When they were gone, I ran into the house. Nick and Alison had left my bags beside the door. I shut the front door and looked into the living room. Alison and Nick were grinning at each other, and then they looked back at me. "What? What's going on?" I said. I knew they were up to something.

Mom came out of the kitchen and into the living room. The sight of her made me feel warm. She was smiling, and I could tell that she was glad to have me home.

Alison turned to Mom and said, "Can we show her now?"

"Yeah! I'm sure Kristen would like to see it," Mom said. "Let's show her."

"Show me what?" I asked.

"Come on!" Alison squealed with happiness.

Alison grabbed my hand and led me downstairs to the bas.e.m.e.nt hallway. Mom and Nick followed with my bags. My bedroom was down there. I could only imagine what she couldn't wait to show me. I opened the door to my bedroom and turned on the light. Nothing in my worst nightmares could have prepared me for what I saw. It wasn't blue, it wasn't orange, and it wasn't even white, like the walls of the hospital. It was pink! My whole room had been painted pink. From the ceiling to the new paint on my old wooden bed frame and dressers. Everything was pink. I held onto Janine's blanket and hugged it, almost scared.

"She likes it!" Alison inaccurately observed.

Nick shook his head when I looked at him. He knew what I was thinking. I looked at Mom, and she was smiling in a way that I wanted to deny.

I made myself walk deeper into that strange room. I looked around. My books were in place. There were new sheets and a new quilt on the bed. My notebooks were as I had left them. Those looked like the only things that were in the right place. Mom turned to Alison and Nick.

She said, "Go upstairs and set the table for dinner. Kristen and I will be up in a minute."

Alison gave me another hug and Nick kissed my cheek. They ran upstairs in a race to try to beat each other to the kitchen. When we were alone, Mom walked over to my dresser. She put her hand on a silver-toned jewelry box. That jewelry box had not been there before I had gone into Bent Creek. It was bejeweled and dazzling to the eye. It looked too elegant to be mine.

"Do you like it?" she asked me.

"Who does that belong to?" I asked.

Mom laughed. "It belongs to you, silly girl."

"Really? But it's so pretty."

"That's why she brought it here for you," Mom said.

"Who brought it?"

"Lexus brought it for you when she came over to help us paint your room. Alison picked out the color. I couldn't very well have you come home with your room the way you had it. The walls were covered in black and your sheets were well, you know. Lexus had the idea to come over and help me get things ready for your return. Since you are better now, we thought you'd start fresh."

I carried my bags over to the closet. I opened the door. I looked up, shocked, when I saw that the shelves and walls were completely empty.

"Where are my ninja swords and the daggers? Where are my knives?"

"Don't you like your jewelry box? Look inside," she said. "You have earrings, necklaces, rings, and other cute stuff. You don't need to collect those knives anymore. Why don't you collect jewelry?"

My head began to ache. "You got rid of them?"

"Don't be angry, Kristen. You'll get them back when I see that you are ready to have them. Now, I don't think it's a good idea for you to have those things in here. Look at this!" She pulled out a gold necklace with a little fairy pendant dangling from the center. The fairy's wings didn't look as sharp as my b.u.t.terfly pendant. I was sure that was her and Lexus' intentions. Mom came towards me with that necklace. She held it over my head and placed it around my neck. Then she stood in front of me to admire the necklace.

"All right," she a.s.sured herself. "I'll let you unpack and get yourself prepared for dinner. Did you thank Jonathan for bringing you home?"

"Of course," I said. I wanted her to leave me alone already.

"Good," she said. "We're going to Lexus and John's engagement party next week." She was smiling her forced and ridiculous smile.

I didn't smile back. I didn't want to be fake anymore. I was too tired, and I was too freaked out by that strange and uncomfortable room. It didn't feel like mine anymore.

As Mom walked out of the room, I began to shut the door. Mom stopped it from closing with her foot. She said, "No. I want this door to stay open from now on."

"I can't shut my bedroom door?"

"No," she said. "I want you to keep it open. Things are going to start changing around here. If I have to make changes in order to keep you from slashing your wrists and being completely depressed, then you are going to work with me and make some changes too."

It started to feel like home again. I knew it wouldn't take too long.

As Mom walked towards the stairwell, I started to close my bedroom door. She turned around and looked at me. I hesitated. She saw me hesitate. She turned away, and as soon as I heard the first stair creak underneath her foot, I slammed shut my bedroom door. I made sure to do it hard and loud enough so that she could hear it. I locked the door and waited. I pressed my ear to the door and, for a second, I heard the stair creak again. I smiled. She was coming back toward the door. But then I heard her storm up the stairs.

I looked around my room. I could smell the nauseating fresh paint. It had Lexus' personality written all over it. I made my way over to the dresser that had no mirror in it. I thought back to the day I'd smashed that stupid mirror with my hands. Mom had never replaced it, convinced I'd only do it again. Maybe I would have destroyed it again if there were a mirror in the frame.

The only thing I saw was that precious jewelry box. The anger inside of me swelled to an unbearable crescendo. Not being able to hold it in any longer, I swiped my hand across the surface the jewelry box sat on. Calmly, I watched it violently crash to the floor. The box disa.s.sembled upon landing, and the beautiful jewels that decorated the box smashed and broke apart.

Relief washed over me as the jewelry spilled out of the box. Little pendants and gorgeous crystals and jewels rolled underneath the bed and scattered in other places throughout the room. Pieces of jewels cracked, snapped, popped, and were destroyed. All of the chaos and the new disarrangement defined exactly how I felt inside.

CHAPTER 54.

Before going into Bent Creek, I didn't have to worry about Mom being angry with me for keeping my door shut. It was always closed. No one bothered me. I could just sit for hours inside the dark, black walls of my room. Mr. Sharp and I would talk for hours after doing homework, after work, and after Lexus left to go on her dates with John. I closed my door, but I always opened it back up.

It wasn't until the day when I'd found that letter from Jack asking for Mom's forgiveness, that I'd felt I did not ever want to have to open my bedroom door again. Was it hopelessness? Was it fear? Did I fear her forgiving him? Did I think that she really would go to his parole hearing and put Nicholas through that again? Would she really put all of us through that again?

She banged on my door in the morning. The banging was angry and loud. I woke up, startled. Then I realized that this was the moment I had been waiting for since I'd left Bent Creek. The morning of the day that I got my st.i.tches removed.

I could hear Mom yelling from the other side of the door. She couldn't open it. I'd begun locking my bedroom door ever since coming back from Bent Creek.

"Kristen! Kristen! Open this door! Kristen!" She almost sounded panicked.

I opened the door, fully dressed and ready to go. I just looked at the sore expression on her face, almost wanting to laugh.

"Don't you ever -" she caught herself. "Kristen. I thought I told you to keep this door open from now on."

"What do you want me to do, Mom?" I said as I pushed past her. "You want me to get dressed with my bedroom door open from now on?"

She followed me up the stairs. I felt as if she was on my back as she yelled, "Don't start with me this morning! We are not going to be like this. I'm not going to argue with you. You keep the door open, and that's it. You hear me?"

"Fine," I said under my breath.

"I can't understand you. I asked you a question."

"I said that is fine, Mom."

"Good," she accepted. "Come on, let's go. I have to drop Nick and Alison off at the Rec Center before I take you to the doctor." She went to the top of the stairs and headed for their bedrooms. "Nicholas and Alison, let's get going! You're going to be late."

I grabbed my summer jacket off the banister of the stairwell, and as I was slipping it on, I noticed three envelopes on the occasional table that sat by the front door. All three of them had my name on them. I picked them up.

Alison and Nick were coming towards me as Mom yelled for them to go to the car and wait for her. I grabbed the car keys and the three of us went out to the car. When we were in the car, it didn't take long for Nick and Alison to find something silly to argue about. Which of the X-Men was the most powerful?

I blocked them out. I looked down at the envelopes in my hand, and I opened the one that was postmarked the earliest. Two of them were grades from cla.s.ses I was taking. B- in Calculus I and a B+ in Life Science. I didn't expect to do any better than that in those cla.s.ses. The last one I opened was dated almost two weeks prior to that day. It was a notice from my school for past due tuition.

There was a late fee plus the tuition that was past due. I hadn't had a paycheck since Mom had come to the hospital with my last one. I remembered that I had endorsed it to her and asked her to mail off what I owed for the month. What had happened?

Mom came out to the car and got in on the driver's side. She looked back at Nick and Alison. Their arguing had somehow turned to them hitting each other. They stopped fighting after Mom yelled for them to stop. She threatened that instead of letting them go to summer camp at the Recreation Center she'd make them stay home and do ch.o.r.es.

I stayed silent as Mom pulled out of the driveway and drove off.

"Kristen," she began, "You hear them back there trying to kill each other. Why didn't you do anything?"

I didn't say anything. I looked down at the notice from my school and held back my temptation to ball it up and throw it at her.

When we were at the doctor's office, I anxiously awaited to be called in. I was eager to see what my arms were going to look like without all of the metalwork and st.i.tching. I was finally inside of the room. The nurse had been kind enough to ask my mother to stay in the waiting room. I didn't want her there while the doctor was removing the st.i.tching because I didn't want her to talk about it or pretend to cry so that she could get sympathy from the doctor.

The little, white room felt crowded with all of the equipment around me. Dr. Mitsen finally came into the room with the nurse, who pushed in a metal cart that held the tools to do the job. I was back in Dr. Mitsen's office because it was time to have the metal-sutured st.i.tches removed. The nurse cleaned the area with Isopropyl, and then the doctor held up the scissors.

"Don't be nervous," Dr. Mitsen said. "You won't feel a thing."

He completely lied to me. I walked out of his office with my arms against my chest. I hadn't had regular, sewn-in st.i.tches. I'd had metal in me that had been supported with the string. The part when he'd cut the string hadn't hurt at all, but removing the metal had hurt, and looking down while he'd done it had made it even worse. I felt like what I imagined a machine transforming into a human would feel like. All of the pain felt so new, and when I looked down at the results, I realized that my wrists looked better with the st.i.tches than without.

"Don't you worry," Dr. Mitsen said. "They will scar over and heal in due time."

I knew he was right, but the way they would scar over would be thick and too obvious. I'll have to wear long sleeves forever, I thought.

After the doctor's appointment, Mom and I were back in the car together. She drove as I sat on the pa.s.senger side, trying not to look at her. I wished Alison and Nick were in the car with us. They were having fun at the local recreation center, doing summer camp activities. At least they were enjoying their youth. I was struggling through mine.

Mom sensed something through my silence. I could tell she was frustrated. She could tell there was something bothering me. She started sweet, like she used to do. Then it would turn into her yelling and end with me feeling like a troublesome burden.

"It's really nice to have a day off," she said.

I didn't respond.

"Did you know, while you were in the hospital, I was working almost seventy hours a week? You plan on going back to work soon?"

I nodded.

"When?" she asked.

"I talked to my boss yesterday. She said I can come back to work on Monday," I responded.

"That's nice," Mom said. "At least they don't know why you were in the hospital. She probably would have fired you."

I looked down at my arms. I tried not to let her get to me, but the scars on my arms and wrists only made me feel worse.

"What's wrong with you now?"

"Nothing," I lied.

"Kristen, don't start. Remember, this is how it started last time. We were in the car coming home, and I asked you what was wrong, and you told me that it was nothing. I didn't say anything and I let you get away with it. When we got home, you went down to your room and shut your door. Then the next thing I know, your little brother finds you in your bed with your wrists cut up."

"Thanks for the replay, Mom," I said.

She pulled into our driveway. When she put the car in park, she reached her arm over and slapped me across my face. She slapped me so hard that I thought I saw stars.

I rubbed my cheek, as it stung in pain.

"Don't dare act like you are the only one in pain! Do you know what that did to us, Kristen? Do you even know what you did to us?"

"Yes! I know! I'm sorry! Okay? I'm sorry! I know that I did something terrible, Mom. I admit that, and I don't want to do that to you again. I can't take it back, but I was scared."

"Scared of what?" she said with tears in her eyes.

"The letter."

Mom got out of the car as soon as she heard my answer.

I quickly followed behind her.

She opened the front door, and we both entered the house. Mom threw herself down on the couch and I sat down next to her.

"Mom, are you going to the hearing?"

"I don't want to talk about this right now, Kristen."

"When are we going to talk about it? It's getting close. You have to tell me, because I can't sit here and live in this fear that you're going to give in and go and possibly..." my voice trailed off as I could only think of what I was afraid of instead of put them into words.

"What is it?" Mom asked. "You think I'm going to try to help get Jack out of prison? You think I'm so lonely and desperate that I would want that man who hurt my own child to come back into our lives? Is that what you think of me, Kristen?"

"I don't know what to think," I told her.

Mom took a deep breath and wiped the heavy tears that were falling from her eyes. They were real tears this time. I couldn't figure out why she was crying. But she was crying so hard that, each time she wiped tears away, more would fall. Did I hurt her?

I pleaded, "Mom. I'm sorry. I've messed up so much. It's this Borderline Personality Disorder, and it's -"

Mom looked at me with those angry tears. She said, "Don't do that. You've been in that place all this time. And you've had those people to talk to you and counsel you and show you how to deal. But I haven't had that. I haven't had the privilege of having someone to listen to me and take into consideration how I feel about things. I have to take care of your brother and sister. I can't even give any attention to me and my needs. Sometimes I feel as if I can't take it anymore. No, it's most of the time that I feel this way. So, don't sit there and act like you're the one with all of the problems, Kristen."

"But I do!" I yelled. "I do have problems! Mom! You can't put me on the back burner because I'm almost eighteen! When I turn eighteen, I will still be your child! You can't just expect me to go away and be able to deal with this on my own. I can't. I'm not strong enough to do that. I'm trying to survive, but I can't do it on my own. Don't just ignore it, Mom."

"Shut up!"