AMY
I AM SITTING IN MY ROOM.
The door opens.
“What are you doing?” Elder asks.
“I am sitting in my room,” I say.
“What are you looking at?”
“The wall. ”
“Why are you looking at the wall?”
Elder asks so many questions.
Elder walks to me. He picks up my hand. His fingers trace my bruises.
“Come with me,” Elder says. I stand up. He walks. I follow.
We walk until we stop.
Elder pushes a button. The door opens. I follow him inside. He takes me to a chair.
I sit.
“Amy,” a deep voice says. I look up and see the doctor. We are in his office. He is sitting at his desk. “What seems to be the problem?”
I blink. “Nothing. Everything is fine. ”
“Everything is not fine!” Elder shouts.
I look at him. “Everything is fine. ”
The chair I am sitting in is blue. It is made of hard plastic. The desk is interesting. Everything is placed so neatly on the desk. The pencils are all straight in
their cup.
“What happened to you?” Elder shouts.
I jump. I had forgotten he was there. I stare at him.
Elder growls, like a dog, and it is funny, and I smile.
“There is nothing wrong with her, Elder,” the doctor says. “I think you’ve become too accustomed to being around the mental patients. Perhaps it would be better for you to spend more time with normal people. I recommend . . . ”
The doctor is still talking. I know because his mouth is going up and down and sound is coming out, but the words just jangle around in my head, cluttering it up. The notepad on the doctor’s desk has such neat, even edges. I reach out and run my finger along the edges. They are smooth—so smooth that the paper slices my skin. A tiny line of red sprouts on the end of my finger. Look, the doctor has another notebook on the other side of his desk. That’s nice. Symmetrical. I like symmetrical. See-met-tree-cul. That’s a nice word. I say it out loud.
“See-met-tree-cul. ” Yes. That sounds nice.
Elder is staring at me as if I’m crazy, but that’s crazy, ha ha, because he’s the one who hangs out at a mental hospital for fun.
The walls are painted a nice shade of blue. So nice. Like a foggy sky.
Something rattles. I look. The doctor places a brown bottle of pills on his desk. I cock my head, staring at them. The pills lay chaotically on the bottom of the bottle. Piled up like little candies.
The doctor and Elder speak.