Bleed Like Me (17 page)

Then the fog overtook me and I fell forward. The floor felt
surprisingly cool against my cheek. I didn't feel Luis's fingers anymore, but I knew he must be nearby.

“Go,” I tried to say to him, but it was too soft. Maybe I didn't even say it at all.

I blinked two more times and closed my eyes.

“Gannon!”
I thought I heard, but knew it was just the smoke clouding over me. Even still, I smiled for a second before the blackness pushed at the corners of my eyes and there was the pleasantness of nothing.

•  •  •

I woke feeling like I was buried alive. My arms tried to flail, but they were strapped to my sides. I was enveloped in gauze, and every part of me itched so much I shifted back and forth to ease it.

“Amelia,” Mom breathed from the space beside me. I turned my head and she gave me a tiny smile.

“You look like shit,” I said to her. My voice sounded like my throat had been stripped of its vocal cords.

She laughed once and wiped her red splotchy face. “So do you.”

My hands pressed against the straps. “Why am I tied up?”

“What happened?” Mom countered.

“How am I supposed to know?” The cloud of the evening pressed against my brain. I coughed too hard and Mom stared
at me with frightened eyes. “Where's Brooks?” I finally asked when I could breathe again.

Mom pursed her lips and shifted in her chair. “Why was he at the house last night?”

“Last night? What time is it?”

“It's a little after three in the afternoon.”

“Why am I tied up?” I asked again. My hands fisted. I stared out the hospital window into late-afternoon gray. The events of the night played like a movie in my head. Too fast. Too many images. Too many questions. I coughed again. “Did Luis get out?”

Mom nodded. “He's with Dad down the hall. You were smart to wrap him in the blanket. He inhaled much less smoke than you.”

I coughed again and shifted my body to relieve the itching on my back. “Untie me.”

“You have a bad sprain in your ankle. And the burns on parts of your legs are pretty bad. But they think they'll be able to fix them. It'll take a while. They'll have to do some skin grafting.”

I looked down. I couldn't feel my legs. They were hidden by gauze and I couldn't feel them. Not good. “So you tied me up so I wouldn't freak over my legs?”

Mom chewed on her bottom lip. She leaned toward me and touched my face. “The doctors, they saw all the cuts and
scars. They're concerned you're a danger to yourself.” Her voice cracked and a sob erupted from her throat. “How long have you been doing that?”

I swallowed and looked away. It was going to rain. The clouds were fat and ready to burst. A tear slipped out of my left eye.

“Amelia,” she whispered, “did you . . . did you set the fire on purpose? Were you trying to kill yourself?”

I shook my head back and forth too many times. More tears leaked out. Where was Brooks?

“How long have you been cutting yourself?” Mom asked again, firmer this time, determined to push forth something real between us.

I turned away from her and shut my eyes. It was too late for her questions. Too late to ask for anything more than the kindness of lying. The hospital window speckled with the first drops of rain, and I stared out, aching for Brooks and offering Mom nothing but loaded silence.

Finally she stood up and moved toward me, eyes darting to the dressings on my legs. I couldn't look at them. Didn't care about them. More scars. More damage. None of it mattered.

“We need to have a conversation at some point,” Mom said. Her fingers skimmed over the hair plastered to my forehead. I flinched and pressed back into the pillow, straining against the straps on my wrist again.

“Release my wrists.”

She tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear. “Why did you cut yourself?”

I blinked back angry tears and turned my face to the window again. I shut my eyes, praying for sleep that wouldn't come, praying for Brooks to walk in and save me from the reality of this life.

I was in the burn unit of the hospital for ten days before they moved me. Ten days of no one telling me where Brooks was. Ten days of having my every move monitored. Ten days of itching and screaming and then finally silence. My parents wouldn't let anyone visit me. They said they were worried about infection. Then one morning a nurse came in and helped me out of bed and wheeled me to the psych unit. Like it was nothing. Like they transferred mental patients all the time.

Then began the incessant talking. Hours of talking. Individual and group therapy every day. Inpatient psych was more of a joke than any crappy TV drama I'd ever seen. At first I kept my mouth shut and stared out the window, but then one of the therapists told me I'd just have to stay longer. So I talked about my family, my brothers, school, Brooks. And I waited
for someone to tell me what had happened. But they wouldn't.

Mom and Dad and the boys came to family therapy and I listened as the boys accused me of not looking out for them. Mom said she was angry I hadn't told her about the cutting. Dad yelled at Mom for not paying enough attention to me. I told them all they could rot in hell.

Finally, a few days after Christmas, Ali got to come see me. She'd streaked her hair pink and was wearing a half shirt showing off her belly button ring. She hugged me so hard when she saw me I coughed. She dropped her arms and looked at me in fear.

“I'm fine. You just squeezed too tight.”

She relaxed and plopped onto the plastic visitor couch. “I've missed you, bitch.”

I grinned at her and wrapped my pinkie around hers. “Me too. How come it took you so long to come?”

She opened her mouth. “Are you shitting me? I've had to plant myself at your parents' door and beg them every frickin' day to let me come see you.”

I blinked. Of course. My parents. I should have known they wouldn't let anyone in to see me. My heart squeezed. Brooks. Was he trying to get to me too?

“Where's Brooks?”

She looked at her hands and dropped her voice. “I'm not supposed to tell you. It was the only way to get your parents to agree to me visiting.”

I shifted toward her. “Screw that,” I said. “Tell me now.”

She clicked her tongue piercing. “Okay. But don't freak out. If you freak out, they'll know I told you and I'll never get back in here.”

I folded my hands in my lap. “I'm listening.”

“He's back in juvie.”

“What?” I stood up and knocked the table in front of me. The nurse at the front desk looked up at us.

Ali waved at her and yanked me back down. “Shh, calm down. You aren't supposed to freak out.”

“What's he doing in juvie?”

Ali leaned toward me. “How much do you remember about what happened the night of the fire?”

“Most of it. At least up until I blacked out trying to get Luis out.”

She nodded. “Brooks tried to go in after you, but a firefighter held him back because the flames were out of control at that point. Finally he hit the guy and ended up breaking a window to get in and drag you out. The firefighter had him taken into custody. And then things got really bad. I guess your parents showed up and went nuts. Obviously. Brooks was brought in and charged for reckless child endangerment.”

“What?” I shouted, and Ali slapped a hand across my mouth.

“Can you please calm down?”

I nodded my head and she released her hand. “Sorry.”

“So yeah, I guess he had some kind of stipulation on his earlier probation. After he assaulted the firefighter and then they found out he'd been to rehab,” Ali continued, and she raised an eyebrow at me, “they sent him back to juvie. It was actually sort of lucky they didn't try him as an adult. I guess his foster mom convinced the police not to.”

“Oh my God,” I said and twisted my hands together. “I have to do something. It wasn't his fault.”

“He told them he lit the candles and forgot to blow them out. He admitted everything.”

“Why would he do that?”

She lifted a shoulder. “I think he was trying to protect you.”

“He didn't light the candles to burn the house down, though. It wasn't arson.”

Ali nodded. “I know. That's why the prosecutors went with child endangerment. Your parents don't want him anywhere near you or the boys. They think he's a bad influence.”

I snorted. “I had my razors long before I ever met Brooks.”

The truth of my words sat between us. Ali toyed with the chain at her neck before finally nodding. “You need to get out of here, Gannon. Get yourself better. Do whatever they tell you.”

“I'm trying, Ali.”

She hooked her arm in mine. “Try harder. I can't have my best friend in the nuthouse. It looks bad.”

I stared hard at her. “Am I still your best friend?”

“Of course.”

“I'm sorry I didn't give you the money.”

She clicked her tongue again and nodded. “Jace did.”

“Really? I thought you were going to have to help Skeevy Dave out.”

A side of her mouth tilted up. “Yeah. I kinda wanted you to think that. But Jace wouldn't hear of it. He gave me what he had saved up and then borrowed against his paychecks for the rest.” She laughed, but it came out forced and awkward. “Lucky his boss likes him so much.”

“Are you gonna owe him something now?”

She shrugged. “He told me I could pay him back this summer when I get a job.”

I squeezed her elbow. “Okay. Just be careful. I don't want him pushing you into doing something because you feel like you have to pay off a debt.”

She raised her eyebrows at me. “Dating advice from the girl whose boyfriend managed to burn her house down.”

Brooks. Every cell in my body ached for him. The craving was worse than anything I'd ever felt before, worse even than when I was so desperate for my razors I couldn't think straight.

“When you get out,” Ali continued, “you'll figure out how to help him. But don't say anything to your parents about any
of this. They blame him for everything. You won't be able to change their minds.”

She was right, of course. My parents would never trust anything I said about Brooks. Especially after they found out about the cutting. My anger at what they'd done burned inside of me. I had to get out and help Brooks, and I had to do it on my own. I hugged Ali.

“If you see him, hear from him, whatever, tell him I love him.”

She rolled her eyes but then nodded. “Just get yourself out of here.”

•  •  •

It was six more weeks before they released me. Six weeks, thirty-six individual therapy sessions, twenty-one group therapy sessions, and two more painful family sessions.

The last family session involved a full-on screaming match about Brooks. About my dating him. About what the charges against him meant. I almost blurted out that he'd probably be stuck with probation, unable to leave if his dad came after him, but decided against it. My parents didn't care. They only cared about me never seeing Brooks again. At the end of the session they dropped the bomb that they'd requested a restraining order against him seeing me. After that I stopped talking about him. I was a shell; nothing they said or did could convince me I was better off without Brooks. So I stared through them and dropped their meaningless words into a space inside me filled
with years of their fake bullshit platitudes about the importance of “family.”

Before I left the hospital, I had more than a dozen consultations about the burns on my legs. I didn't care about them. More scars. More battle wounds. My body was littered with lines and marks and none of them seemed nearly as painful as the emotional damage of losing Brooks.

I checked out of the psych unit wearing scrubs, a pile of resources tucked into a plastic bag on my lap as they wheeled me past the pale peach walls of the hospital. I had to keep seeing a therapist, keep taking antidepressants, and my family was given the task of finding a family therapist we liked enough to show up for appointments.

Dad had found us a furnished apartment. The walls were industrial tan and the furniture reeked of wet dog. My room was right next to my parents', of course. Mom had picked up three pairs of jeans and some T-shirts from the Gap and put them into the drawers of the crappy plastic dresser along with some underwear and tank tops. I wanted to barf when I thought of all the clothes I'd lost in the fire, but I slid into her replacements without saying a word. They were better than the hospital scrubs I'd been wearing for too long.

Things with my brothers were weird. They didn't know how to be with me. They'd worked out some kind of temporary truce with Mom and Dad, but they seemed to be walking
on eggshells around me. Mostly I ignored everyone and sat on the roof of our new building, practicing how to roll Indian Spirit cigarettes. My parents checked on me often but didn't say anything about the smoking. Guess they decided cigarettes were better than razors.

I was supposed to go back to school, but I convinced my therapist to buy me until the end of the school year. My teachers agreed to let me continue with “virtual school” while I recovered. The hospital staff had forced me to keep up with my studies in the psych unit, so my grades had actually improved. It was about the only interesting thing to do there anyway.

I spent my first nights at home researching ways I could help Brooks, but nothing looked promising. I was seventeen, with not enough money to hire any legal help. I considered going to Dennis and asking to borrow money, but I hadn't seen him since the day I walked out, and even though my parents said he'd called to check on me a bunch of times, I couldn't reach out to him.

Ricardo stopped by, but I barely looked at him as he fidgeted on the crappy leather couch. He told me funny things about the store and did the uncomfortable talking thing until I told him to go. He offered to come back, but I told him I wasn't really up for company yet.