Part 10

Chapter 46

When Nikki and I arrive back at the house after our apartment 'hunting' adventure, Catherine and Sara are too casually waiting for us in the living room. They look anxious even though I'm pretty sure they're trying for the cool and easy going look. They've got the same body language talking to me as they have had for the last few months. It's them holding their breath waiting to see if I'm going to bring them news that I'm still falling apart or that I'm getting worse or that I'm having hallucinations.

Sara looks over at Nikki and I catch the quick nod that Nikki gives to my mom. I'm not completely ignorant of the silent communication that goes on between them at times. It's the whole, 'there's a crazy in the room so we have to speak in code' language that they've developed, that they developed mostly out of actual need for it. I'm sure there are times when I really didn't need to know what they were telling each other, but now that I've managed to decipher the code it doesn't really seem necessarily right now.

"I'm not moving out," I say for the benefit of speaking verbally instead of having odd winks, nods and erroneous gestures flung about the room in some kind of weird monkey language that will get us all eventually committed to a mental institution. "Nikki informed me of the Doc's plan to 'remove' me from the situation and all that."

Relief and apprehension cover both Sara's and Catherine's faces. I can feel a long talk coming on right now and I can almost admit that I'm ready for it. For the most part, on our way back here Nikki and I were silent in the car. I was gearing myself up to talk to these two adults and I can only assume that Nikki either knew and respected that or just didn't have anything she wanted to say to me.

I move over to where Catherine and Sara are sitting and take a seat across from them on the coffee table that is in front of the sofa they are 'casually' sitting on as they watch the weather channel. I've heard stories that a while ago they were actually cool instead of the weather channel watchers they've turned into.

"So I'm thinkin' that Sara should go back to work," my elbows are planted on my thighs pushing into my skin so that I don't run away and my face is planted in the palms of my hands for the extra weight.

Catherine and Sara both look oddly at me obviously missing the segue I was trying to throw at them and Nikki comes and sits next to me. She doesn't try to move my body and that's probably because she can see how planted I am in my position. If she moves me I might topple over like a tree uprooted.

Sara is the first to speak. "Okay."

I need to just pull this whole situation off like I'm peeling off a band-aid. "After talking to Nikki about stuff, I've found out that I'm really tired of having everyone's life resting on my shoulders." I manage to say in a rush and add for good measure, "And the medicine appears to be working better this time."

"What do you mean?" Catherine asks.

I take a quick look at the ground, then at Nikki, then at the wall across from us, then at the stairs slightly behind us, then at the television, then my eyes finally seem to find the general direction that Catherine and Sara are sitting in. "The meds seem to be clearing up some of the fog."

By the look I manage to catch through another sweep of my gaze around the room, I kind of think that's not the answer Catherine was looking for. "You feel like everyone's life is resting on your shoulders?" Catherine prompts.

Sara reaches her right hand out and presses it against the side of my left leg. I barely manage to stay sitting upright from the touch because it rocks me. It's like she's gathered too much static electricity and then decided to pump gas and exploded the whole station-me being the gas station of course.

"This is really something you need to talk to us about, Melinda," Sara must see the tiny, thin, miniscule amount of control I have in this moment so removes her hand from me and sits back on the sofa giving me some much needed space.

"I'm trying," I say through semi-gritted teeth. "It's hard."

My eyes find themselves focusing on my healing arms. I concentrate on them, willing for them to remain blood free. It's been a long day considering all the talking that I've been doing. It would be really unfortunate if all the sudden I had to start going crazy again or rather more crazy than the controlled crazy that I have seemed to start to get a handle on.

"Take your time sweetie," Catherine's voice penetrates my concentration. I look up at her and notice that she's moved closer to Sara, whether it's for Sara's support or to support Sara I can't guess on.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath willing away the voice of my grandmother that is telling me something about me failing and something about me being weak and worthless. I don't have an internal mantra that can make the auditory hallucinations go away as easily as closing my eyes does for the visual ones. I can't really tell myself that what I'm hearing isn't real, because it is real to me. I've heard these words come from the woman who I thought was my mother for the majority of my life.

It's the separation of the past and the present that my therapist says that I need to work on. Since I don't have a mantra of my own for the auditory hallucinations she gave me one. It's corny and stupid and I swore that I would never repeat it because of how stupid it was, but I find myself repeating the words in my head anyway, 'I hear you but you are dead. I am in control. I am in the present not the past. I hear you but you are dead. I am in control. I am in the present not the past. I hear you but you are dead. I am in control. I am in the present not the past.'

"If you're not ready," Sara begins to offer but I raise my hand to her stopping her words.

"Give me a moment." I don't open my eyes. 'I hear you but you are dead. I am in control. I am in the present not the past.'

My own internal voice is out-yelling the ones that don't belong. Maybe my therapist learned something from all that education that she received after all. It almost makes me want to think about going to college again, a topic that has been very far from my thoughts lately.

Of almost their own free will, my eyes open up to see the concerned faces of everyone sitting around me. "Ever since I got really bad," my voice is surprisingly calm, "everyone has been watching me to take cues as to what they should do. You both stopped working for a while and Nikki gave up her entire life, I think." My thoughts drift off along with my voice but I redirect them quickly to where they need to be. "It's cool that you all are willing to do everything to help me but I think we're at a place where we need to figure out how you can start functioning again so that we can all live."

I'm met by silence. I don't know what kind of silence it is so I start speaking again with the only thing I can think of to say, "I think we're ready now."

The 'we' thing that I've started to vocalize surprises me a little. I don't know how that came about. I was thinking 'I' in my head but I guess 'we' sounds better. It's supposed to be a joint effort in all this isn't it? I mean, we all want the same outcome. We want me to live. That seems like something in common and we also, I think, want to move onto something a little more positive.

I can't really say that I want it to be like how it was before, because I don't think that was exactly good happenings going on before.

There is still silence but this time Nikki fills it. "She's fighting now," she sounds prideful or maybe that's just what being happy in the moment sounds like. It's been a while since I've heard that kind of tone.

Sara swallows quite audibly and obviously forgets what happened before when she touched me because she's reaching out with both arms and is pulling me to her.

I topple over right onto her lap.

"I'm so sorry you've felt so pressured. We really didn't want that." Sara tells me.

"I guess in trying not to pressure you we ended up pressuring the hell out of you," Catherine adds. "Thank you for talking to us about it. We know it couldn't have been easy for you."

It seems like this 'we' phenomenon isn't going to end anytime soon. I feel almost comfortable enough to ride out this wave of new developments and high emotionality.

Feeling slightly overwhelmed I remove myself from Sara's lap and take my place back onto the coffee table. I wipe at my nose and then at my eyes for no particular reason except to do something while I figure out what it is I want to say.

"If you do go back to work, Sara, then I'd kind of like it to be part-time," I manage to stumble out. "I don't think that I'm ready to be alone full time yet. I still need you with me."

I honestly didn't know that I was going to admit that. My lips didn't get permission from my brain before they formed the words. That's not really a good thing because next they'll be telling me that I was chanting that stupid mantra aloud.

"Of course," this time Catherine reaches out to touch me. It would appear that they really like keeping in physical contact with me. I'm not big on it yet. I mean, it feels good an all but it still feels really weird. As far as I can remember, I wasn't really touched in any positive ways as a child. I had a few punches and slaps here and a few fierce grabs there, but nothing in the same box as where Catherine's and Sara's touches fall into. "We'll take baby steps," Catherine smiles at me, her hand resting on my knee. It's warm, her hand.

For a moment I wonder if Sara held me when I was a baby before she left for good. I wonder if I got a chance to form a secure attachment to her before I was left to fend for myself in an environment that would contribute greatly to making me who I am today. If I was securely attached to her and then she just left and one of my cries was unanswered as a toddler is that when I lost my trust in humanity?

I've probably been reading too many of those psychology books and pamphlets that the doctors keep on handing out to me. They should probably read some of the stuff they push off before handing it over to people who aren't completely stable and secure. Through reading some of the stuff, I'm sure I could diagnose myself with at least another billion disorders. Why only have one when you can have thousands?

So to get my mind focused on what is happening around me in the present, Sara left me when I was very young and now I'm asking her to not leave me and she's not going to, at least I think she's not going to. I mean, she's been here more for me than she ever was before. She's listening to what I have to say and is paying attention to how I feel and everything.

When I first came to stay with her, which seems like a thousand years ago now, I got the feeling that she really loved her work. I don't think she lived for it, but I'm certain that she was really into it. Yet, she hasn't really talked about it at all since she simply walked away from it. Although, I'm pretty sure that she didn't simply walk away from it at all. It probably had all kinds of drama involved that I'm not privileged enough to get told yet.

My hand surprises me when it reaches and takes hold of Sara's free hand, the one that Catherine doesn't have in a death grip. "Thank you." It would appear that my lips have stopped wanting to check all words with my brain first. My body is conspiring against me.

"Never thank us for loving you and doing all we can to help you," Catherine somehow manages to say through the tears that are rolling down her face. I feel wetness on the hand that I have ensconced with Sara's and find it odd that Catherine's tears would land on my hand. That's when part of my brain kicks back in and I realize that the reason Catherine is speaking is because Sara is crying too hard to form any words and most of her tears are managing to fall down her cheeks onto our joined hands.

There's some kind of symbolism here that I'm too tired or too stupid to grasp onto right now. Maybe I can sit back and think about it when those auditory hallucinations start coming back. I can sit and analyze the meaning of tears and the meaning behind the fact that they are falling down onto our joined flesh. The same flesh that remained disjointed for a very long time.

"I'm going to fight now," I tell them and this time my lips have permission to say the words. "I'm going to get better, for real."



Chapter 47

"So you told them how you felt?" For some reason the Doc always insists on repeating what I say. It's annoying and has no purpose. I didn't stutter when I told her about what happened between Catherine and Sara and Nikki and me. Well that's not completely true. I did stutter but I know that she understood me anyway.

"Yeah I told them," I irritably reply to her as I concentrate on getting the invisible dirt from under the nails of my right hand.

"You only had one bout of hearing Laura's voice?" She prompts ignoring my tone.

"Hallucinations you mean? Yeah, did that chant thing," I mutter. "It worked."

"You did the chant?" She seems interested in this. I guess I left that out in my original re-telling of events to her.

I nod.

"It helped?"

I nod.

"Did you say it like we practiced?"

I nod.

"How many times did you have to repeat it before your grandmother's voice went away?"

This isn't a question I can just answer with a nod. So she won this round. "Three or four, I think."

Her blue eyes widen in surprise. "Really? Melinda, that shows remarkable improvement."

"Yeah, so I guess that means I don't need to be shipped off to the crazy house and separated from my fam… the people I'm surrounded by."

She smirks. "If you continue to improve like this, there will be no need for us to separate you from your family."

"You mean the people I'm surrounded by," I immediately correct her like I immediately corrected myself. I don't have that good of a history with family as it stands right now. Family has never been too positive of a word for me. It's been closer to a curse word actually.

"We've talked about this, Melinda." Her voice is slightly chastising. "Family isn't a curse word. It can be positive if you let it."

"Can't I let it be a word I don't want to use too? It's hard not to associate some things back to my home." I say knowing that once again Doc has managed to get me to talk about things that I don't want to talk about at all and especially don't want to admit aloud or even admit to myself.

"Your home is no longer with your grandparents, Melinda" She shifts the notepad she has on her lap.

"It was my home for a long time."

"It was and as we've already talked about, you're still mentally stuck there. To a certain extent, you're still letting Laura Sidle control your life, as is shown in your continuation of hearing her voice. You're not really having hallucinations, Melinda. You're using Laura's past words as an internal barrier to the world around you. You have to give yourself permission to let her words go. It's your voice, Melinda, you just have to take control of it."

She makes it sound so easy, but all the doctors I've seen have made things sound easy. Roberson, here, isn't any different although she's a little different because she's actually managed to help me some. My previous doctor told me that I needed to see someone who used different methods and recommended to Sara and Catherine that they take me to the woman sitting across from me now.

The fact that I'm talking to her must say something about her skills or maybe it says even more about my defenses and the chronic lack of them these days. "Home is still the place where I got pounded on and eventually ended up becoming a murderer."

"Yes I know," Doc Roberson sighs. "Home was that place and for the record it wasn't murder. We've talked about that too."

"If it wasn't then why isn't anyone talking to the police for some kind of investigation to get me acquitted or something? Why is everyone treating it like murder?"

"We have talked to the police, Melinda."

Whoa. "What? No one has talked to me about that?"

"I know, so that means that I haven't either," she warns me. "But I think you should at least know that there's no one that considers what you did murder. No one is going to convict you and since your grandmother was in an accident after the events it would be very hard to prove that you were responsible for anything."

"Oh."

Roberson puts her pad down on the desk next to her. "It would help you a lot if you started thinking of home as the place where your parents live. Where Catherine and Sara live and where your sister Lindsey lives. It would help for you to try to imagine yourself in your home surrounded by the people who you care enough about and who care enough about you that you are willing to fight for your existence."

My attention goes back to cleaning my nails. "It seems like I've always been fighting for my existence."

"You have been," Roberson agrees softly. "You fought for the right to grow up in a terrible situation and now you have to fight yourself. If you survived your environment for as long as you did, do you really want that fighting to go to waste because you end up defeating yourself in the end?"

Well when she puts it that way. "The medicine is starting to work." That seems to be my answer these days to a lot of questions that aren't particularly asked of me. Maybe one day in the future I can use it as a new and improved pick up line.

Roberson smiles. "Yes, it is working."

"Is it the reason for my improvement?" I'm reluctant to hear the answer because I'm kind of afraid that it's doing all the work and that I'm a slave to its whims. It'd be nice to have some control for a change.

"Melinda, trust me when I tell you that the medication wouldn't be doing its part if you weren't doing yours. Your medication isn't a solution to your problems it's only a helper. You're the main component in getting better."

"So it won't, like, make me feel things that I don't really feel?"

She shakes her head, "No, not at all." She props her head on her fist as she leans on the armrest of her chair. "I'm curious as to why you asked that?"

"I don't know," I shake my head and shrug. "I guess I just want my emotions to be my own. If I'm going to start making words like 'home' and 'family' a positive part of my vocabulary then I want it to be me talkin' and nothing else."

Roberson nods. "That's completely understandable. You shouldn't be pushed into something that you're not comfortable with."

She's silent for a little while. I don't bother to lift my eyes from my nails. I'll let her talk when she's ready to again.

"So now that you've talked to them, how do you feel about it?"

She does that a lot, asking me how I feel about things. I'm not very good at it: telling about how I feel. Most of the time, I don't know how I feel. I mean, it's never really clear how I feel about anything. It's getting clearer but now that I can see a little better that doesn't mean I can interpret what I'm feeling any better. If that makes any kind of sense at all.

"I don't know," I respond as I pick at a hang nail with my teeth. "A little off-balanced I guess." Then again, I always feel off-balanced so that shouldn't be anything new.

"I can see how you would feel that way." She's silent again and I have an odd feeling that she's waiting for me to talk without being asked a question.

That's almost an unheard of occurrence between us. She asks questions and I answer them. We have a fool-proof system going on. She's not allowed to change the system after it's been set.

"They hugged me and stuff during and after it all," I tell her for no reason at all. "I'm still not completely comfortable with them touching me. It was after Sara touched my leg that I started up with the invasion of Laura's voice."

Roberson is still sitting there looking at me with open, friendly blue eyes waiting for me to finish telling her my story.

"But like I said, I did the chant thing and it went away."

She sits there looking at me for another moment then casually asks, "How much does your mother look like your grandmother?"

Immediately panic washes over me. "I don't know," I tell the floor.

"From what you've told me about your hallucinations, they seem to be triggered by Sara a lot. I would guess that she reminds you of your grandmother both physically and mentally. You see your grandmother in her."

"No I don't," I weakly defend myself. "At least I didn't until you told me I did."

"You still have a lot of conflicting emotions when it comes to Sara, Melinda. That's perfectly normal and I think that's one of the reasons why you've bonded more quickly to Catherine."

I shift in my seat and throw my legs around on the floor until I find a comfortable position for them. I play with the hem of my shirt for a few moments then start looking around the room. Once again Roberson has me thinking about things that I don't want to think about at all.

"It would only be natural that Sara reminds you of your grandmother, Melinda. She was your mom's parent. She raised your mom, much like she raised you."

"So what," I stutter, "does that mean she's like stuck inside of us like that stupid alien is in that movie just waiting to burst out of our chest cavities?"

"That's not the analogy I was going for, but it'll work."

"And?"

"And I think you should think about what that means to you for our next session." Her eyes drop to her wristwatch. "Right now your time is up."

She's got to be kidding me. She's going to leave me with thinking about this of all subjects! That's not really fair. She should have asked me to think about something a little easier. Maybe should could have asked me to contemplate quantum mechanics or something.

"This is something you need to really think about, Melinda. You shouldn't be pushed into talking about it right now. Figure out what it means to you."

"I already know what it means to me," I rush out. "It means shit since she's dead and since she doesn't mean anything anymore."

Roberson stands up. "Our time is up."

"Fine!" I jump up from the chair I've been sitting in for the last hour and practically rip her door open and run out of her office. Sara calls my name but I walk past her and straight to her car in the parking lot. I don't want to stay around and listen to what the Doctor has to tell Sara. She's probably going to warn her about me having a mood swing or something.

It takes me a few minutes, more minutes than I want it to take, but eventually Sara appears in the parking lot and unlocks the SUV. I hurry into the car and close the door firmly just shy of actually slamming it. Sara takes her precious time to get in but doesn't put the key in the ignition so that she can get us away from Roberson. She turns to me and says, "We can talk about it later, if you want."

My eyes start failing on me because I feel myself trying desperately to blink away tears. I really hate when my sessions end this way. I'd much rather leave happy and stuff rather than crying, tired and emotionally spent.

"She doesn't mean anything," I say as I wipe sloppily at my face.

"Dr. Roberson is trying to help you." Obviously Sara doesn't know who I'm talking about. It doesn't matter.

I turn to the window seeing my pitiful reflection in it. I look bad. "I'm talking about your mother." I say a little more harshly than I want to. "She doesn't matter," I whisper softly to my reflection.

Sara moves closer to me and her reflection appears on the glass too. We look alike. My skin is darker and all but we do look alike. My hair is a little wavier and longer but not too much so. If a stranger was looking at us I bet they could tell that we were related somehow.

Her hand moves to my upper back and I almost jump through the window. She quickly moves her hand away.

"No!" I yell at our reflections then turn to her and grab her hand with my own. "We're not her," I tell her forcefully. "We can't be her," I say through the tears I've stopped trying to hold back. "You can't be her."

Sara throws her free hand and arm across my body and awkwardly pulls me to her in this too tight space. "I'm not her, Melinda," my mother tells me shakily. "I promise you that I will never be her."

We sit in the car and cry. She holds me and I force back any words that are trying to force themselves onto me through my grandmother's voice in my head and suddenly I think I have a new chant.

'I have a mother who isn't you. I have a life that you didn't ruin. I have a good home and a good family. You are defeated. You are worthless. You are nothing.'



Chapter 48

Nikki and I are sitting in the middle of her new single-bedroom apartment trying to put together the entertainment center I bought her as a house-warming present. Looking around the room, I'm thinkin' that maybe I should have bought Nikki a futon or maybe a bed instead. I ignorantly assumed that she had put the stuff from her old apartment in storage, but apparently she sold everything instead so that she could keep living without mooching of Catherine and Sara while I recuperated.

All the money that she had left was able to pay for part of her first month's rent and to bought her a mattress so that she wouldn't have to sleep on the floor.

"So you have any possible job prospects coming to you?" I ask Nikki as I look at the pictures on the horrible directions that came with the entertainment center. I have two parts in my hands that don't look like the ones in the picture, but they fit together so I'm going to keep them that way.

"I hear Wal-Mart is hiring," she tells me as she watches me fit the parts together like I actually know what I'm doing.

"They are always hiring," I reply absently as I look around me for part D and screw type W. I find the screw but the sticker that I assume was to mark part D is now stuck to my jeans. "You have any place better, a little more humane maybe?"

"Catherine offered to see if she could hook me up with some menial job with the city," Nikki leans over and rips the D sticker off of my jeans and puts it back on the piece of fake wood that it hopefully belongs to.

I start gluing the two pieces together. It'd be a real suck-fest at this point if I'm screwing up the instructions. "There's a lot of security in city jobs," I mutter as I try wiping the glue from my fingers and onto my jeans. "What were you doing before I came and turned your life upside down? From what I can barely remember, you seemed to have a nice enough place."

"I was working as a computer technician for the local school district."

'They let you work near children?" I ask surprised. "They must have been desperate."

Nikki throws a small piece of the box this center came in at me as she tells me to shut up. The piece of cardboard flies over my head.

"So if that's what you were doing before then why don't you try working for a district here? I seem to recall from my short stay in one of the actual schools that they have computers here too."

"I'll take anything at this point," Nikki reaches out and starts to try and fit a few pieces together. "So how did your session with Doctor Roberson go? You haven't said anything to me about it."

I debate whether I want to tell Nikki anything at all about what happened only a few hours earlier. I don't want to talk about my therapy at all really. It's not exactly a conversation lifter. Then again, if I don't use Nikki as a sounding board for Roberson's craziness then who am I going to use? I can't talk to Catherine and Sara about everything.

"Roberson wants me to think about my grandmother exploding from Sara's and my chest cavities," I say quickly picking up another piece of the jigsaw puzzle that I have managed to buy for my friend.

Nikki stops what she's doing and looks at me. "What?"

"She has this wacked out theory that perhaps it's possible that Sara reminds me a little bit of my grandmother and that could be a trigger for some of my hallucinations, especially when Sara touches me." I say in a rush refusing to look at her.

"For a wacked out theory that makes sense," Nikki replies after a long moment of silence. "They look almost exactly alike."

I drop the parts that I've been unable to fit together. "I know," I whisper. "I really don't want to think about it."

"I'm a little surprised no one made any of these connections before," Nikki picks up the pieces I discarded and make them fit with the parts she's been messing with.

"I guess I've just been too caught up in the independent issues I have with Sara that I couldn't really think about who she looks like."

Nikki stops what she's doing and looks directly at me. "We shouldn't talk about this tonight," she tells me. "You need a break. If we carry on like this then you'll relapse."

Her suggestion rocks me a little and I'm a little upset that she thinks she can dictate what it is I talk about. I open my mouth to most likely yell at her but she jumps over the piles of entertainment center jigsaw pieces and pulls me to her. "You're walking on a thin edge," she whispers into my ear. "If you move too fast you'll fall off. Give yourself a break."

If I could find it in me to fight with her, I would. But I can't. I am feeling a little unbalanced. Especially after the scene that played out between Sara and me in the car. After we had both stopped crying neither of us really knew what to do afterwards. The moment became really awkward and I couldn't quite explain away my more than erratic behavior and now thanks to Roberson I can't stop thinking about Sara and my reflection in the glass.

We both look so much like her. Well, I look less like her, but it's still in there. It's still in me. I find myself evaluating every single move I make to see if I'm doing anything at all like she did. Do I walk like she did? Do the inflictions in my words sound like hers?

I wonder if Roberson knew that having me think about this could drive me to be crazier than I already am. If she did, then we need to find another counselor for me. We haven't tried out a guy yet. Maybe we should try out a guy.

"I can't stop thinking about it now," I tell Nikki as I pull myself out of the grasp she has me in. I don't really feel like being touched right now.

She takes my moving away from her in stride. "I'm sure if we start working on this…thing you've bought me your mind will start drifting again."

I take a look at the pieces that are scattered around the room. "It's been a long time since I've done a scavenger hunt."

Nikki nods then grabs for one of the pieces on the floor. There's a knock at her door and since I'm already standing I walk over to answer it while pulling a twenty dollar bill from my back pocket. We ordered a pizza what must have been hours ago now.

I'm only mildly surprised to see Catherine, Sara and Lindsey standing on the other side of the door when I open it. "We're crashing the party," Catherine explains as she walks past me and turns her eyes to the mess on the floor. "Did the box throw up?" She asks me looking quite serious.

"Hey," I say to Sara and Lindsey ignoring Catherine. "Did you bring food?"

"Crashers don't bring food," Sara smiles tentatively at me. She doesn't look too terribly comfortable to be standing in front of me right now.

I nod but don't respond to her. I'm not too terribly comfortable either. I step aside so that Sara and Lindsey can carefully step into Nikki's apartment. "How did you get conned into spending a Friday night with your parents?" I ask Lindsey.

She shrugs. "I wanted to come."

"Oh. Cool. Then you can help with the new entertainment center."

Lindsey rolls her eyes and steps over the mess on the floor muttering something about already promising to help with the bed. I turn to Sara looking for an answer. "We bought Nikki a bed. Catherine couldn't bare the thought of Nikki sleeping on the floor."

"So she really does love me!" Nikki smiles brightly her body still firmly planted on the floor.

"Don't get too excited," Catherine makes her way over to Nikki and places her hand on Nikki's head. "We're not putting it together for you."

"It's still in the car," Sara tells us and points to the front door that I haven't seemed to manage to close yet. "I'll get it."

"You'll need help," Catherine tells Sara but I get the feeling she's really telling me since she's looking directly at me.

"Oh, well then I'll help," I say with as much fake enthusiasm as I can muster as I walk out the door and across the walkway to Catherine's car. Sara quickly falls in step next to me.

We walk to the car in silence. Sara opens up the back door and we both stare at the long semi-thin box in front of us. Neither of us moves to pick it up.

"Catherine talked me into this," Sara tells the box. "I thought it was a bad idea, still do. I think you need some time."

I nod not quite sure why I'm doing it. "So did you tell her what happened?"

Sara releases a long labored sigh. "No. But she can sense something's wrong. She's giving me space about it."

"Yeah well," I brush my hair back with a quick move of my right hand, "that's cool of her."

Sara's hands go deeply into the front pockets of her jeans. "Yeah."

My hands start moving to the front pockets of my own jeans but once I realize what they're doing I stop them and hook my thumbs on my belt loops instead. The movement didn't look smooth at all. "It smells like it might rain."

This is now officially a conversation that is going absolutely nowhere. I've brought up the weather and that's certainly a sign that this conversation has died.

"It's supposed to rain later in the night," Sara says as she looks up at the night sky that is mostly void of stars.

"Rain is good." Rain is good? That's certainly brilliance.

I give up and reach for the box but before I can get my hands firmly attached to it for lifting Sara asks me, "Do I remind you of her at all?" Her words come in a rush and it takes a moment for my brain to catch up with what my ears heard.

My hands fall away from the box and go straight into the front pockets of my jeans then quickly out again once I realize I am mimicking the way Sara is standing. "Can we not do this?" My words aren't as quick as hers were. They fall over each other in their laziness and lack of enunciation.

"Yeah. Sure. Of course." Her hands quickly leave her pockets and she reaches for the box.

This sucks. Roberson sucks. Therapy sucks. "She's inside us both Sara." I think that actually hurt me to say and by the looks of it, it hurt Sara to hear. It looks like she's holding onto that non-descript box for dear life. "She raised us both y'know?" Oh, hey look! I can't stop talking now.

Sara laughs but it's not a very pleasant laugh at all. It's hard and gritty and ugly. "Yeah. I know." Her voice has no humor in it.

I open my mouth to say something but come up short with anything to say and am saved from saying anything when Lindsey appears and tells us she was sent down by Catherine to see what was taking us so long. "I was hoping that you all would finish the entertainment center so that I don't have to work on it anymore," I tell her as I force a smile on my face and infuse some kind of humor in my voice.

Lindsey smiles back at me so it would seem that my fake smile was taken as genuine. "Well you don't have to worry about it anymore. Mom took the instructions from Nikki and has officially taken over."

"Good," Somehow I keep a smile on my face. "But since you're down here now, I guess that means you can help us with this box."

She looks like she wants to refuse by stomps over to us and looks at us obviously waiting for Sara or me to make the first move. Sara doesn't seem like she's going to move anytime soon so I once again reach in for a box that hasn't moved a centimeter despite all the attempts made to do so.

"Hey wait," I can feel Sara's breath on my neck and her hand on my back. "Lindsey, do you think you could give us a few more minutes?"

My eyes close and I can hear Lindsey walking away. This box is never going to move anywhere.

"One of my biggest fears is ending up like her, Melinda," Sara tells my back.

My eyes are still closed. "It's one of mine too," I admit softly, afraid that if I say the words too loud then they'll come true. Isn't there some big thing out there about 'saying something makes it real'?

Sara puts her hand on my shoulder and forces me to turn and face her. Automatically my eyes open. "You'll never be like her," she tells me vehemently but she misunderstood me.

"It's not so much my fear that I'll end up like her-I was obviously willing to kill myself before that happened-I fear that you'll end up like her. I'm afraid that I'll love and trust you and then all the sudden you'll turn into her. I think I might be more afraid of that than of you leaving me again. I think I could survive you leaving me, but not you being her. I couldn't survive loving you if you are like her."

She's shaking. Her whole body is shaking.

I don't know how long we stand looking at one another but it would seem that we managed to do it long enough for Catherine to come get us this time. She immediately recognizes that something is wrong.

"What have you two been talking about?" She asks us gently.

Neither of us answers.

She goes up to Sara and puts an arm around Sara's waist and my mother crumbles into Catherine's deceptively strong embrace.

"I'm so sorry, Mel," Sara may be in Catherine's arms but her attention is focused solely on me. "I'm so sorry."

I'm not quite sure why she's apologizing. I don't know the reason why she feels she needs to. We've already covered all the apologies. I guess, she's not completely over her own guilt yet or somethin'. I don't know.

I hardly know what I'm witnessing. I hardly know what I'm letting myself witness.

Maybe I'm witnessing that Sara is in pain too? Maybe I'm witnessing that she's a person who is afraid: for me, for her, for us?



Chapter 49

"So, how is she doing?" It feels weird to be asking that about someone else.

"I'm not quite sure what went on between you two but it did a number on her," Catherine says freely then I think realizes who she's talking to because her back stiffens and that parental mask that she has slips back in place. "Don't worry, she'll be fine."

I may be crazy, but I'm not quite crazy enough to believe her. "It's okay to let me know that everything isn't roses and sunshine." I snort. "I think I could tell by her reaction that everything isn't 'fine'."

"Well what is it you want to know?" She sounds upset with me. My words seem to have easily removed that mask she put on and I'm not liking what's in its place.

I take a small step away from her. "I'm just concerned for her, that's all."

Her eyes are still flashing cold fire at me but I hold my ground. I refuse to let her intimidate me, or rather I refuse to let her know that she intimidates me.

"I'm not positive you really are concerned for her, Melinda. Do you know how," she suddenly stops talking. She closes her eyes and takes a few deep breaths.

A lot of things may have been going on with me lately, but I can still identify anger and she's definitely angry. Angry at me.

Well I can be angry too. "I don't know a whole lot, Catherine," I intentionally sound out every syllable of her name knowing that it will annoy her by how much it annoys me to do it. "It's hard to know things when everyone around you seems to not want you to know anything."

When her eyes open the fire is still present and looks like it may have gotten a little worse. "That's because you can't handle it."

Truth.

It hurts.

"Let me handle a little bit of it," I sound pathetic. My righteous anger has mysteriously left me. "Please?" Begging doesn't suit me but, "Sara is my mom, Catherine. She's the best one I've been given and I don't want to lose that, not now. So please. Don't be angry at me right now. Talk to me."

Her anger disappears within a blink of my tears. "I don't want to be angry at you, Mel." her hand roughly combs her hair, "It's hard to see her hurt like this."

"Does it make any difference to you that I didn't mean to upset her this much?" My words rush out of my mouth before I know they are coming. "I didn't mean to upset her at all. It's Roberson's fault. She's got me thinkin' about stuff that I've been tryin' not to think about ever since I got here."

Catherine looks at me for a long moment, a moment that is long enough for me to run away from this, but I stay. I stay to hear what she has to say to me. I stay to hear whatever it is that will most likely hurt me.

"I know it's not your fault, Mel." Okay that's not what I was expecting to hear. "It's just that Sara is working as hard as you are to stay 'okay', y'know?"

Not really. I'm ready for confrontation and personal attacks. I'm ready to defend myself and plea with Catherine to let me stay just one more night. "I haven't really thought about it," my words come out really slowly. I almost sound like I'm a different kind of 'special'.

"No," Catherine looks away from me, "I don't suppose you would have."

That's close to what I was expecting to hear before but it doesn't quite make the mark. "Why not? Why would I have not thought about it?"

"She's always strong for you, Melinda. She doesn't give you a chance to see her any other way."

"Well you don't either." I think I wanted to sound defensive but instead my tone is non-hostile. I'm making a simple comment on how things have been going on around here.

"You can't handle it," Catherine says again. It doesn't hurt any less this time around and it's not any less true either.

"Fair enough," I reply through a ragged sigh. But what does me not being able to handle it mean, anyway? It's not like I don't know that there's some heavy stuff going on around here that I don't know about. I'm not deaf, mute, and dumb. I understand that there's conversations that go on behind closed doors that I'm not supposed to hear or participate in. "So why don't you tell me a little bit about Mom? Something I can handle?"

"Your mom is trying really hard to make sure you both survive," Catherine admits to me like she's telling some big secret and maybe she is. I don't know. I'm starting to feel like I should start thinking about things through Sara's perspective, but that seems really scary. I don't want to do that at all. It might not work out too well for me. For all I know, through her eyes, I'm a selfish little brat who has given her life hell since I've landed in it. I don't want to see me that way. I don't want to see me any way, really.

Deep down, I'm talkin' really deep, I know that Sara loves me. I think that if I concentrate on that deep down part, then I also realize that I can see how much she loves me every time she looks at me. She's not comfortable around me, but it's not because she doesn't love me. She's uncomfortable because she looks at me and sees…

Catherine's hand on my hip scares me and I jump away. The smirk she gives me is sort of like a, 'I told you so' kind of smirk. She knows I'm freaking out over the little piece of nothing she gave me thus proving to her and everyone that I can't handle all the confessions she can give me right now.

"You and Lindsey, y'know, you've both got it easy," I tell her and I'm not being mean about it either. "You don't have to figure out the parent, daughter relationship like Sara and I do."

She nods. She knows how lucky she is. She has to, because if someone like me can see it, it must be there. "Why don't you go downstairs and entertain Lindsey for a while."

I'm about to ask her what she's going to be doing, but the answer comes to me before I can say anything. I know where Catherine is going to be. She's going to hold my mother as she sleeps. She's going to love her.

And now, I'm jealous and it's not their relationship I'm jealous of, not really. It's something else, something I don't want to admit quite now.

"I'll be downstairs with Lindsey," I point downwards. "If you need anything let me know."

I don't bother to stick around to watch Catherine open the door to her and my mom's bedroom and slip back inside to their little world. I walk to the stairs and then down them. I approach Lindsey and sit down next to her. She's watching something on a television that I don't recognize on a station I've never heard of and somehow Nikki has failed to stay at her apartment, again.

"What good is it to have your own place if you're never there?" I take a seat between the two and stretch my feet out onto the coffee table in front of us.

"If you saw how all those boxes threw up on my living room floor, you wouldn't want to be there either," Nikki puts her arm around me and draws me closer to her body. I'm sure she wants to know what's going on but she's not going to ask anything in front of Lindsey.

"Is everything okay upstairs?" Lindsey asks reminding us just one more time that she's not quite as young as we try to make her be.

"It's getting that way," I answer honestly. If she can ask the question then she at least deserves an answer from me that isn't a lie. I'm pretty sure she can handle it. "Your mom is just taking care of Sara. She was really upset."

"With you?" Yeah she definitely isn't as young as we might want her to be, which means offering a cookie won't shut her up.

"No, not really. I don't think. It's not like that, really. It like…"

"Sometimes she remembers stuff like Melinda does," Nikki jumps in for the benefit of us all, "and she gets upset about it. It's not because she's mad at Mel, it just happens like that sometimes."

"Oh," Lindsey nods and easily accepts Nikki's very uncomplicated explanation that she seemed to come up with a lot more ease compared to the word throw-up my brain came up with.

"I'm going to get something to drink," I jump off the couch. I feel the need to keep moving, because I'm sure if I sat down long enough I'd start thinking and I think history shows that me and thinking don't fit together so well. "Anyone else want anything to drink?"

"Get me a Pepsi, please," Lindsey doesn't even bother to look at me. She's too focused on whatever is happening on the television screen.

"How many have you had today?" I ask her knowing that Catherine limits Lindsey's intake of caffeine and soda. Now only if I could remember what the limit was…

Lindsey turns her attention away from the screen, I guess because my question is more important than a commercial and we proceed to have a staring contest. I think she might be trying to intimidate me into not caring about her caffeine or soda intake for the day. It's unfortunate for her that her mother intimidates me more. The last thing I want is for Catherine to come into the room and find Lindsey drinking her twentieth Pepsi of the day and Lindsey confessing to her that I told her that it was okay she have another one. I'm not getting into that mess again. "Fine," she rolls her eyes and looks back at the screen. I've won. "Get me some juice."

I would ask her to say please, but I don't want to push her too far. I'm not into getting in a fight with her tonight.

"You're lucky that she's not making you get us drinks with that attitude," Nikki throws over her shoulder as she steps into the kitchen.

"Yeah," I try to sound authoritative as I smile and run to catch up with Nikki. From now on, maybe she should take care of talking to Lindsey.

"She's getting more and more like you every day," Nikki whispers as I enter the kitchen.

"Yeah," I respond thoughtfully then Nikki's words catch up with me. "Hey!" I slap playfully at her shoulder but she jumps out of the way before my hand makes contact.

"You agreed with me first," she says through laughter, "so that must mean you think I'm right and you have no room to be offended."

It's been a long time since anyone has been able to make me laugh or that I've allowed anyone to make me laugh. Right now I'm laughing. Despite everything that has happened tonight, I'm laughing and my laughter immediately makes Nikki's stop. She stands up straight and looks at me, laughing. "You're beautiful when you laugh, Mel. It's good to see you do it again."

My laughing stops. "It's been a long time since beautiful could be an adjective used to describe me." I guess that's because beauty is only skin deep. The messed up part overshadowed all the beauty that might have been there.

Nikki's hands go directly to my hips and her arms are pulling me closer to her. "You've always been beautiful, Mel, but honestly I rather have you healthy than beautiful any day."

I start laughing again. "I think a compliment was in there somewhere."

"Yeah," Nikki smiles. "It's right here," then she's leaning in and kissing me. It's not a passionate let's go get down and busy type of kiss either. It's just a soft touch of her lips against mine. It's a new sensation for me, not because we haven't kissed before, but because it's not about unresolved passion. It's just me and her standing in my guardians' kitchen kissing because we can now. We're at 'that' place now.

Nikki pulls away from me and she's still smiling. I think I'm smiling too, but my smile quickly disappears when I hear someone (Catherine) clearing her throat from behind us. I manage to jump away from Nikki and right into the kitchen island causing my hip bone to make intimate contact with the edge of it. "Fucking ow!" I scream loud enough to make sure the entire neighborhood heard me or I at least scream loud enough for Sara to come rushing down the stairs and for Lindsey to run into the kitchen.

Seeing everyone surround me in their panicked state makes me laugh again, but much much harder this time. "I hit my hip on the island," I say for Sara's and Lindsey's benefit. "It hurt."

"Are you okay?" Catherine's concerned face drops and she starts laughing too.

I'm sure they don't know why, but Sara and Lindsey start in on the laughing too and I know that this moment really isn't funny at all. I know that there's nothing comical about me jumping into a kitchen counter having been caught kissing Nikki. There's nothing funny about this moment at all, but we need to laugh.

This house hasn't seen laughter in a while, not like this. This is special and I'll happily accept this moment in exchange for the massive bruise that is forming on my hip. I'll accept it in exchange for almost anything.



Chapter 50

It's raining, which isn't so surprising since spring has somehow managed to arrive. This is my first spring in Vegas and I guess I didn't expect it to rain at all. It's not raining really all that badly or anything, but it's still rain and still surprises me since I thought I was in the middle of a desert.

The rain just started and it doesn't look like it's going to last long at all. It's been on and off all day, and Catherine and Sara have been out in it. I haven't seen them since Catherine came and dragged Sara off to the labs. Apparently some type of emergency popped up that made them forget about my craziness for a while. They left me in charge of Lindsey and told me they would call me when they got a chance.

So Sara's back at work, for the first time, and I've been left alone with Lindsey and am in charge. It would seem that whatever is going on is important enough for me to forego a slow transition back into normal roles. I can't even call Nikki and ask her to come over, cause she did finally get that new job of hers. She's working for the city as a dispatcher for the the city of Las Vegas. Catherine told her about the job and I guess with Nikki's skills and a small amount of favoritism working in her favor, she was hired in no time.

They all work for the city now. I wonder if that can be some kind of predictor of my future chances for working a city job. It's not something I ever had in my plans. Of course, I never really had plans of what I would do past college.

It looks like I might just survive all that's been going on with me now, so I guess it's time I start thinking about what I'm going to do when I can walk out the front door of this house and start up my life again. That just might mean thinking about college and what's going to happen after I'm done with it.

My goals just aren't what they used to be.

"I'm bored," Lindsey announces as she pushes herself into my room and invites herself to lay down on my bed. "Mom said I couldn't have my friends over now since neither she or Sara are here."

"Neither nor," I tell her giving her plenty of room on the bed to stretch out. "It's neither she nor Sara."

Lindsey rolls her eyes. "Whatever."

"If you're bored why don't you try reading a book." I know why she's really in here. She wants me to let her friends come over anyway. She obviously doesn't think it's a bad idea at all for me to be in charge of myself and other people.

"I'm tired of reading," she whines.

"Then watch television."

"Television sucks."

"Then meditate." That activity seems to keep me busy most of the time.

"Can I please invite at least two of my friends over?" She's finally reached her point.

"No," and I'm finally rejecting it.

"Why not?"

"I can't be in charge of more than you and me right now."

About a hundred sounds of exasperation come from Lindsey and she no longer is on my bed. She's standing over me looking very irritated. "You suck. Everything is about what you can do. I hate living here." She runs out of my room and slams my door shut.

I'm going to give her a few minutes to calm down before I go after her. I don't feel like arguing with her right now and I don't even know how I would argue with her. A lot of things are based on what I can or cannot handle. It's not fair to her but I can't fix that. I'm trying to fix it, but I can't snap my fingers and make it happen.

That doesn't mean she shouldn't be able to sit down and yell at me about it though, I guess. She's got to be able to release some of her frustrations. I've done it to Sara enough, pretty much ever since I arrived in Las Vegas. It's gotten cut down a lot recently, but I'm still angry about a lot of things.

I roll off the bed and open my door. It's time Lindsey gets her yelling out. I make it to her closed door and open it without knocking but before I step inside I make a mental note to apologize, yet again, to Sara when I see her next. We still haven't gotten a chance to hash out that whole 'you look a lot like Laura' thing.

My eyes roam over Lindsey's room and it becomes very obvious, by the open window and all, that she decided to skip out on me. She must be a lot angrier than I thought. So I guess that means that I need to call Catherine and tell her that I lost her daughter.

But I really don't want to do that. She seemed upset enough when she came to get Sara earlier. Something big is already going on in her world and I certainly don't want to add to that. Lindsey shouldn't have been able to get too far. I didn't leave her alone for long.

I run and put on my running shoes, place my cell phone in my pocket then get the keys to the house and take off in the direction I hope Lindsey ran off too. I focus really hard on not thinking about being alone and running about the neighborhood at this time of night. This is the type of situation that would be prime for sparking some kind of hallucination of mine.

It's really important I don't think about any of that though. So instead, I focus on how out of shape I am. I haven't been running that long but I'm already tired. I should really think about starting back up my athletic life.

When I finally spot Lindsey she's getting into someone's car who I can only hope she knows. I scream out her name but she either doesn't hear me or is ignoring me. I'm not fast enough to catch up with them before they pull away from the curb and into the flow of traffic. I run after the car as long as I can before I realize that I'm never going to be able to catch up to them. At least I was lucky enough to get close enough to it to recognize who was in the driver's seat.

I run to the nearest convenience store and beg the clerk for a phone book. I flip through it until I reach the name I'm looking for. Within moments I'm dialing the number and waiting for Jeremy's parents to pick up their home phone. I can only hope that his parents know where he's going tonight. I'm really needing to talk to actively involved parents right now and not the kind they do television specials on.

His mother picks up and tells me he was going to an end of the year party at a friend's house and was even helpful enough to give me the address. I thank her without explaining to her that her son picked up a minor that is more minor than he is and dragged her off to a high school party. I try to hand back the phone book to the clerk but he's focused on the small television he has behind the counter. I take a look at it and see some dude who looks surprising like that Mr. Brown guy that Catherine works with pushing his way through the reporters. He doesn't look happy and I'm going to bet that whatever has got the local news swelling with interest around him probably has something to do with why Catherine dragged Sara off to work.

I put the phonebook on the counter and thank the clerk, who probably doesn't hear me, then walk out of the store. The party isn't that far from here and all I've got to get me there is my feet so I start running again. If I don't get Lindsey back before everything at Catherine's work settles then I'm going to get in a lot of trouble and so is Lindsey, which will of course make the kid blame me for everything that goes wrong in her life for the next hundred years or so and Catherine… well I'm not quite sure what she would do and I don't really want to find out either.

So right now all I need to do is concentrate on my running and not passing out. I'm doing such a great job on concentrating on this that I'm almost knocked over with the force of my ringing phone. I come to a complete stop and slowly take my phone out of my pocket. The caller ID tells me it's Sara calling. If I don't answer then she'll probably send a SWAT team to the house, because chances are she already tried to call the house; so I pick up the phone and do my best to control my breathing.

"Hello?" I say through a held breath then cover the mouthpiece so that I can start gasping for air again.

"Melinda, where are you?" Sara certainly doesn't sound calm. As a matter of fact she sounds like she's a little stressed.

I'm going to give Lindsey some serious hard times for making me lie to Sara, especially now, especially when Sara is starting to be my mother for real. But I uncover the mouthpiece to open my mouth up and lie anyway. "I'm upstairs sitting outside of Lindsey's room. She had a fit because her friends couldn't come over tonight." I cover the mouthpiece again.

"I tried calling the house."

Once again I remove my hand. "I think Lindsey is probably on the phone telling her friends how bad she has it." And there's another lie.

"I'm sorry she's doing this to you," and now Sara is apologizing, that's great, "she's just acting out because…"

"Because she's rightfully angry at me, at what I've done to her life." This time I don't cover the phone up when I'm done. My breathing has already evened.

"Are you okay with staying with her?" Sara asks after a moment.

I look around me and I see the house I've been running to within my sights. Hopefully that's where Lindsey is. "I'm cool with it."

"Are you sure?"

I'm sure I don't want to get caught. I'm sure I don't want Lindsey to get caught for running away either. They might get the idea to send Lindsey to some kind of boarding school or somethin'. "I'm not going to pull you away from work. Catherine thought it was important enough to drag you to work so it must be really important. Do your thing and I'll take care of this," or rather I'll do my best at trying to take care of it. "If anything gets totally out of hand then I'll call."

There's a long silence again but eventually Sara thanks me and tells me she'll call me again when she can. Something big is going on down there. It's obviously important enough to keep Sara workin' even though she knows there's a 'slight' problem happening at home.

My phone goes back into my pocket and I run the rest of the way to the house. The door is open and loud music is playing from within. There's a bunch of teenagers dancing around and fucking around and I can't bring myself to step inside. I haven't been to a party like this in a really long time. I was certainly a different person when I walked in a situation like this last time.

I can't do this. I'm going to have to call Sara and let her know what's going on. She can walk in here and drag Lindsey out of the mess she's getting herself into.

"Mel?" Shit. I've been recognized. "I never thought you'd bother to come to my party." I'm trying really hard to recognize the voice and face of the guy standing in front of me, but I don't.

I force a smile on my face. "I have to come out of hiding sometime," I step over the threshold of the door. "Plus, my step-sister Lindsey Willows ran off and I think she came here."

His face is a mixture of drunken confusion and surprise. "Everyone was saying that you were locked away or something."

This obviously isn't going to work. "Rumors are only that, man, no truth to it." I push myself away from him and start searching the house room by room. I push past people who think they know me and people who have probably only heard the legends of my demise.

It would figure that the last room I check is the one Lindsey is in. She, along with two or four other couples, is making out with somebody I hardly recognize. I pull her away from the guy and she squeals out her disapproval. I ignore her and instead focus in on the guy that no longer has a make-out partner. It's not Jeremy.

"Who the fuck are you?" I grab him by his shirt and push him against the wall. Lindsey grabs at my arm but I push her away.

The guy's mouth starts moving but he doesn't say anything. He looks scared. "How old are you?" I shout at him. "You better fucking be younger than me."

"Fourteen," he stumbles out and gains some of his wits because he's pushing against my grip on him. "Let me go."

My hand moves to his neck. He stops struggling. "Let him go, Mel!" Lindsey's hands are pulling at the arm I have steadying my weight against this guy's neck.

I want to kill him. With the smoke, alcohol, and hormones in the air reminding me and putting me back in that place I've been trying so hard to escape from, I want to kill him. I don't care how old he is or if he has anything to do with Lindsey running off. I don't care how guilty or how innocent he is of anything.

I close my eyes tightly to push away the memories and drop my grip from him. He doesn't bother to stay around and take care of Lindsey; he runs off without looking back to see if I'm going to chase him.

"Look what you've done, Mel!" Lindsey steps in front of me and is yelling directly at me. My eyes are still closed. "He's never going to talk to me again."

This is what she's worried about? My eyes open. The same hand that was wrapped around that kid's neck is now wrapped around her right bicep. "Hey!" She tries to pull out of my grip but she's not nearly strong enough to do so. I drag her down the stairs of the house and out the front door. When we reach the front lawn I release her and all her resistance throws her onto the grass.

"We need to go back home now." I tell her as calmly as I possibly can. I feel the hallucinations, memories, tortures trying to force themselves into the forefront of my mind.

Lindsey picks herself up off the ground. "I don't want to leave."

"Do you think I'm making this an option?" I barely open my mouth to talk. My head is starting to hurt.

She must see something or hear something in my voice because she steps away from me. "Okay."

I start walking in the direction I came from and am pleased when Lindsey automatically starts following me. We're silent for most of the walk until Lindsey feels the need to apologize to me. Her guilt is catching up with her.

"Consider us even now," My words are still calm. It's not the good kind of calm either. I'm concentrating only on my steps. We've walked 2,457 steps.

"Did you call Mom?" Lindsey is looking down at her feet but I don't think she's counting her steps as closely as I'm counting mine.

"This never happened," 2,473 steps. "It's between us. We're even."

"I know what I did was stupid."

"We do stupid things sometimes," 2,522 steps. I'm in no condition to try and counsel her about anything that happened tonight. This little nightly venture probably has set me back in recovery a few hundred paces.

When we reach the house Nikki's car is in the driveway and she's running out of the house as soon as we appear near it. She's asking us if we're okay and what's been going on. I tell Lindsey to go to her room and she doesn't give me any grief about it.

"Sara asked me to check on you." Nikki tells me as she guides me back into the house.

"Did you call her and tell her we weren't here?" It would suck for her to know that I lied to her.

"No, I wanted to give you some time first. So are you going to tell me what happened?"

I shrug. "Lindsey got angry and ran away to some party. I tracked her down and brought her back here." I get a glance at the clock on the wall and see that the night has turned into morning.

"You went after her alone?" Nikki guides me to the couch. I fall into it just now realizing how sore my legs are from all the walking and running. My foot is even a little sore.

"Not the smartest thing I could have done, I realize."

Nikki nods. "Any problems?"

I shake my head. "Close though. I could feel stuff in my head wanting to take me over."

"Okay," Nikki puts her arm across my shoulders and pulls me to her. "You can tell me the details later."

Speaking of details, "What's up with Catherine and Sara?"

Nikki's free hand rubs her forehead. "One of their guys, Nick Stokes, was kidnapped and buried alive. They got him out not that long ago."

Wow. "That's fucked up."

"Yeah, it is." We sit in silence over this for a while. "I'm sure Sara and Catherine will be back soon, though."

Oh good, I can't wait. We can see if I'm able to maintain a lie or even if I should.



Continued…