"You don't know me!" Tai snapped back at her.

I felt the tension rise between Tai and Mena.

Daniel said, "This is not about you! This is about what happened to our friend last night. Rocky is lying in a hospital with his head in a box, and he is fighting for his life! Did you think about that?"

The girls looked away from each other with shame. At least Tai looked like she was ashamed. Mena just kept a straight face and remained quiet. She picked up her breakfast tray and walked away from the table.

When she was gone, Tai seemed to be relieved.

She said, "That girl is seriously asking for a beat down."

As we sat at the table, I wondered what Mena had meant. I should have just ignored her like everyone else did, but the thought only lingered.

Our first group meeting with Dr. Bent took place after breakfast. We all sat around a long table, and Dr. Bent wanted to discuss our thoughts and feelings about what had happened to Rocky. At first, there weren't any volunteers who wanted to share. Dr. Bent seemed to like it when she had volunteers to speak. Daniel, who was more open than the rest of us, was in his own world this morning. He sat in his chair, silently staring down at his shoes. He wasn't even picking at his shoelaces. It was the most silent I had ever seen him.

When I closed my eyes, I still saw Rocky lying on the stretcher with his head barely attached to his body. His face was stone-blue, and he looked dead. I shuddered as I flashed back to that scene. Daniel must have been seeing the whole thing repeatedly in his mind.

"I keep hearing the door slam when he did it, and it woke me up. He was on the floor," Daniel sobbed to Dr. Bent. "If I hadn't fallen asleep while he was talking to me, maybe I could have stopped him."

"It's not your fault, Daniel," Dr. Bent said. "You know it's not your fault. Don't do that to yourself."

Daniel shook his head and said, "I know it's not my fault. I just wish I had been awake. He had been saying stuff, and I didn't know what he was talking about. I thought he was just trying to bother me like he always did at night. He never liked to sleep. He'd just lie there and make weird noises or talk to himself. I swear, I didn't know."

"Oh, G.o.d! I need a cigarette," Tai said as she slapped herself in the forehead miserably.

Daniel raised his head to that.

"Rocky was thirteen, and he smoked, too," he said. "He was thirteen and he wanted to die. I know what that's like. I was the same way. Why didn't I catch that? Why didn't I see it coming?"

Daniel's voice faded out, and his sobs turned to heavy cries. He cried so hard that he made tears come out of my eyes. Janine shook her head and started to get up and go to him, but Dr. Bent reached him first. While she stood next to him, she picked up the telephone and called someone to come get Daniel, because she didn't think that he needed to be in Group. Within a minute, Dr. Finch came into the room without knocking. He told Daniel to come with him. Daniel seemed relieved to be leaving with his doctor. Rocky's suicide attempt may have been too much for him to talk about in Group Therapy.

When Daniel and Dr. Finch were gone, Dr. Bent moved in on Mena, who was sitting cross-legged on the end of the long table. She was leaning back and had her arms folded across her chest. She was staring up at the ceiling, letting the bright hospital lights burn into her eyes. She didn't blink once. Dr. Bent called out to her. Mena moved her head slowly and fixed her eyes on Dr. Bent, who was at the opposite end of the table.

"How old are you, Mena?" Dr. Bent asked.

"I'm seventeen," she said.

Dr. Bent boldly asked, "Would you care to share with us what brought you here?"

Mena shook her head while keeping her eyes on Dr. Bent, as if she didn't trust her.

Dr. Bent leaned forward. She said in a calm voice, "No one here will judge you, Mena."

"Everything I say can stay in this room, and no one will judge me or hold it against me because we are all in this together...blah...blah...blah...blah. I know all of this," Mena said to Dr. Bent.

Dr. Bent was sitting back in her seat with her arms folded across her chest, silently staring at Mena.

Mena looked away from Dr. Bent. She said, "I have 'anger problems', or so they say."

"So who say?" asked Dr. Bent.

Mena sighed. "The judge who put me here for four weeks," she said. "I guess four weeks is the longest I can be here at this place."

Dr. Bent nodded. "Yes, four weeks is the longest any patient can be here. This is a short-term hospital. If you don't show any progress as it gets closer to four weeks' time, then arrangements are made with a long-term facility."

"Well, I don't plan on being here that long," Mena made clear. "I'm just here because that judge thinks I have these 'anger problems,' and I don't. So..."

"Well, what happened to make the judge say that you had anger problems?" Dr. Bent kept pressing the subject.

Mena was getting frustrated. "Don't you have suicidal people to talk to? Didn't you just have a kid kill himself last night, right here in this hospital?"

"Dr. Pelchat's your doctor, right?"

Mena nodded.

"Dr. Pelchat is a wonderful doctor. I'm sure you will get the treatment you need so that you don't have to go to a long-term hospital."

Mena didn't respond. She looked back up at the ceiling and stared into the bright light. Dr. Bent left Mena alone and started talking to Tai, who said that it wasn't fair that, after a situation like what had happened the night before, they all couldn't have a cigarette. Dr. Bent laughed, and other people joined in, I guess because they wanted cigarettes too.

After Dr. Bent's Group Therapy meeting, and on the way back to the Adolescent Unit, Mena kept staring at me. She looked down at me, and I thought she was trying to intimidate me. I didn't like her. I didn't like to be stared at, and she could tell that it was making me upset, but she kept on staring.

"Are you worried about your boyfriend?" she asked me suddenly.

I looked at her, shocked. I must have had a stupid expression on my face, because she smirked. I didn't respond to her. I tried to ignore her to make her feel like she was talking to herself.

"You know who I'm talking about," she carried on. "The little baby that was crying back there. You know, the one who let his roommate break his neck."

I turned to her. I almost opened my mouth. Something told me to hold it in and not say anything back to her. Instead of giving in, I walked past her to the counselor's desk. I stayed there to avoid her. Where there was authority, I noticed she'd try to stay as far away as possible. Mena went to the Girls' Unit. I sighed in relief.

Suddenly a feeling inside of me that I had not felt in a long time took over me. Mr. Anton was behind the counter, and I asked him for a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. He asked me if I was going to write a letter, and I told him that I didn't know what I was going to write. I just felt like writing.

He handed over the paper and pencil and, while he handed it to me, he said, "Most writers make masterpieces while they are in a place like Bent Creek."

I nodded my head. "Maybe," I responded.

I quickly sat down at the table and started writing. I didn't stop until my fingers cramped up and my mind stopped spilling. When I was done, I scanned the paper, and realized that none of it seemed to make sense. They were just words on paper that had responded to a strong feeling inside of me. It didn't matter if it made sense, because I'd just had to write it out.

I folded the sheet of paper, stuck it in my back pocket, and returned the pencil to Mr. Anton. I went to the bedroom, and Janine was not in there. My silver b.u.t.terfly sat peacefully on the table next to my bed. My heart was pounding as I stared at the sharp, shiny wings. I picked the b.u.t.terfly up off the table. Mr. Sharp always made it okay. I didn't need to understand anything else. I didn't need to write again. I didn't need to find a cure, or an answer, and I didn't feel like I needed to cry. That's why Mr. Sharp was there.

I lifted my pant leg and pressed the cold, silver wing to my leg, and it made me shudder. The pain reminded me of the last time I had pressed something sharp to my skin. I wasn't used to the pain again. I couldn't do it. I took the b.u.t.terfly in my fist and I squeezed it in anger.

No! No! Don't you dare cry, Kristen! No! I threw the b.u.t.terfly down onto the table and cried. Why did I let Mena get to me? Why did I do it?

Mr. Sharp was sitting on the table, holding my b.u.t.terfly in his hand. He shoved it towards me, but I just lay there, staring at him. He shook his head in disappointment. I closed my eyes and let him disappear from my mind as I tried not to think of my upcoming meeting with Dr. Pelchat.

CHAPTER 32.

Dr. Pelchat did not come right out and ask me to talk about what had brought me to Bent Creek. When we were in his office, he sat behind his desk, as usual, with my chart open. He scanned through the chart and kept the same calm, but stern, look on his face. He looked up at me and sighed deeply.

"What?" I asked nervously.

He shrugged his shoulders and said, "I don't know, Kristen."

He seemed very strange to me. I shook my head. "I don't know, either," I said with a sigh.

Dr. Pelchat said, "I think that I'm starting to have an idea about you from your behavioral pattern. The notes that were left for me are very vague, kind of like Dr. Cuvo himself, but I can learn something from what was written. Is it true that, while you were in the hospital, right after meeting with Dr. Cuvo for the first time, you started banging your wrists on the side of your bed?"

I turned red in embarra.s.sment. I felt my cheeks get hot.

"Does it say that?" I asked him.

"Yes, it does," he said. "You expressed this rage, and had to be sedated to control your behavior. This has happened twice since your hospitalization."

"Yes, that one time after I met Dr. Cuvo at the main hospital, and then when I was put in the BCR," I admitted.

I felt like some kind of criminal who had to tell the truth in front of a judge in court. If you lied, you could be sent to jail for life. Dr. Pelchat had that way about him that made you feel like you had to tell the truth.

"It also says here that you expressed some worry when you first arrived here at Bent Creek. You were worried that it would be like a prison, and that you would be sort of an outcast from your peers and that they would ridicule you. Then your att.i.tude seemed to change very quickly. You began to show a nurturing att.i.tude towards your peers as you grew comfortable. Even so, I'm concerned about your mood swings. We had to put you in the BCR because of your outburst. In addition, when you were in the hospital, you first appeared calm to Dr. Cuvo, but when he left, your emotions and your mood changed very quickly. You became violent."

"I'm not going to hurt anyone, if you are thinking that. I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't know what came over me that day when they put me in the BCR and had to stick me with the needle. I was just...I mean, I was..."

"You were angry," he said.

"Yes," I replied.

"What about when you first met Dr. Cuvo?"

I didn't know what to say except the truth. "When I was angry in the hospital, it wasn't at Dr. Cuvo."

"You were not angry with him at all?"

"I was mean to him, and I was mad because I didn't want to deal with a doctor. I didn't want to be there."

"Where did you want to be?"

"I don't know. Not in the hospital," I said.

Then, there was silence. All I could do was stare down at my bandaged wrists and not say a word. I had no idea what he was getting at, but he was scaring me. I tried to hold back the tears.

He said, "I just need to ask you a few questions that will help me administer the right test for you."

"All right," I agreed.

"Do you ever get the feeling that the people you love or trust will leave you or abandon you?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Do you ever feel like, when you do something that you know may not be so pleasing to, say, your mother, that she'll leave you or abandon you somehow?"

I thought about her signing me away to Bent Creek. And I thought about the times when we'd have our talks. She always made me feel like I had to go along with what she wanted, and that what she said was the only way, even if it didn't feel right. If I didn't go along with her, I knew she'd be angry enough to get rid of me if she had a chance. That's what she'd done when she'd made me go to Bent Creek. I nodded positively to Dr. Pelchat.

He scribbled in my chart and then asked, "Do you ever feel like something always has to be happening in your life, and if it's not, you get a feeling of emptiness?"

I could tell that he was reading the questions from a sheet, but he was trying to put the questions into his own words so that I could understand. That question made me think.

"When it was quiet and I was alone, I would get scared," I told him. "It felt like the world was ending sometimes, and it just scared me, like there was no one that existed but me."

Dr. Pelchat looked into my eyes. That made me nervous, and I looked away.

He said, "You're a cutter, right?"

I nodded.

"Who am I here with?"

Shocked, I turned back towards him. My heart jumped inside of my chest. I could feel something else pulling inside of me.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Do you ever feel like you're not yourself? Like, when you get these wild ideas in your head, does it feel like someone else is putting those thoughts in there? Maybe an influence, like a voice, or maybe you see other people whom others cannot see?"

Mr. Sharp suddenly appeared. He was just itching to come out. Up to now, I had been able to keep him locked inside, but Dr. Pelchat was pushing his b.u.t.tons. I didn't want to end up in the BCR again. I tried to hold back.

I answered, "I don't know what you mean by wild ideas. I do think that things can happen, and will happen, if I make certain choices. Maybe feeling like the world is ending when I feel empty is a little wild, but-"

"How about this," he asked. "How about I put it in a different way? Answer this as honestly as you can. If your mom comes over to you, and she starts hugging you and smiling, and giving you gifts because she says that you are doing an amazing job in school by making good grades, attending all of your cla.s.ses, and doing all those things, how do you take that behavior?"

I said, "I'd think that she was proud of me and that she was happy."

"Okay," he said. "Now how about if, the next day, after she was hugging you and smiling, and giving you all of those gifts, she just storms over to you and starts yelling at you, and she tells you that she needs you to help out more around the house, like cleaning your room, helping with ch.o.r.es, and trying to put more effort into the upkeep of your home than you do at school? How would you take that behavior?"

"Honestly, I'd probably cut," I admitted.

"Why do you feel that you have to punish yourself?"

"It's like it's too much. I don't understand how she can be happy with me one day and then just be mad at me the next because I didn't clean the kitchen. I'd think that she didn't care about the good job I did in school. All she would care about is how I didn't clean the kitchen or do a good job in the house. It wouldn't even matter anymore that I did well in school. She'd just want to be mad at me and punish me."

Dr. Pelchat didn't say a word. The look on his face was genuinely sincere with concern. He scribbled in my chart. As he did, I began to wonder if I had done the right thing by answering honestly.

Dr. Pelchat looked up when he was finished writing, and he said, "You will be taking the test this week. I'm writing an order to have this done no later than Wednesday, and I'm writing an order for you to see a physician about your st.i.tches."

My heart began to race. "Why did you ask me all of those questions?"