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“He’s fine. They admitted him here last night. Supposedly Mom is coming this afternoon to tell you, but you know how that goes.”

“Here? They admitted him
here
?”

Margie grabbed Theresa’s hand, relieving her of the responsibility of speaking. “They don’t send you home after a suicide attempt. They have to figure out if you’re a risk to yourself. It’s like babysitting, only really fucking expensive.”

“You don’t have to say that word,” Theresa whispered. Theresa turned toward the patio.

In the direct light, I saw she had dark circles under her eyes, and renegade hairs had escaped her ponytail. She’d lost her friend, and her brother had almost died. She had a sister in an institution and a father who liked girls slightly younger than her. I realized she was as much of an addict as I was, and refinement was her drug of choice.

“Are you okay, Theresa? You look like hell,” I said.

“She was my friend, but she was also a little in love with money, which is probably why she went from Dad to Jon… God, it’s even hard to say that.”

“Not easy to hear either.”

“I think she was trying to blackmail Dad,” Theresa said. “It’s such a mess. I’ve never seen Dad like this. He’s
afraid
. That’s scarier than anything.”

“He’s not scared,” Margie cut in. “He’s playing at it. And yes, she was trying to blackmail Dad. I got that through my own channels.”

“Why didn’t he just pay it?”

“Maybe he did,” Margie said. “But she kept coming after him.”

“Then me,” Theresa said. “She kept saying hateful things to me about Jonathan and Dad, like she was trying to get me to hate them. I was weird about her dating my brother, then I wasn’t. Now I am again. But when you see Jonathan, can you tell him I’m sorry? We had this big fight just before. I called him names, which was… I don’t know what came over me.” Her hands sat palm up in her lap, and she stared at them. “We can’t fight amongst ourselves. Reporters are asking questions. It’s nuts out there. They’re asking about Rachel, about you. They want to use us. Everyone has a camera, and I don’t want us to be used any more.”

“We’re the world’s circus,” I said. “Third ring to the right. I don’t know how to shake it.”

“I’m going to.” Theresa set her jaw, and a steel curtain dropped over her face. “I’m going to be normal. I’m going to work and have a job like anyone else. I’m going to have friends who like me for me. Not for money or fame or any of this.”

“Good luck with that,” I said, already shaking my head over her failure to achieve the dream of being no better than ordinary.

On the way out, with Theresa half a hall away, Margie took my hand. “Keep your shit together, and you can get out. Your mandated time is only a few more days, and your boyfriend’s not pressing charges, so you can probably avoid a lot of questioning and ugliness if you stay low. But a little sisterly advice.”

“As opposed to what you usually give?”

“Jonathan’s going to need you. He’s not himself. Be there for him. It really is a circus. They’ve been poking around Dad, which means there are going to be questions.”

“I told Mom to talk to Carrie. I’m sorry, I just—”

“It’s okay. Forget it.”

“Carrie always knew Dad had a thing for… I can’t even say it. I always thought she… I can’t say that either.” I couldn’t say that Carrie had always maintained that Dad liked young girls, and that made me think she’d gotten some form of sexual attention none of the rest of us had. I had no proof, just a twist in the gut. Carrie had never said one way or the other.

“Carrie can take care of herself,” Margie said. “If I were you, I’d stay in here as long as possible. As a matter of fact, I’d like to admit myself right now.”

“If you were in here, I’d work like hell to get you out.”

“You’re implying… what?”

“You ditched me.”

She put her hands on her hips. “For your own good.”

“Isn’t it about time other people stopped deciding what was for my own good? Maybe treat me like an adult who can make her own decisions? I have my own reason for wanting you to be my lawyer, and it has nothing to do with your experience. I don’t want to explain myself to some strange, experienced person. I need someone to work with who I am. Do you get it?”

She didn’t answer. She pecked me on the cheek and stalked off for the door. From Margie, that might as well have been a signature on the dotted line.

FIONA

I
’d left my sisters with promises and comfort I was ill-equipped to give. Only someone as naïve as Theresa would tell a psycho like me a thing, and only a Drazen psycho would keep that fucking promise to death.

“They wanted to visit. What’s the big deal, Deena?”

Brazilian Blowout’s name was Deena. It made me want to kick a puppy.

“You look upset,” she said.

“I’m not upset.”

“You still have no recollection of what happened the night before you arrived here. Honestly, I find it hard to send you home before you remember.”

“It’s not a condition of my release. Not according to my lawyer.”

“We have some latitude.”

“You mean
you
have latitude. You know the violent outbursts were valid. This other bullshit is just bullshit.”

“What exactly do you think is going on, Fiona?” She had her forearms on the edge of the desk, and her fucking blowout at a right angle to the earth, and a practiced, blank expression that created a vacuum that sucked the truth out of me.

“I think you’re looking to make a career jump.” Even as the voice in my head told me to stop, I kept on. “I think you’re going to change the names to protect the guilty and write a paper about the famous, debased heiress with a father who married his wife real young. I think you put me back on Paxil, which Elliot took me off of, so I’d have less control over myself and I’d get snappy in the afternoons.”

“There’s no proof Paxil has that side effect.” She sat back, crossing her wrists in her lap. “It’s interesting you think Dr. Chapman had your best interests at heart though.”

“I think you’re vile.” I was white hot, and nothing could stop me from burning that shit down. “I think you’re a heartless cunt. I’m a
thing
to you. A new trinket on your shelf. You think I’m your fucking gravy train, and I think this hokey Indian crap is all for show unless sleeping with that blanket’s going to give me smallpox.”

“Let’s talk about—”

“Fuck you.”

“Your feelings are—”

“Fuck you.”

“Fiona, this is—”

“Fuck you.”

“Deacon contacted the hospital.”

“Fuck you.”

“He wanted to see you.”

She’d done it. She’d stopped my torrent of hate with a sliver of hope. “This is a trick. I—”

“I told him that until you participated fully in your therapy, he would not be allowed in.”

“What?”

“Tell me, Fiona, would you allow him here if you were on this side of the desk? Your last violent episode outside these walls involved him. You’ve blocked out the memory of it. Seeing him could open floodgates you’re not prepared to—”

At the word floodgates, I was finished. Floodgates had opened all right. I remembered it very clearly. The pressure on my right foot as I stood, the pressure of the hard wooden desk on my left knee, the feeling of falling as I straightened my leg on her desk, my thrust forward as I made sure to get my arms out in time to latch my hands around her motherfucking lying throat.

I think I was screaming, which must have been what saved that bitch’s life.

ELLIOT

L
ike any self-respecting monied hippie from San Francisco, Jana was in therapy. And like any functioning neurotic, she didn’t reveal the depths of her neuroses until we were deeply involved.

My father said my time in seminary had made me too concerned, too warm, too compassionate to see what was face value to everyone else, but my father had never been known for his humanity, only his data analysis and domineering attitude. The data told him Jana was beautiful, and his dominance told him she was a handful.

In the sweet opening months of our relationship, while I was doing good work in a chaplaincy at Alondra House in Compton, Jana was my refuge. She didn’t want to talk about my work, making my time with her restful. We cooked together, played volleyball on the beach, and sat on my porch and drank beer into the night, watching the West Hollywood partiers traipse up and down the block.

But I couldn’t keep work and life separated forever. A mother I’d been treating at Alondra had been pimping out her son for drugs. He was eight. I reported it, and the ensuing threats from her gang were pretty frightening. I understood fear as well as the next person. I understood that no one wanted to put someone they loved in the way of hurt, but I wouldn’t let an eight-year-old have sex with men in exchange for his mother’s drugs.

Sorry.

That had been six months ago, and though the boy had been taken to foster care, and the gang calmed, Jana still bled fear, and I spent most of my free time torn between a desire to soothe her and a compulsion to run away.

“Good morning,” Jana said when I came downstairs. She was dressed in an embroidered jacket and suede skirt she and no one else could pull off. Her light brown hair was pulled back in the front and allowed to drape in the back. She was the assistant head of upper school at a swanky little private school, where self expression was the selling point and rigid academics were the reality.

“Hey,” I said, refusing the coffee she handed me. “I’m running late.”

The TV was on an entertainment news show. Another Drazen story about Fiona. The same clip we’d all seen a hundred times: her approaching a black Range Rover with her pierced nipples exposed by her unbuttoned shirt. Knowing the story behind the famous shot didn’t make it any less compelling when she winked at the cameras before closing the door.

“Uhm,” Jana said, snapping my attention from the TV. “I thought you left at eight thirty?”

“I have a working mother who needs to meet at eight, or she loses her job.” I shrugged into my jacket. I don’t know what satisfaction I got out of being sharp with her.

“Okay, I wanted to tell you we’re looking for a school counselor,” she said. “Psychological counselor, and I thought…”

I was intimidating her. I knew it from her expression and the way her sentence drifted off. I hated that. I hated thinking she didn’t feel as though she could express herself freely because of my reaction. I put my arms around her. “You thought, ‘Elliot doesn’t have anything steady, so he might like it?’”

“Yeah. I have your resume. I can just shoot it to Mary.”

I kissed her, her apple lip balm leaving residue on my mouth. “Sure. Send it over.”

FIONA

I
 wouldn’t say I woke. I didn’t actually wake up. I more or less flew over the clouds, dipped below, went back above them and in them. The swash of soft white light hit me in the face as I felt the movement of my body, but not a change in my visual field.

Only my pussy grounded me. Somehow, while my senses were dulled, the throb of arousal became a focal point around which everything else swirled. The physical affected the mental, and the pressure between my legs demanded action.

I opened my eyes. The room around my bed was white with microsuede walls. The floor was a warm linoleum without a seam or disturbance. The fiberglass ceiling had three disks of soft lighting, one with a plastic dome around it. A camera for sure. A sparkling clean toilet. The door was closed, sealed, locked, and there was no window in it.

Solitary.

I snaked my right hand under my waistband because I couldn’t think until I rubbed out my exploding clit. Once past my Westonwood-approved undergarments, I felt a sting.

I was sore. Very sore. Red, raw, Sunday morning sore. I put the fingers of my left hand to my nose and smelled pussy. Whatever this stupid drug was, I’d been conscious enough to masturbate for however long I’d been in that room, and still I needed it.

I looked at the corners of the bed. Restraints were hanging from the corners, so they had chosen to keep my hands free. They let me beat myself raw. Maybe they even wanted it. Well, I wouldn’t give them what they wanted.

I sat up and looked around, but there was nothing else to see. How long had I been in there? No way to know. I didn’t have a watch. I would have had to be conscious to take a meal, and I was sure they weren’t interested in starving me.

I looked at the camera, waving. “Hey! Hungry.”

I wasn’t really, but I wanted to get a reaction out of someone, somewhere. I slid off the cot and stepped forward, cringing. It became easy then to figure out how long I’d been in that room. Some time before I got really hungry, and some time after I rubbed my clit so sore I couldn’t walk.

I peed in the little bowl and washed my hands in the little white sink. Were they watching? I was sure they were. Lucky for me I didn’t care.

“Hey!” I shouted at the camera. “Was that fun? Watching me piss? It hurt too. You know, for once, I wish you’d have tied me down.”

I paced the room, thinking that getting tied down had a purpose. This was punishment. I was being punished for trying to choke my therapist. God, I wanted Elliot. I threw myself on the cot, wanting him. All my sexual fantasies of him went out the window. I wanted to sit across his desk and talk, or lie on the couch and listen to him count backward.

Three.

Two.

One.

***

Deacon has tied me and left me longer than usual.

It’s an asymmetrical knotting, a demonstration for Martin. I’m in underpants and a tank top, not that both of them haven’t seen and done plenty to my body before. Today is strictly clinical. Supposedly.

I face the ceiling. My right knee is tied bent and looped so my knee is connected to my neck. Left leg extended and connected to my left wrist. Right arm behind my back. Ropes around my jaw, holding my mouth open, and my head connected to the suspending rope.

The crotch of my panties has shifted, as they often do, so that air hits between my legs, and I feel the coolness of moisture drying. Deacon’s voice becomes a hum. He shows Martin how to knot, his hands touching my skin where the rope dents it, demonstrating the right tightness and the way to handle a sub without hurting her. Martin’s hands, careless and dangerous, fix the ropes at my inner thigh. His eyes are on me as if I’m some object, some fuckthing, the thought of it burning like a rage. He wants me today. I feel it in the way his fingers linger on me.