the phone closer to my ear, lowering my voice. "How much coke have you done in the last week, Kyla? Huh? You doin' a double dose for me, too? Are you?"

"Shutup, Ashley." She snaps, not wanting to hear about it. She never liked talking about it out loud, thinking maybe it wouldn't be real if no one spoke about it. Atleast, it wouldn't be real for her, and no one else had to know.

"Does our Mother know about your little problem yet, now that I'm not around there to hog up all the spotlight? Does she know you have every fucking single addiction I have, if not more?" I hiss into the phone, needing to make someone feel as bad as I feel myself. "Does she know how pathetic you are yet, just like me?"

"Whose fault is that?" She demands, her voice shrill. "I didn't know what coke was before you practically shoved it in my face, Ashley. Don't try and make me feel bad for something that's - "

"What?" I cut in, warning in my voice. "Something that's what?"

She's silent.

"How much less do you think she's going to love you when she finds out?" I ask, and I hear her burst into tears.

"Fuck you!" She cries, voice breaking completely. "You practically shoved the first line of coke I ever did into my face, so fuck you, Ashley!" I quietly berate myself for getting her to this point, and I take every single word like a stab in the gut, welcoming the distracting pain, this new hurt. "I hope you get better, Ashley, I really do, but you're such a bitch I don't know if I can handle it anymore."

"Better?" I say in a steely voice, clutching the phone to my ear. "I didn't come here to get better, I came here to serve time." I throw the phone back onto the table, getting up and storming out.

Kyla would probably be pretty shaken up after our fight. I know I was. The only difference was she could find a way to make it better, and I was still suck in between these walls.

---

Spencer came and sat with my by the window, that day. I was actually just sitting crosslegged on the floor, thinking that a chair would be better for my sore bones, but then I had to actually sit next to people. And the woman with a leg brace who was sitting on the only available chair looked like she had dandruff. So I just sat and watched gray clouds move against a slightly blue sky. It was later in the day, and the rain had subsided. I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't in California, and this strange weather was still foreign to me. The landscape of dead trees and more gravel didn't hold my interest, so I tried to enjoy the last few minutes of blue sky before the rains moved in again.

I felt the rumbling under my butt before I even heard it. A loud scraping sound of wood being dragged across a tile floor. I looked over to see Spencer, with a look of determination on her face, pulling a loveseat from in front of the TV, startling several people and pushing them out of the way. It was a spectactle, and Laurie, the short squatty orderly with bad makeup, made a move to stop her. I saw Nurse James put a hand on her arm, keeping Laurie where she was, and then give a tiny, amused laugh.

Spencer pulled the small couch tight up to my toes, and plopped down on it, facing the window. I looked around, and people were staring at her, entertained for a few seconds, but eventually they lost interest. Spencer didn't say anything to me, but I took the hint and got up to sit next to her on the couch. She was staring out the window, of course. 

"Why, ah...why did you bring this all the way over here?" I ask, trying to follow her gaze out the window and found she was staring at nothing. 

"You shouldn't sit on the floor." She tells me. "Not when you hurt so bad. The sofa's much comfier, isn't it?" She bounces up and down on the cushion, looking at me quickly for approval.

I nod at her, hell, I even smile at her. I can't really help it, and I'm not quite sure why. It's, what, my second one since being in this place? "Yeah. It's great. Thank you."

"Really?" She asks, looking at me a bit unsure.

I lean back, taking a deep breath, and feel the aching sensation leave my body a little bit. "Yeah." I swallow, feeling like I should say something else. "And I don't usually, well...thanks for last night, too. I don't think I could have..." I trail off, feeling awkward, not knowing how to say how I couldn't have fallen asleep without feeling some kind of security and warmth, not last night, atleast. Not sure of a good way to tell her how safe she made me feel, not even quite sure I understood it myself. "Just, thanks, really."

She looks at the ground shyly, and when she looks up at me again, she's beaming. It makes my stomach feel like there might be ice in it for a second, all tingly and something I've never felt before, and I look away too, not feeling really ready to have a full sized Spencer smile aimed directly at me. I feel like it's something very special. 

So I turn my stare out the window, "Nice view, huh?" I ask, trying to make conversation. I'm ready for Spencer to stop being a mystery to me. "I mean, these skies have been sucking lately, haven't they?" I peek at her to see how she's taking me trying to make chitchat. She's still staring right at me, abandoning her gaze out the window for the time being, with that same exactly, overpowering smile. 

"What do you mean?" She asks, sounding a little confused, and cocks her head to one side. I tell myself to breath normally, not sure if it's because of the pain that's been with me for days, or because of something new. 

"Well, uh, the skies." I gesture out the window. "It's been so rainy, and gray, you know? Yucky, right?" I ask playfully, or as playfully as I can manage with her staring at me like that. I wish she'd stop, almost. But not really.

"Oh." Her eyes sparkle in with understanding. "No, I don't see the skies."

I frown. "What?"

"No, I don't see blue."

"What?" I feel worry creeping up my spine, like maybe I might be witnessing her getting ready to turn crazy on me. 

"Or green." She tells me. "I'm colorblind."

I feel ridiculously relieved. "Oh." Duh. At that, she turns away from me, and looks toward the sky. I find myself staring at the side of her face. 

"People always..." She begins, licking her lips. Her gaze gets a bit dreamy, like she's remembering something that's happened a long time ago. "People always tell you how pretty the skies are, the blue skies. And the green grass, the green leaves. The things poets write about. I don't see any of that." She blinks. "It's all gray to me. It's all just different shades of gray, the prettiest parts of the world."

I think of Spencer waking up every morning, looking out the window, and not seeing any of that color that I take for granted. Always being surrounded by a lighter shade of black. I try to imagine being a child, and running through ugly, gray grass. Trying to find joy in climbing trees with lifeless, gray leaves. Looking up and being completely enclosed in a perpetually gray sky. I shudder.

I think I might be finally starting to understand why she doesn't smile so much. "Spencer..." I scoot a little closer to her, for once forgetting to wince at the pains that shoot through me. "Hey, Spencer, look at me." I say, softness in my tone sounding strange to my ears. This is a voice I haven't used before. 

She does. She tears her eyes away from the window, her blue eyes that now seem almost unbearably sad to me. "Your eyes are blue, you know." I tell her.

Spencer just nods, never blinking. "People tell me that they're pretty." Her voice is almost inaudible, it's so thin. 

"They're really, really blue." I say, holding her gaze in a way I don't think I've ever looked at anyone before, and I don't know where this is coming from. I want her to look at me and see all the way inside of me and only see the stuff that's good. I don't know if there's a lot of that in there, but I hope she can spot it.

"Tell me." She asks, in a very quiet, melancholy kind of way, opening her eyes up wide to allow me to see as much of them as I can.

I'm at a loss for words. "I...I like them a lot." I see a certain kind of sorrow in her eyes that I think might match mine perfectly, if there was every any way in the world that blue and brown were similiar. "Come here." I gesture to her, and she pauses for only a second before bringing her ear close to my lips, and I whisper like it's a secret. "I know you can't see them," I tell her, "But I can, and I think if you could you'd like them as much as I do."

She just stares out the window after that. I don't know if I've said the right thing. 

I look out the window and pretend as hard as I can to see gray everywhere I look. I don't think I like it very much, and I'm not very good at it.

Then I turn to Spencer, and wonder if she's any better at trying to imagine what it's like to see a sky full of color, to see a beautiful shade of blue peering out of her own eyes. 

8

"Time for medication, Miss Davies."

I sit up in bed, stretching out my neck, and then laid back down, noting a lack of strain on my muscles. Thomas set the pills down the nightstand next to me and held out my cup for me. I took them without a word. 

"Miss Carlin, today we're starting your new treatment, so that's what that new pill is you see. You've talked about it with Dr. Marlow, I assume? You understand?" Thomas writes something down on his notepad.

I spotted Spencer sitting by the window, tucked away into the corner so much that I could barely see her. "Yes." She says, swallowing her pills in one gulp, as she is accustomed to. "I understand."

"Alright, ladies. Breakfast in five." Thomas nods politely and then is on his way out. Spencer resumes her skywatching.

"Hey." I call out to her gently. After a minute, she turns her gaze to me. 

"Hey." 

"What are you looking out?"

"You." 

"No, silly." I say, fighting a smile. "Out the window."

"Oh." She returns her gaze out the window, and shrugs almost imperceptibly. "Just...out the window."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." She could be watching the dew melt on the glass of the window, or she could be gazing out far long the flat landscape. I don't know. I never know what she's staring at.

"You slept the whole night." She let me know, not looking at me. 

I like that she noticed, but not if it meant she was up all alone in the middle of the night. I shake the thought off. "Hey." 

"Hm?" She asks, not peeling her stare away from the window.

"You should look at me." I tell her quietly, noticing that my body isn't pierced with any wracking pain when I prop myself up on my elbow. It's still there, but it's just a subtle ache at this point. My mind is clearer, too. The dull throbbing has left my temples and I feel refreshed after my nearly full night of sleep.

Spencer looks at me, and I hold her stare with the best kind of clarity I've possessed in a while. I don't know why I'm just noticing it now, but there is an equally beautiful face attached to those eyes, almost stunning. Such a different kind of face than all those blonde girls in LA, dancing under the lights and the influence. Such a different kind of beauty that I'm only fully grasping now.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Spencer asks innocently, catching me off guard.

"I...I don't know." I tell her honestly, blinking a few times. I intend to look away but I can't. 

"It doesn't bother me, you know."

"What?" I ask.

"You looking at me." She stands up, only a split second before the breakfast bell rings. She doesn't break eye contact. "Usually people just look at me like I'm crazy."

I don't quite know how to respond to that so I just let her search my face for a minute.

"And besides, I like looking at you, too." She gives me a girly, quick smile and nods her head. Then she ducks out of the room, following the rest of patients in the breakfast rush.

She doesn't stay long enough to see blush spread wildly through my cheeks, and I'm glad.

---

"Blood pressure, heartbeat, appetite...all normal." Dr. Marlow taps his pen against the pad of paper, observing me. "How do you feel?"

"Like...like someone turned up the picture on my TV." I tell him. "I feel kind of okay, actually."

"That's good to hear, Miss Davies. From what I can understand, you are definitely through the worst of the withdrawal symptoms." He tells me, then he does something funny. He hands me a sucker from his drawer, and I hold it in my hand. What, four, five days off coke and this is my trophy. 

I laugh, because I almost have to. "Thanks, I guess."

He looks up at me from scribbling something on the paper, giving me a warm chuckle. "It's quite the accomplishment, you're very welcome. Now, we're going to start tapering off on your medication..."

I tune him out slightly, clutching onto my testament to triumph, a tiny, cherry flavored lollipop in my hand. A smile tugs at my lips and I force myself to quell it.

Eventually Nurse James comes to take my back to the community room. "How you feelin' today, honey?" She pats my back. "You feelin' better?"

I hold up my small red candy to her. "I'm one cherry lollipop's worth of feeling good." I say. "It's been almost a week."

She laughs heartily. "Dr. Marlow still handin' those things out? That's nice. Good for you, Miss Davies. That's real good for you." She actually sounds proud of me, making me feel a little warm inside. This makes me feel proud of myself, I find.

There's a feeling of a little bit of my old self come back. I always liked talking to people, and I can feel my personable nature coming back to me almost as quickly as the minutes tick by. I try to forget what made me that way I was for so long.

"It just, I dunno. Kinda makes me feel like a little kid at the doctor's office or something." I say goodnaturedly.

"A kid at the doctor's office?" Nurse James says, shaking her head with a small smile. "Now if that ain't exactly what you are, Miss Davies, I don't know what is." 

I open my mouth to shoot something back at her, but all I can find myself saying is, "Call me Ashley."

She looks at me with kind eyes. "Ashley, huh? Well, Ashley, you sure are a much sweeter when you aren't carrying on and hollerin'." 

I think I would have smiled if at that exact same moment, we hadn't passed the visitor's room, on that long corridor of rooms on the way back to the center of the facility. I see a glimpse of unmistakable blonde hair and stop immediately, pressing my face curiously against the plexiglass window.

Spencer sits with a tall, dark haired man on one of the couches, watching something on TV. His arm is around her, slung over her shoulders in a fatherly, protective manner

"Is that Spencer's Dad?" 

"Now, Miss - Ashley, that ain't none of our business."

On the TV, Spencer's face fills up the whole screen. She's laughing, and smiling, and saying something into the camera. She might have been only a little bit younger, maybe early high school. A blonde boy that has to be her brother tackles her on screen, and she quickly gets up and smothers him in a hug, sticking her tongue out at the camera. Her hair's in her face and she self consciously tucks it behind her ear and then blows a kiss to someone off screen. I'm captivated by this tiny slice of Spencer's life, the way she's smiling, that certain smile that for a second, I think I'm glad is actually caught on camera. One that I don't get to see often enough.

"She was so different..." I mumble to myself. 

"That's Miss Carlin's family time." Nurse James says softly, tugging me away by the arm.

"What happened to her?" I wonder aloud, honestly perplexed. "That was - what, five years ago? She's so..." I look at Nurse James. "What's wrong with her?"

She just shakes her head sadly. "Now, that ain't for me to say, Ashley."

---

"Spencer?"

She's brushing her hair at the bathroom sink and I frame myself in the doorway, wanting to talk to her before lights out.

"Hi." 

"Uh, hey." I'm unsure of how to go on, but she puts her brush down and gives me her full attention, all of her eyes. "How are you?" I ask ridiculously.

The smallest of smiles plays on her lips, and I remember that video from earlier today. Why doesn't she smile as much anymore? "I'm good. Are you okay?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine. I just, I saw you with your Dad today. Did you guys have a nice visit?"

She nods her head swiftly. "Yes. We had a nice time. I love visits, especially from my Dad." 

She's a Daddy's girl, I almost have to grin. We have this in common. "That's good. I'm glad for you." I say, then I feel foolish. Something about this girl puts me out of my element. Maybe the way she looks at me.

"Are you feeling better now? You don't look as bad as you have lately." 

I force a nice laugh. "Jeez, thanks, Spencer."

Her face falls a little bit. "I didn't mean it like that, really. I just - "

"Oh, no I totally know. I was just kidding." I interrupt her, smiling for her benefit. Also, because I couldn't help it. She's so adorable when she's confused, I've been noticing. 

I've been noticing a lot of things lately.

"Good." She says, and I guess my smile is contagious because she gives me one. "You should smile more. I like it when you smile, you're really pretty."

I almost choke on my tongue, but after a second I can speak despite the erratic pounding of my heart. "Hey, I think so too." I joke weakly.

She's still smiling at me. "That's good." She laughs. A laugh! I get a little tingly all over, feeling completely over my head, standing in front of this girl. 

"You laughed." I say softly, watching her eyes. She almost laughs with her eyes, they're so expressive. I'm drawn to them inexplicably, and she feeds my strange obsession by never taking them off of me while she talks. "You should laugh more, you have a pretty laugh." I say, mirroring her own words to me only seconds earlier. 

"Okay." Is all she says, completely unreadable to me. Her smile naturally fades, leaving only a tiny glimmer of something in her eyes. 

"Can I ask you something, Spencer?"

"Yes."

I lick my lips, knowing there's only minutes before lights out. "That day...why did you yell at the birds?" 

"The birds at the window?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, I just couldn't see them." She says casually, and then picks up her brush to finish her hair. Her eyes are trained on her reflection now, not me. I'm still watching her.

"The birds? You couldn't see the birds?" I ask, praying for a rational response. Needing one.

"No. I couldn't see the men."

"What? What men?" 

"The men in capes. The men with capes, and hats that hide their faces and eyes." She tells me. Brush. Brush. The seconds tick away and there's a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"Men in caps and hats?" I grapple, trying to understand. "There are men outside the windows?"

"They used to visit me when I was little. Then they stopped." Brush. "They're back now, though."

"I don't understand." My voice is soft, pleading, almost. "Are they real?"

"They're coming to get me. They used to be very far away, just specks. But now they're closer. They get closer everyday I watch them. I have to watch them." She says, her voice now back to its monotone flatness. 

"Is that why you look out the windows?" I ask her quietly, feeling almost sick to my stomach.

She nods. "Yes. I can't see their faces, but when I can, I know that's when they'll come." 

"Come?"

"To get me." She finishes. "They're like magicians. That's what I call them." Spencer looks at me when she says that, conspiratorially, like we're sharing a secret. Like she's sharing something special with me. 

For the first time, I look away before I can see her eyes, feeling extremely let down. "My magicians." She whispers. 

"Yeah." I mumble, and leave the bathroom without saying another word. I go to peer out the window. There are more stars then there ever were in California, a million tiny lights in the sky, casting light over the land. I look around, as far as I can see in the dark. There's nothing. Trees, dirt, cars. No men. Of course not. I'm not crazy.

I let my head fall against the glass of the window, making a loud thump. I do it again, then once more, even louder. "Fuck." Then I pull the shades over the window harshly, wanting to cover it up. I don't want to see it anymore.

And then I get into my bed and pretend to fall asleep. 

I can hear Spencer pad over to the window and pull back the curtains, revealing the outside night once more. I know she'll watch for her magicians until she goes to sleep. 

9

Spencer wakes me up in the middle of the night. Not on purpose, but the first thing when I'm snapped out of sleep that I can see is a light on in the bathroom and then I hear her hurling. I jump to my feet, still half asleep, and stumble my way to the bathroom door and push it open.

"What the...are you okay?" I ask her, eyes adjusting to the bright light and my voice groggy.

She doesn't answer me, she just holds her stomach and heaves into the toilet. 

"Fuck." I mutter, hurrying over to her and falling to my knees behind her, trying to keep my eyes open. Most of my pain has subsided, but the late night aches are pretty apparent right now, not that I care about that at this second, because Spencer's making sounds that make it seem like she's hurting. "Are you okay, Spencer?" I ask again, gingerly holding her hair out of her face.

"Those..." She spits. "The pills." 

I start rubbing her back almost on instinct, something I've done with Kyla countless times. I might not be able to handle crazy, but I can handle puking. I can handle that. "I'm sorry." I tell her, leaning down closer to her ear. She heaves again, and I lay my forehead against her back, feeling the muscles there tighten. "You're alright, you'll be alright." 

She reaches up to flush the toilet and then puts the toilet lid down, leaning her head against it. She breathes deeply.

Without thinking about it, I wrap my arms around her stomach and press my cheek against her shoulder blade, giving her a hug. I feel like she needs it, so I squeeze her, but gently, because I don't want to hurt her. She's delicate.

"Are you okay?" I ask, my voice breathy.

"Yeah." Comes her strangled response, voice raw from vomiting. Her stomach still quivers a little under my grasp.

"Sure? Want me to get the nurse?" I don't move an inch unless she'll tell me to.

"No. No." She says, relaxing into my embrace. "No."

"Okay. I won't."

"Just stay like this." 

"I will." I promise. And I do.

---

"She can't have those." I tell Laurie the orderly later that morning, as she's delivering our pills while Spencer's in the bathroom. I take one look at the large pill in Spencer's cup and shake my head. "It made her throw up last night."

Laurie looks at me like she's amused. "Uh huh."

"She was up half the night barfing." I glare.

"You should have alerted a nurse. And besides, new medicines take some getting used to. Since when did you become a doctor?" She almost smirks at me. 

"Hey, I'm not a makeup artist either, but I know that you shouldn't paint your eyebrows halfway up the front of your fivehead, bitch. Now you go tell Nurse James or Dr. Marlow or whoever - "

"That you need a tranquilizer and no breakfast this morning?" She snaps, writing something on her stupid clipboard. 

"Whatever." I pop my pill and drink the water, crumpling up my cup and throwing it on the ground at her feet. 

I wait for Spencer in the lunchroom, for the first time in days finally having enough of an appetite to eat the french toast sticks. I'm chomping on them when Spencer sits down across from me. "Good morning."

"Morning, beautiful." I give her a quick wink that seems to leave her mystified. "Are you feeling better?" I ask, genuinely concerned.

She doesn't nod or anything, but she says, "Thank you for last night. You didn't have to do that."

"Yeah, if I was like, a horrible person or something. And that's one thing I'm not." I take a bite of food. "Atleast not to you." I enjoy my conversation with her, I like talking to her like she's my friend, like we're not in rehab. Like she might not be crazy enough to like me back. 

I feel like I might be able to talk her into being normal, maybe. 

She watches me for a second, and I just chew away, oblivious until I catch her eye. "What?" I ask.

"You're feeling a lot better, aren't you?" She asks, like she already knows the answer.

"Actually, yeah." I say, and it's true. 

"I can tell." She nodding, still watching me closely. "You're very kind."

This sort of stops me for a second, because no one's ever called me kind before. I've never even really thought of myself as kind, but if Spencer says so, I'll believe her. "Here, I have something for you." I say, and reach into my pocket, pulling out a bright red lollipop. "I got this from the doctor, but I'm not a fan of candy."

"The doctor gave you candy?" She charmingly cocks her head.

"For my uh, well. It's like a celebration, I guess." I'm unsure of how to continue. I don't exactly want to tell her about my coke habit straight out for some reason. But then I remember that she held me during the worst of it, and I remember her magicians and I hold her gaze. "It's been a week since I've had coke."

"Coke?"

"Cocaine. He said that I'm past the worst of it now." I twirl the sucker in my fingertips, then hold it out to her. "So now you can have it."

"I don't want it." She says, pushing it back towards me.

"What? Why?"

"That's not just candy, Ashley." She tells me seriously. 

I raise on eyebrow at her. "What do you mean?"

"It's more important than that. You should keep it, it means something to you." 

I look down at it. "You sure? You don't have a sweet tooth?" 

Spencer smiles at me fully. "I'm sweet enough."

I could have died on the spot. "Was that a joke? A joke from Spencer Carlin?" I can't help but to grin from ear to ear. "You should bring the funny more often. I like it."

"Just keep smiling at me like that." She says, completely disarming me with her usual blunt honesty. "And I will."

---

"Last night, I wanted...I wanted a fix so bad. Just a little one, I would have given a freaking foot to have a needle full of heroin." Some talkative junky squeezes his hands together, looking lost. 

"You persevered, brother." An overly sappy patient next to him claps him on the shoulder like he's accomplished something except admitting how weak he was. 

"He's locked in here, of course he persevered." I say outloud, unexpectedly. 

"What?" 

"I said, of course he isn't going to find some heroin in the medicine cabinet. Last time I checked, we were in rehab." I roll my eyes.

"He's sharing his will. His trials. That's what support group is here for." Nurse James pipes up.

"Oh. Well, to me it sounded a lot like whining. My mistake." I shrug my shoulders and lean back in my chair.

The heroin junky sits up straighter. "You got a lot to learn, little girl."

I look at his redrimmed eyes and I don't think there's a single thing he can teach me. "Oh yeah?"

"You've got nothing to fight for." He tells me.

"Is that so?" I humor him.

"You sit here and act like you know it all, but you don't know nothin', you really don't." He says passionately. "You don't know how it is to struggle, 'cause you never try. You just give in before you ever give yourself a chance to fight."

I try to dismiss him with a roll of my eyes. "Whatever, guy."

"Just like that, see?" His voice is low and dripping with sincerity. "You've don't have it - you got no hope. You're a little girl with no hope."

I get up and leave for reasons I'm not quite aware.

10

"Shh, shhh." I soothe Spencer the best I can, holding her in the exact same position we've been in for the past few nights, her keeled over the toilet and me, hating every second of her pain. "It'll be over in a minute."

She gives one last long heave and I reach up for her and flush the toilet. "You good now?" I ask, patting her on the back.

Spencer barely nods, just sits exhaustedly on the tile and leans her head on my shoulder.

For the past week or so, Spencer's been up almost every night like this. I haven't been getting much sleep because of it, either, and Spencer's told me to stop yelling at her nurses because they can't help that her new pills make her throw up.

It's a very strange feeling for me, being protective. The urge to hold Spencer against myself, to feel her weight in my arms when she's like this, is almost overpowering and unlike anything I can be sure I've experienced. It fills me with dread and fear and giddiness.

"When does it get better?" I ask her, and feel her sigh against my neck.

"I don't know anymore."

---

Spencer sat, completely silent and still, with her eyes fixed on some spot faraway in the distance. I fidgeted next to her, on that love seat by the window. It hadn't moved yet, and we found ourself occupying it every day, like clockwork. She's been even more introverted today than usual, and I find myself desperately wanting to cheer her up.

"Spencer?"

She doesn't say anything, and doesn't really give any indication that she's heard me.

"Spencer." I reach over with my foot and tap her on the leg.

"Ashley." She swivels her head and her eyes settle on mine. "Hey."

"Hey." I let a few seconds of quiet float between us. "Wanna hear something funny?"

She nods, but just barely.

"When I was little, I played Baby Jesus in a Christmas pageant." 

A tiny flicker on her lips.

"No, really. It was a big publicity scene. My Mother sang and everything. No one even knew I was a little girl, because I was only like, a year old." I tell her, nodding. The corners of her lips are completely upturned now, and she's thorougly amused with me. "Don't laugh."

"I wasn't going to." She says slyly, and I smile, too. Anytime Spencer smiles you know I can't be far behind.

"You so were. But that's okay, go ahead and laugh."

A tiny giggle escapes from her throat. 

"There you go." I say. "See, laughing's good therapy. You should laugh more, Spencer." 

She peers at me closely. "I like the way you say my name."

I'm taken aback by her statement, and the subsequent butterflies that it gives me. "Really?" 

She bites her lip and nods shyly. I feel like I'm right back in high school, nervously flirting with girls after figuring out how much I liked them. It was never a big deal to me, or anyone around me. Boys and girls, girls and boys. I've had them all. But watching Spencer cutely hold my gaze and not look away brings back the novelty. 

"Thank you for taking care of me." She almost whispers, like she's been meaning to say it for a while. "I...I like that, too." 

Her usual blunt demeanor is gone, replaced instead by a gorgeous, flustered girl who I find incredibly appealing and mystifying. "Anytime."

She looks away for a second, and I frown at the break of eye contact. I reach over and, feeling bold, place my hand over hers. Spencer looks down at the two of our hands, lips parted, like it's a puzzle she's trying to figure out. Then she looks at me, a soft, gentle look that I can't quite decipher but can't take my eyes off of. 

"Anytime?" She asks.

"Of course." I pause, peeking at our hands. I feel like I could leave it there all day, feeling her warmth and knowing she doesn't want to move it away. I've never taken such simple pleasure in such a simple touch before. 

"I really like you, Spencer." I blurt out, then, aghast at my own honesty, attempt to pull my hand away from hers. I hadn't meant to say that. "I, uh..." She quickly takes my hand in hers, holding it there, and then I'm stricken into silence, heart beating wildly. 

"I like you, too." I look at her, at her shining eyes, her piercing blue eyes. I get tunnel vision for a second, I think. All I can see is her eyes, and I've never really looked at someone's eyes and seen so much of them before, but I think that's what's happening now. It almost startles me when she lets go of my hand, and I lose her gaze.

Without further notice, she's staring out the window, a dreamy look on her face. My face falls and my stomach fills with something that feels a lot like disappointment.

---

"Today is your two week marker, Ashey. Tell us how you feel about that." Nurse Jones glances down at her notes, then back at me with an encouraging smile. 

"I don't want to."

"Now, why not?" She asks, seemingly concerned. I just sigh, crossing my arms. The circle of people around me whispers and chatters.

"I think I know why." A girl speaks up, a girl a few years older than me. I think she might have been an alcoholic, she had that watery look to her eyes. She always talked a lot about her kids. "Ashley, right? Well, Ashley, you don't want to talk about how you feel because you don't know how you feel."

She looks proud of herself, and I am not impressed. "So?" 

"You don't know what you want. People are telling you you're doing good, they're telling you that it's good you're off coke. But you still want it, don't you?"

"Shutup." I almost whisper, almost say to myself.

"You don't know if you want to leave here and be sober, or go back to the life that got you here. You think maybe you can do it, but what if you can't, right?" She shakes her head at my, like I'm pitiful. Like she can read my thoughts. "It's just now occuring to you that you have a choice in things, and you're even more confused. I know, I've been there."

"You don't know anything." I try to dismiss her, but she keeps on, talking with an addict's conviction about things she's so sure about.

"Never thought it would be this hard, did you? Well, it's always this hard. It never gets easier. She laughts bitterly. "You didn't plan on feeling so weak, did you?"

"Shut the fuck up!" I roar, standing up and storming away from the circle. 

Nurse Jones catches me by the arm just before I reach my room. "Now Ashley, you can't keep on runnin' away like this."

"Running away? It doesn't feel like running away!" I yell, kicking the wall several times. "It feels like I'm still fucking stuck in this nuthouse! This fucking funny farm! I hate it here, I hate sitting in that stupid circle."

"You calm down right now, Miss Davies." She tells me sharply, trying to grasp me. "We don't tolerate that here!"

"I don't care! I'm so tired of you - of everyone! This is a prison, I sit in the group every day and all you son of a bitches do is judge me! Like they're any better!" I scream in the direction of the group circle, even though several rooms and walls are between us now. "You don't know me!" I fall back against the wall, slamming my head against it just a little bit harder than I intended do. This quiets me down, and I just look angrily at Nurse Jones, who's gesturing to two orderlies who are standing at the end of the hallway. "They don't know me." I tell her.

"They sure don't, Miss Davies. They sure don't..." 

"I want coke so bad." I whimper pathetically, slumped against the wall.

"Of course you do." She tells me firmly. "You just gonna have to deal with that now, aren't you?"

"Fuck you." I say without any feeling, and she reaches out to push the hair out of my eyes.

"Now, you don't mean that, honey."

"I do." I say weakly, trying to escape her touch. She doesn't allow me to, grasping my face and peering into my eyes with her old, weathered ones.

"You got control of yourself now? You okay now?"

"No." I shake my head over over. 

--

When I get to my room, the light is already out. There's barely a moon out, and it makes the room dim enough for me to have to creep slowly to my bed. 

Spencer isn't in the bathroom hurling, she's curled up in her bed, hopefully sleeping. She deserves a good night.

I sit on the edge of my bed, holding my face, squeezing my head between my hands. I take a deep breath, trying to steady myself, calm myself enough for sleep.

That's when I hear it. A slight, almost airy whispering, a murmuring coming from across the room. Spencer's eyes are squeezed tightly shut, but I know she isn't sleeping soundly because she's muttering, nearly to quiet to hear, to herself. 

My stomach contricts for a second, and I feel nauseous, listening to her ramble like a crazy person in the dark. I can't quite decipher a single word she's saying, and I think I'm grateful for it. 

I fall asleep with a sick, sad feeling in my gut.

11

"What's wrong?"

I look up at Spencer from mulling over my oatmeal and blink. "Nothing."

She peers at me closely. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." I say, then resume my staredown with breakfast. I don't want to meet her eyes. She got up exactly once last night, to throw up just once. I laid in bed and listened to her, not quite able to talk myself up and into the bathroom. Just looked guiltily at the ceiling, then pretended to be asleep.

"I heard you yelling last night." Spencer leans forward on the table.

"It happens." I mutter, then I push aside my plate and put my head down on the table.

"Are you sure you're okay?" I feel her hand tentatively brush my arm, but I don't move or say anything.

Spencer seems to get a read on my mood quite quickly, because she stops talking after that. Soon, the bell that resumes breakfast rings, and when I look up, she's already gone and out of sight.

---

"I want a drink." I say, mostly to myself, sitting in the corner of the community room watching two people hit a ping pong back and forth.

"What's your drink?" Thomas asks, spritzing water on one of the windows nearby. 

"What?"

"Drink of choice." 

"Should you be asking me that?" I ask. "Isn't that irresponsible?"

"Is it?" He counters, shrugging.

"Everclear and tonic water." I tell him, watching for his reaction.

He looks at me, sucking on one of his crooked front teeth. "Really?"

"Does it matter?"

He turns back to the window, wiping it down. "I'm more of a tequila guy."

"You drink tequila." I snicker. "How much tequila do you drink?"

"Not that much really." He admits. Of course. 

"I can't drink dark liquor. It makes me forget."

"Forget?"

I look on, amused. "Yeah, sometimes that's actually a bad thing." I spot Spencer across the room, back from her meeting with the doctor. She sees me, catches me eye from all the way across the room. I look away quickly for a few seconds, and when I look back, she's sitting in front of the TV, looking glum. I sigh. "Fucking Carlin."

"What's that?" Thomas asks, turning his ear towards me.

"Spencer Carlin." I tell him. "I don't get it."

He gazes across the room at her, then back to me. "What's not to get?'

I try to shrug nonchalantly. "Why is she even here? What's the matter with her? She's so strange..."

"Yeah, she's different." He states, squirting cleaner on the glass. 

"Tell me." He's the nicest of the orderlies, the most personable. Sometimes I see him sneaking a smoke outside, breaking the no smoking rule. I know he'll tell me if I ask.

"You know I can't."

"Oh, cut the shit, Thomas." I say harshly, and begin picking my nails. Our topic of choice is beginning to make me nervous. 

He makes a noise between a sigh and a laugh. "She's been here for about a year. A runaway. They found her in winter, almost frozen dead on the street." 

"Why?" I ask softly, wincing inwardly at the thought of Spencer on the side of some road, freezing almost to death.

"She's uh..." He bites his lip, deliberating over whether to go on. "All those pills she takes everyday? She's got a basketful of personality disorders, problems, Ashley. Lots of big problems."

I valiantly attempt to ignore the awful sting in my stomach, "What kinds of problems?"

"Listen..." He walks over to the window closest to me, one he's already washed and begins to wash it again. "Once, she was for all intents and purposes, a completely normal girl."

I swallow the lump in my throat, thinking back on the video I saw. Spencer grinning like the world was hers. "Was she?" I feel a little glimmer of hope.

He looks somber. "Thing is...well, thing is, schizophrenia usually starts to manifest itself in the late teens."

My breathing catches. "No."

He just nods at me. "Yeah." And then wanders off to go clean some windows, ones that are farther away. 

I feel like I just had the air knocked out of me, sitting there on the floor. I drag my eyes over to Spencer's and she's watching me. I stare and stare at her, until I realize that she's not looking at me, I don't think. She's watching the windows.

---

"Spencer, tell me about Ohio." I say, trying not to sound as defeated as I felt as I plopped down next to her. I know she's from Ohio because I once saw it on her chart. 

"Ohio?" She looks at me, surprised. 

"Yeah, like...when you were younger." 

"Why do you care?" 

For a second I'm caught off guard, so I tell her the first thing that comes to mind. "I care about you." I say, almost pained. 

She just watches the TV.

"Spencer, please." I say quietly, and then she turns to look at me just as the words escape my mouth. 

"I have a Mom, and a Dad, and I had two brothers. Now I just have one." The words stumble out of her mouth.

"What happened?"

"When I was sixteen, I was at a dance, and then I heard some shots." She shrugs at this, though her gaze flutters away from mine. "And then my brother wasn't around anymore."

"Oh, God..." I put a hand to my chest, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." She tells me. 

"I am, though." I say, and then my hand leaves my chest and, with a mind of its own, finds hers. I wrap my grip around her limp hand. "Spencer, hold my hand." I say softly, and then she squeezes. She squeezes hard. "Tell me what happened to you."

"Everything changed after that. I got, I got afraid of everything. The world changed for me, everything was scary. It was different, it...it still is different." Her eyes are on our hands, she looks transfixed. "I didn't feel the same. Something happened and that's when the magicians came back. That's when the whispers in my ears started, the ones where I have to listen real close to hear what they're saying." She uses both of her hands to hold onto mine now, sandwiching it between her own. "My Mom didn't like who I was becoming, who I said I was. She didn't believe me, at first. She cried a lot, and I felt bad. I cried, too, and the voices got louder and the men with capes and hats showed up more and more, and then they were there all the time."

"Spencer..." 

"My Dad started getting gray hair. It was my fault, my brother told me. I was adding more gray to the world, that's all I was doing. I was hurting my family and I couldn't control it. I yelled at them, I begged them to see what I saw. But they couldn't see what I see, no one can." She's gripping my hand tightly, now, unable to look anywhere else. I don't mind at all, I welcome to pain. Any pain besides the one that was on the inside right now, this foreign torture.

"It's alright, Spencer. Everyone sees things...everyone sees the world differently. Nothing's the same for everyone, it's...it's..." I lose all my words at the moment, not sure what I'm trying to say. I know what I want to tell her, but I can't find any words of comfort. 

"No." She shakes her head. "No. Regular people have five senses. I know that. I have another sense, one that only feels and sees bad things. Bad things that no one can see or understand and it hurt my family. So I had to leave. I had to protect them."

I'm squeezing her hand back, matching her for with all the strength I've got in my body. 

"I didn't always used to be like this." She whispers to me, and finally peers up at me with her shining, lost gaze. I recognize her pain, I know what it's like to realize you've become someone completely different that what you believed yourself to be. "I'm just broken, now."

My heart breaks.

---

I take a long shower that night. Then I sit on my bed and try to pray for the first time in years and years. I try to pray for myself, and find I have nothing to say. I try to pray for Spencer, and I feel like I have too much to say.

I'm tired and for some reason, I feel lonely. I'm lonely even though Spencer's standing with her nose to the window, eyes wide and staring into the night. I try not to watch her, I try to keep my eyes off of her. 

"Ashley?"

"I'm here." I say, sitting on the bed behind her. She doesn't move.

"When I told my Mom I was gay, she told me I was crazy." She follows this with a sad chuckle. "I don't think she meant it like that, though."

Not able to stand it anymore, I stand up on shaky legs and walk up behind her, wrapping my arms completely around her and setting my chin on her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Spencer."

"You can stop saying that now." She tells me, staring out at the stars. "It makes me sad."

I brush my lips against her cheek, brazen for a split second, then I think better of leaving an actual kiss there. She doesn't say anything.

"I don't want you to be sad." I tell her in a low, sincere voice. "Try not to be, I can help you..." I say, almost pleading with her.

"No one can." She sounds so hopeless. "I can see them, Ashley. There's so many of them now...more than I can count anymore."

I watch her eyes, watch her drag them over things I can't see, outside in the dark. She doesn't really look afraid, just resigned. I hold her tighter, thinking that's worse. 

"They're closer." She says, and I watch her eyes glitter in the reflection of the window. She's crazy. She's crazier than I can understand. I feel her bring her hands up to grip mine that are clasped around her stomach. "Can you see them? Do you...do you see them?" 

I think I've never held anyone this close. "Yeah." I whisper in her ear, voice ragged. "Yeah, Spencer, I see them. I know. I can see."

I don't know if she believes me, but she turns around in my arms and hugs me completely, burrowing her face into my neck.

She mutters something into my neck that sounds a lot like 'Thank you.'

12

"You lived in LA?"

I look up at Spencer from shoveling scrambled eggs down my throat. "Huh? Yeah. Yeah, I Iived in LA."

"What was it like?" She asks, curious.

"Well, it was like LA." I set my fork down. "Lots of bad things that look pretty under the lights."

"Did you like it?" 

"I've only ever lived there. I loved it and hated it." I shrug. "You know all those stars we can see in the sky at night?" I ask her, and she nods. "Well, it's nothing like that. There's hardly ever a single star out at night, even if you're in the highest building."

She looks thoughtful for a second. "That sounds lonely."

"I guess." I think of how often I've parked my car on the highest hill I could find, whatever peak was closest, and stood on the edge, braving the strong gusts of wind just to be closer the the sky. "I'll show you one day." I tell her.

"Yeah?" She brightens a little.

"Yeah. I mean, it's not a big deal or anything." I feel a smile tugging on the corners of my lips. "You'll like it."

"I think I would." Spencer agrees, and looks cutely at her plate, biting her lip.

I lean forward on my elbows, gazing at her. "Cool. It's a date, then."

---

"Spencer, go long!" I cry, and then pump the roll of toilet paper across the room. I hear her squeal and duck behind the ping pong table as it narrowly misses her head. 

"You missed!" She yells, amused and completely loud in such a silent, dull place.

"I wasn't trying to hit you, I was trying to throw it to you!" I call back, ignoring the looks of grumpy looking patients and fully grinning at Spencer, who picks up the roll and impressively launches it straight into my waiting arms. 

"Jeez, Spencer. Is that a rocket launcher or an arm?" I tease her.

"Two older brothers. I can throw a perfect spiral, too." She lets me know. I watch her smile for a second, loving the way her face lights up, loving the way her eyes follow suit. When she's active like this, playful and talkative, I get that good, twisted-up feeling in my stomach that I haven't quite gotten used to yet. Her hair is bouncing and she's completely graceful and adorable and I don't think I can get enough. I try not to think about why that's a scary thought, how I can't recall ever feeling exactly like this.

"You two wanna keep it down?" Some whiner pipes up from in front of the TV.

"You wanna mind your own business, fucker?" I shoot back at him, then quickly toss the toilet paper to Spencer, hitting her right in the side of the head. "Shit. Spencer!" I trot across the floor. She looks perturbed for a split second, then resumes looking out the window. "Spencer, you're not supposed to catch it with your face." I put my hand on either side of her face, looking for any visible injury. "Alright, you're fine." She's still looking out the window. "Spencer?" Nothing.

"Hey." I press my lips lightly onto her forehead, and when I pull back she's staring straight into my eyes.

"Hey." She mimics quietly.

"Welcome back to Earth." I force myself to drop my hands from her face but the second I'm about to take a step back, her hand is cupping my cheek.

"When you go back to LA, are you going to go back to everything else?" She asks me softly. 

I swallow, but can't bring myself to pull my cheek away. "Why?"

"Because you're going to leave me behind and I wanna know you'll be okay." She's so sincere, and her hand is so warm on my cheek I can't bring myself to lie to her. So I try to change the subject.

"That's not going to be for a long time." I tell her.

"Time's been passing quickly since you've been here. You've done something to me..." She shakes her head, then drops her hand. "You're not going to stop, are you? The drugs."

"Why do you care?" I take a step back from her, trying to look away from those blues and finding I can't, or won't.

"We care about each other." She says simply. "Don't we?" I think about how different things would be if I thought she could spend an afternoon with me without getting lost in the sky outside.

This time, I do look away. "I don't know." I weakly answer her question, all her questions.

"You're too young to waste yourself." She says, and I can't escape the terrible feeling that she feels like she's already been wasted.

---

"Ashley Davies, you have a visitor."

The words shock me out of my almost stupor, daydreaming about a certain blonde, and I amble my way up to the Nurse's station. Maria the orderly leads me to the visiting quarters, and I'm filled up with equal parts anticipation and dread. Who could it be? If it was my Mother I would just turn around and walk right up.

The door opens and Kyla sits there, looking out of place and uncomfortable in her glammed up outfit. I sit down across from her, slumping in my seat. "What."

"I needed to see you." She stays, her voice steely. Then, almost immediately, her resolve crumples. "How are you doing?"

I hold my hand out in front of me, not shaken by the slightest tremor. She watches. "I'm steady."

"Good." She looks to weary to actually smile, but it looks like this makes her happy. "Good." She takes a deep breathe. "You look good, you really do." She doesn't mean this. I know I'm paler, and sleep deprived, and my eyes give everything else away. Just like hers.

I feel like the air is slowly getting sucked out of the room. I have no idea what to say to her. 

"I'm sorry." She tells me, putting hand flat on the table. "I don't know how to make you believe that, but..."

"It's fine." I mutter, not looking at her. 

"No, it's not. It's - "

"We're tired." I say, glancing up at her. "I think we're both just really, really tired." I watch her, and I feel like I've reached a decision about something, like I'm just beginning to see the world like a sane person."We have to stop, Ky. Both of us."

Her lip trembles slightly. "What do you mean?"

I reach into my pocket, pulling out a small, red lollipop. I take her hand from the table and place it in her palm. "You know what I mean."

She clutches it, peering at the dark red color. "I don't know if I can." She whispers to me, voice slightly shaking.

"That makes two of us."

And with that, we both sit in silence. Sometimes I can't believe Kyla's not even twenty yet. I look at her eyes, the same brown as mine, aged beyond the years she's lived. I have to look away.

I gently set my head on the table, feeling worn out. Spencer, Kyla, the overbearing sadness that just now hits me. I squeeze my eyes shut just as I hear her say my name. "Ash?"

"Saint Humbeline died in her brother's arms." I don't lift my head.

Kyla just sits there, and I don't move an inch. That's how we stay.

13

"Are you gonna throw up?" I'm sitting against the sink, watching Spencer hunch over the toilet.

"I don't know."

"Well, do you feel alright?" I ask her.

"I don't know." She frowns into the toilet, and then sighs, falling abruptly into a sitting position.

"Whoa." I scoot across the tile floor, slinging an arm around her shoulders. "Be careful, Spencer."

I feel her rest her head on my shoulder. I tighten my hold, pulling her closer. "I like that."

"What?"

She burrows a little bit deeper to the embrace, and we fit comfortably. "You hold me. You actually touch me like you aren't afraid of me."

"Why would I be afraid of you?"

I feel her shrug. "I don't know." She pauses, and for a second the only sound is the hum of the flourescent light bulb. "When the doctors told us what was wrong with me, after we finally knew, she...my Mom, she was afraid to hug me. She didn't really even smile at me, after that. Not for a long time."

Spencer doesn't sound sad when she says this, but there's an element to her voice that pains me to hear. A tiny bit of anguish that is present whenever she talks about her family. "She still loved you, Spencer." I find my words hollow. I've never been good at things like this.

"I know. I know. I think...I think that maybe that might be worse." 

I plant a single kiss on the top of her head. "Maybe." I say softly. "But I'll never be afraid of you, okay?"

"Promise?"

"I promise."

"Ashley?"

"Hm?" I thread my fingers back and forth through her hair.

"Did you drugs make things better? Whatever was hurting you?" She asks me quietly.

I hesitate for a second. "No." I shake my head. "It just made me forget. But when I started remembering again, it was a lot worse." 

"Will they get better again?"

I consider this. "I think they're already getting better, don't you?"

We fall silent for a minute, contemplating this. My leg is falling asleep, and the tile underneath me is cold. I'm missing out on sleep I probably need. But Spencer's head is inches away from mine, and her hair smells good, and her full attention is on me. There's no way I can get up now. 

Sitting here on the floor with Spencer, with her body no longer tense and softening under my touch, I feel like we both have something the other needs.

"I saw your sister the other day, when she was leaving." Spencer tells me. "She's very pretty."

"Yeah, Kyla's real pretty." 

"Not like you, though."

"No?"

She angles her head and looks up at me, blue eyes shocking me with their clarity. "I think you're the prettiest girl I know." 

---

"My daughter called me today." Some teary eyed guy with slippers on wipes at his face. "Told me she was proud of me. My little girl's never said that."

I shift nervously in my seat. 

"Well, you've given her a reason to be proud, Ron." Nurse James says warmly, and the group claps quietly at his admission. 

"You just hafta believe things will turn out okay," Ron blubbers, getting caught up in the moment. I would have rolled my eyes if I wasn't a little taken aback by his raw sincerity. I bite my lip.

"I learned here, I learned that you have to trust, and have faith, and you'll be okay." He nods at all of us, and sits back down. "Just gotta have hope."

The circle is quiet for a moment, and I'm lost in reflection for a second. "How?"

Several heads turn in my direction, surprised. "What was that, Ashley?" Nurse James asks.

I bite my thumbnail. "I asked how." I mumble.

"How what, sweetheart?"

I take a deep breathe, not meeting anyone's eyes. "How do you have hope?" My voice sounds as small as I feel.

No one answers for a second. "Does anyone have any words of advice for Ashley here?" Nurse James prods.

The woman to my right puts a friendly hand on my arm. "People think hope is something everyone's got, like it's something you're born with." I brave a glance at her dark eyes, the deep lines in her face. She's lived a life without a lot of hope, I think. "Now, most of us here know that ain't the case. Hope is what comes to you when you got nothing left. It's what you get when there's nothing else, you understand?"

I nod absently, looking to the ground. 

"But that's all the 'how' you get. If you're lucky, it'll come when you need it."

I try to think if I can have that, one day. If I'll wake up and it will be brighter outside, and Spencer would be okay, and I'd never want coke again.

I try to feel, for a second, like everything will be all right.

It seems like a fairy tale.

---

"Ash?"

I jolt awake. "Kyla?" She's the only person to ever call me 'Ash.'

"No, Spencer." 

I turn over in bed, facing Spencer, and blink a few times until I can see in the dark. She's on her bed, lying perfectly still, and staring straight at me. 

"You called me Ash." I wipe sleep out of my eyes.

"Did I?"

"Yeah." I say sleepily. "It was cute."

I can see her smile broadly even in the darkness, and after that I'm wide awake. 

"What's up?" I ask her. "Couldn't sleep?"

"They keep looking in the windows." She tells me, and I feel a chill run up my spine. I don't venture to ask her who 'they' are.

"Are you afraid?" 

She stops to think about this for a second. "Yes." 

"Can I help?" 

"I don't think so." She tells me solemnly.

I hesitate, not sure how to handle this. "Can I try?"

"Please."

Without another thought, I kick my blankets off and I'm out of bed. My bare feet hit the floor the one, two, three steps over the Spencer's bed. I hold back the blankets and slide in next to Spencer.

For some reason, her bed feels warmer. 

"Come here." I whisper, and pull her a little closer to me. I do what I've been wanting to do for a while and press myself into her back, molding to her and holding her against me. "Is this better?"

"Yes." She nods, and I kiss her once, softly, on the nape of her neck, where soft hair meets soft skin. 

"You don't have to be afraid." I murmur, and only have a few seconds to wonder what this little blonde girl is doing to me before I fall to sleep. 

14

"So...how'd you sleep last night?"

I sip my milk and pray I don't blush, not even a little. I don't know if Spencer's trying to be cute and flirtatious, or if she's honestly wondering how I slept. She's kind of unpredictable like that.

"Fantastic." I tell her, picking up her banana and exchanging it with my apple. Spencer doesn't like bananas, something about their "smooshiness." She told me this in a completely endearing, adorable manner and I don't think I'll ever forget that about her.

"Good." She smiles brilliantly and I busy myself with peeling the banana. She's been doing that, smiling, a lot more lately. I like to believe it's because of me. "You're very comfortable, you know."

"I'm comfy?"

She nods wisely, like the knows something I don't. I think she might, actually. "Well, Spencer." I take a bite of my banana. "No one's ever called me comfy before. I think I like how it sounds."

She cocks her head to the side, watching me with a tiny smile dancing on her lips. "Do you?"

"Yeah."

"Ashley?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for the apple."

---

"Miss Davies, your Mother is on the line." Laurie the orderly tells me, cocking one hideously painted on eyebrow. She always seems a starstruck by some b-grade singer and I fight the kneejerk reaction to let her know that I want nothing to do with my Mother.

But I'm trying to grow.

I sigh and slug my way into the chair next to the phone. I calm my nerves before picking up the phone and putting it to my ear. "Yeah?"

"Ashley, I'm in Houston! It's wonderful. How are you, dear?"

"I'm fine, Mother."

"Oh, the tour is going so well. Tickets aren't sold out, not exactly, but we're filling a lot of seats!" She sounds excited, but I'm bored and a little nervous.

"That's great."

"But about you - how did you like your visit with Kyla? I don't see her at all these days, I just won't he home for moths. This tour could kill an old woman!" My Mother rambles.

"Mom - "

"Which is really just - "

"Mother."

"Hm?"

I take a deep breath. "I'm actually a little glad you called..."

"That's great! You - "

I interrupt her, wanting to get this out before I lose my nerve. "Listen, in group therapy, they tell you that you should, like, try to tell all the people you've hurt - "

"Oh, honey, how much time do you have left in there? 3 months? You should - "

"Shut the fuck up!" I cry, a little frustrated. "I'm trying to do something important and you keep runnin' your mouth!"

"Oh. Sorry. Yes, go on."

I continue, forcing the words out. "They said to tell all the people you've hurt why you're sorry for what you did. And I'm trying to tell you that, ah, I'm sorry."

"For what, dear?" My Mother sounds like she'd rather not be hearing this and that makes it this much harder to say. This is a big step, I think.

"For everything, Mom. You know. For not being...the daughter you've always wanted. For not being Kyla and for...making you send me here. I'm just sorry, alright?" I finish, a little exasperated and more emotional than I'd like to be.

"Apology accepted, dear. I take it you don't mean all those horrible things you said to me before you left for Arizona?"

I bite my nail down to a tiny, bloodstained nub. "No, Mother."

"Great."

Silence fills the line, and is tentatively broken by me.

"Mother?" I clear my throat, wondering how to phrase this. "I know you're not at home, but maybe could you get someone - Henry, anyone really, to look after Kyla? Check up on her and make sure she's okay? She...might need it."

"You sound so different." She states, almost marveling. I feel a tiny little tug of pride in my stomach.

"I quit, Mom. I stopped, and it hurt more than anything I had to do, ever. And I'm not going back. Just so you don't think I'm saying all these things because they make me, I...I really mean them." I say with an earnestness that I couldn't bring face to face, I'm sure. I wouldn't be ready for that, yet.

"Ashley..." For once, my Mother seems properly stunned. "That's the best news I've heard all week."

I laugh weakly. "Really?"

"It is."

---

"I talked to my Mom today." I tell Spencer later. We're sitting on our couch by the window, and she has her feet up on the windowsill. If I didn't know better I'd think her eyes were concentrating on her toes, not past them out the window.

She doesn't answer me. I reach out and pinch the bottom of the chin. "Spencer, I love your chin."

"Huh?"

I smile a little. "I said I talked to my Mother today. She called."

Her eyes sparkle with genuine interest. "How was it?"

"Good, actually." I say. I had been itching to talk about this with someone all day. Well, not someone - Spencer. "I told her..." I scratch my cheek. "About the drug thing?"

She nods.

"Well, I told her I'm pretty much done with it. I'm not...There's no going back to that." I watch Spencer's eyes get bigger and bigger, always telegraphing what's going through her mind. "Not from this." 

"Ashley..." She closes the distance between us on the couch in an instant. "Is it the truth?" Her hand is on my arm.

"Yeah." I say, sure of it. As far as I know, it is. I hope I'm as strong as I think I can be. "I feel..." I trail off, struggling for words. "I feel..."

"You feel." Spencer says, and I look at her quizzically, not quite grasping her words.

But she looks so confident and she's nodding, and I realize that she's right. For the first time in a long time, I've been feeling. And it's better than I remember thinking it could be.

"Yeah." I say softly. "Yeah." I give her a very small, understanding smile that she returns. I have to look away for a second to compose myself, but I look right back in almost an instant. My hand is warm and I realize that Spencer's wrapped her own around mine, and I don't recall it happening. "She just...my Mother. She sounded proud, almost."

"She should be proud. I'm proud." Spencer states, and then she's tugging on my hand, pulling me into her and covering me in her arms, she's hugging me.

When we finally pull apart, after who knows how long, I look at her, a little shyly. "Really?" Spencer has the ability to dissolve all my cockiness and swagger.

"Totally."

I grin sheepishly, and then we both stare out the window.

---

"Ashley."

I groan, in the depths of sleep.

"Ashley." I feel fingers brush a few strand of hair behind my ear. I'm awakened by the touch, and when I open my eyes Spencer is kneeling next to my bed, peering at me closely. 

"Hey." I stare straight back at her. "Scared again?" I ask sleepily.

"No."

"Everything okay?"

She just shrugs. I stifle a yawn and prop myself up on my elbow. "Tell me."

She appears hesitant for a second. "Spencer..." I'm not used to her like this, so I hope gentle prodding will help. 

"Can I get in?" 

"Always. You can always get in." I wipe my eyes and scoot back. "Climb in here."

She does, settling in and facing towards me in the bed. "Good?" I ask, getting comfortable.

"Come closer."

"Closer?" I inch over to her side of the bed. "I can do that." I say, feeling slightly elated and slightly scared. "Better?" 

"Perfect." She whispers, and I feel her hands settle on my hips. My breathing falters for a second. I'm almost spinning at this close contact to her, and I am not a girl unpracticed in the ways of love. Physical love, anyways. I never had a problem being physical with someone, but here in the dark with Spencer's eyes barely inches from mine, and beginning to dart towards my lips like she can't help it...It's almost a dream that if I'm not careful, I might wake up from.

I loosely wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her the last bit of distance between us. She seems hypnotized for a second, completely still and silent and peering straight at my lips. I'm unprepared when she speaks.

"I think I would kiss you if you said it was okay." 

My entire body flushes, and I take a single shaky breath before licking my lips, glad she can't see me blush in the dark. "It's more than okay."

Her lips are soft, moist and warm, and it's everything a shy first kiss should be. She keeps her eyes completely open. I fight the urge to close my own, instead matching her gaze with mine. It's an odd experience, to be connected at the eyes and lips, but for a few seconds I feel connected to her in more ways than that. Countless ways. When the kiss breaks, the feeling is still present. It's unsettling and inexplicably soothing and something I've never felt. 

Her hands cup my face. I relish in the feeling of her soft hands on my skin. She caresses my cheeks with her thumbs, and I get lost in the touch. "God..." I whisper, not really having any other words.

"I like being here with you." Spencer tells me tenderly. "More than anything else."

"You do things to me..." I murmur with my eyes closed, but I trail off, not completely aware that I spoke, or even able to finish my sentence. I sigh, content, atleast for a few seconds. When I open my eyes, Spencer is still watching me, her eyes appearing brighter than ever, even in the dark. "I love your eyes."

"They're so you can always find me in the dark." She says seriously, and then she kisses me on the cheek, puts her head on my chest, and falls alseep. 

I stare at the ceiling, one protective arm around Spencer, and will myself to take everything from this moment in, a few minutes of happiness to remember, maybe. And then I fall asleep. 

15

Spencer laid with her head in my lap, blue eyes peering up at me, and blonde hair splayed out everywhere, it seemed. I busied myself with tracing the tips of my fingers across her hairline, completely enamored with the way she was grinning up at me, watching me while I watched her.

"Can you hear the birds chirping?"

I quirk an eyebrow, listening. Nothing. "Can you?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Are you sure you don't hear them?"

I closed my eyes, listening very carefully. I wasn't sure I heard anything. I opened my eyes again, thankful that Spencer was looking at me, and not out the window at nothing. "Yeah. I hear them." I smiled at her. "It's pretty."

"It is." She smiled back, content, and I resumed running my fingers through her soft hair. We sat by the window, the sun was a little brighter, it seemed, and the birds Spencer heard seemed to fit in perfectly. I looked down at her, at how blue her eyes were, how comfortably her head sat in my lap, how she responded to each touch with a flash of glee across her face. How my stomach fluttered everytime, and how unused to that I was.

Spencer didn't seem so crazy. It just seemed that she liked me as much as I liked her, and that filled me with something that felt good, a subtle happiness that wasn't there before.

"It's almost like music." She says gently, now a faraway look in her eyes. She light from the window is hitting her skin, highlighting all the things I love about her face. Her lips, her eyebrows, her little nose. I shake my head to myself, unconsciously tracing a finger down the side of her face.

"What is?"

"The birds. It's so...it's lovely. Can you hear it?"

I nod, preoccupied with watching her features.

"I want to dance." She says, then makes a move to get up.

"Aw." I plant my hands on her hips and haul her into a sitting position on my lap. "No dancing. More of this."

A lazy smile crosses her face that tells me she doesn't want to go anywhere. "You don't wanna dance with me?" She asks, face millimeters from my own.

I glance at her lips. "Not here." I tell her in a whisper.

"Where?"

I peer around the room, orderlies are mopping the brown floors, some people in robes are arguing by the ping pong table, and a nurse is readying a tray of pills. I'm not in a dancing mood. I turn back to her and brush my nose against hers, "Spain. Paris. Anywhere you want."

Spencer looks at me kind of funny for a minute. "But not here?"

"Anywhere else." I assure her.

"What if there isn't - "

"Kiss me again." I interrupt her, feeling a little antsy and not wanting to know how she was going to finish her sentence.

And she does, quietly and quickly, press her lips into mine.

I think I would really love to dance with Spencer, if only the sounds of our footsteps wouldn't bounce off of these hideous walls, in this depressing place.

--

I sit silently in the large circle, feeling completely calm, if not a little bored. People drone on and one about their problems, begging for a solution, and others feel like they have all the answers, offering them to those in need.

I try to tune it out, thinking about questions I have. Things I want to ask, because there's so much I'm not sure of yet. But all I can think about is Spencer, unsuprisingly, and how she seems to be the center of all my thoughts lately.

I don't think it's unhealthy, because truthfully, I've never felt better.

"Nurse James?" My voice pokes through a debate between two other patients and she looks at me in surprise.

"Yes, Ashley?"

"Can I, uh, go to my room? I just wanna rest up before dinner." I lie.

"Group's barely halfway over, now, if you - "

"I'm just not feeling up to it." I say firmly, standing up and crossing my arms.

"Well, then." She adjusts her glasses, not asking for a fight. "We'll talk about this later, Miss Davies."

I turn around and walk back to my room, knocking gently on the door to get Spencer's attention. She was staring out the window like she was confused. It's nearly dark outside.

"Thought you'd be in here." I smile at her.

"You were right."

I wander over to her, "I bailed on the circle so I could hang out with you before dinner." I say.

"Why?" She asks, holding out arms out expectantly before I even got there.

I fit snugly, and she wraps them around me. "Because you're great."

"You really think so?" Spencer's voice is at once hopeful and unsure, and I wrap my arms around her waist.

"I know so. You don't know?"

She just shrugs.

"No one's ever told you how great you are?" I say in disbelief, and she shrugs again. I pull her in a little closer. "You are so much better than everyone else, because you make me smile so easily and I love everything you say."

She buries her head against my shoulder to hide her smile. I kiss her cheek. "You're the most adorable thing I've ever seen." I tell her honestly, and she peeks her head up at me.

"I like it when I know you're telling the truth." She says, and then gives me the warmest, most unexpected, and definitely my favorite of all our kisses so far. Of every kiss I've ever had, so far.

This time, we both keep our eyes closed.

---

Spencer's gazing out the window sporadically during dinner.

"Hey."

She turns to me, then looks down at her plates and pokes her roast beef with her fork.

"Are you cold?" I ask her.

"No." She says, glancing out the window again. Then away again.

"Because you have goosebumps." I reach out and rub her arm, trying to warm her up. "You want me to go get you a jacket or something?"

"No." She meets my eyes. "But thank you." Spencer appears as though she's trying very hard to keep her concentration on me.

"Are you alright?"

"Fine." She gives me a weak smile and reaches over to grab my bread, and then begins spreading butter on it.

"What are you doing?" I ask, a little amused, and when she looks at me, she has a genuine, albeit tiny, smile on her face.

"Buttering your bread." She tells me, spreading it carefully. "You always tear holes in it with the knife." She shakes her head playfully, glancing at me. "You just aren't very good at it at all."

"Is that so?" I tuck some hair behind her ear and lean forward. "Well, good thing I have you here to look out for me, then." I say.

"It really is." She holds the bread out to me, and I take a small bite. "Good?"

"Good." I say, taking the bread and setting it down on the table. Then I take her hand gently in mine. "Great."

She watches me happily. "It doesn't seem so much like what it is, when we're together."

"What does that mean?" I ask.

"You know." She gestures around to the dim, hanging lights. The chatty crowds of people at tables around us, and nurses watching from a distance. Atleast, I think that's what she's referring to. "All this. All the stuff I wish I didn't see, or hear. You make it a lot easier to pretend."

I watch her, not quite sure of what to think. I'm not even positive I understand, but there's something in her eyes...

I try to smile at her when she lifts up my hand and brings it to her lips. "I like pretending." She says quietly.

"I like pretending, too." I say, a strange, hollow quality to my voice. I squeeze her hand. "We can pretend." 

16

"How are you feeling, Ashley?" Dr. Marlow sits with his hands cross, sizing me up.

"Good." I shrug. 

"Nurse James tells me that you leave support group fairly often, and your attendance - "

"Look," I interrupted, before he can go on. "I know what you're going to say. I just - I don't feel like I need it. I don't need to talk to people."

He peered at me, analyzing me, I knew, and I just stared back. "You have a little over two months left with us. I think you'll find that communication - "

"I have communication, alright? I just don't need it from a bunch of strangers."

He smiled lightly at me. "I understand that you don't feel like you need things, but they're honestly for you're own good."

"What the hell!" I cry, letting my impatience get the best of me. "I mean - sorry. I just feel like I've been doing good, okay? I've been doing fine, right?"

"Yes." Is all he says. "You're doing very well."

I sit for a second. "Is that it?"

"That's all we can ask of you."

---

"What's it like to have a famous Mom?" Spencer asked me later, staring out the window. I sat at the other end of the couch, facing her and with my feet in her lap.

"It's... I don't kow. It's all I've known." I tell her, shrugging. "I don't see her a lot. And when I do she always has her assistant with her or whatever. But - I am rich." I send her a smile. "I can't complain."

"You can't?" She asks. "Was it different?"

"When?"

"Ever. Between you two." She reaches down and starts absently wiggling my toes. She's still looking out the window, eyes surveying nothingness.

"I don't know." I admit, trying to think back. "I think...I think she loves my sister more, and my Dad loved me more." I sigh. "But he's not around anymore, so..."

"I'm sorry." Spencer tells me, finally looking at me.

"Don't be."

"Alright." I feel her lightly begin to tickle my feet. "You're not ticklish." She observes, the corners of her mouth upturned slightly.

"Nope." I shake my head. "Disappointed?"

'Never." She smiles at me, disarming me in ways tickling could never do. 

"Do you like any of her songs?" I ask, making conversation. 

"Christine Davies?" She almost makes a face, and I laugh at it. "No, not any that I can think of."

"I'll let you in on a secret, Spence. Neither do I. No one under the age of forty likes her, I promise you."

A tiny giggle escapes her throat, making me smile wider. "That's mean."

"And true." I go on, words coming easily like they always do when I have Spencer's full attention. "She always wants me to do some Mother/Daughter singalong with her, but I refuse. I think she resent that I have the voice and not Kyla."

Spencer's hand drags itself gently up and down my leg. "You can sing?" She asks, genuinely surprised and interested. 

"I guess." I say, instantly feeling modest and liking more to concentrate on her hand sliding up and down my leg. 

"Sing." Spencer says softly, through a smile. 

"I really - "

"For me?" She cocks her head, and her hand stops moving, and she seems so sincere and her eyes aren't lost out the window, they're on me. 

"Uh..." I wrack my brain for lyrics, singing the first words the come to mind, that remind me of Spencer. 

"Green, green, green..." I sing, quietly, "What about the sweetness we knew, what about what's good, what's true, from those days." Spencer watches me closely, almost making me nervous. "Can't count all the lovers I burned through. So why do I still burn for you..." I sit up on my knees and crawl toward her, singing even softer. "I can't say." I settle on her lap, unaware of the stares and anchored completely by her eyes and not even fighting it. "Heal her soul," I whisper the words in her ear, "Carry her, my angel." A kiss on her earlobe. "Ohio." I sing the last word.

Spencer wraps her arms around my neck and presses her cheek against mine.

"Your voice is gorgeous." She tells me with quiet passion in her voice. I feel my cheeks burn red. 

"It's just the first song...it reminded me of you." I almost stammer.

"I loved it. Thank you."

"Anytime." I say.

"Anytime?"

"Only for you, though."

---

I sat on my bed, watching Spencer walk past the window every few seconds, brushing her hair, and glancing out the window. She makes half a dozen trips before I lie down, watching her. I enjoyed watching her, always had, and it seemed like that's all I could do when she got like this.

"They're close." She murmured.

I sighed to myself. "Spence."

She didn't hear me, or atleast didn't act like she did.

"Spencer."

"Ashley."

I gave her my most pleading look. "Come to bed."

She looked a little conflicted, and paced a little more but took a few steps closer to her bed. 

"Close the curtain." I say suddenly, in a clipped tone.

She looks at me like she's worried. "Why?"

"Why not?"

She doesn't answer, bites her lips and looks away, and I stare at the ground, a sinking feeling in my stomach. 

"Spencer."

"Ashley?"

"Come get in my bed." I tell her gently.

"Okay." She relented and came to slip into bed next to me. 

"I don't know how I'll be able to go to sleep when you leave." Spencer whispers as we face each other in bed.

"Don't even think about that." I dismiss it almost immediately, not wanting to consider the inevitable. "Just...just come here." 

She burrows her face into my chest, and I wrap my arms around her. She molds herself into my, then brings her head up and captures my lips in a deep kiss that I return immediately. "Spencer..." I moan, pulling her impossibly close.

"Kiss me harder." She says, muffled by the kiss. I press myself into her, I move my hands all over her body, feeling flushed and tingling all over. A ridiculous sensation that's almost overpowering. I need to get closer to her, need to wrap myself up in her.

She wraps her legs around my own, rolling on top of me. I open my eyes and we break apart, taking a breathe and staring straight into each other's eyes. "Can you see me?" She asks, almost whimpering.

I put my hands under her shirt, feeling the warmth of her back, and caressing the skin there. "Yes."

She sighs at this, something I don't understand, and then her gaze flickers toward the corner, the window. The curtain flutters in the breeze. She blinks a few times, then lays her head down on my chest, facing the window. 

An abrupt ending. I wrap my arms around her, and she falls asleep like that, and I feel empty, despite being more fulfilled than I ever had in my life. 

The strange combination makes it impossible for sleep. 

17

A new orderly with dark hair cut short to his head and shifty, bright green eyes brings Spencer her pills the next morning.

"Water." He says curtly, nodding to the tiny cup. Spencer blinks in his direction and appears a little uneasy. Shane, as it says on his nametag, pops his gum impatiently. I watch out of the corner of my eye from the bathroom, and soon he's out the door.

Spencer appears next to me after a minute, peering at my reflection in the mirror. "There's a new guy." She says.

"I saw." I hand her the brush, shaking my own hair out. "He looked like a jerk."

"Did he?" Spencer asks, pulling the brush through her hair slowly.

"I think so, yeah." I watch her.

"Me too." She agrees, and for a moment we fall into a silence. She hands me back my brush, but I linger for a second. I toy with the brush in my hands, contemplating asking Spencer for a kiss before breakfast. I woke up just in time to entangle myself from her and went back to my own cold bed very reluctantly. When she awoke, I caught her searching for me, groping at the empty space next to her. It had made me smile to myself.

Spencer leans against the sink and fixes her gaze on me, "What?"

"What?" I repeat.

"You were gonna say something."

"Was I?"

She nods. "Yeah." Takes a step closer to me. "If you want to talk about last night, that's okay."

I put the brush down and smooth her sleeve out for her. "Well I don't know what..." I trail off, considering my words and decide to tell her the first truth that comes to mind. "It was nice." I tell her. "It's always nice when it's me and you."

A slow smile spreads across her face. "Really?"

I completely forget about asking for a kiss and lean in to take one. She offers her lips up without hesitation, giving me a single kiss on the lips that is nearly enough to incapacitate me. "Really." I whisper to her, before pulling away.

Suddenly she has a more serious look on her face, a tiny crease in the middle of her forehead. "Ashley?" 

I lean in, not wanting to miss a word, and her voice is so soft I have to. "Yeah?"

She wraps her arms around my waist and clasps her hands behind my back, and I let myself be hauled foreward by her, pressed against her gently. She lowers her lips to my ear, but before she can get a single word out the breakfast bell screams through our moment, destroying the soft atmosphere and startling me.

My heart is beating wildly, trying to recover from the shock but it seems that Spencer isn't even fazed. She stands, still so close to me, and whispers in my ear. "I think it's nice, too."

Eventually, we peel ourselves apart and make it to breakfast. 

---

"The tree's growing." Spencer notes, eyes glazed after being focused on the distant horizon for some time now. 

I shift in my seat, the couch by the window, and squint against the sunlight filtering through the window. The tree was edging its way up and into the view of the window. "Is it?"

"Yeah." Spencer answers, distant. I imagine the dark green leaves pressed up against the window as tiny pieces of gray, the sky behind a lighter shade of black. I look the other way, busying myself with watching Spencer instead. 

"You ever think trees are prettier when all their leaves have fallen?" Spencer asks me.

"I never thought about it." I say, shrugging. "Do you?"

She bites her lip, nibbles on it for a second before nodding, eyes still glued on some faraway spot that I can't see. "Yeah. I do."

The leaves outside rattle in the wind. "You don't think it makes the tree look naked?" I ask, half kidding.

"I think the leaves make the tree look bushy, and soft, and weaker than it is." She tilts her head, as if this thought just came to her. "A tree by itself looks much stronger." She says firmly.

I reach a hand over and trace a circle into her knee, looking thoughtfully out the window, then back to Spencer. "I wish I had your brain for a day." I tell her affectionately. When I catch an almost imperceptible sadness creeping into her eyes my stomach falls and I find myself thinking, no, maybe I don't.

"You okay?" 

"That tree's gonna grow and grow." She rips her eyes away from the window and settles them on me. I hold onto them with my own steady gaze. The only way to talk to Spencer is looking her straight in the eyes, I found. The only way. "The leaves will be a golden brown in the Autumn. I can see them, then. Just a little bit before they die."

I do the math in my head, quick math as there's only twelve months in a year, and I can see her watching my brain work through my eyes. She watches knowingly as I add up the months, and realize I won't be here to see Autumn with Spencer. She'll be here, on this couch, probably. And I'll be...somewhere. Not here. 

I sigh. "You..."

She looks away, like her head is on a cord being pulled to look straight out the window. And just like that I have no words left, and out of all the thoughts swirling in my head not one can make it's way out of my mouth. 

"Me?" Spencer asks quietly, but her eyes never waver from - what? The tree? The sky? The men, outside, that only she can see. I shiver a little involuntarily, and then scoot closer to her. 

"Yeah, you." I tell her, sliding an arm over her shoulders and planting a kiss on her cheek. Her lips twitch and are on their way to maybe forming a smile when a shadow falls over us.

"Break it up you two." Shane barks, his too green eyes staring us down.

"Go away." I tell him, curling my lip. "We're not doing anything."

He points the stick of the broom our way. "Intimacy between patients," he sneers, "Is not permitted."

I hold onto Spencer, maybe a little tighter inadvertently, and she still stares out the window. I narrow my eyes. "Fuck. Off." I say, no longer having the patience for him.

The broom hits the floor in a clatter, and Shane puffs out his chest. "You," he points a finger directly in my face, "get your ass up right now - "

"You get that damn finger out of my face right now." I say with warning in my voice, feeling a lot of anger and rage I hadn't felt lately filling my veins like a drug. I let go of Spencer and prepare to stand up and that's when she grabs my hand. I look down and she's peering up at me with those record breaking blue eyes and I'm temporarily stalled.

Shane is starting to yell and Nurse James ambles her way up to talk with him, and she's nodding and patting him on the back and after a second he walks away with nothing but a smirk and glare. I'm still a little bit lost in Spencer's eyes, having a million different conversations, silently and all at once. "Be good." She says softly to me, so that I can barely hear. I force myself to look away as Nurse James turns to us.

"Girls." She says, sounding a bit exasperated and glancing at our joined hands pointedly. "You know the rules." I frown and let go of Spencer's hand reluctantly.

"I never read a fucking rulebook." I cross my arms, both Spencer and Nurse James looking at me. The latter crosses her own arms, a mirror of mine, and shakes her head slowly at me. 

"Shane comes from a big hospital up in the city and isn't used to workin' in quite so small a hospital, alright, honey?" She lets me know. "He's got a temper to match yours now, so you just..." She attempts to catch Spencer's eye, to my surprise, successfully. "You keep an eye on your girl, yes, Miss Carlin?"

Spencer says not a single word, but my jaw drops a little. Nurse James gives me a warm, knowing nod and then walks away with an air of authority trailing after her. 

---

"That new orderly is a douchebag." I fluff my pillows and toss them onto the bed. "I should just rail him right in the - "

"Ashley." Spencer sits on my bed, effectively cutting me off. "You have to be good, remember?"

I try on a tiny smirk, aimed right at Spencer. "I'm no good."

She seems amused by this. "That's just not true."

"No, huh?" I pinch her on the butt slightly. "Lift." She sits up a bit and I pull the covers out for underneath her. "And why not?"

"Because I say it isn't." She shrugs like it's nothing and lies down on my bed without a second thought. "And I just know these things."

I grin at her. "I'll take your word for it."

"Are you going to get in?" Spencer asks, pulling back the covers. I take a few seconds to particularly enjoy the fact that Spencer is in my bed and, and another second to love the fact that she looks like she belongs there.

I walk over to Spencer's side of the bed and lie down, rolling over her dramatically to get to my side. This earns me a good few seconds of giggling from Spencer, making me especially happy. I prop myself up on one elbow and peer down at her. 

"Hey."

"Hey." Spencer reaches out and traces my bottom lip. I don't move an inch. "I want you to do something for me."

Anything. "Okay."

She concentrates on my upper lip now, running a finger along the tiny curves there. "I want you to meet my Dad tomorrow." She says it quickly, in one burst, like she'd been gathering up the courage.

A smile tweaks my lips. "Your Dad?"

"He's visiting. He barely ever does that, but...I think he would like you. And you might like him." She tells me earnestly. "You really don't have to if - "

"Yeah, right." I cut her off, delivering a lightning quick tickle to her ribs just to bring a smile to her face. "I would love that." I grab her hand and kiss it, once, then again. "I'm so happy you want me to." I tell her tenderly, holding her hand to my cheek.

"Really?"

"Yeah." 

The smile gets bigger and Spencer's nose scrunches up, her happiness invades her eyes and gives me butterflies. 

"I've never had this." Spencer tells me, wide blue eyes still sparkling. 

"What?" 

Spencer pauses, then grabs my hand and holds it to her chest, flat over her heart. "I've never liked living this much." She says easily, and my heart skips a beat. 

"Spencer..."

"Lights out." Nurse James' voice rings out from the doorway, but Spencer and I do not flinch. We turn, unconcerned, to the nurse and she shakes her head, having caught us in a moment. "Lights out, ladies." She says, sighing, and flips out the light.

We don't say much else.

Spencer holds my hand there until she falls asleep. "I've never had this, either." I whisper my admission to her, almost in a worried voice. I gently take my arm back and wrap it around her, holding her to me in an embrace I keep until morning.

18

"How do I look?"

Spencer stands almost timidly in the doorway of our tiny bathroom, and I sit up, wiping sleep out of my eyes and opening them wide enough to get in all of her. "Disarming." I tell her, eliciting a small blush, and I swing my legs out of bed.

"Nurse James gave me curlers." Spencer fluffs her tiny ringlets of blonde curls and smiles. "I think it look nice." She's glowing, complete happiness emanating from her and making me have to stop and catch my breath.

"You look better than nice." I stand up and pad over to her, wrapping my arms around her waist. Her hair is warm, fresh out of curlers, and smells like hairspray and Spencer. It comforts me, almost as much as when she returns the embrace. 

I catch a glimpse out of the window over her shoulder, what seems like endless blue sky. "It's pretty outside today." I murmur absentmindedly, planting a kiss on top of her head.

"Is it?" She asks, as if she couldn't tell. I falter for a second, because maybe she can't, and then I just peck her on the cheek. 

"Almost as pretty as you." I put my hands on her hips, facing her. "It's like, a totally perfect beach day."

"What's that?"

"I don't know." I shrug, rocking us back and force gently in rhythm, pondering. "Clear blue sky...hot, but not too hot...the trees barely blowing with the wind. Kyla and Mom would tan but Dad and I would build sandcastles and..." I almost sigh at this. "It's just gotta smell like summer, you know?"

"No." She whispers, but she's smiling, and her eyes are a little dazzled. Spencer's the only person who's ever listened to me like she absolutely cared about every word I spoke. Without even trying. "But I can feel it." 

I hold her a little tighter at her words and we both watch the sunlight filter through the window. After a minute, she speaks.

"I used to go to the lake with my brothers and parents." She starts, then she trails off.

"Yeah?" I urge her softly.

"Well, my Dad would cook hot dogs. And my brothers and I would swim, and jump off the dock and yell at our Mom to watch us and..." She shakes her head, faraway in memories. I don't ask for her to come back, I let her live there for a few seconds until she blinks and looks back at me. "I think it might be something like that, right?"

"Yes." I answer quietly, nodding. "Exactly like that." 

"I haven't thought about it in forever, and we never went after...We just stopped. Maybe they started going again." She says, trying to shrug but not quite pulling it off. Spencer's emotions have always been written all over her face, even to someone like me, who's never been too good at reading people. "I'll have to ask my Dad." 

"You should." I encourage her. "Ask him about the lake. He would like it." I don't know why I say that, because I know next to nothing about her Dad, but if he's visiting Spencer he has to love her, and I think I like him a lot more for making the effort. 

"I will." She almost smiles, but presses her lips to mine just before it's fully formed. "Or you can, since you're going to be there, right?"

"Right." I say brightly, and this time her smile is hitting me full force. I play with a tiny curl below her ear, "You - "

"Crazy pills." Shane barks, tossing a tray down on the bedside table. I almost jump back, but I hold onto Spencer. 

"You gonna get over here and take these pills?" He leers at Spencer.

I step in front of her with an icy look. "Say please."

"Don't - "

"Say 'please, Spencer.'" I tell him, not letting go of her. She stands still.

"Please, Spencer." He says, but his voice is all attitude. I drop my arms and Spencer strides over and pops the pill in her mouth, dry swallowing it and then pushing the cup of water away. "Wackjobs." Shane mutters, grabbing the tray, and he's out of the room before I can say anything. I walk to the door and watch his back retreat.

"Asshole!" I call, but he does not turn around. "What an asshole." I turn back to Spencer. "That guy's an - "

"I got the picture." Spencer interrupts, and turns back to head into the bathroom. I follow, splashing water on my face. 

"I guess I have to make myself presentable." I glance at myself in the mirror. I had changed so much in the past few months. I was heavier than I had been since puberty, my face was paler than she could remember, but had a healthy shine. The bags were now almost nonexistent. I was in a better place, these days.

"Then you won't have too much work to do" Spencer almost purrs, smoothing my hair onto my shoulders. 

"I love it when you're clever."

She just laughs, leaning against the sink with her head tilted. "I've never let anyone meet my parents before." She says, then pauses. "I never had anyone before." She seems to think about that for a second, then catches my eye. "I'm excited."

"I'm...nervous." I admit, quirking an eyebrow. "I'm not normally the type of girl you bring home."

"Why?" Spencer asks simply, and I'm at a loss for words for a few seconds.

"I...I don't know. I just never did it. I don't know." I shrug it off.

The breakfast bell sounds, and I rush to dress in a hurry and slam straight into Nurse James, who stands like a wall while I bounce right off of her.

She chuckles goodnaturedly. "Have you walked lately, Miss Davies?" She asks.

"Funny." I mumble, and she and Spencer both lean down to take a hand and pull me up. "I didn't know you were a comedian and a nurse."

Nurse James ignores this and turns to Spencer and uses a soft voice. "Spencer, your Father wants to speak with you, honey."

"Oh. He's usually not here so early." She touches her hair and seems to stifle a grin.

"He's waiting on the phone." Nurse James says gently, and Thomas appears beside her to lead Spencer away to the office. I give her a nod before she leaves, and then give my attention to Nurse James. 

I grab a pair off pants off of my tiny stack of clothes I brought with me and hold them up to Nurse James. "These look okay, you think? Or should I go for a skirt? I kind of feel like showing off leg, but - "

"Miss Davies."

"Well, Spencer likes this skirt on me..." I grab another garment and hold it up.

"Ashley. Don't you think you should let that poor girl alone?"

This stops me in my tracks. "You...don't like the skirt?"

"The staff is well aware of your relationship, Miss Davies. And it is strictly - "

"I know." I interrupt, rolling my eyes. "Listen, I get out of here in like, two months and - "

"Exactly." 

"What?"

"Miss Carlin has never been this well behaved. She's taken to you, Ashley. And when you leave - "

"I don't want to - "

"Which you will. You will leave." She stresses, glancing behind her. "It'll do her no good, you understand? This is not the place for these types of things."

My face gets all hot. "We're not hurting anything." I say stubbornly.

"Not yet."

"I care about her." I tell her fiercely, just in case she doubted it. "It isn't like she's - "

"I understand, Ashley." She stands up straighter, towering over me. "Miss Davies. Use your discretion."

I watch her go, wondering what that means.

---

Spencer sits down at breakfast that day, after I had eaten most of it alone. 

"Hey, you. I saved you my applesauce." I present her with a spoon. "But only 'cause I like you." I look around. "Where's your Dad?"

"He isn't coming."

"What, is he coming tomorrow or something?" 

"No, he just isn't coming. Probably not anymore." Spencer says, not quite sullen, but she isn't meeting my eyes. 

"But..." I struggle to find my words. "That sucks."

Spencer pushes the applesauce back towards me. "I'm not hungry."

I lick my lips, because they're suddenly dry and suddenly I feel really terrible. "I saved it for you." I tell her quietly. 

"I don't want it." 

"Okay." I squeak, and we sit there. Spencer, with her hands in her lap, and her head down. And me, staring at her, and trying and failing to think of a way to make it all alright. 

"Do you want to talk about it?" I ask, a little apprehensively.

"Why would I?" She asks in a low voice, not quite meeting my eye.

"I'm sorry." I don't know what else to say.

"I guess no one really wants a crazy daughter." She almost whispers.

"Spencer, you're not..." I dare myself to say the words, I beg myself silently. But I can't. 

And of course, this is the only time she looks up to meet my eyes, a hooded stare. She's daring me, too. "I am." She says softly, and sighs, the kind of sigh you hear before someone cries. "He doesn't go to the lake anymore." 

Then she gets up and stalks out of the dining hall, through the wide doors, and disappears. I follow her to the door and stop, because I know where she's going. I see her from faraway, silhouetted in front of the window, gazing up at her gray skies. My heart plummets to my feet.

"He's not a bad guy." I almost jump, and turn around to see Nurse James, sneaking up on my for the second time that morning.

"Huh?" 

"Her Father. He's not a bad person." She explains, seemingly knowing my thoughts.

"Oh." I look back to Spencer, who's rocking back and forth on the heels of her feet. 

"Sometimes it's just a little too much. Your baby grows up, and they're not what you expect, they hurt in ways you don't understand, and..." Nurse James' sturdy voice seems to waiver, and I get the feeling that she's got a lot more sadness to her than I thought. "It's real hard. I know."

"He could have atleast come to see her." I insist, watching Spencer as she reaches out to touch the tip of her index finger to the glass of the window. Her curls still bouncing around her head, she looks angelic against the blue sky. "He could have done that much."

"I won't say I disagree." Is all she says, and we both stand there as I attempt to swallow the lump in my throat. I take this opportunity to look around. The brown carpet, the cold tile floors. The strange, musky smell of the corridors and the sickly yellow tint to every light. St. Humbeline's Rehab and Detainment center was never first class, but this is the only time it's begun to feel like a prison.

The walls seem to shrink in on me in that second, and Spencer has both hands, palms flat, on the window now, and it looks like she wants out bad. 

"Spencer Carlin, she's a good girl." I feel Nurse James' strong, comforting hand on my shoulder, and pick up on the inherent gloom in her voice. Something I can't seem to shake.

"She is." I whisper, my voice so small I'm not even sure Nurse James heard it, but her hand is still clapped on my shoulder, and we watch Spencer stand as still as a portrait. 

Spencer Carlin never came to St. Humbeline's to get better. It occurs to me now, and it sinks my heart way down below my knees, that Spencer Carlin was sent here to be forgotten.

---

Spencer slept all day.

I sit in the support circle for a long time that night, trying to draw any kind of strength from the words of compassion being spoken around me. People smile, people offer support and tell their stories. Stories about faith, and perseverance and knowledge and I can't feel a single thing. 

Then I trudge back to my room with robotic legs, where I see Spencer waiting on my bed, whispering something into her hands. I feel awkward, but I sit beside her anyways, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and squeezing my eyes shut.

"We had fun today, right, Ashley?" 

I look at her, and her blue eyes gaze up at me expectantly. "I think my Dad liked you. He never liked any of the girls Glen brought home, but I think he likes you." 

I open my mouth, then close it again. I frown slightly at her words, and my stomach clenches up. "What do you mean, Spence?"

She just looks at me, and for a second I feel like she's playing a trick, but there's nothing in her eyes that tell me that's true. There wouldn't be. They're as clear as the sky that afternoon, a shocking shade of blue.

It doesn't seem like she can read the disappointment or confusion in my face, either, so I give her a sad, sad smile and don't bother hiding it. "He was great." I croak.

"You really think so?" She asks. "Do you think he liked my hair?"

I rub her arm with my hand, and kiss her once on the head. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

Spencer smiles genuinely, but I cannot bring myself to do so. 

We lie down, and this time, she holds me from behind as I stare out the window, up at the stars I would never be able to see from Los Angeles. 

19

Spencer was distant that morning. She woke up and crawled out of bed abruptly, waking me up in the process. I sat on the edge of the bed, watching her seem transfixed by her own reflection in the mirror. I was afraid to call out to her, so I just approachd her slowly, grazing her shoulder with my hand.

"Morning." 

She doesn't move, and I stand there, feeling a little bit tense. 

"Are you okay?"

"Yes." She says, and she sounds like she means it, but I don't really know for sure. This makes me a little sad, all that she could be hiding that I don't see. I remind myself that I've only known her for a bit more than four months, and then I only have to remind myself of the way she makes me feel, and I feel like I've known her for as long as I've known Kyla, or my Mother, or anyone else that's been with me since back before I couldn't remember anything.

"You sure?" I ask her.

Her eyes flicker away from the mirror, and then back. "I wouldn't lie to you." She says, sincerity apparent even in her quiet voice. 

"Of course." I say quickly, finding her hand and squeezing it. "Did you brush yet?"

She shakes her head slightly.

"Then I'll do the honors..." I apply paste to both of our toothbrushes and hand on to her, and we carry on in silence. Spencer finishes and then walks out to the room the second Shane swaggers in, a cup of pills on the tray for her.

They stand facing each other for a while, and then he gestures to the pills. "No fuss today."

"I'm not taking them." Spencer states easily.

"Like hell you're not taking them."

I turn the faucet off.

"I don't want them." Spencer says, her voice forceful.

Shane reaches out to grab her arm. "Just swallow them!"

"No!" Spencer roars, jerking her hand back protectively, and I immediately pull her to me, behind me, and stand my ground. 

"Back the fuck off!"

"Nurse!" Shane hollers over her shoulder. "You two are so done. Done!" He holds the cup out to Spencer, who's peeking over my shoulder. "You will be taking these, so you know." He says smugly.

She reaches out before I can stop her and smacks the cup out of his hand. Pills hit the floor. His nostrils flare and he takes a single, threatening step forward, but I stand my ground and put on my meanest look, because I can feel Spencer shaking and I hate Shane, I've decided now.

"You come one step closer and I - "

"Shane, Ashley." Nurse James appears at the hallways, and Thomas and and Maria, the stocky female orderly pop their heads in. 

Shane rushes to talk to them, and I immediately drag Spencer into the bathroom, closing the door. "Why'd you do that?" I demand softly, cupping her face in my hands. She looks completely calm and reaches out to capture my lips in a kiss, which I have no choice but to return. "They're gonna...they're gonna take you, now." I mumble, a little bit pained. I hear footsteps approaching the day. "They're gonna take you away from me." 

"Only for a little while." She whispers in my ear, then kisses it, kisses my cheek, and kisses my lips. There's a knock at the door at the instant I moan into the kiss, and Thomas comes in looking chagrined and sorry as he reaches for Spencer. 

"Come on now, Miss Carlin. I don't want to hurt you." He tells her, but she grips onto my shoulders for a second. 

"Check my pillow." She tells me secretively, and Thomas has to physically pull her away from me. 

"Don't hurt her!" I stand up and follow them as Spencer lets her body go limp and be carried away. She has a grin on her face that makes me feel like I want to be sick. "Don't...be careful, Thomas." I urge him frantically, and he just nods at me. He understands. I watch them with a twisted expression. "She didn't do anything." I say, as I see Maria follow them with a syringe. "It was him!" I point a finger at Shane angrily, almost shaking.

"She does this, she does this from time to time." Nurse James tries to explain, putting her hands on my shoulders. I jerk away. 

"No, she doesn't!" I say loudly. "She never does this! He was...he..." I try to remember what he did to Spencer, but all I remember is how she just exploded, and how it kind of scared me. I don't want to admit that. "He's a fucker! Fire him, he doesn't know what he's doing."

"I'm not gonna take this from some celebrity rehab darling." Shane almost spits, but Nurse James gives him a warning glare and he just stomps out of the room. 

"I'm gonna sue this damn place." I snarl, throwing myself on the bed and feeling ready to cry. "I hate it here! You guys don't help people, you make them worse!"

When I look at Nurse James, she looks very apologetic and and sighs slowly at me. "This has to stop, Miss Davies."

And without another word, she turns and follows Shane's footsteps out the door. I'm quaking with anger, and helplessness and I almost forget about Spencer's parting words.

I almost fly over to her bed, scooping up her pillow. There's nothing under it, there's nothing around it, but...I feel a lump inside her pillowcase. I tear the pillow out of it and hold the thing upside down. I hear a small sound and toss the pillowcase aside.

Covering the bed, scattered over the sheets are what looks like dozens of tiny bright, colorful pills of all different sizes. 

"Oh, no..."

I stare at them hard for a long time, and then I feel my lip shaking. I bit it, I clamp down on it and scoop all of the pills up and throw them back into the pillow case with hands that seem to be trembling. 

Then I put the pillow back, checking the door the make sure no one's coming, and set the bed up like it was before. 

I try to think of what this means, but I can't quite get a thought process going yet. So I put my head in my hands. "Dammit, Spencer..." 

---

"Hello?"

I sit at the table in the Nurse's office, feeling drained and more than a little lost. "Mom?"

"How's my little girl?"

I crumple on the inside at this, at her supportive, almost maternal tone. "Not so good."

"What's wrong?"

I don't think I have it in my to explain it to her, so I just sniff loudly and try to collect myself. "Just stuff. You know, rehab stuff. I'm fine, really. How's, uh, how's the tour?"

"Oh, the tour's great, honey! We're wrapping soon but you know these last few venues are always the best." She gushes. "Kyla came to my Sacramento show and she just loved it, really."

"I'm glad." I try to crack a smile so she can hear it in my voice, but I can't. I don't feel too bad about it since I'm not sure she could have heard. "Kyla, how is she?"

"She's Kyla. She's great." Of course. "A little loopy lately, though. She hasn't really been being herself. Oh well, maybe it's just because I haven't been seeing her lately. I'm going to be at home during the break though, in a week or so..." She goes on. I ignore the rest of her words for the time being, feeling my shoulders sag a bit. 

Obviously, Kyla was still on coke. This thought filled me with more anger and resentment than anything. "Fuck."

"What's that, honey?"

"Nothing."

I think I might need my little sister back when I go home. I think I really might, and I don't know if I can look at her when she's high without feeling like I might die a little bit. 

"Henry says sales went so well, we're really surprised...." I hear her, drifting back into the conversation from my reverie. I sigh.

"What are you gonna do after the tour?" I ask, and suddenly my voice is small.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, like..." What did I mean? I bit my lip. "Are you coming home?"

She seemed to pause. "Of course."

I felt relieved. "I get to see you, right, when I get out?" I clung to the phone, feeling like a small child. I hadn't realized the comfort my Mother could bring until I was having a bad day and she surprised me with a phone call just when I needed it. I remembered all those times she let me cry with my head in her lap after my Dad died and never said a single word, and I feel a pang in my chest. This day has been too much for me.

"I'll be home, dear. Of course I will. And you'll be home, too, and so will Kyla, and we can all just take a break together. Alright, Ashley?" My Mother is talking in soothing tones, and I plead with myself to be lost in them. I close my eyes. "Why, do you need a visit? Because - "

"No, uh, no. Not me." I tighten my grip on the phone, pressing it into my ear. "I'm worried about Kyla..." I let myself say.

"What do you mean?"

"She..."

"Oh, that's my manager on the other line, honey! So sorry - "

"Wait!"

"What is it?" once again, she had switched, abruptly, to the Mother I knew all the well.

"It's Kyla, Mom. I can't get out and have her...I don't want to see...." I wrestled with my words, white knuckling the phone.

"Yes?" 

"Just...check the shoebox under her vanity when you get back." I blurt, then sit back in my chair. I hope that's where Kyla still keeps her stash.

"Why on Earth..."

"Just do it." I say, pulling my arms close to myself. "And don't...don't yell at her, okay?"

"Ashley, I don't....oh, shit. I have to go, listen dear, I'll see you in a few months."

"Don't forget - "

"I won't. I'll remind Henry." 

"Don't - "

"Goodbye, Ashley."

---

I wandered into Spencer's room, feeling down really wanting to see her smile. There was a comfort in her that I found in no one else, and that scared me as much as it thrilled me. 

I eased myself onto my knees in front of her bed, where she was tied down with restraints, and ran a finger over her wrist. "I'll undo them." I whisper.

"Don't."

I falter for a second. "Why?"

"Leave them." I peer closer and I see that there's wetness around her eyes. She's been crying, I realize. 

"I'm not going to."

"I deserve them." Her voice gets a little louder. "I need them." 

"Shhh." I shush her gently, and lean down to her face, kissing away a fresh tear that had sprung. "You're crying."

"I can't help it." 

"It's okay." I take off her cuffs and try to rub away the red marks that circle around her wrists. "That better?"

She nods silently, and I do the same for her feet, and then crawl into bed with her, facing her. "It hurts to see you sad." I admit plainly, and with anyone else but Spencer I would be astonished at my capacity for the truth.

"I'm sorry." She tells me, almost whimpers it. But then her face falls like she might tear up again, and I scoop her into my arms and pull her close so I don't have to see. "Shhh, Spencer. It's okay."

"My family doesn't want me anymore." I feel her chest heave against mine.

"That's not true." I say, I say it over and over again as I feel her chest rise and move with breath and tears again my own. "It's not true."

"It is. I'm like St. Humbeline. I'm different, but it's not good different, is it, Ashley?" She sounds so little right now, and I'm holding her as hard as I can without hurting her. 

"No, no, no..." I say, because there's nothing else to say. Because I could never tell her that the men she sees outside the windows separate her so far from everyone she loves, and that's a tragedy, because she's wonderful. I feel like she's crying for me, too, right now. 

"Yes." She says, and pulls back to look at me intently and I pay close attention to what she says next. "My eyes are so gray, Ashley. I look in the mirror and they're colorless and it hurts sometimes, because that's why I see what I do."

"Spencer..." My voice sounds pleading, but I don't know for what.

"I never wanted to be like this." She whispers sadly. "You came to me and now I can see all the ways I'm different."

"You're so beautiful, Spencer, don't - "

"If I was like everyone else I could love you like I wanted."

I grind my teeth together and the entire world stops spinning, atleast for these few seconds. "I would never want it another way. Ever." I tell her fiercely, eyes welling up, and we both know that this is the truth. That this is only the truth because it never could be another way, but it's our truth.

"Tell me." She buries her face in my chest, breathing in my scent. I want to make her stop crying, I want to give her what she needs but I can only give her this.

"I love you." I tell her, with conviction. "I love you so much just the way you are."

And we both believed it.

20

Early the next morning, I was up before Spencer, and I took the opportunity to watch her sleep. I cradled my chin in my own hands and watched her chest rise and fall, not quite knowing what kind of mood I was in. I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into the warm bed and plant my lips all over her, but something held me back, something made me heavy. Spencer frowned slightly in her sleep, shaking her head and beginning to toss and turn.

She opened her eyes slowly, and her eyes seemed to lock on mine before she was fully awake. She seemed to freeze, blinking a few times and unable to look away. "Ashley?" 

Suddenly, my heaviness was gone and I dropped to me knees and edged my way over to the bed. "Morning, sleeping beauty." I whisper, close to her face.

"Hi."

I put my hand flat on her stomach. "You okay?"

She nods, peering up at and hiding the lower half of her face with the blanket. "Yes."

"You havin' bad dreams?" I ask, pushing her hair back out of her eyes carefully.

She nods again. "Yes." She says. Her voice is always softer in the mornings. The slight frown on her face, coupled with her eyes, still dim with sleep and darting quick peeks at the window, tell me that maybe waking up hadn't ended the bad dream.

I pull the blanket away from her face, leaning down and giving her a sweet, slow kiss. When I pull away, her eyes are closed. I hope I've soothed her.

I lower my head down onto her chest and keep back the sigh I feel coming. I just listen to her heart beat.

---

I watched Spencer that day, and she seemed preoccupied. Not in the way where she stared out the window with a faraway look in her eyes, and I could convince myself that maybe she was just daydreaming about me. The way I was used to. 

No, it was different.

"Hey." I'm leaning against the seat of the couch by the window, our couch by the window. She's sitting all the way on the other side. "Spence." I tap her with my foot, my legs stretched out toward her. 

"Hm?" Her gaze does not stray from the window.

"Spencer." I keep my voice light. "Look at me."

She pauses for a second, and doesn't move. "Why?"

"Um..." I'm uncomfortable, and I shift, pulling my feet back towards myself, more than a tiny bit wounded. "Because you like looking at me." 

At this, she complies, turning her head slightly to look at me. "I'm sorry." She says, and it sounds like she really means it. But then her eyes are back on the window. 

I bite back a sigh, and my stomach curls. I blink, and in an instant, I feel my nearly forgotten need for that white powder. I remember a time when my problems were gone as easily as I could find a pipe and a lighter. It's been a long time, but I nearly salivate at the thought and am reminded that I will most likely never be rid of it completely. 

I ball my hand up into a fist, watching the tendons stretch and bulge, and I unclench it, holding my hand out in front of me. I do it again, almost transfixed by the movement. My mind needs something to focus on, and that comes when I see Spencer's pale fingers wrap around my own, tugging my hand into hers and holding it there. 

Her eyes lock on mine, finally, for the first time since this morning. It calms me, her blue eyes and pink lips and soft hand in mine. 

"You have to take your pills." I tell her softly, and her face doesn't change at all.

"I can't." She says simply.

"You have to." I insist, and I'm almost sure she does. I don't know the specifics, and I never ask, but I know she's slipping away from me more and more. And maybe in those bright little pills, maybe there's an answer there. "They're good for you."

"They hurt me." She says. "They make me throw up and feel sick and they hurt."

"But..." I search for my words, gripping onto her hand now with both of mine. "But the doctors know what they're saying, Spencer. They know how to make you..." They can make you better. I can't bring myself to say it. There's no way I'm telling her I think of her as defected, that she even needs to get better. There's no way I'm ready to hear her response to that.

"I'm fine." She says, and she smiles so brilliantly I almost believe her. Now both of our hands are on each others, all four of them together, like we're making a pact. We clutch each other. "I can feel now." She tells me. "I can feel you. You're the only thing I have any more, I think." She's still smiling, and she's saying such an unfortunate thing, and it just makes me a little sad.

"That's not true. Come on, your family loves you." I tell her, pulling her hand up to my lips. I kiss her knuckles. 

"But they're not here." She says firmly. "You're here. I see the men outside the windows and they're a lot closer these days, Ashley. One day - "

"Spencer."

"One day they're going to be right up against the glass. They're going to be able to break it, Ashley, break right through and - "

"Come on, Spencer, just..." I plead with her, letting go of her hands and wrapping my arms around her. I need to hold her, I need to hold her and shut her up and this does the job fine. I squeeze her because I really feel like I might snort or smoke or slam anything if I had it on me, and that's so scary, almost as scary as these things she's saying. So I just hold her against me.

"You know, right? I told you." She says, and there's almost an edge of fright to her voice, but an eerie calm and Spencer's the only person I've ever know to mix the two together. I almost shiver. "I told you, Ashley."

"You did. I know. I understand." I murmur into her hair. "I know." 

I hear a throat clear behind me, and jerk my head back to see Thomas pushing a mop around, motioning to the front of the big community room. "Heads up, Davies."

Shane is looking at us with a quirked eyebrow, saying something to Maria the orderly. 

"You gotta let her go." Thomas says, with his head down, like he isn't talking to me. 

I ease Spencer out of my arms, and she just resumes staring out the window. I try not to notice.

"You both have to quit it."

"That's bullshit." I let him know. 

"You guys are getting bold, you know." He tells me, shaking his head a little. Then he's off to mop in a different corner. 

"Ashley."

"Yeah?"

"The sky's really blue today, isn't it?"

I glance out the window, staring. We are a mirror of each other, eyes stuck out in the distance. "Yeah...how'd you know?"

"It's just a different shade of gray." She tells me. "It's all just different shades of gray."

I won't ask her about the pills again for a long time.

---

That night, I'm making our bed, heavy with thoughts of life outside of the walls of St. Humbeline. Without Spencer, with all those temptations, and I feel scared and guilty and I don't like it at all. She hasn't spoken to me a lot today, adding to my gloom. 

Spencer is standing beside me, silently at first, but she's watching my face. Then she touches my elbow.

"You remind me of a girl." 

I look up at Spencer and grin, seeing her mood has shifted inexplicably. I'm fluffing our pillows. "Which girl? Is she hot?"

Spencer seems to consider this, making a pensive face. "Sure. Sure. Yeah. She was." 

Spencer's very charming even when she doesn't want to be. When she actually tries, it's off the charts. 

I give her an amused looked. "Yeah? Keep goin'."

"Well, her last name was Carmichael and seating was alphabetical, so I always got to sit behind her in PE." She says, a slow smile beginning on her face, one I know will be in full form by the end of the story. 

"Am I gonna have to hear about how you stared at her ass for four years straight?" I complain, grinning.

"Yes." She shushes me with a tiny pinch and sits on the bed. She holds my attention completely. "Anyways, she was always just so pretty. I bet she spent a lot of time on her hair. I remember thinking, a lot, actually, that I'd like to kiss her. I always thought she would smell really good."

"Starting to feel a little jealous..." I say jokingly, but I sit down next to her and set my head on her shoulder. 

"She was just my first actual crush. And I thought my head would explode if I ever actually did anything with her. One day she cornered me in the locker room and just...laid one on me." Spencer laughs at the memory, and I bring my head up.

"You scored with Carmichael hottie?" I ask, half intrigued and half actually a little jealous, this time. I loved hearing about Spencer's life before this place, and I loved imagining her in gym shorts.

"Well, no. But my head actually did explode, it felt like, even though it was just one kiss and nothing really happened after that. She laughed about it." Spencer shakes her head, and it seems like that's the end of the story. She's still wearing a wide smile, and I peck her on the cheek.

"Nice bedtime story, Spence. Tomorrow I'll tell you about how I made out with the lead singer of Lifehouse." I tell her playfully, shrugging my shoulders. But I'm relishing how forthcoming she's being.

"I just wanted you to know that I wasn't always like...completely gone sometimes, and the men weren't always that close up. They were really far away once and I was in school and things were okay." She tells me. "So don't feel bad. I went to the lake, and had crushes and got head exploding kisses." 

I feel like I understand what she's trying to tell me, and now I know she can't help it when she's lost out the window, or talking into her hands. But she seems to know it makes me a little bit heartbroken. 

"Let's lie down." I say, and we lie down as close as we possibly can. My mind swims at the thought that Spencer feels the need to have to come to terms with what life she has lived, when she has so much more to do. I pull her closer to me, shaking the thought out of my head.

"I try to not see them, but I can't. It's scary." She says. "But I'd rather be scared and have you. I always want to have you."

"You will." I promise, without thinking. 

"My heart exploded when I kissed you." She tells me softly, whispering it against my lips. "It almost hurt."

I don't know what this means, so I just kiss her. I kiss her and kiss her, and the window is closed, and I hold her. I know she won't be this forthcoming in the morning, the way things are going. I try to banish this thought from my mind. 

21

"I stole money from my Mom, from my Dad. Even my little sister." A guy sits in group and plays with the sleeves of his shirt while he speaks, not quite meeting anyone's eyes. "I'm a bad person, I think. They sent me here because they love me and I don't deserve it."

I listen to him and I think that he's pathetic and I don't want to hear anymore. I don't want to hear about anyone's problems, when I can barely think about my own. I stand up.

"Where are you going?" I turn back to see that same guy with a questioning look. Like anyone could possibly walk about on his sob story.

"I'm leaving." I try a glance at Nurse James, and she's watching me carefully.

"You just walk out on group like that?" He asks. He's a new guy, and he looks around like people are going to pipe up and agree with.

"Yeah." I say dully, turning around and preparing to leave when he laughs. 

"I know who you are." He calls after me, and then he laughs a little bit. I stop. "Ashley Davies. You're Raife Davies' kid, aren't you?"

I spin around. "And what would you know about him, huh?"

This guy, whose name I don't know and definitely do not care to know, slaps his thighs. "Yeah, worked security for Raife and the boys back when they toured. Long time ago. Considered him a friend."

I set my jaw, looking unimpressed. "Then I'm not surprised you ended up here." I prepare to turn my back on him again, but he speaks up quickly.

"I read about you, you know, in magazines." He almost smirks. "You aren't in them a lot, but when you are it isn't too good."

"What the fuck do you know?" I demand, taking a step forward and crossing my arms tightly in front of me. "What the fuck do you think you know about my life?"

He holds up his hands, smirk in full effect, and I want to rip it off his face."For the record, I'm not surprised to see you here, either."

I grimace. "You're sitting here fishing for our sympathy because you did some things you think are bad, but it just makes you weak and I don't think I need to listen to your pathetic bullshit anymore. It doesn't help me." 

"Sit down, Ashley." Nurse James requests gently. I look at her and frown. 

"You can't sit through a single session, can you?" He asks rhetorically, shaking his head in amusement. He addresses the group. "Has she ever sat through a single - "

"Quiet down, Mr. Smith." Nurse James cuts him off with four words and looks at me. "Just take a seat, Ashley." 

"I don't - "

"Come sit next to me." Her voice is strong and clear and I feel compelled to listen. I slowly make my way over to the seat next to her, and people scoot to make room. "It's alright." She assures me, and I sit down. She leans over as others begin talking and speaks to me in a low voice, "You have to learn patience, Ashley. Mr. Smith is an adult and he hasn't learned it. You can be better than that."

I can feel myself take her words to heart, but I try to ignore them. 

I listen quietly to the rest of the group, but all the while I'm itching to get back to my room and see Spencer. 

---

The dim bulb makes the shadows on the walls of our room a lot bigger than normal.

"The people here suck." I fidget on the floor, picking at the carpet as Spencer leans with her elbows on the windowsill, gazing outside. She doesn't say anything, so I just keep talking. "There's a new guy here, something Smith. He says he knew my Dad. I think he's a fucking jerk."

Spencer seems to make a noise of acknowledgement, and shifts her feet. 

I continue talking, the words coming easily in Spencer's presence. "I kind of want to talk to Kyla. She would just say my Dad knew lots of douchebags and we'd laugh." I pause. "I miss her."

"She misses you, too." Spencer's voice is almost inaudible. 

"What?" I ask, looking toward her. "How do you know?"

"She would have to be crazy not to." Spencer says, without looking away from the window. It's dark outside. "Crazier than me, even, because I would, too."

I think about saying something about that, and decide not to at the last minute. I stand up and walk up behind her, raking her hair between my fingers, and then I begin braiding loosely. "I like when I can see your neck." I let her know, leaning down to kiss her just below her jawline, where the moonlight casts a pale shine. 

She turns around and blinks away the distractedness in her eyes before I can see it too clearly. I'm thankful. "I feel like I've known you as far back as I can possibly remember." She puts her arms around my waist and tugs at me, pulling me against her.

I believe her, I really do. But I don't feel the same way.

She's provided such a brightness for me that it's easy to distinguish between now, and when I didn't have her. It's such a stark contrast it almost frightens me. I shake that off and wrap my arms around her, feeling her tiny frame under her nightgown that comes down to her knees. I hug her, feel her chest rise and fall against mine. "This feels nice." I say. "This is good. This is what's good."

"It is." 

"It is..."

"The moon is full." She observes. I look past her shoulder, out the window, and she's right.

"It's pretty." I say, and then I kiss her. "Think they can see it in LA?"

"I do."

I'm little comforted, and I hope Kyla takes a minute from whatever club or drug or guy she's occupied with right now to take a look up at the sky. 

"Can you see the twins?" Spencer asks.

"Um, I'm ..." I glance down at her chest, then back up at her. "I don't - " 

Her laugh interrupts my stammering. "Not those." She giggles. "The twins. Gemini. The constellation?"

"Oh." I look down at her chest again, and kiss her collarbone. "I like these better."

Spencer barely snickers at this, just turns me around so I'm facing the window and she's behind me. She guides my head to a certain place in the star filled sky and sets her head on my shoulder. "The twins. They're siblings, holding hands and trapped in the sky." 

"Are they?" I ask, not sure I can make it out.

She turns to me, her nose brushing my chin. "See that star?" She takes my hand and points, and I line them up in my sight. "And that one? All those? They connect, they're the body. There's another one right next to it."

I squint. "I think...I think I can see it." Just barely. I notice we're swaying gently back and forth. "Yeah, I can."

I see the starry sisters (because they're sisters to me) holding hands way up in the sky. Stars connected and forming their bodies, legs and arms and hands held together. "It's pretty." I say, actually a little bit marveled.

I feel her kiss the side of my neck. "I thought you might like it."

"Do you think Kyla can see it?" I ask.

She kisses me again. "I don't think so."

"Oh." I don't think Kyla looked at the sky much, anyways. "You know a lot about, what is it, astrology?"

"Not really. There's just..." Her arms slide around my waist. "A lot of stuff floating around in my head."

"Spencer..." I bite my lip. "Do you think I'm patient?"

"I think - "

I never got to hear her answer, because Shane and Maria appear behind us. "Gotta get a new bulb for this light." Shane remarks, and we spin around and step away from each other just the slightest bit.

Maria steps forward, stocky shoulders hunched over, and begins peeling the sheets off of Spencer's bed.

"What are you doing?" I demand, going over to tug on the sheets. "Put these back."

Maria says nothing, just continues to fold the sheets, and that's when Spencer walks over and discreetly grabs her pillow. 

"Room change for a Miss Spencer Carlin." Shane looks at his clipboard then back at me, lips curling smugly. 

"No fucking way." I say, watching Spencer out of the corner of my eye as she hold the pillow close to her chest. The pills, of course. "She doesn't want to change rooms."

"Not her choice." Shane says curtly, then puts the clipboard on the table and begins balling the blankets into a ball, trying to speed the process up. "Nurse's orders."

"I don't believe that for a second. Put these back!" I try to take the blankets from him, but he jerks them back roughly with a mean look on his face. 

"Don't make me call for a sedative, Miss Davies." He nearly spits, throwing the blankets on the ground. I'm glad the attention's on me because Spencer is tossing the pillow on my bed and grabbing one of mine. 

"I'm talking to Nurse James about this, you little prick." I say angrily, gritting my teeth. I walk over to Spencer, grab the pillow, and throw it at him as hard as I can. This just makes him laugh at me. "Fuck you, man! What the hell is your problem! You...you're an idiot." I clench my fists. I feel completely powerless at Spencer being snatched away from me like this.

I can't tell them that Spencer only seems to be better at night these days, and I can't tell them that I don't think I can fall asleep without her. I can't tell them any of that.

I take Spencer's hand and hush my voice. "I don't think we can do anything about this." 

"I know."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay." She says serenely. I look at her for a second, and it seems she's snapped into a reverie. I sigh, letting go of her hand as they reach out to her.

"Come with us, Miss Carlin." Laurie says, taking her arm roughly.

"Fuck. Don't grab her." I snarl. "Crooked eyebrow bitch."

Laurie just shoots me a look, and Shane follows triumphantly with the rest of her bedding. 

Spencer turns around and watches me with big, calm eyes until she rounds the corner. Then I'm alone in my room. 

I thrash around for a while, but no one comes to shut me up, and I stop myself eventually. 

I sit on my bed and for the first time, I realize how big it is. My arms are empty and I'm completely alone.

22

The first night without Spencer, I failed to sleep at all. I spent the evening trying to get comfortable in my bed, which I found so large now that I wondered how I'd ever slept in it at all. I kept getting up and walking around, wondering if I could sneak down the hall and find her room in the dark. 

The next day, when Spencer wasn't at breakfast, I marched right up to Nurse James in the nurses' office and rapped loudly on the glass. 

She appeared and look as if she knew exactly what I wanted. "Where's Spencer?"

"Miss Carlin is in a different wing, and she'll be there all day." 

"A different wing? Where?" I demanded, seeing my slight reflection in the clear glass. I looked like a petulant child, an instant away from stamping my foot.

"Not far." Nurse James explained patiently. "She's perfectly fine, I assure you - "

I interrupted her. "I want to see her." 

"That's not - "

I stepped closer to the glass. "Why did you even move her? I thought you were..." I can't think of the proper words. "Why can't you just put her back?"

She looked at me like she was almost sympathetic. "You know the rules, Ashley."

"Like they even matter. No one cared until Shane was shoving his nose in our business." I say, lightning quick. "You can't just switch people around, that's bullshit and you know it."

"There's nothing I can do." She shrugged her broad shoulders. "These rules have been in place for longer than you've been here, and - "

"I didn't agree to those rules!" I shout, clenching my fist against my side. "I didn't - God! This is stupid! Just...just..." I set my jaw and try to calm myself. I knew yelling would get me nowhere, which Nurse James' pointed look was reminding me. I pressed my forehead against the glass and squeezed my eyes shut. "I kind of need her around." 

I opened my eyes when Nurse James didn't reply, and I saw that she was looking at me softly, surveying the bags under my eyes. "That's exactly why relationships in these kinds of places are discouraged." Her voice was quiet but direct. I pressed my forehead harder against the glass. 

"She likes having me around, too, you know." I say lightly. Nurse James just gives me a sad, tiny smile, and I step back from the glass, sighing loudly.

"Be careful, Ashley." She advises, and I don't really understand. I stare at her blankly, and then she tells me Spencer will be back later.

---

I hear a voice when I'm halfheartedly watching two loud guys play Ping Pong. 

"Where's your friend?" 

I look at Shane, mopping the floor with a smirk on his face, and give him a murderous glare. 

"Shut the fuck up."

He just laughs out loud at me, infuriating me even further. 

"Just keep pushing that mop." I try to ignore him, looking the other way. 

"Oh, I will."

Water slops onto the floor and he drops the wet mop into the puddle, splashing water on my legs. I know it was on purpose. My face gets all hot.

"What the hell is your problem?" I almost shriek, clenching my jaw so tight I feel like I might break a few teeth. A few people glance our way.

He puts on a mock sad face. "You seem sad. Are we in a mood today?"

"You're a prick." I snarl at him, starting toward him and baring teeth. I stop myself. I don't want to show him anger, I definitely don't want him to know that he's getting to me, but it's more than I can help at this point.

"You just never wanna shut that mouth of yours, do you?" He asks nonchalantly. I don't have a single clue what his problem is with me, but at this point I'm thinking he's bordering on insane. "What, are you on the rag?"

That does it, almost instantly. I take a quick step closer to him and point a finger in his face. "I don't know who the fuck you think you are, but you're no one. Got it? You're a pathetic, glorified janitor in nowhere, Arizona." I tell him in as even a voice I can muster, but it's shaking. He narrows his eyes as I continue. "When I get out of here, I'm not going to forget this shit. I can ruin you. I'm going to ruin you. You're disgusting." I emphasize my last words, and step away, noticing the room has quieted down and everyone is kind of staring at me.

I take a deep breath and walk away from him as fast as I can. I want Spencer more than ever.

--

Mr. Smith, the annoying guy from group, sits down next to me on the couch when I was staring at my feet up on the windowsill. 

He glances out the window and slaps his thighs. "Nice view. You pull this couch all the way over here?"

"Wasn't me." I say shortly. 

"That blonde girl you're always with?" He guesses, biting his thumbnail. He's probably jonesing really bad, and his fidgety, nervous energy makes me scoot farther away from him. I've been him before, in this exact same spot.

"Spencer." I tell him her name just so I can say it. I haven't seen her all day and it's almost dinnertime. He just nods, and is kind of silent after that. 

"How long has it been?" I ask quietly. He knows exactly what I'm talking about.

"Almost long enough, they tell me." His leg is bouncing up and down. 

"That's good." I mutter, not terribly interested in anyone's troubles but my own right now.

He scratches at his head and then turns to me. "Listen, I was kind of a jerk, I guess, when we talked a few days ago. I wanted to tell you I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said any of that." 

I'm not too interested in his apology, either. He's been coming down for a few days. In between agonizing and all the shaking, he's probably feeling guilty about everything he's ever said or done. I know how that feels, and I don't like to be reminded at all. 

"It's not a problem." I let him know, hoping he'll get up and leave me alone. 

"And, uh, sorry about your Dad, too. I mean, I worked with him and everything." He's tapping on his knee and sounding awkward. 

I shift in my seat, uncomfortable. "Yeah. You said that."

"I did? Well. He was just one of those good guys, you know? He taught me a lot and when I heard about...man, that crash." He sounds almost lost in his own memories, probably stories he tells his friends often about 'that one time I worked for one of the most famous rock stars that have ever been.' 

I try to block the wave of memories that come crashing at me, the ones I kind of hate this guy for evoking, but they slam into me anyways.

I realize he's still talking. I cut him off before I can focus on his words. I don't want to hear about his tragedy because it's mine, too, and mine hurts more.

"I don't really want to..." I trail off and look the other way. "Get into this shit."

"Oh. Of course." He rushes to say, looking like he stops short of apologizing. "It's John, by the way."

"John Smith." I almost laugh, but I don't. 

"I know." He stands up, shoes squeaking on the tile. Surprisingly, he put me in a worse mood. "Anyways, nice talk." 

It wasn't. He walks away, looking self conscious, scratching at his neck. He was probably desperate for someone to talk to. I don't particularly care. The shortage of people good enough to talk to make me almost ache for Spencer. The day, I decide now, is far too long without her. 

I float around in my head for a little while, feeling like lead on that couch. I think of my Dad, with a very heavy heart. It can't really be avoided, not tonight, atleast. For the first time in a long while, I feel like crying. It might be okay if I did, but I don't dare.

Then I think about my Mom, probably in some hotel for the night in a town far away. My sister, hopefully in her own bed, thousands of miles away. Still, Spencer feels the farthest away from me right now. I've never known myself to be this particular brand of weak, but I'm defenseless against it.

I realize I miss Spencer in a way that I don't miss anyone else. I try to hold her image in my mind for as long as I can.

Soon, it's lights out. Exhausted in a way I can barely handle, I climb into bed and squeeze my eyes shut, praying for sleep. 

23 

I had bad dreams for the few minutes I was asleep.

Now, I sit on my bed and watch the clock with tired eyes and sagging shoulders. I can't recall how long I've been sitting like this, but ever since I realized I wouldn't be able to sleep short of a wink, I've regarded the clock with a sort of antsy, tired energy. 

I want to see Spencer. I want to put my hands on her, and hug her, and hear her voice. The thought of this relaxes me immeasurably, and I sigh just as the breakfast bell rings, startling me. I'll never get used to it.

I push myself up off the bed, a bit sluggish, but propel my feet out the door and towards the cafeteria at as quick a pace as I can muster. I hope beyond hope the see Spencer sitting at a table with a tray of food an expectant smile.

I'm one of the first ones on the scene, having beat the morning rush by several minutes. Usually Spencer and I linger a bit, so I think maybe she's taking her time, wherever she is. I take a seat, sitting up straight and alert, trying to be patient. 

Biting my nails, I glance around. People are filtering in at all angles, filling the room and none of them are Spencer. By the time most of them are sitting with their trays filled with food waiting to be devoured, I begin to lose hope.

Minutes later, and no sign of Spencer. They're having fruit bowls for breakfast. She would love a fruit bowl, as long as she picked out the banana. 

At this moment, despair fills me and exhaustion hits me full force. I feel like I'm being punished for something I don't know I did wrong, because I want to see her more than I can remember wanting most anything, including a lot of things that landed me in here. 

I almost feel like crying, which alarms me. I want to give in to the tears, which alarms me even more. I stand up suddenly, losing all patience, and my chair scrapes the floor loudly. I storm out of the cafeteria, heading back to my room to bury my face in my pillow.

"Fuck." I mutter, brushing hair out of my eyes and rubbing my face. I'm a mess, I have to admit, and this is exactly what Spencer sees when I round the corner to my room and stop, dead in my tracks, when I get sight of her standing solemnly in front of my door. My hands drop to my sides and I shake my head, letting out a long, tension-releasing breath. "Thank God." I whisper, no inhibitions as I rush forward and nearly collapse into her arms. They wrap around me tightly, as strong as they've ever been, and hold me up.

We stay like that for a long time. She whimpers slightly, shifting so she can bury her face in my neck. I can feel her lips move against my skin when she speaks. "I missed you." I feel a tiny kiss. "I love you. I love you and I missed you. So much." She tells me slowly and sincerely.

I squeeze my eyes shut. "I know." I stroke her hair, "I - I finally get to touch you again. God, I needed to. I really did." I sigh, and my breath quivers on the way out, and that's when Spencer pulls back and peers intently into my eyes, like she's forgotten what they looked like, and needs to commit them to memory again. "I love you, too." I say softly, as it's something that needs to be said. It always needs to be said, when it's Spencer. "Are you okay?"

"I knew you would come find me." She says, instead of answering, and then glances at my lips, leaning in for a kiss. I savor it, and it's slow and soft and everything I needed since being away from her. She rests her forehead against mine. "I hated being away from you. It was like - it was like..."

She trails off as I pull her into my room and close the door, heading instinctively for the bed. Within seconds we're a mess of legs, and arms, not even a millimeter of space between us, staring into eachother's eyes. It feels undeniably like coming home. 

"Are you alright?" I ask her.

"I am, now. Yes." 

"You sure?"

"Yes." She seems to pause for a second, reaching up to touch my chin with her fingertip. "The days, they go by slower when you're not around." 

I grab her hand and kiss it, gazing up at her. "Is that a bad thing?"

She just nods. I know exactly what she means.

"I'm here now." I say quietly, and she just nods again, and I give her another kiss, this time on her lips. Here now, yes. I almost shudder to think about what's going to happen when I have to leave. It scares me for the first time, in that second, everything I've been trying to avoid. In less that two months time, I'm going to have to leave Spencer behind, whether I like it or not. I feel a lump in my throat.

"Hey." She says, sounding concerned. "What's wrong?"

I glance away from her, blinking profusely. "Nothing." I shake my head, barely imperceptible, then look back at her. "I just - didn't think it would be this hard."

I don't think what I said made much sense, but I see Spencer nod in agreement. "It's scary."

"Yeah..."

"Good scary, though." Spencer says, but I'm not sure if I can agree. I just grip her tighter, trying to rid all those kinds of thoughts from my mind, trying to concentrate on the way she feels in my arms, right now. She furrows her brow. "You look really tired." 

"Well, I..." I shrug, trying to think of a way to tell her how sleep wasn't even a possibility if I couldn't feel her next to me, or know she was near me. Not since we've come together like we have.

"I couldn't sleep, either." She pokes me lightly in the ribs, and I look up at her and she's grinning, but just barely. Then, I can see she stifles a yawn.

I cup her cheek with my hand and press a kiss onto her forehead, then set my head on her chest and, shock of all shocks, I'm asleep almost before I can close my eyes.

I don't dream at all, this time.

--

Spencer and I sit side by side at the window, sitting on our couch. Oddly enough, she's facing away from the window, gazing out at the people in the community room with a sort of intensity. 

"Spence?"

She cocks her head in my direction. "Ash?"

"What's up, beautiful? Whatcha lookin' at?" I ask, and she looks back at me cutely.

"Just the people, you know." Lightning quick, she glances out the window and then back to my face. "When I was talking to the psychologists, when I was away, they told me I should try to focus more on things that are real."

I frown. 

"They said that if I just try to divert my attention away from the things that other people can't see, maybe that would be helpful." She raises her eyebrows. 

I'm a bit unsure. "Will that help?"

She doesn't say anything. I feel a bit uneasy, speaking about these things in the open and under the lights. 

"Spence? Will that help?"

She almost laughs, it seems, and looks back at the people. "No."

I stare at her, hands folded on her chin, watching the crowds of people in front of the TV, milling about, at the ping pong table. "Then...why are you doing it?" I have to ask.

"You don't like it when I stare out the windows." Is all she says. 

"Spencer." I don't even know what I'm protesting, honestly. I turn around, looking out the windows. I reach out and put a hand on her leg, caressing it with my thumb. "Spencer..." 

She puts her hand on top of mine, turning around in her seat to look at me carefully. "It's okay, Ashley. They told me a lot of things. They gave me a lot of tests. They didn't tell me if I passed them, but you can tell by the looks on their faces." She almost seems to shrug. "It's okay."

"It's...it's..." I sigh, looking at our hands. I don't know how to finish my sentence.

"It'll be okay." She says earnestly, squeezing my hand. It only will be okay because it has to be. 

"I'm really glad you're back." I tell her, smiling gratefully, if not a little sadly. "You're like, my favorite person." You're the only person.

This makes her happy, I can tell. And that makes me happy. For a second, her blue eyes seem to sparkle. Still, I can see them flit to the window, quickly, like she can't control it, then back to me. "They put us in separate rooms." She says, as if she's just remembering.

I pull her closer to me, into a hug. "Not a problem." I murmur into her blonde hair. "Not a problem."

24

Morning light filters in easily around the corners of the curtain. The doctor's office has a still, calming atmosphere.

"Can I go?"

I fidget in the seat across from Dr. Marlow. He peers up from behind his reading glasses, but only for a second, and resumes scribbling something. 

"Not quite yet, Miss Davies."

I nibble the corner of my lip, leaning forward, trying to read his scrawl. Impossible. "What are you writing?"

He raises one eyebrow in my direction without looking at me, and his pen does not stop. 

"Minor details." He says easily. 

"Can I read - "

"Unfortunately not." His smile is actually apologetic as he drops his pen. "Nothing interesting, I assure you."

"Aw, it's about me, it's interesting." I let him know, and he just laughs slightly. 

"Here's something interesting, your scheduled release is less than two months away." He points out, removing his glasses. 

I shift in my seat. 

"Yeah, listen - "

"You must be excited." He says evenly, watching my face.

"About that," I blink a few times, "or, actually, not about that. About Spencer. Carlin?" 

He nods. "I'm familiar." He assures me, and waits for me to go in, in practiced doctor style.

I clear my throat lightly. "We used to have the same room. We were roomies." I smile a little, continuing. "But somehow she got moved, for some reason, I'm not sure. I was thinking, you know, hoping that you could make it so that she could go back to her old room. Our room." 

My words hang in the air while he seems to consider them. "Hmm." I give him my best pleading face.

He pauses just long enough, with that thoughtful look on his face, so that I think he might call in Nurse James and recommend that Miss Davies and Miss Carlin not be placed so far away from each other, because that's just cruel. But all he does is flip his tablet back open and begin writing again.

"Come on." I say, exasperated. After Spencer had been gone a couple days, I barely had any time to spend with her at all before being tossed back into our separate rooms. And now, the next morning, to be here instead of eating breakfast with her. "What - what are you even writing? What did I say?" 

"I have very little pull with the administration here, to be honest with you, Miss Davies." Once again, he sets his pen down. "And I could see how Nurse James would feel that you and Miss Carlin placed in the same quarters would have effects contradictory to a rehabilitory setting."

"Yeah, blah, blah, blah." I mutter, almost rolling my eyes. I stand up abruptly. "Can we be done now?"

He almost looks amused, and then reaches into his top drawer and pulls out a small piece or red licorice. "You've been doing well." He holds it out to me, and I take it after a second's hesitation. "Keep it up, Miss Davies. You'll see this through, yet."

I glance at the candy, turning to go slowly, and slip out the door. After a second, I sigh, and take a single step inside the room. 

"Sorry for being rude, I just want to get to breakfast." I explain. He smiles faintly, nodding in understanding. I turn to leave, but popping my head back in quickly, I hold up the licorice. "And thanks for the candy."

I hear him chuckle as I make my way down the hall. 
---

"Ugh, lame, I got back in just enough time to see some guy steal the last croissant." I slid into the chair opposite Spencer. "What a way to start the day." 

Spence gently pushes her tray an inch or two in my direction. "Then...I guess it's a good thing I got here early enough to grab two." 

I put both hands on my chin, gazing at Spencer dreamily. "Spencer Carlin, what did I ever do without you?"

She shrugs adorably, "Who knows these things."

This earns a genuine laugh from me, and I take the offered pastry. "I had bad, tossy turny sleep last night." I inform her, picking at it. "You want some of this?" She hasn't touched anything on her plate. 

"I didn't sleep either." Is all she says. 

"Not even a little?" I inspect the dark, ever present circles under her eyes. She shakes her head and I try to stifle a frown. "Did you count sheep like I told you?"

"Sheep stink." 

I hold out a piece of croissant to her, and she takes a bite, watching me while she chews. "So?"

"Have you ever met a sheep?" She asks seriously.

I almost laugh. "I've never had the pleasure. City girl, remember?"

"How could I forget?" She dazzles me with a quick smile, but then it's gone almost as fast. "Sheep are noisy and smelly, and I never even thought they were that cute." 

"Is that so?" I open my milk. "Lots of sheep in Ohio?" I ask, enjoying our easy conversation immensely. She was in rare form, which didn't happen so often anymore. 

"Tons." She tells me. 

"Oh?"

She nods. "They wander the streets, clomping around in giant herds, making noise and stinking the neighborhood up." She tells me in her matter of fact way, and I burst out laughing.

"Sheep gangs wandering the suburbs of Ohio." I grin broadly, grabbing her hand and planting a kiss on the back of it. "So maybe count something else."

"Like what?" She asks, reaching over and taking my milk, sipping it. 

"Stars?"

"Too many."

"Ceiling tiles?" 

"Not enough."

"No? Well, we'll think of something." 

--

"She can't sleep." I tell Nurse James in a low voice, watching Spencer standing with her nose against the glass of the window, way across the room. "Isn't there something you can give her, just so she can sleep at night?"

"We'll look into it, Ashley. Miss Carlin has to see Dr. Marlow before he can prescribe anything." She tells me, following my gaze to Spencer. 

"Just look at her. She never really had trouble sleeping before. Now she has giant bags under her eyes. I mean..." I shake my head. "Come on. It's not good for her to stay up all the time."

"I'll schedule an appointment." Nurse James assures me. 

I sigh. "Thank you." I say sincerely. "I just hate seeing her like that. She was...fine this morning. Look at her. She just stays up all night and stares out the window, I know it." 

Nurse James watches Spencer for a few more seconds, like she's trying to figure something out. "She sure sees something out those windows." She crosses her arms, making a disapproving noise. "It's a shame."

"It is." I agree, my voice thin. "You just need to - "

"Ashley Davies." I look up at Thomas, holding the door to the office open to me. "Phone call for Ashley Davies." The intercom summons me.

"Go on, answer your call." Nurse James urges me, and I walk briskly to the office, leaving Nurse James to contemplate Spencer a bit.

"Hello?"

"You bitch." Kyla's voice is cold and hard, crackling through the receiver.

"Kyla? What's wrong?"

"You know damn well what's wrong, Ashley." She sneers my name, almost breathless with anger. "You go to rehab for a couple of months and you think you're some fucking saint!"

"Okay, how about you stop shouting at me or I'll hang up? What is your problem?" I demand.

"The shoebox, Ashley. You told Mom about the shoebox? What the fuck? What is the matter with you?" She screeches, Kyla's voice has always been able to reach the most shrill levels when she's angry, and right now, she's pissed. "You told her because you're jealous of me! You always have been - "

"Oh my God, Kyla. What is wrong with you? I told her about it because you never would have. I'm trying to help you, you dumbass. You think you're just going to wake up one day and - "

"Shutup!" She yells, and I remove the phone fro my ear for a second, taking a deep breath. I don't know why I didn't prepare myself for this phone call, I should have known it was coming. I'd been preoccupied.

"Your life isn't going to change magically, Kyla!" I shout, standing up from my chair. I'm too agitated to sit. "You need to get your shit in order, and that includes not snorting all your money up your nose, it includes not lying to our Mother - "

"Oh, because you're so good at that, aren't you?" She says cruelly. "Guess where I learned it? Huh? From you. From the best." She taunts. "You're so pathetic - "

"You're pathetic! You're pathetic because you can't admit that you're fucked up. Just as much as I am - was. Because I'm getting better, and I'm not coming home to some junkie sister!" I grapple with my words, struggling to find the ones to get through to her. "God...remember when you wanted to do things with your life?" 

"I don't - "

"No! Shutup. Fashion, designing...all that. Remember when you were good at things? Remember when you actually had dreams?" I say passionately, remembering the way Kyla was before, before a lot of things. So far back the memories are cloudy, but they're there. "I've been a shitty sister for so long, but now I'm trying to help you, so stop being a brat."

"Mom wants to send me to some hospital! I'm not going, no way. No fucking way." Kyla is exasperated now, she doesn't want to hear a thing I'm saying. Thomas pokes his head in, concerned, and I turn away from him so he can't see me. 

"Listen, I said those things once, too. It's hard, but it's not impossible. All you have to do is - " 

"I'm leaving, Ash." I hear her cry a little when she says this, but catches herself quickly. "I'm not going to be sent somewhere...I'm not tough like you, I can't." She says this in little more than a whimper.

"What?" I ask, alarmed. "Kyla, you can't - where are you going? You don't have anywhere to go."

"That's what you think." Her voice is dull. "Thanks, Ashley." She hangs up and leaves me with a dial tone. 

"Fuck!" I throw the phone on the table.

"Miss Davies..." Thomas says cautiously, stepping into the room.

I take a deep, shaky breath. I hold my hands up. "I'm fine. I'm fine. I...I need to call my Mom. I need to tell her..." I pick up the phone. "How do I dial out?"

"Um..." Thomas sounds unsure looks around, I know, for Nurse James.

"How the fuck do I dial out? Tell me how to dial out." I try to keep my voice calm, but it's quivering.

"Just...dial eight first."

He lets me call once, and she doesn't pick up. Begrudgingly, he lets me try again. When I hear my Mother's voicemail, I don't even know where to begin so I hang up instead, defeated.

--

I'm lying on my back on the couch, on our couch. Spencer is standing in front of the window, tracing something against the glass that I can't see, completely preoccupied. I hold my hands steady, wringing them together tightly. I'm a bundle of nerves, and I know if Spencer would look at me, she would be able to see that something was wrong.

But she hasn't glanced my way. Kyla's words fly through my mind, enraging me and saddening me and worrying me. I feel completely helpess, and I watch Spencer's shadow cast across the floor change shape as the sun changes positions in the sky, slowly. 

I don't know how long I lie there until Spencer turns to look at me. "Hey."

I return her stare, but that's it. She looks impossibly sad. I don't know if she's just reflecting what she sees on my face, or if it's any other number of things. These days it's hard to tell. It hurts my heart a little more, but I can't even try to look away. 

I hold out a single arm to her, and she sits on the floor next to me, kissing me right in the crook of the elbow. Then she lays her head directly against my chest, sighing, and doesn't move at all. 

We lie like that for a while, until I decide to speak. "I don't know what to do, Spencer. I don't." She doesn't reply, but I don't mind. I feel the weight of her against my chest and try to make myself okay, but it doesn't quite work.

"I'm worried about my sister. My family isn't too big, and we already lost my Dad." My voice catches, but I'm speaking so quietly you can't hardly notice. The sun is a sliver disappearing behind the horizon.

"I thought I was going to lose myself, but now I think I might lose Kyla." I whisper, and then I squeeze my eyes shut, words I would never speak to anyone else hanging in the air. I feel completely safe saying these things to Spencer, and I don't even begin to question it.

"You're apart of my family now, too." This I can't be too positive if I said aloud, or if it was only in my head. I suppose it doesn't matter because I look down at Spencer and see her eyes closed, her breathing steady and measured. She's sleeping. I smile to myself, soothed by atleast one thing.

A loud crack makes both of us jump, Spencer's eyes popping wide open, going directly to the darkening window. 

I look over at Shane to glare daggers, and he's still clapping two wooden clipboards together. "Cut it the fuck out." I snarl. 

"Lights out in five." He smirks, and slams them together once for good measure and then turns his back on us.

"You okay?" I turn to Spencer, softening my voice and helping her up from her sitting position on the floor. "I hope that wasn't uncomfortable, I didn't know you were sleeping or I would have..." I trail off as she grasps my hand loosely with one of hers, and with the other, glides her fingers over the window. She isn't listening to me.

"Four hundred twenty nine." She mumbles. I don't know what she's talking about, so I gently tug on her arm.

"Come on, I'll walk you to your room, Spencer." 

"Four hundred and twenty nine." She says more clearly, finally turning to look at me.

I look at her for a second, searching her eyes, until I ask. "Four hundred and twenty nine what?"

"Four hundred and twenty nine of your heartbeats until I fell asleep." 

I kiss her then, because that's the only thing I could do.

---

As a teenager, I've snuck out of my house countless numbers of times. But sneaking through the darkened corridors of St. Humbeline's was far more nervewracking. Every step squeaked, all the hinges needed oil, and apparently my ninja skills were rusty.

I was no more than ten yards away from Spencer's door when I see a white orderly uniform in the darkness, and then Laurie spots me. "Davies." Something tells me she knows my destination. "Back to your room now." She says quietly but sternly. "Nurse James will hear about this."

She follows me back to my room, and closes the door behind me. I curse myself and fall back into bed. There was always tomorrow night. 

25

I get up early the next morning, and the hallways are empty, so soon I find myself in Spencer's room. She's sleeping on top of her blankets, perfectly still on her back.

I take a second to admire her, tracing the shell of her ear softly with my finger. "God, you're so pretty..." I murmur absently, almost unaware of speaking.

"That tickles." 

I jump back, scared for only a split second, and then Spencer opens her eyes, slowly, without moving an inch. 

"Did I wake you?" I ask, having recovered, and kneel back down.

"No."

"Oh." I pause to pick up her hand in both of my own, kissing the fingertips. "How long have you been awake?"

"Since lights out." 

I frown slightly. "Spencer..."

"I know you're going to tell me I should sleep, but I can't." She says, and she even looks a little sorry. 

"It's not your fault, I mean, the doctors here should be doing something. Isn't that why we're here?" I attempt a wry smile. "It's not exactly summer camp."

"I don't want to take any more pills." Spencer says plainly, looking straight at me. 

I sigh, looking down at her hand sandwiched between mine, inspecting her clean, short nails. "Do you ever think..." I trail off, considering my words carefully, "maybe you should just...take the pills they give you?"

"I really don't." Her voice is flat. She takes her hand away abruptly, and I almost wince. She sits up on her knees, grabs her pillow and tips it upside down. Pills flow out of the open end, all different kinds of pills. She picks up a small white one, with writing I can't read. "This one makes me throw up. You remember this one." I nod. I do. 

She picks up another one, a red one. "This one made my stomach cramp." Another. "This one gave me bad dreams. The worst dreams." Her voice is getting progressively louder, and I put a hand on her knee, trying to quiet her. "This one made me angry all the time, and sometimes it made me cry." She throws it back into the pile and in one swift, unexpected movement, swipes them off the bed and onto the floor. "And none of them work."

"Spencer!" I'm on my knees in a flash, scooping the pills up as fast as I can. "Someone's gonna see these."

"They all hurt me in a different way." Spencer says evenly, seeming to ignore my words and watching me scrabble at the floor, trying to clean up all the bright little pills. "The only pain I'm really used to is being myself."

I look up at her, instantly saddened by her words. "Spencer..." I want to go to her, but I can't, any second Shane, or Thomas, or someone is going to stick their heads in the door. "Don't say that, it's not..." I don't know what to say at all. 

But before I know it she's on her knees next to me, smiling at me beautifully, the prettiest girl I know. 

"And I want to be myself when I'm around you." And then she's pressing her lips into my forehead, and I'm melting. 

"Spencer..." I swallow the lump in my throat, pulling her down to my lips, and kissing her. "I just want you to be okay."

"I am okay."

She says this like she's so sure, and I almost believe her. I reach out a single finger gingerly, gently touching the dark circles around her eyes. "I really want you to be okay." I whisper, and kiss her again. "More than anything."

"I am okay." She insists. 

I open my mouth, but find I have no words to speak. I don't know how to tell her I'm not used to feeling as desperate as I have lately, not used to caring so much I want to cry, almost. So I say the only thing I can't think of to say, one thing I'm really sure about right now. I tell her I love her. 

At this, she stands up and gets her pillowcase, patiently shoveling every single pill back inside. I sit and watch her, unmoving and for some reason, I feel defeated.

But when she looks at me, her eyes glitter, then trail to the window. "I never had this much fun at summer camp."

---

"I never thought I could be this strong." 

Group that night was all about finding strength. People in a circle who had all once found strength in something - drugs, alcohol, bad things - had to learn how to be strong without it. How to be whole without it. And most of them said they were better for it. I tried to believe all of them, watching the way their eyes shone when they spoke.

"You never think you can do it, but eventually you wonder why you ever doubted yourself."

They went on like this, filling themselves up with kind words, anchoring each other with stories of hope and a better life. I watched them and yearned to be like them, so sure of themselves. I tried to remember a time when drugs I needed to have in my body were my hardest battle, tried to remember when the people around me were crying, and trying to find strength they didn't think they had. My memory did me a disservice and I drew a blank. 

"All of us can do it."

I wanted to trust them. I wanted to believe in Nurse James' encouraging nods and proud smiles. I tried to sit up straight, and remember a time when I thought everything would be okay, that I could maybe see things through. All I could feel was my heavy heart.

"Tell me something." I surprised myself by speaking.

"Miss Davies?" Nurse James looks at me, not seeming to have heard my words.

I clear my throat, "Tell me something. Anything."

"Tell you what, dear?" Nurse James asks in a gentle voice. 

"I don't know." I say. People are staring at me now, trying to figure me out. "Something that's true. Something I'll want to believe."

She studies me for a long time. "You're stronger than you know." 

It felt like a lie.

"I don't believe any of you."

--

"I hate him." I tell Nurse James, gesturing towards Shane, across the community room fixing a loose hinge on a door.

"You don't hate anyone." Nurse James says goodnaturedly. And I think I could rattle off a list, and am about to when she continues, "It's not healthy to hate, especially at such a young age."

I glare at him for a long time, biting at my nails down to little stubs. "He's a bad person." I surmise.

"Oh, Shane?" She puts down her pen and clipboard, "No, he ain't a bad person. He's just a sad person. Now don't go confusing the two. He's had a very tragic life, he might not let on, but he's very sad."

I look at him and try to imagine whatever kind of hurt he carried around with him, but all I saw was sneering, and smirking, and hatred. I immediately banished from my mind the thought of humanizing him. "He probably deserves it. He's just got evil eyes."

"Now, Miss Davies." She puts a single hand on my shoulder. "Everyone's born an innocent, remember that. No one deserves any hurt. Now go on to bed."

26

The days begin to go by faster, and the nights last a lot longer than I seem to remember. I find my own eyes, like Spencer's a lot more these days, drawn out the windows. Even at night, unable to sleep, they linger on the stars, so many and so clear in the night they almost seem to make the sky heavy, weighing down on me. 

Sometimes I find myself sitting, quietly, and my stomach begins to twist and knot, like I'm forgetting to be nervous, like my mind won't allow my body to let up for a while. It's not a brand new feeling to me, it's something I remember from back, before the drugs, and before this place. My temperament was never perfect, there was lashing out and loud fits that evidenced this even as a child, but now it's a more internal frenzy, something I can never seem to placate. 

Spencer's finger toys with her own lip, curled up on our couch. She speaks quietly to herself, and though her words are muffled, I'm caught between trying to decipher her words and not listen at all.

"Spencer." 

She stares intently out the window, showing no sign of hearing me.

"Spencer Carlin."

At this, she seems to purse her lips against the words and turn her head slightly toward me, silent now though still not looking at me.

"What are you looking at?" I ask, my tone conversational.

She glances at me with a distracted, almost sad look. "Nothing."

"Nothing?" I shift uncomfortably. "Are you looking at that cloud that sort of looks like Snoopy?" I poke her gently in the leg with my toe.

She nearly smiles at this, but can't manage to tear her eyes away from the window. I only see the suggestion of tugging at the corners of her lips, but then it's gone almost as fast. 

"You're sitting far away." She intones, not moving an inch. 

"Well, so are you." I point out lightly.

"Come closer." 

With that, I crawl across the cushions that separate us and press my lips against Spencer's cheek. I leave them like that for a second, breathing in her scent, willing it to calm my nerves. I feel her hand cup my cheek, gentle, keeping me there for a few moments. 

"I always want you closer." She whispers, like it's a secret, and I almost shiver. 

I pull away from her, only slightly, and brush my fingertip up and down the bridge of her nose. "That's okay." I say, trying to giver her a reassuring smile. "That's perfectly alright with me."

With that, she turns her attention back out the window, but not before resting her head comfortably in my lap. I lazily run my fingers through her hair, something I've found I could do for hours upon hours. 

She shifts slightly, almost seeming to sigh. She's fixed her gaze somewhere far away, someplace I can't see. "There's so many of them now." She says, so simply.
This time, I do shiver.

---

Nurse James approaches me just as I'm heading back to my room to ditch group that night. "Miss Davies."

"Please, just let me skip it. I hate sitting there. I hate it." I start pleading with her, but she just squeezes me once on the shoulder.

"You got a phone call, Miss Davies. You go ahead and lie down afterwards, get your rest." There's a strange look in her eyes, and I speedwalk to the phone, sitting down abruptly and putting it to my ear.

"Hello?"

"Ashley..." My Mother's voice is halfway between calm and hysterical, and it immediately gives me goosebumps.

"Mom?"

"Ashley, honey, Kyla's missing."

"You can't...you can't find her?" My insides twist and turn painfully.

"I haven't heard from her. She's not answering her phone, no one's seen her, not for over a week. I don't know what to do." She's sounds on the verge of tears.

"Did she say anything? Did you call her friends? Did you...oh, fuck. Did you call the police?" I'm clenching and unclenching my fists, hating that they're shaking, hating that my heart is racing. "What do we do?"

"You don't panic, dear. You just..." Her voice betrays her right in the middle of the sentence and she gives in to one loud sob. "Oh, God, Ashley. I don't have time for this, I have...meetings, I have performances...I can't be a mess right now."

"She's just doing this because..." My head swims as I try to rationalize it. "She's fine, Mom. She just had to get away for a while." My stomach knots up guiltily.

"Do you have any idea where she would be?" 

"I - no. I don't know. I wouldn't..." I try to swallow the impossible lump in my throat. "She's somewhere, she has to be. She's okay."

"Do you really think so? Oh, I just couldn't handle it if..."

"Don't say that, don't say anything like that. Trust me, Mom. Trust me. She'll turn up." I try to sound sure of myself. She told me she would do this, but I didn't think it would happen like this. I can't decide whether to hate her or cry for her.

"I hope you're right, Ashley. I really do." She seems to regain her composure after my words. 

"Just...just call me if you hear from her. And if you don't." I bite my lip, hard. "Call me everyday."

"Oh, I'll try, honey. Don't worry yourself, you just...be good."

"I love you, Mom." I say quietly, surprising even myself.

There's a pause, and an, "I love you, too, Ashley." In what you could almost call a warm voice. I take a breath for the first time in minutes, it seems. 

"Don't forget - " A dialtone interrupts my sentence. "To call..." I finish lamely, hanging the phone up gently. My eyes well up with tears, but I just look down at my hand, almost sore from clutching the phone so tightly. Not a single tear falls.

---

I wander silently, completely downcast, into Spencer's room. She's lying on her back, gazing at the light on the ceiling. She doesn't say a word to me as I crawl into bed next to her. Desperate for comfort, I curl up inside the crook of her arm, press my face into her nightgown and squeeze my eyes shut. She tightens her arm around me.

"My little sister's missing." I say, my voice hollow and almost indistinct. 

"Kyla?" Spencer asks, like she's known her forever.

I nod against her. "I don't know where she is. I don't know." I say miserably. "I don't know what she's doing, I don't know if she's okay."

Feeling her other arm close around me, Spencer hugs me even tighter. "Let's go find her."

I laugh despite myself, a hollow sound. "The last time I talked to her, I was screaming at her." 

"You were trying to help her. That's all. She wasn't making it easy for you." Spencer's voice is hushed, and concerned. I still don't want to look at her, afraid that would be that last thing I did before I start crying and couldn't stop. 

I'm silent for a while after that, completely still in Spencer's embrace, the most consoling place I could ever think of being, especially when she's holding me so close, and I believe she's concentrating only on me.

I dwell on my next words for a long time before I speak them, but in the end they slip out as easily as most do when I'm saying them to Spencer. "My Dad always told me I had to take care of Kyla because she was so much nicer than I was, and I always knew he was sort of joking, but he was right. I mean, I'm not that much older than she is, just a year or so. But she always looked to me before anyone else, and I didn't...after my Dad died, I didn't do too well with her." I feel Spencer's warm lips planting kissing onto the top of my head. "I always...I always tried to take care of her, but sometimes I couldn't even take care of myself."

Spencer moves her body, removing her arm and using it to gently lift my face so she can look me in the eyes. She doesn't say a word, but she seems to be memorizing every single feature of my sadness, something she doesn't like to see, but I know she understands sadness better than anyone. 

"Can you...can we just..." I rasp an unfinished sentence, but Spencer seems to read my mind, and with arms stronger than I ever remembered them, holds me close to her, pressing me into her. With her cradling my head I hide my face once again into the skin of her shoulder. 

"When my Dad died, I couldn't believe it. I didn't want to, so I couldn't. He, he had left his favorite vest with me the last time I saw him, and...it sound stupid, but I was always waiting for him to come back and get it. I almost convinced myself..." I'm vaguely aware of Spencer rocking me, ever so slightly, back and forth. In the back of my mind, I flash back to one of my first nights here, where Spencer soothed me immeasurably, before I knew her or loved her. "I wasn't dealing with it, and because of that Kyla definitely wasn't dealing with it. Sometimes she would cry and I would just...walk away. I walked away, and I cried by myself. I couldn't take it. Everything was just so fucked up." I have a tight grip on Spencer's nightgown, and I feel completely vulnerable saying all these things, but for once, the words won't stop coming. "At some point I stopped treating her like a little sister, I just forgot how different from me she was. She was always gentler, more...And now she's just..." I shake my head, over and over, wondering if I've said too much, or not enough.

"Please don't feel guilty." Spencer tells me softly. "You love your sister, and she loves you." She says firmly, and I look up at her. Her eyes are gleaming, fierce, no match for her light tone. "She'll be okay because she has to be okay."

"I hope." 

"It sounds like there's a lot of love in your family, Ashley. That's a good thing."

I only nod, but I'm more than grateful for her words. 

"When my brother Clay died, I saw him at the breakfast table sometimes. He never ate a single thing. Sometimes it made me cry, but other times it made me feel good." She tells me, and I sigh shakily. "You will see him again, your Father. Somewhere more beautiful than you can imagine."

I don't say a single word, but I feel a chill up the length of my spine. I clench my jaw shut. Any single movement I made would have unleashed a flood of tears.

"You look sad." She tells me, frowning slightly. "I hate it when you look sad."

When I don't say anything, Spencer just leans forward until the tip of her nose touches mine, and stops there. 

I rest my forehead against hers, our lips barely touching. I whisper in a tiny voice. "My Dad told me that when he turned seventeen, he never felt any older. He just felt like a teenager forever, like he never aged another minute, but eventually people just started treating him like a grownup."

She just barely grazes her lips against mine. "Is that how you feel?"

I shake my head almost imperceptibly. "No. I feel older every day." I tell her truthfully, painfully.

That night, I fell asleep and dreamed of a place I'd never been, but somehow knew, and everyone anyone had loved and lost was there.

27

"I'm glad you slept last night." 

I'm pulled away from sleep by the sound of Spencer's voice, her weight on my bed, and open my eyes to the her tilting her head down at me.

"Me too." I rub my eyes, waiting for more to be said, but Spencer just sits there, a neutral expression on her face. I'm used to this, so I just put my hand on her hips and haul her a little bit closer to me. "What are you up to?"

She just shakes her head in reply, pulling my covers down a bit and smoothing out my pajama top. "Did you sleep well?"

I think back to my dreams, and the night before, and meet Spencer's eyes. "Yeah." I half smile.

"Good." She tells me genuinely, and then pulls the bottom of my shirt up barely past my bellybutton. My half smile turns into a full smile, and I peer down at my own stomach as she begins to trace tiny circles around my navel. 

"I like your bellybutton."

"Do you?" I say, amused and ignoring the thundering that's now taking place in my chest. Spencer's touch sends ripples throughout my body. "No one's ever told me that before."

"That's a shame." She says simply. My stomach flutters indescribably.

"How are you feeling?" I ask, tearing my eyes away from the sight of her finger dancing around my stomach to look at her.

"Me?" She asks, seeming puzzled.

"Yeah, you." I run my hand quickly up and down her side.

"I'm fine." 

"Okay. Good." I pause, and then nod my head at her. "Hey."

"Yes?" 

"Can I have a kiss?" I give her an exaggerated pucker of my lips.

She looks at me and cocks her head to one side, grinning fully, and instead plants two tiny kisses on my abdomen, afterwards looking up at me slyly, with a smile I have no choice but to return.

The way she looks at me in that second, I have no choice but to spring into pure, instinctual action. Without a second's hesitation I take her hand which is now flat on my stomach and pull her toward me, meeting her lips with a warm, long kiss, holding her to me while her hands stroke my cheeks. 

"Ashley...Ashley.." Far, far too soon she pulls away from me, her cheeks tinged with red and her lips glistening, almost swollen, giving her previous activity away.

"What's wrong?" I ask gently, breathing heavily. 

"Nothing." She assures me, lying fully on top of me. "Nurse James sent me in here to find you."

I brush her hair out of her eyes, "Well, you found me." I kiss her on the chin.

"She told me to tell you that you had a visitor." Spencer finishes, and I pull back from her, dumbstruck.

"I have a visitor?" 

Spencer nods. I take a second to hug her tightly before gently rolling her off of me. "I have to go see..." I say, scrambling out of bed.

"I know."

I'm out into the hallway and Spencer's still on my bed before I run back to smooth her tousled hair and give her a quick kiss, though my nerves are going wild. "You should wake me up like that more often."

I leave her as she's smiling out the window.

---

I speedwalk across the tiled floor.

"Who is it?" I demand of Nurse James, who is waiting in front of the office door. "Who is it? Is it my Mother?"

She steps out of my way, opening the door for me with an encouraging clap on the shoulder. "You do what you have to do, Ashley." 

She closes the door behind me and I see Kyla, pale and slumped in her chair, barely reacting to my presence in the room. I carry myself with weak knees over to her, roughly pulling her out of her chair and pulling her into a hug that she denies at first, but I'm stronger than she is. She relents and allows me to crush her with a hug.

"Ash..." 

"Shut up."

"Ashley." She whimpers.

"Just shut up." 

I feel her shake in my grasp for a second, but then she throws her arms around me, "I'm sorry." 

"I'm sorry, too. I'm sorry. Now we don't have to say it anymore, okay?." I say fiercely, and then I let her go, holding her at arm's length so I can get a good look at her. 

Her eyes are brimming with tears, she smaller than I remember, and she looks scared. "I didn't know where to go." Her bottom lip quivers as she speaks, the same way it always did, the way I could recall it happening a million times before. 

"Don't cry." I tell her, because when Kyla cries I usually always follow suit. "Come on, Ky."

"You don't know how hard it's been." She says, a single black tear running down her cheeks, smearing her makeup. "Shit." She paws at it for a second, then falls into her seat, letting more tears fall. Kyla always gave in to tears easily.

"Use this." I offer her to bottom of my robe, and she dabs gently at her eyes. 

"I got a hotel. Here." Kyla's voice is loud, emotional. "It's just across town. I mean, I don't know if I'm staying here, I just needed...I don't know." She pulls her hair back and ties it quickly, then two seconds later shakes it out, undoing it. "I think I just had to see you, you know?" She sniffs loudly, tying her har back again.

"Kyla..." I grab her hands, fold them, and drop them in her lap. "Mom's worried about you, she called me in like, a fucking panic. You have to call her."

Kyla tries to laugh harshly, something she can't quite pull off right now. "Good. I'm glad she's worried, let her worry." She peers at me, closely this time, "You look really good, Ash."

"Thanks." I say, distracted. I kick her lightly in the shin. "You look like shit."

This time, a genuine laugh, despite herself. "Fuck you. But I know." She fluffs at her hair, then sighs, letting it go limp. We both sit for a while, the silence almost defeaning. 

"I'm out of here in a month and a half." I tell her. "Forty five days. If you can just...just hold on for forty five days, Kyla. I can help you."

She's shaking her head even before my sentence is finished. "I can't."

My nostril's flare, and I feel the anger that was muted before by worry, and fear, come bubbling back to the surface. "What's the matter with you? What, do you have a bag of coke back in your hotel room or something?" 

Kyla sighs dramatically, averting her eyes. "Oh, my God, will you stop with the - "

"You do. You fucking do!" I accuse her, hopping off the table. "Do you want to die? Huh? Is that what you want?"

"Shut up, Ashley! I don't need to hear this shit from you!" 

"You need to hear it from me more than anyone! You...Jesus, Kyla." I clench my fists at my side, gritting my teeth. "Do you want to die like Dad?" My voice is low, and measured, and I can see my words poking holes in her already flimsy armor. "Is that what you want to happen? Do you want to wrap your fucking car around a pole in an intersection? Do you? Do you want me to have to live with that?"

"I don't care!" She finally screams, and I see figures moving outside the door, ready to burst in at the first sign of trouble. "I don't care. I don't care. I shouldn't have come here." She stands up and in an instant my hands are on her shoulders, firmly holding her in place.

"I care." I tell her, hoping she can hear the honesty in my voice. "I care, Ky. I know you do, too."

She's biting her lip, I know waging an internal battle with herself because she doesn't want to shed one more single tear in front of me. "Get out of my way." She whispers, quaking with emotion.

"You can't go anywhere. You have to stay here, with me. I'm your sister, trust me. Please, trust me." I beg, I plead with her. "I love you. Please." Kyla seems bewildered by my admissions, by my sincerity and pain. "You're not this, you're better than this. We're both better than this."

A wail escapes her throat, and she lets her tears fall freely. I take a deep breath, feeling my own coming on, when she nearly falls into my arms. "Remember when Mom and Dad took us to Paris? The Eiffel Tower? And how we went all the way up to the top?" She asks in an urgent whipser, still quietly crying. I try to control my own tears, not recalling when they came, but they're falling onto her shoulder. I nod. I do remember. "Remember you were looking over the edge, and telling me how pretty it was, trying to get me to come away from the door and see all the lights from the highest spot in the city? But I was too afraid to move at all?" 

"Yeah." My voice is weak, but it urges her on. We each look over the other's shoulder, each unable to look the other in the eye. 

"So you leaned over the railing and and you laughed, and said it wasn't scary at all, and Mom and Dad wanted to leave but you wouldn't let any of us go until I came and stood with you by the very edge." She takes a long, steadying breath, going on even though, of course, I know the rest of the story. "Eventually you grabbed my hand and just dragged me over, and...you were right. It was beautiful. And I wasn't afraid." 

"I remember." 

Finally, she pulls away from me, and we get a look at each other's tear streaked faces. I look down at her hands, clutching at the sides of my robe, her knuckles vaguely white. "Tell me this is just like that." She implores me quietly, her eyes searching mine. "Tell me it's exactly the same. Tell me I won't be afraid on the other side of this." 

"It's exactly the same. It's exactly the same." I tell her. "I promise."

She seems to absorb this, and then lets go of my robe, her shoulders sagging. "I'm so numb, Ash."

I stand there, drained, arms at my side, and I stare at the wall behind Kyla, feeling empty. But when I speak, my voice is filled with conviction.. "I know. But it gets better."

And then, once again, I offer her the bottom of my robe. 

---

That night, the halls are curiously empty. My legs are on autopilot, navigating the halls until I'm outside of Spencer's door, then beside her bed. I haven't seen her all day, having spent my time instead with Kyla in the visitor's room, catching up with her and soothing her and seeing her come more alive as the day progressed. She left with a promise to flush what was left of her stash, and when she stood her shoulders were a little more straight, and I believed her.

Spencer stares up at me from her bed, but when I get a little closer to her I find that she's staring directly out the window. 

"The visitor was Kyla." I tell her in the darkness, and sit down next to her. 

"Is she alright?" Spencer's frowning at the window, and I look away.

"More or less." I sigh. "She will be, anyways." 

Spencer's hand finds mine. "Are you alright?" 

My face twists into a smile that I know she can't see. "Yes. Both the Davies girls are alright."

"Good. I was worried about you. And I was worried about Kyla because I know you love her, and I love you." Spencer says this, like it's the simplest thing in the world. And maybe it is. I lie down next to her on my back, and she tangles herself up in me, a familiar form in my arms.

"You never have to worry about me." I say.

"But I always will." She lets me know, and I kiss her on the temple, touched beyond words. She stares out the window, never having made eye contact with me, but at that instant, she glances my way, quickly, for an instant. 

"You were crying."

I have no idea how she knows this, but like a lot of things about Spencer, I don't question it. "Yeah." Her eyes are back out the window, back to the glowing moon. 

"I hope atleast some of them were good tears." She says solemnly, speaking to the sky though I know her words are for me.

I close my eyes. "A few."

Without sensing her move, like magic, I feel her place two gentle kisses on each of my eyelids. Then she puts her head on my chest, facing herself towards the window.

"I have to look out there. I'm sorry. I have to watch them." She tells me, only slightly apologetic, and a little more melancholy.

I'm surprised, and saddened by her apology. "That's okay, Spencer." My tone is understanding, and I hope, comforting. 

With my eyes closed, I try to imagine being at home, away from her, in my own bed. Without her. 

Like so many nights before, I try to think of a way around this, and I draw blanks, once again. But unlike so many nights before, only recent nights, there's something growing inside of me that feels hopeless, something that's spreading throughout my entire being. This, mixed with my love for everything that Spencer is, this love that I'm only beginning to get used to, to rely on, creates a painful and despairing feeling. 

"Ashley, can you stay with me tonight?" Spencer's head rests on my chest, and her voice is tired, coming to me from the edge of sleep. 

"I'll probably get in trouble." I remind her lightly, not caring in the least right now.

"So yes?"

"Always yes."

I feel her relax even further into my arms.

I will myself not think of home, which is supposed to be the place I'm returning to not too long from now. Because when I think of home, I can only picture a blonde, blue eyed girl that I now can't imagine life without. My heart swells painfully at the thought.

I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for sleep.

28

I pause outside Spencer's door a few mornings later and tap my fingers against the doorframe with nervous energy. I watch her stand at her window. Her eyes are perfectly blank and she's toying with the ends of her hair with her fingertips. I approach her slowly, despite my excitement, and set my chin gently on her shoulder. 

"Hey." I whisper, and she doesn't move a single inch. "I have a surprise."

"I love surprises." She manages to say, and she has that voice she uses when I know she's not all the way with me.

"Kyla's coming to visit, maybe, today. And I was wondering if, um." I clear my throat, almost rolling my eyes at myself and my nerves. "Do you want to meet my sister?" 

A pause, and then, "Do you want me to meet your sister?" Her hands still fidget with the ends of her hair absentmindedly. 

"It would make me really happy, actually." I say, not even having to think about it. The morning sunlight casts a vague reflection of us in the window, and I see Spencer blink at this. Her reflection's eyes flicker to meet my reflection's eyes. 

"I would love to." She says simply, and then averts her eyes again, letting herself drift away.

I smile, unable to stifle it. I wrap my arms around her waist from behind and give her a long, tight hug and a kiss just below her earlobe. "You're the best."

Her eyes seem to be contemplating something, not mirroring my own glee in the least. "You okay, Spencer?"

She just knits her brow a bit, not replying. She's faraway, the same way she's been for a while. "Spence?" I've been having to talk her out of these trances more and more lately. I imagine for a second, her view from the window, gray and clouded with things I wouldn't be able to envision. "How did you sleep?" I run my fingers up and down her side lightly. Her hipbones have been jutting out a bit more than usual, I've noticed. Any miniscule change in her form, I can notice, because it's been imprinted on my mind and body for the better part of five months. 

"Yeah." She says softly, answering my question not at all, but this doesn't seem to faze her. I doubt my voice even got through. "It's going to be Autumn soon."

"Yeah." I echo her. "I know." I grab her hands delicately, and they're almost shockingly cold. "You'll be able to see the leaves, right?"

"Yeah." She says, once again, sounding defeated. Her reflection looks almost sorrowful. 

"Are you excited about it?"

"No." She says plainly, and I frown.

I won't be there to see the leaves turn brown with Spencer, and for some reason it makes me almost unbearably sad to think that she isn't looking forward to it anymore.

After a few more moments of silence, I kiss her on the back of her neck and leave the room quietly.

--

I pull Nurse James aside before breakfast and stand in front of her for a good minute before beginning to talk. "So, Kyla told me she's coming to visit today."

Nurse James looks genuinely happy for me. "That's great news, honey. She looks like a fine young woman." I let myself share a smile with her, glad my excitement is infectious. 

"It is, actually. But I was just wondering if...well, it's not against the rules if Spencer is there, too, is it?" I begin to bite my thumbnail, shifting on my feet. "Because I just wanted Kyla to, you know...meet Spencer." I'm sure my cheeks are reddening, something I didn't expect.

Nurse James laughs with a warm look in her eyes. "You were mumblin', sweetheart." She pulls my hand out from in front of my mouth. 

I groan dramatically. "Come on, Nurse J."

"You look like you blushin' a bit, Miss Davies." Nurse James says, sounding amused. 

I cross my arms like a petulant teenager, glaring at her. Then my face breaks up into a smile that I can't quite help. "I only want to introduce them." I try to sound nonchalantly. "I just think they would...enjoy each other's company. Not a big deal."

"Of course it isn't." Nurse James pats me on my shoulder with one big hand. "How is Miss Carlin these days? She don't seem so talkative lately."

"No. No, she's okay. She's fine." I insist, shrugging. I can't bring myself to say what Nurse James and I both know is the truth. "I just..." I sigh. "It's cool if I let her meet Kyla and we all just...hang out for a little while?" I say, hoping Nurse James can sense, through my choice of words, my need for any semblance of normalcy these days.

"There ain't nothing wrong with that, you go right ahead and let 'em visit."

"Good." I say. "Thanks."

"You don't have thank me, I didn't do do anything now, did I?" She tells me, turning to go.

"You do plenty." I call to her retreating back, and she throws me a smile over her shoulder. 

--

"Don't be nervous, okay?" I fret over Spencer at breakfast, cutting her waffles for her. Spencer usually likes to spear the entire waffle and eat it one bite ate a time from her fork. It works, but it gets syrup everywhere, so I inserted myself as a middleman.

"I'm not."

"Because Kyla's really nice. She's almost as nice as me." I look up from my work and shoot Spencer a smile, which she receives and does not return. "Here." I pass her her plate.

"I'm not sure anyone could be as nice as you." She says, moving her food around on her plate but not taking a bite. 

I take a second to recover from the sweetness of her statement before I continue. "It's not a huge event or anything, I just..." I trail off, trying to put into words why I feel such a need to have atleast one member of my family be aware of Spencer's existence, to see in person who painfully beautiful and sincere she is. "It's just important to me, I guess."

I feel her hand cover mine and I look up to find her eyes, alive for a second and boring into mine. "It's important to me, too."

I brighten, and lean over to press a kiss into her forehead, then lightly wipe at it afterwards. "Sticky syrup kisses."

"My favorite." Spencer lets me know, which brings me my broadest smile in days. 

When we get up to go at the sound of the bell, we leave behind Spencer's plate, her entire meal left untouched.

--

I greet Kyla with a hug, something I would never have done months and months ago, but something that's beginning to become the norm. I couldn't not, seeing as how she seemed a bit unsteady on her feet, and looked so relieved to see me. Her eyes are hooded, and she's at the strange place between hurt and healthy. But I can sense the difference in her.

"Hey." I lead her to sit down in a chair, and take the seat across from her and grab her hand, testing it. "You're shaking." I notice the faint tremor.

"I can't seem to quit it. I don't know..." She looks a bit ashamed, and averts my eyes for a second. "It stop sometimes."

"I know how it feels." I assure her, hoping I sound comforting. "It goes away, eventually. You'll feel a lot better soon."

I see her jaw clench and unclench. "God, I hope so." I'm immediately plagued by the thought of Kyla sitting alone, shaking uncontrollably in a hotel room, waiting for things to get better. I pull her into another hug.

"Jeez, Ash." She tries to laugh but lets me hug her despite herself. "I called Mom...I didn't tell her what was going on or anything. I couldn't." She says, pulling away, shaking her head. "I told her I was in town to visit you for a couple weeks. She bought it, I guess she was worried or something. I don't know. This is...all so much to deal with."

I could sympathize with feeling overwhelmed. "It's a lot." I agree. "You're doing so good." I tell her in a strong, sure voice. "I'm so proud of you. Really, Ky."

"It's so hard. I have dreams...every night. Sometimes I want to go to sleep just so I can dream about it." She admits, slumping back in her chair.

I nod. I know the feeling. "Are you sure you don't...I mean, you could check in here." 

Kyla looks at me intently. "I started this thing on my own. I can finish it out." She scratches her cheek and sighs. "Plus, you're getting out soon, right? I can do this. You'll be there soon. I can do it." She sounds convinced of this, like she's said it to herself before.

Still, I look around at the walls that I've now grown so accustomed to. "It isn't so bad."

"You kidding me?" She scoffs. "This place is a shithole." 

"It's not the worst thing." A voice from the doorway pipes up, and we both turn to look at Spencer. Kyla shoots me a questioning look, and I stand up, suddenly a little bashful. 

"Oh, hey." I go over to Spencer and pull her into the room. "Kyla, this is Spencer. Spencer, this is my sister Kyla."

Kyla offers a tentative hand, and looks a little confused when Spencer pulls her into a big hug and gives her a big smile. "It's very nice to finally meet you." 

Kyla can't seem to help but smile back at her earnestness, giving me a bemused glance. "Well, thanks, I guess. It's nice to meet you, too."

"How are you feeling?" Spencer asks her, eyebrows furrowed in concern. 

"Uh, fine." Kyla nods, trying to make some sense of Spencer. My memory draws me back to my first few times meeting Spencer, how strange she seemed, but how wonderful, too. 

"Good." Spencer says, like that news actually makes her happy, and knowing Spencer, it probably does. 

"Spencer was my roommate when I first got sent to St. Humbeline's." I explain to Kyla. "She actually helped me get through the worst of it." I look at Spencer with a small, grateful smile. "I owe her a lot." Spencer shakes her head slightly at me, telling me, no, I don't. I nod, telling her, more than she'll ever know.

Kyla takes this in and seems to look at Spencer in a new light. "Well, in that case, Spencer, give me another hug." She pulls Spencer into a quick embrace. "Ashley's come a long freaking way."

"She has." Spencer beams at me over Kyla's shoulder, and I send her a nose-scrunching smile, looking at the ground when I feel my cheeks getting hot. Kyla turns around just in time to see this, and raises an eyebrow at me.

"And you...made her blush like a schoolgirl." Kyla notes slowly, "So that's something."

"Shut up, Kyla." I mutter goodnaturedly. Kyla gives me a strange stare, like something's dawning on her that she can't understand quite yet.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll shut up." She almost smirks, and then turns to go sit back down. I grab Spencer's pink and gently tug her over to the couch, sitting her down next to me across from Kyla.

"You seem really tired." Spencer tells her.

Kyla barks a laugh and rubs her eyes, "Nah, I just didn't get a ton of sleep last night. It happens."

"She knows, Ky." 

Kyla looks at me, then looks at Spencer's unwavering stare. She doesn't flinch away from it. Maybe she finds it oddly comforting, like I always have. "Of course she does...well, yeah, Spencer. I'm exhausted." She gives Spencer a tired smile.

"Sometimes life is tiring." Is all Spencer says, which I know everyone in the room agrees with.

"Yeah..." Kyla says, looking at her feet. "It feels good to actually talk to people."

I nod. "It's a lonely process." I say quietly, and it must be for Kyla. It was for me, and I had Spencer with me the whole time, constantly by my side and holding my hand, always being a place for me to rest. Hopefully I can be that place for Kyla, when I get out.

She seems to read my mind at that moment, because she says, "It won't be for long, I think it'll be somehow easier with Ashley there." Kyla says, giving me a grateful look. "And you, too, Spencer. After this rehab thing's over, we should all get together for lunch or something." She offers genuinely.

Spencer smiles, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. "I would really, really like that." She says weakly, while my heart gives a tug. Then she says abruptly, "I should let you two catch up - "

"Are you sure?" Kyla asks, frowning, and I sense that she's taken a liking to Spencer. "I see this one's face all the time." 

"Oh, so do I." Spencer stands up, and so does Kyla. "You should have her all to yourself for a little while."

"If you insist...It was really nice to meet you, Spencer." Kyla tells her, "You seem like such a nice girl, I'm really glad my sister met you." 

"So am I." Spencer says sincerely, and when I get a look at her, she wears the face of someone trying to hold back tears. 

"Spencer..." I begin, but she cuts me off to speak to Kyla, who doesn't seem to notice. Maybe because she hasn't spent the last five months staring into Spencer's eyes.

"You know, you two have the exact same smile." She tells Kyla nicely.

"Yeah, everyone always told us that. It's our Dad's smile, too." Kyla lets her know.

I reach up to grab Spencer's hand, not sure of what to say, and she just gives it a squeeze. "He was a very lucky man." And then she lets go, and she's turning towards the door.

"Yeah..." Kyla says, blinking a few times, then she turns to Spencer. "Hey, I was serious about that lunch offer. I better see you again, and when I feel not as crappy." She wrings her hands together. I sit back, watching the two most important girls in my life interact.

Spencer pauses for a few seconds, and can't help but look a tiny bit sad. Then she takes a step closer to Kyla, and leans in like she's sharing a secret. "Soon, it will be hard to even remember how bad you're feeling now. Everything will be as good as you want it to be."

And then she's gone. I stare at the door, feeling an odd mix of emotions, then turn to Kyla, who's watching me. It looks like it takes a minute for her to absorb things, then she says, "She's a trip."

"Yeah."

"I like her."

"Yeah."

--

I made my way into Spencer's room that night with a heavy heart, not having seen her since earlier that day. I can't seem to get her face, masked with unshed tears, out of my mind. I can't shake it, and it weighs me down. I don't know if she'll be awake, all I know is I need to see her. Sleep is out of the question. 

There's a dim light on in one of the rooms I pass, and I see Shane through the glass, mopping something up with a grim look on his face. My body casts a shadow over him as I pass, and I'm not quick enough to evade his sight. He looks up, and meets my eyes. Glares. I wait a split second for him to stop me, to say something disgusting and rude, but all he does is splash more dirty water on the ground and hold my gaze.

I continue walking, waiting for him to come after me, and he never does. I'm surprised, but I have other things to think about as I reach Spencer's room. She's holding onto the bars of the window, gently bouncing her head off of one of the steel rods. She's staring at some faraway point of the sky. 

"Hey, cut that out." I say softly, holding her head in my hands. I kiss her before I say anything else, feeling the need to touch her lips to mine. She kisses me back, but doesn't say anything.

"Kyla really liked you." I say truthfully. Nothing. "It seems that you liked her, too. That's good." I say, well versed in how to keep a one sided conversation going. "You did great, Spence." It's true, she was in rare form today. Kyla hadn't an idea what was wrong with her, and even asked me what her story was. I just shrugged at the, not too subtly changing the subject. "I'm glad you two got along."

"It doesn't matter." Spencer almost whispers. 

"Spencer?" I put my hand on her cheek and slowly turn her face so she's looking at me. Those same tears are in her eyes, threating to spill but never doing so. 

"It doesn't matter. These bars..." She grips the cold iron bards in between her hands. "They're always going to be there..."

"Spencer..." I don't know how to soothe her, but she saves me the trouble by pressing her lips into mine, and soon her hands are traveling all over my body. "Spencer..." I repeat her name, this time, for completely different reasons.

She pushes me backward gently, and I find myself walking backwards in the direction of the bed. My mind is on Spencer, and her lips, and her hands, and her body pressing into mine, so I don't notice when my feet are no longer on the floor. She's holding me to her, her feet doing the walking for both of us, and I find myself being laid gently on the bed. I stare up at her, and she's breathing deeply, her face flushed. I press a single hand to her cheek, every nerve ending of my body begging for more.

"I love you." She says as a preface, and before I can reply, she lowers her head to my stomach, delivering so many soft kisses I have to stop breathing. She lifts my shirt up inch by inch, kissing every pieces of skin she reveals. When it finally reaches the top of my ribs, to the soft part of me where my chest meets my stomach, she looks up at me, questioning. 

My heart is beating what has to be at record times, I'm sure, and I'm not quite sure how it isn't waking up people in the next room. My answer should be yes, a million times yes, but then I remember Shane, a few doors down, and her unshed tears, and her magicians, and it gives me a second's pause. I remember the bars on the window. "Spencer..." 

She presses herself into me, and I have to squeeze my eyes shut. "I love you, too." I tell her, and then pull her down to my lips, giving her a soft kiss. After, for reasons I couldn't even explain to myself, I pull my shirt down. I lay her down to the side of me, pull the blankets back, and cover us up. She curls into me, laying her head on my chest, telling it's okay.

"I'm sorry..." I try to explain something even I can't understand, knowing I owe her the words. "I can't...it's..."

I think she know what it is, and why I can't, more than me, even. 

She just kisses me on my temple, and closes her eyes. 

29

That morning Spencer woke to me standing at her window, hands around those same bars. It was only a few minutes before the sun came up, just a few minutes left in the pre-dawn.

"You're awake." 

"Yeah." I answer, my voice rough from sleep and maybe something else.

That was the extent of our conversation, and I stood with the air completely still around me as the sun rose and took claim to the sky. Soon, I felt Spencer right beside me, seemingly careful not to touch me. I wanted to ask her how the sky looked to her, through gray eyes only she knew, but I felt the answer would only depress me further. 

"Did you dream?" She asks me suddenly, although she doesn't glance my way.

"No." I lie, after thinking about it for a moment. This time, she does look at me, and this time, I'm the only who doesn't look away from the window. "I dreamed about you." I confess after a second, like I knew I would. Like she knew I would, apparently, because she hasn't stopped staring at me.

"I know." She says, and I feel her lips on my cheek. "You said my name."

She's all I can dream about, these days. "Sounds like something I would do." I say in a low voice, embarassed for some reason.

And now she's much closer to me, threading her fingers through mine. "I dream about you, too."

I allow myself a small smile, and lean my head onto her shoulder, watching sunlight spread throughout our part of the world. There are worse ways to start out a morning.

--

"Will I see you in group tonight?" Nurse James sidles up next to me as I linger next to the ping pong table in the community room. I finger the loose tape at the corner, chewing my lip and watching Spencer trace circles into the window in front of our couch, halfway across the room.

"Do I have a choice?" 

"Oh, there's always a choice, Miss Davies." Nurse James follows my line of sight to Spencer. "She loves those windows, don't she?"

I don't answer. 

"Well. Nothing wrong with that." Nurse James offers halfheartedly, picking up on my mood. "You seem so...blue, dear." She puts and arm around my shoulders and gives me a small hug. "You gettin' outta here soon, you should be smilin'."

"I should, huh." I sigh, "I should be smiling all over the place."

Nurse James seems to consider this for a few seconds, and then meets my eye seriously. "Heaven knows I warned you, Miss Davies." She takes a deep breath. "Now it's another thing you'll have to deal with, unfortunately, sweetie."

"Whatever." I say flippantly, unhappy with the way the conversation was going, and turn on my heel to go. I run right into Shane, who's carrying a mop and a bucket of water. 

"Watch it." He growls, taking a few steps back. "Sorry." He also says, eyes flicking to Nurse James. 

"Yeah." I say hesitantly, and he stalks away. "He hasn't been so hellish lately." I note to Nurse James. 

"Oh, I had a talk with him. I told you everyone deserves a second chance. Especially some people, they just..." She trails off, staring after his back.

"What's his story?" I ask, curious for something to take my thoughts off my trouble.

"It's not mine to tell, Miss Davies. People weren't there for him properly when he was a boy, he's had things happen to him that shouldn't happen to nobody." She says with some apprehension. "I knew his Mother, she was a very sad person. But..." She draws her shoulders back. "None of that's important for you to know, so you just take your mind off it."

"Yeah." I say quietly, trying not to glance at Shane's back. Maybe I didn't want to know, after all. "That's awful."

"Yes, ma'am, it is." She smooths out her white coat and looks around. "I have things to tend to, I'll speak with you tonight, Miss Davies."

"Yeah, Nurse J. I'll see you later." I say to her retreating figure. I turn around and look at Shane, mopping the floor, and I watch him for a few seconds, frowning. I try to will away the thoughts that come to me, try to avoid another depressing story knocking around my brain. So I head over to Spencer and sit on the couch behind her.

"Hey, Spence." I greet her quietly, not expecting anything in return, and I'm right. I watch her figure, silhouetted against the light from the window. I watch her blonde hair sway with every tiny movement of her body, and I know that despite everything, I'm more than thankful for her presence.

Pulling me away from my thoughts roughly, she presses a flat palm against the window. "They're so close." She almost sing songs, with something mixing excitement and fear in her voice.

I shiver.

--

Spencer sits next to me in the circle, concentrating on a random square of tile of the ground. People around me are speaking, sneaking glances at her, and I try to ignore everything. Nurse James pats Spencer on the leg and gives her a smile, but Spencer doesn't notice. 

"How are you feeling?" Some man in large, laced up combat boots asks me. He's been in group nearly every single time, and he's had to have spoken his name in every meeting. I almost feel a pang of guilt, having been unable to remember any of the people's names. They all look at me expectantly, waiting for an answer, everyone but Spencer. She's never here, and it's almost like she's not here, now.

"Why?" 

"Well, you're outta here in what, six weeks? Five weeks?" He estimates, while I know it's 39 days exactly. "How are you feeling about that? That's the soonest any of us get out." Everyone around him nods.

I clear my throat like I'm about to speak, until I realize I have nothing to say. Spencer hasn't moved an inch. 

"Are you excited?" Someone else asks, a woman with a large bruise on her chin. She just got here. I don't know her name, either. 

"No." I answer honestly. "I'm..." I can't find any words. Everyone seems interested in what I have to say, this girl who sits in this circle night after night with nothing to share. It's obvious to me at that moment that to everyone there I'm a mystery with a snarling face, most times. And when I'm not angry I'm completely lost and hopeless, telegraphing that with every word I say. "Afraid." It's out of my mouth before I can stop it, before I'm aware I'm saying it.

"That's completely normal." Nurse James assures me. Out of the corner of my eye, I wait for Spencer's reaction, and I get nothing.

"Not for me." My voice is small, and I try to shrug it off. "I just...I don't know how I feel. I thought I'd be happy, but..." I stifle a long sigh, braving a look at Spencer. 

Everyone's quiet for a moment, but then a girl, who looks to be a little bit older than me speaks up. "I'm never happy. At first you think the drugs can make you happy, and then you realize they can't, so you do more of them." She laughs harshly at this, and Spencer looks up a bit, almost imperceptibly. "And then you think maybe rehab can make you happy, until you get there. And then you hope getting out can make you happy, it's almost like you forgot how much you hated the world to begin with." I stare blankly at her, her words making the worst kind of sense to me. Spencer peers at me closely, and sees the words going in through my ears and messing around with my brain. I don't look at her. "I've been here so many time I've lost count, and I'm still not happy." Once again, the girl laughs, almost cruelly. "Guess I'm not doing it right."

It's at this point, when the group is hushed and contemplative, that Spencer speaks up. "I'm never getting out of here." She tells the circle softly "After all of you leave, I'll still be here, and when this place gets too old and starts falling apart, they'll just send me somewhere else." Spencer says with something like resignation in her sweet voice. "There won't be a lot of light in my life, and it hurts, but it makes it so much easier to see the light in all of you." Defying everything, Spencer smiles at them, one of her brightest smiles. "So it's good to have pain in your heart sometimes, because then you get to be rescued. And you are all going to be saved, I can see it, and it will be lovely."

I love Spencer so much in that moment it makes me breathless. No one says a single word, their eyes are all fixed on Spencer, this girl they don't know giving them the most beautiful words of encouragement. 

"Thank you, Miss Carlin." Nurse James beams at her from her seat. Spencer finds my eyes and holds my stare. I don't know what she's telling me but it's something good. 

--

I go up to Spencer later, after group, and slide into her bed. Without a word she wraps her arms around me and pulls me close to her. 

"I want you to be happy." She tells me, when I start kissing her wrist.

"You make me happy." 

Her voice sounds pained in the darkness. "I know."

"I want you to have light in your life." I say gently, brushing her blonde hair to the side so I can see the glint of her eyes clearly. I pause before my next sentence, struggling with its simple message. "I want to be your light."

"You are." She whispers. She leans over and delivers a warm kiss to my collarbone, and I can feel a lot of my tension dissipate.

"I'm really happy I met you, Spencer." I say, for reasons I can't explain to myself. 

"It's because I love you more than anyone else possibly could." She says to me, sounding so sure. "I can hear you even when you're not there."

30

"Want some?"

I offer a spoonful of applesauce to Spencer, which she shakes her head at without even looking. 

"You sure? It's delicious." I try a small taste and hold it out again. "Come on, don't make me do the airplane. 'Cause I will." I attempt a smile to hide my worry.

After a few long seconds, Spencer's eyes turn towards mine. "I'm fine."

She doesn't look fine, not at all. "Fine, but now I'm going to eat it. And then yours, too. I'm going to dominate all the applesauce I can find, it's just so good." I take a big bite as she looks amused for a second, before letting her eyes fall away from me. The applesauce almost gets stuck in my throat. I can't find it in me to make myself eat, not when Spencer isn't.

There's concentration written all over her face, her head tilted slightly, like a dog when it's struggling to listen to something faraway. "Spencer."

She makes no move to express that she's heard me.

"Spencer." I reach out and run my thumb down her cheek, just once. 

She answers me with a smile. 

I push her small plate of scrambled eggs toward her. "For me?"

She seems to ignore me, occupying herself by picking up my milk and opening it, then sticking the straw in it. Spencer always tells me to use a straw when I drink it straight from the little carton, and it sometimes drizzles down my chin. I smile to myself at the action. She sets it down in front of me, and then picks up her fork. 

"Okay, for you." She tells me, and proceeds to eat her eggs with a grimace like they're made of broken glass.

--

I'm waiting outside the nurse's station for Nurse James to come out, so I can 'accidentally' bump into her. To my surprise, she approaches me from behind and I spin around, startled.

"Didn't mean to scare you, Miss Davies." She says, moving past me and towards the door. "Waitin' for something special?" 

"Oh, um, actually." I begin, already stammering. "I was just...actually, you know what, nevermind." I turn to go, but I feel her hand close around my arm, gently turning me back around.

"What's wrong, dear?" 

I bite my lip, glancing all the way across the room to Spencer, sitting motionless on our couch. "It's Spencer." I say miserably. 

"What about Miss Carlin?"

I shake my head, like I can't believe I'm doing this, but the words tumble out anyways. "She isn't eating. I can make her eat, sometimes, but I can look at her and know she's losing weight. She's losing a lot of weight, and I..." I shrug helplessly, imploring Nurse James with my eyes. "I don't know what to do. Can you do something? You're the nurse, you have to do something."

She watches me for a long minute, then squeezes my shoulder. "You did the right thing in coming to me. I'll have Dr. Marlow look at her today."

"You will?"

"I will."

"Okay." I say, not feeling very relieved, but still, feeling like I did something. I make my way across the room to where Spencer is and sit next to her, as close to her as I can get, and say nothing.

---

I walk into my room later that day, just as the sun was going down, and immediately got goosbumps. 

"It's cold in here." I rub my arms. Spencer's sitting on my bed, crosslegged and eyes transfixed on the ceiling. That's new, I thought, and followed her gaze. A large moth fluttered around the light, bumping against the bulb in a panic.

"It came in through the window, and now it won't leave." 

"I'll wait for it to land and smash it." I say. I was never a big fan of moths.

"No. Don't kill it." Spencer says with undeniable conviction.

Her tone stops me completely. "Okay. I won't." Instead I plant myself next to her on the bed.

"You can't kill it. Look at it." It smacks against the dim bulb again and again, with seeming no idea as to where its going. "It's as sad as we are."

I almost laugh at this, but I can't bring myself to. "Maybe."

The poor moth doesn't seem to be aware that there's an open window a few feet away from it, and if it were so inclined, it could escape this dingy room and artificial light. 

"It's so dusty and gray." I observe, leaning back onto the pillows. 

"They only live a few months." She sounds distracted. "It wasn't born as a caterpillar, so it spends its whole life searching for bright places."

I reach over and loosely grasp her hand, busying myself with memorizing the small lines in her hand.

"Moths are nature's cruelest tricks." Spencer says somberly. "So close to being a butterfly, but it never got the benefit of a cocoon."

"Should I guide it to the window?" I suggest and at them mention, Spencer's glance shoots to the window for just an instant. 

"No. It knows the window's there." Spencer murmurs, "Let it stay."

At this, I feel the need to lean over and kiss her. I catch her eyes and am halfway there when Thomas the orderly appears at the door.

"Ladies." He greets us courteously, then frowns at the open window. He wanders over to close it, "This should be shut, it's startin' to get cold in here." 

"What's up, Thomas?" I say coolly, while Spencer doesn't let go of my hand.

He holds up his clipboard and taps it with a pen. "I got a Miss Spencer Carlin who's got an appointment with Dr. Marlow right about now."

I feel Spencer's hand nearly clamp around my own, "I don't want to." Is all the says, in her soft voice. She resumes watching the moth flit around the room.

Thomas glances at me nervously, always the most sensitive and and kind of all the orderlies, and takes a few steps toward Spencer. "Let's go, Spencer, it's just going to be a quick little chat and maybe - "

"I don't want to." Spencer says again, and this time, I squeeze her hand back.

"Spencer, you should just go." I meet Thomas' eye and nod my head encouragingly. "Thomas is just going to take you to Dr. Marlow..."

"I don't want to." Spencer says loudly, shaking her head over and over again. 

"Spencer." I say, beginning to be alarmed. "Nothing's going to happen, I promise, it's just - " At this moment, Thomas reaches out to take Spencer gingerly by the arm. 

"No!" She recoils violently and latches on to me, and I instinctively draw my arms around her. "No!" 

"Spencer." I'm taken aback by her screaming, and a little afraid. I try in vain to quiet her.

"No! No!" 

"Spencer, you have to come with me now." Thomas instructs her, above the yelling, tugging at her grip on me. He calls for more orderlies. "Ashley." He looks at me. "You have to let go."

"Ashley!" Spencer screams, eyes wild, "Don't let them!" 

"Ashley, you have to let go!" Thomas insists, pulling at both of our arms.

"I can't." I tell him, actually sorry. "I - I can't." There's Laurie, and Maria now behind Thomas, readying a hypodermic needle, and Spencer's still screaming her head off. 

In an instant, she stops and tries to catch her breath, and the sounds are almost guttural. "Don't make me go, please don't make me go." She pleads with me. 

"I don't...it's not..." My eyes fill with tears, and Thomas finally rips her away. She's thrashing around, kicking her legs, louder than before. I spring off the bed but am stopped and held back by Shane, of all people, and he pushes me roughly back onto the bed.

"Stop it! Stop!" Her yells echo off of the walls around us, piercing my ears. 

I wring my hands together until they hurt. "Spencer, please, just stop. Just let them..." My voice breaks, as I can see it's not getting through to her. "It'll be okay. It's going to be fine. It..." My words trail off as they plunge the needle into the flesh above her hip. I try to get up again and am once again pushed back onto the bed. 

"Get the fuck off of me!" I yell, tears threatening to fall, and jump up again. Shane easily blocks me, and I can see through blurry eyes, them carrying a limp Spencer out of the room.

I'm standing still, my face completely flushed, and I'm shaking all over. My feet automatically pedal me towards the door, but Shane grabs me by the arms and sits me down on the bed.

"That." He says, gesturing to the direction they carried Spencer off in, "Is how crazy she really is. She's an animal, okay? Don't forget it." I worm angrily out of his grasp.

"Fuck you." I almost spit, voice quaking.

And then he's gone, Spencer's voice still ringing in my ears. My adrenaline is in overdrive, and my heart is still beating in a frenzy. I sit back on the bed. "Shit." I say, feeling the anger surge to my muscles, "Shit! Shit!" I pound the bed over and over again with my fists, throwing the pillows against the wall. "Fuck!" Feathers float in the air, falling all over, and I begin to cry for just my second time at St. Humbeline's.

The room is covered in tiny pieces of white, stuck in my hair, masking the floor. In the midst of it all, the moth flutters around the single lightbulb, casting its shadow all over the walls. I watch it for a moment, and begin to cry harder. And then I stand with shaky legs on the bed, and with trembling hands, catch it gently in between my palms.

Still crying, I order my jellied knees to carry me to the window. When I open it, a gust of window rustles the feather up, making them dance in the air once again. I hold my arms out between the bars, opening my hands and releasing the moth into the now-night air. And then I slide down the wall, legs failing me after all, wiping away all my tears and trying to pull myself together. 

When I think my tears are gone, I spot what at first is mistaken for a slow falling, particularly ugly, gray feather. Peering closer, I find that it is the moth, flown back in from the window, drawn back to the light of the weak bulb.

I begin to cry again.

--

Late that night, after I'm sure every soul in the hospital is asleep, I navigate the familiar route to Spencer's room. 

The moon is bright in her window, and it is from this light I can tell that she's restrained onto her bed. For the first time, I hesitate next to her.

"I'm sorry." Are her first words, "I didn't mean to." Her voice is small, and I feel guilty for my prior hesitation.

"Don't be. Are you okay?" I ask her timidly, and I see her hold her strapped-down hand out, open, waiting for mine. I place my own in it, lacing our fingers together. Her eyes are wide, glued to the window from her prostrate position. 

When they do make the long journey to mine, and she immediately frowns. "I made you cry."

"No." I whisper gently, touching her face. "That was all my fault. I made me cry."

A few seconds after my words, her face crumples, and Spencer lets her tears fall for the first time since I met her. 

"Oh, no." I say, pained, unsure if I could handle this, on top of everything else. "Please don't, Spencer." I swallow an enormous lump in my throat and immediately begin undoing all her restraints as she cries silently. I pull her up and into my arms, "It's okay, Spencer. I'm here, it's okay." I kiss away every single tears that fall from her eyes. 

"It's not okay." She cries quietly. "I tried to be so good, I really did. But I can't. It's too hard and I'm not that strong. I thought I could be, Ashley, for you. I tried, please believe me. I'm so sorry." The tears halt her voice in some places, and her shoulders shake with sobs. It's the saddest thing I've ever seen.

"Shhh." I try to soothe her, not knowing any other way. I kiss her cheeks, her forehead, I wipe away her tears and look her straight into the eyes. "I love you, Spencer. Everything else will be okay." I try so hard to sounds like I believe my own words.

"It won't." She wails, holding me closer. "You don't know that it won't, and it's going to hurt you when you find out." She wraps her arms around my neck, burying her face in my hair. My heart breaks silently, for what feels to be the hundredth time since I stepped foot through the doors. "You're beautiful in so many ways, Ashley. You don't deserve me." 

"Hey." I pull us apart just enough so that she can look into my eyes. "Don't say that. Don't ever say that. I couldn't want anyone more than I want you, okay? Don't ever think otherwise." I cradle her face in both my hands and give her a long kiss. "Okay?" I say, willing a response out of her.

But she just looks back to the window. The pale light from the moon makes the tracks of her tears seem to glow on her face. There's a flash of fear in her eyes. "They're closer, Ashley." She whispers, like it's a secret, a terrible, terrible secret. "They're always looking at me. I can see their eyes now." A single fresh tear falls. "I didn't think it would be this soon."

"Let's lie down, Spencer." I say abruptly, trying to make my voice soft. Her words are scaring me, more than they ever have before. "C'mon."

She complies without another word, and I pull her to me, so I can feel as much of her body against mine as possible. I take in a deep breath of her scent. "No more crying, okay? We'll be alright, no need to cry." I say shakily, for whose benefit, I don't know.

"You know." Spencer says after a while, almost thoughtfully, "They're not as scary up close as I thought they would be."

I lie in bed, feeling like I'd been pulled apart and someone had done a poor job of putting me back together again. 

31

"If you undo Miss Carlin's restraints one more time, I will have to reprimand you."

Nurse James approaches me in my room the next morning. It's been cleaned, and the only remnants of the night before are a few stray feathers lost under the bed, or scattered around the dresser. I keep my face expressionless.

"Understood?"

"She shouldn't be tied up. She's not going to hurt anyone." Even as I'm saying this, I try not the flashback to the night before, the wild look in Spencer's eyes.

Nurse James looks at me long and hard. "Just don't do it again. We have protocol here, and you won't be allowed to go breakin' it without repercussions anymore."

"Whatever." I lie down on my bed, so my back is to her. I feel the bed creak with her weight, but I don't move.

Her tone softens. "I know you had a hard night, Ashley. I understand that, and I feel for you. Now, do want to talk about it?" She asks.

"There's nothing to talk about."

"There isn't?" I know she's only trying to help, but there's nothing in my that wants to be receptive to it at the moment.

"No."

I hear her sigh. "Well, when you think of something, I'm always here."

I clench and unclench my jaw. Her kindness feels like exactly what I need, but I ignore it. "Did you ever stop to think that this place might be driving her crazier than she already is?"

Nurse James shift her weight. "You talkin' about yourself or Miss Carlin?"

"Leave me alone." The words are harsh, but I mean them. 

"Try not to make so much of a mess outta your room next time, sweetie." As soon as she gets up, I follow suit and find myself standing at Spencer's doorway.

I hold my hand out to her as soon as she meets my eyes. "Ready for breakfast?"

She brightens my mood with a single smile, blonde hair perfectly framing her face, and takes my hand. "Ready." She says cheerfully, like she can't remember the night before, like it never happened.

For a second, I almost envy her.

--

Spencer and I sit at the window, on our couch, and stare at nothing at all.

Well, I'm staring at a patch of sky over the trees, Spencer is gazing worriedly at something I can't see. And she's been doing so for the past hour and a half, punctuating it only to set her head in my lap.

I run my fingers across her scalp, enjoying the way the blonde strands of her hair sparkle golden in the sun.

"You ever go to a drive in, Spence?" I ask idly. She shakes her head slightly in my lap. "Yeah, I figured. You're too young. I guess they don't have a ton of them in Ohio. They don't really in LA, either." I've shifted my gaze from the window down to her. I watch her profile, completely still, as I speak. "There's this one, though. It's sort of a long drive, but it's totally worth it. They have snacks, double features, the whole nine yards. You just turn the radio onto this special station, and listen to the movie from your car." I nearly smile at my own memories.

"That sounds fun." Spencer blinks a few times, eyes still focused out the window.

I run my fingertips across her cheek. "It totally is, it's a great time. The screen's so huge, and you can talk all you want without getting hushed."

"I'd like to go sometime." Spencer says easily, and my fingertips stop moving for just an instant.

"I'd love to take you." I say, with some effort. "We'll go, someday."

"Really?"

"Yeah. It can be our first date. We'll hold hands over the gearshift and everything."

From my position above her, I can see her lips curl into a brief smile. Then, it disappears as quickly as it came.

--

I'm trying to be a good listener to Kyla, because I remember being in her position not so many months ago. But it feels like it was years ago that I was trembling out of any other reason besides near heartbreak. Listening to Kyla talk to me about things like drugs, and hope, and visiting me was as hard to hear as it was comforting. The phone is cold in my hand.

"That way, when you get out, we can just both go back to Mom's, you know? Live there for a while." Kyla says.

"Yeah. Totally."

She pauses for a second, then, "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." 

"You sound like you're crying or something."

"I'm not fucking crying. Jesus, Kyla." I say testily.

"God! What's wrong with you?" Kyla's exasperated tone filters through the receiver. 

"Nothing."

"Oh, come on. Bullshit." She urges me as only a sister can.

I shrug, feeling idiotic, and say, "It's Spencer."

"Spencer? Spencer the girl I met?"

I sigh, for a long time. "Yeah. That Spencer." 

"Okay. Well, uh, what about her?" 

I hesitate for a few seconds, mulling it over, and lean my head into my hand. "Nothing. Just forget about it."

"No. What? You know I can't forget about anything." She tells me. "What about Spencer?"

"It's stupid, it's just...well, it's not stupid." I struggles with my words. "I think I'm in love with her?" 

There's a long silence on Kyla's end while my stomach twists, and flutters, and does every other thing you can imagine. 

"Kyla?"

"Um, wow." She sounds confused. "What?"

"I am in love with her, Ky." It feels good to say, it's almost a relief. 

"Ashley..." I know Kyla understands the severity of my words, having known me my entire life to have never uttered those words about anyone. My relationships, what there was of them, were always presented with something of a marked disinterest from me. That's just the way I was. "Are you sure that place isn't...I don't know. Are you sure?" She sounds for a moment like she doubts my sanity.

"I'm so sure. I'm more sure of this than anything. I mean, you met her."

"Yeah, she was great." Kyla admits, still sounding like she doesn't quite believe it. "And she was gorgeous, too."

I smile dumbly. "She is. She's...she's just the best." I hear Kyla laugh on the other laugh at my gushing, but it doesn't stop me. These things need to be said, to someone other than myself. "She's like, the kindest person I've ever known, and she's so sweet it almost hurts, Ky. Sometimes the things she says, I just want to write them down and show people, because they wouldn't believe someone that thoughtful could ever exist." 

"Aww, Ash!" Kyla fully giggles, and I have to, too, at the way I'm sounding. "You're fucking smitten."

"Way past smitten. Way past." I shake my head. "God, I just want like, Mom to meet her. Mom would freakin' love Spencer, and everyone else, too." I'm completely candid, because with Kyla, I always could be, and I know she's excited for me. "Dad, Kyla. Dad would have loved Spencer." I say softly, sure of it, and I feel a small tug in my heart at the unspoken lament that the two will never get to meet.

"You think?"

"I know."

"You should hear yourself, man." Kyla teases, making me actually blush. "So, when does the rest of the family get to meet her?" She asks, sounding a little giddy, and I clam up. "Huh, Ash?"

"I don't know." 

"You don't know? Well, when does she get out? She's not like, some heroin freak, is she? Oh God, that would suck. Ash?" 

"No, no, she's not..." I can feel my feet plant back on the ground, and the truth is there again, staring me in the face. "She's just..."

"What?"

"Schizophrenic." It physically hurts me to say this. I cringe.

"Ashley?"

I don't say anything, I know what's coming.

"She's schizophrenic?" Kyla now sounds worried. "Are you sure? She didn't seem so cra...she seemed fine."

"Sometimes she does." I say, anguished. "Listen, I'm gonna go."

"No, Ash - wait. Hold up."

"For what?" 

"I don't know. Are you, like, okay?" 

"What do you think?"

"Oh."

I hang up abruptly.

--

I feel an odd sort of lightness as I make my way to Spencer's room that night. I managed to jostle myself out of sleep somehow, to my discontent. I was having a dream about Spencer, and she was meeting my whole family, and even my Dad was there, and he was telling me how great I'd turned out, and how wonderful Spencer was. 

I almost woke up with a smile on my face. 

The tile is cold under my feet, and the air is still around me. I rub my hands over my arms, trying to will away the goosebumps forming there. When I get to Spencer's room, the door is already cracked, though the light is off.

I push the door aside, slipping into the room in relative silence and turning all the way around before I realize I am not the only person in the room besides Spencer. A large shadow stands right over Spencer's bed, and for a second I think I've lost my mind, too. I can see Spencer's magicians and they were here the whole time, and I'm frightened.

Then I hear, "What the hell are you doing in here?" And the shadow with Shane's voice moves away from the bed and faster than lightning, I reach out and jerk the chain, turning on the light. He squints against glare, stumbling even farther away from Spencer, and I look at the blankets pulled down away from her chin, the first few buttons of her nightgown undone, and then I look to his guilty face. 

"What the fuck are you doing in here?" 

"You don't know what you're talking about." 

"What the fuck were you doing?" I demand, looking to Spencer, mind swirling. "What was he doing, Spencer? Did he do anything to you?" My voice quakes with anger, more anger than I can ever remember feeling. Spencer appears lost, like she forgot how to look scared, and won't even glance towards Shane. "Spencer?"

"You shouldn't be in here." Shane says, avoiding my eyes, fidgeting and nervous "So - " He makes his way towards the door quickly. "I'll talk to Nurse James about this in the morning."

"Ashley?" Spencer whispers apprehensively, more afraid than I've ever heard her. This, combined with watching Shane hurry towards the door flips a switch inside of me. 

"You're not going anywhere." I tell him, putting my body in front of the door. "Yeah fuckin' right, Nurse James!" I scream. 

Shane's glare turns almost murderous as he grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me, trying to quiet me. 

"Fuck you!" I reach out a single hand to rake my nails across my face, his eyes, anything I can get my hands on. My legs flail wildly, kicking him in just the right spot. He hits the ground. "I'll kill you if you hurt her!" I yell, falling on top of him. "I'll kill you! You fucking pervert!" I claw at his face with my hands, trying to tear at the skin, hoping to do him permanent damage. 

"Get her off me! Get her off me! She attacked me." Is all he says, over and over again, and in the back of my head, I wonder who he's talking to. But nothing could reach out and touch me through my rage. 

"Fucker!" I scream in his face, pummeling him. "You disgusting fucking pig!"

Eventually strong arms pull me away, and for the first time I notice the room is filled with people. Thomas holds me close to him, readying a needle. Nurse James sends me a disbelieving, worried look, across the room helping Shane to his feet. 

"Ashley! Calm down!" Thomas orders loudly, and I feel a sharp pain in my side. 

"Don't fucking stick me with that! He put his filthy hands on her!" I thrash, but in a few seconds I feel weak, and Thomas lets me gently fall against the wall, and then, to the floor. "He hurt her." I whimper, looking over to Spencer, who's still sitting exactly as I found her, watching us all with a bewildered look on her face, like a small child watching her parents engage in a vicious fight in front of her. Despite the medicine shutting my body down, I crawl over to her, using all of my strength to pull myself onto the bed. 

Her eyes are shining with tears. "Spencer..." I manage to say, lifting my heavy arms to do the impossible task of hugging her close to me. I hear Shane's protests, sounding like they're coming from a million miles away. I see Thomas approach, looking reluctant to pull me away. "Don't make me leave her....don't make me." I plead with him, over and over, until the lights in my world shut off.

32

My vision is foggy the first few times I open my eyes, and when I reach up to rub them, I find that my hands are shackled to the bed. I force my eyelids open, waiting for my sight to acclimate to the daylight, for clarity to return to my mind.

The heavy curtains are drawn, and I can't tell if it's daylight, and I find it impossible to estimate how long I've been out. I squirm a little bit against the restraints, feeling like I want to throw up as the past night's events come flooding back to me, battering me all over again.

At that instant, of course, Nurse James pokes her head into the door. "You're awake." I'm almost glad to see her, she's a comforting presence. That is, until the uniformed police offer follows right behind her, standing off to the side.

"What's this?" I croak.

Nurse James approaches the bed with something of a sympathetic, but reserved look. "Officer Jensen is here to take your account."

"My account?"

"Of what happened, dear." Nurse James explains, standing next to my bed and peering down at me. "We need to know what happened."

"Where's Spencer?" I ask, beginning to get worried. I glance at the officer, a stifling presence in the room. "Ask her, she was there."

Nurse James pauses, heavily considering her next words. "Miss Carlin claims to have no memory of the event."

I squeeze my eyes shut and the world behind my eyelids spins. "You're lying."

"That's what her police report says." A gruff voice invades my ears. The cop. "She appeared very rattled.

"I want to see her." I open my eyes again, aiming my gaze at Nurse James.

"That isn't the best idea right now, Ashley." She tells me lightly.

"Can you untie me?" I ask quietly.

Her gaze flickers to Officer Jensen, and then back to me. "I'm afraid I can't."

I hold her stare, trying to plead with my eyes. "I'm not going to hurt you or anything." I mumble, almost embarassed.

She looks guilty for a second, and then Officer Jensen steps forward, flipping open a notepad. "Shane Parker suffered various facial lacerations and a scratch to his retina."

"Good." I say without thinking, staring blankly at the ceiling and trying to control my anger.

"Oh, you think that's good?" The cop remarks, scribbling something on his notepad.

"Yeah, I think it's great." I say through clenched teeth, then let out a shaky sigh. "Okay, so Spencer says she doesn't remember, and I'm sure fucking Shane told you lies, so I'll tell you that I walked into Spencer's room last night and saw him standing over her bed in the dark, unbuttoning the top of her blouse, and she looked too damn scared to even scream for help." My nostrils flare in complete anger, my voice is thick with emotion. "He was doing something to her, and it wasn't good, and if he told you anything else he's a fucking liar."

Nurse James looks highly bothered by my words, and gives me a sorrowful look, but she stays silent. Officer Jensen smooths out his mustache and takes a step closer to my bed. "Those are some heavy accusations."

"It's the truth."

"Uh huh." He writes for a moment. "And why did you attack him?"

"Because I wanted to. Because he deserved it."

"Okay." He continues writing, then stops and looks at me. "Anything else?"

I can't believe my words are being taken so lightly, it makes me almost uncontrollably angry. I glare at the officer for a long time. "Yeah. You better keep him away from me, or next time I really will tear his face off."

The cop looks amused and disgusted by my words, and pops his gum. "You're a lucky girl, Ashley Davies. Mr. Parker's not pressing charges, so this will stay off your record, but I'm sure there will have to be certain..." He looks pointedly at Nurse James, who looks like she's sorrier than anyone. "Re-evaluations. Good day, ladies."

After he's gone, I look to Nurse James. "What the fuck?" I ask, voice breaking.

"Do you really think Shane did something to Spencer?" Nurse James asks seriously, and I'm glad to find she's regarding me like I'm not an insane person. "I'm not the police, Ashley, I ain't against you. You gotta tell me the truth."

"I did tell you the truth." I say, feeling like I want to cry. "You know me, Nurse J. You do, you know I wouldn't lie, not about Spencer."

She looks terribly conflicted.

"Untie me?" I ask weakly. "Please?"

To my relief, she tentatively reaches for the straps and begins to undo them. After doing so, she grasps me by the hand and helps me into a sitting position, causing me to grimace. "Ah. Ow." I wince. Small bruises caused by Shane's fingertips digging into me run up and down my arms, and there's bits of dried blood on my hands. Not mine. Nurse James follows my eyes, reaching out to examine the bruises.

"This was Shane?"

"He...he shook me when I tried to call for help." I say, flexing my fingers and cringing at the pain. "He's not a good guy, Nurse J. He's a son of a bitch, and when I saw him hurting Spencer...I lost it. I lost control." I stare at my hands. "But I'm not crazy."

She pats me on the cheek, and I allow myself to be pulled into a hug. "I know. I know, dear. He won't come back, I promise. But besides that, I'm afraid there's nothing we can do. I'm so sorry."

I let her hug me, but I don't return it, I just stare over her shoulder. "I wanted to kill him."

"Don't say that, Ashley."

She releases me, and gives me a long, sad look. "I believe you. Sometimes having faith in people can come back to bite you... It hurts my heart to think this is all my fault, but it is. 

"It's not." I say noncommitally, unfeeling. The moment passes, and then I ask, "Can I see Spencer? Please?"

Without a word, she helps me down off the bed and leads me to Spencer's room. Before opening the door, I turn back to her and give her a sincere look.

"Thanks."

She just nods, "I'll pray for all three of you."

--

"Spencer?"

She sits on her bed, running her fingers along the rays of light splashed onto her bed from the window. She looks up when she hears me. "Hey."

"Are you okay?" I ask, hanging back near the door, nervous. "I was really worried about you."

"Come closer." She says. I bring myself over to her, putting both my hands on her knees.

"Why did you tell the police you didn't remember?" I ask, rubbing her legs to comfort her. "Why didn't you tell them what happened?"

"What happened?" She asks, confused.

I try to tell her, grappling with my own words. "Last night...in the dark?"

"A lot of things happen in the dark. I don't like the dark." Spencer says nonchalantly.

"Did he...did he hurt you?"

Spencer looks at me strangely. "Who?"

"You didn't see him moving around in your room, Spencer?" I ask, trying to understand. 

"There are always things moving around in my room." She says in a low voice, looking at me like it was obvious. Goosebumps rise on my arms. 

"No, not like that." I attempt to explain. "Someone was really in your room last night, it was Shane."

"Shane was in my room last night?" 

"Spencer..." I look at her, lost, willing her to recall the events. "I might be in trouble. You have to tell them he was there and he was...you have to tell them what he was doing." 

Spencer looks like she has no idea what I'm talking about, making my stomach fall. "I'll tell them whatever you want me to tell them, Ashley. I talked to the police, and they asked me questions I didn't understand, about things I couldn't remember. They asked me about men in my room, I thought it was another test."

I try to put the pieces together, struggling to make sense of everything. "You really don't remember last night?" 

"I remember I had a dream about you." She says, beginning to smile. "You took me to a drive in and we watched old black and white movies and had popcorn and soda. I liked the black and white because it made me feel normal for a while. And then I woke up really early, and they told me I couldn't see you, and they asked me all these questions and I didn't know what to tell them."

I search her eyes for a long time, her perfectly blank, beautiful blue eyes. I open my mouth and promptly close it again, words completely failing me. She happens to glance down at my hands, and frowns, picking them up to inspect them. "What happened to you?"

"Nothing." I dismiss it quickly, shaking my head. "Just forget everything I said, okay? Nothing happened, you're right." If she inexplicably doesn't remember, I won't tell her about it. I try to force a smile but it doesn't quite work out.

Seeing this, she grasps my hand tightly and jumps off the bed, pulling me along behind her and into the bathroom. "Here..." She runs some warms water, and with a look of concentration on her face, gently cleans my hands off under the faucet. After she's done, with the utmost of care, she dries my hands with a wash cloth. "Better." She says, finally looking up to meet my eyes, which are now filled with tears, threatening to spill over. "What?"

"I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you." I whisper, not even loud enough for her to hear, because that's all I can do without crying. Without another word, I pull her into me and wrap my arms around her, holding her there so she doesn't see my tears.

--

"She says she doesn't remember anything, how is that possible?" I demand of Thomas as he's dropping pills into tiny cups on trays just beside the nurse's station. 

"Assuming that she's telling the truth, there's a lot of ways it's possible." He says, glancing at me, then back to his work.

"Of course she's telling the truth. What, did she block it out or something?"

He merely shrugs, "Maybe. The nature of mental illness is such that we can't really explain it or understand it, I mean, why exactly does she stand at the window everyday? Why does she talk out loud when no one's there?" He continues dropping pills, one by one, as he speaks. "Why - "

"Alright, I get it." I snap.

He looks at me thoughtfully. "Maybe it's just a selective memory type thing. It's not like she doesn't have the history." He pauses. "I always knew Shane was bad news, Miss Davies. I almost had half a mind not to pull you off him."

I manage to twist my mouth into something resembling a smile. "Thanks, Thomas."

"Listen." He tells me as I turn to go. "Don't worry about Miss Carlin, or try not to. You can't...you can't really do anything. It's all in her brain, you know? Even she can't help it. Don't try to understand."

His words are ringing in my ears as I clutch the phone to my ear, venting to Kyla. "It's such bullshit, Ky, this place is supposed to be making her better, but it's fucked her up probably worse than she was when she came here."

"I'm so sorry, Ash." Is all Kyla says, and she's said it atleast half a dozen times. She sounds more than sympathic, my sister feels pained at the prospect of me hurting so much.

"It's just...I need you to get every damn lawyer we know on the phone, Kyla. Because when I get out of here, Spencer is coming with me if I have to burn this place to the ground." I say through gritted teeth, believing my own words completely. "Can you do that?"

"I'll get on it first thing in the morning." She promises. "We can make this happen, Ashley. Don't worry."

--

Nurse James approaches me that night after dinner, and takes me aside. My day had been full of visits to Dr. Marlow to evaulate my mental status, meetings in the conference room with Nurse James and the orderlies to discuss my behavior, tending to Spencer and making her feel like nothing out of the ordinary had happened, because to her, it hadn't. 

By the end of the night, my head was swimming. 

"I just have some things I have to let you know, Miss Davies." She says dutifully. She informs me that any legal action taken against Shane would most likely not come out to my favor, judging from lack of witnesses and my manic state of mind during the incident, that Dr. Marlow had met with Spencer and concluded that she had absolutely no memory of the past night's events, something I already knew. And then she told me that although Shane had pressed no charges against me and would never again step foot inside St. Humbeline's, Dr. Marlow decided that it would be best for my stay here to be extended throughout the next coming months, so I would not be leaving at the time I had expected I would be.

Upon hearing that, I was filled with the strangest sense of relief I'd ever experienced.

33

The sun hurts my eyes.

A skewed blind on one of the windows throws harsh light all around my room. I groan, toss my covers off, and my feet hit the floor before I'm fully awake. I yawn loudly, then I'm out into the hallway. My footsteps are the only sounds meeting my ears, telling me I'm up early. Two, four, six doors down and to my right, I could walk this route with my eyes closed.

I open her door noiselessly, peeking in. Spencer has wound herself all up in her sheet, most likely from a long night of tossing and turning. For the moment, though, she's asleep, and I think better of waking her up. I take a seat on the floor next to her bed, where, peering up, I have a perfect view of the side of her still face.

If anyone else did this, it would be creepy. But I know she hardly ever gets the good sleep.

After a while, I close my eyes and listen to her breathing, quiet and slow. When she's not kicking around, Spencer's a silent sleeper. I'm listening so closely that I notice my breaths are beginning to match hers, then I remember how tired I am, myself.

"Why're you down there?"

My head jerks up. "Hey. I didn't want to wake you."

"Why?"

"You were sleeping."

A miniscule laugh. "I know."

I can feel a tiny smile flash across my own features, "Obviously, right?" I think I can only smile when she's smiling now.

"You can come up." She tells me.

I bring myself up on my knees, meet her face with mine. "I don't know, I was beginning to like the view from down here. Right up your nose." I press mine against hers. "Check it out, gnome kisses."

Her hands travel down to my waist and gently tug me upward. "Rest your bones."

I pause for a millisecond, committing the exact face she's making to memory, and crawl into the bed, situating myself around her body. "How was sleep?"

She presses her cheek against mine. "Good."

I believe her. This is a good morning.

She kisses me, and her eyes are clear.

A very good morning.

---

"I think your feet are stinky, Spencer." I tell her, later on our couch. As the day wears on, she's grown more despondent. I hate that I'm more used to her this way now than when she's better.

"I think..." Spencer mumbles, and I honestly believe she meant to finish the sentence, but her attention was drawn away.

I lean forward, her feet in my lap and her sprawled on the couch, and give them a quick smell. "Either that or the air around them is stinky."

Spencer's eyes are scanning the horizon.

"Let's say a little of both, that's fair, right?" I grasp her pinky toe and wiggle it. "I don't mind, though, don't worry." Her toes are adorable, especially the little ones. "Spencer, your toes are adorable." I tap them with my fingers. "Especially the little ones."

Spencer sighs, and for an instant, looks sad and overwhelmed. Something I can't see has caught her eye.

"Spencer?" I lean over onto her to inspect her face. "Are you alright?" 

She's paying such close attention to the world outside, it's difficult for me to imagine what she's seeing. "Okay. You're okay." My stomach has that familiar knotting sensation, that awful tangling I can never stop. I ease myself back.

In my hands, her feet move from side to side, just slightly.

That's sort of like a response.

---

"She's not going to get better, is she?" Kyla cocks her head to the side, trying to study my face when she says this.

"No, Kyla, you do not 'get better' from schizophrenia." I feel like spitting whenever I hear the word.

The visitor's room is empty except for us. People here don't get a lot of company coming to see them.

"I like her the way she is," I say helplessly, looking at the ceiling. "anyway."

"Well, yeah, but she could be - "

"Just shut up, Kyla."

She's balancing the chair on its hind legs.

"I know, I'm just saying that if she - "

"I know, and I'm just saying shut up. And stop doing that. You're going to fall."

"I'm not going to fall."

"I don't care if you fall, you're just making me nervous."

"God." The chair makes a loud slam the reverberates off the walls when it hits the ground. "You're so touchy lately."

I take in a deep breath, and let out an even longer sigh. "I wonder why."

"Everything's going to be okay." She tries to reassure me. When I don't answer with anything except a weak head shake, she leans forward. "Hey, Ash. Come on. This is going to turn out fine, you know?" This time she says it like she actually believes it.

"How?" The sound I make is small.

She bites her lip, and then the chair is back up on two legs. "I don't know." She says honestly.

"It's just...it's scary. I could sit in that room with her forever while she stares out the window, but what..." I shake my head against my own words. "What is that gonna do? What can I do?"

"I'm not sure, Ashley." She sounds so sorry. We sit quietly for a while, her watching me, me watching the floor. "I love you, though."

I think Kyla might be worried about me almost as much as I'm worried about Spencer.

---

Spencer's eyelashes are touching the window, she's so close to it. I stand next to her, the sun just slipping behind the skyline. But I don't think she's enraptured by the sunset.

I look at her, the last remnants of daylight reflecting off of her eyes, and I feel like crying. "Spencer..." I felt that there were more words in me, but I swallow them, and my tears, and just lace my hands with hers.

She gasps.

"What is it?"

She squeezes my hand. "They're so close."

I hang my head, and the day turns into night. Thirty three days, I marked off the calendar in my head. Thirty three days I had left with her.

I was just about to walk her to dinner when Nurse James comes, pulls me off to the side, and tells me that Spencer has a visitor.