Page 8

“Hold it, hold it! Only first names, Hannah. You know the rules.” She wagged a finger at me.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I forgot.”

“Blame the B-52 ass-jab,” the bone-thin girl next to me whispered. Her name was Michaela, and I hadn’t forgottenher. We’d been roommates the last time I was here, and we’d become friends. Had she been readmitted? Or had she never left? I knew I wouldn’t—shouldn’t—ask.

“Hi, Michaela,” I said. “Again.”

“Welcome back, babe,” she said smoothly. I couldn’t entirely tell if she was being serious or sarcastic. It was probably in bad taste to welcome someone back to a locked psychiatric ward anyway.

I looked around the room at the heavy, pleather chairs, the faded Impressionist posters behind unbreakable glass, and the tall windows that were too narrow to jump out of. I hadn’t forgotten about any of those. I hadn’t forgotten how cold it was on the unit, either, or how it smelled like air freshener and latex gloves and disinfectant and maybe something like despair.

I really, truly, deeply can’t believe it. I’m back on Ward 6, and I don’t have any idea how I got here.

“Did you say something, Hannah?” Lulu asked.

I shook my head. Did I? I hadn’t meant to.

Maybe she can hear your thoughts.

No she can’t, that’s ridiculous.

“Well, would you like to take your turn?” Lulu said.

I looked down at my lap. I was wearing a faded hoodie and ugly sweatpants, neither of which were mine. I still had my boots, but someone had removed the laces. There was a long cut on the back of my hand, and the dirt underneath my fingernails had the brown-red tint of dried blood.

Did I hurt someone? Did I hurt myself?

Everything that had happened in the present time, before I woke up strapped to a hospital bed, was a blank.

“Can I pass?” I said. “I feel … sort of woozy.”

Lulu didn’t like it when people skipped their turns, but she decided not to force anything. “All right. Sean? How about you?”

Sean was a skinny guy with long, greasy hair. “I don’t belong here,” he said. “This place is fucked. I want to go home.”

Beside me, Michaela made a little groaning sound, becauseeveryonesaid that when they were new. (I seemed to be the only one whokeptsaying it.)

“Let’s talk about why you think you shouldn’t be here,” Lulu said gently.

Across the circle, a pimply kid dug his finger deep into hisnose. The intercom made a staticky burp. “Paging Dr. Klein,” it said. “Paging Dr. Klein.”

I leaned back in my ugly chair. Most likely Seandidbelong here, because it wasn’t like you could just waltz into Belman and ask for a room. I didn’t know what his problems were, but I knew what he had to look forward to during his stay on Ward 6. In addition to group therapy, he’d have meetings with a social worker, check-ins with therapists and doctors, art therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and optional classes for breathing, yoga, and stress management. There would be mushy cafeteria food and supervised walks outside, an ever-changing cocktail of prescription medications with unfortunate side effects, and endless bad television shows blaring from the lounge.

The thing about Belman was, it was about as nice as a psychiatric hospital could get. Ward 6 was a special adolescent/young adult ward, staffed mostly by people only a few years older than us. There were no sadistic nurses, no senile old men drooling in wheelchairs in the hallway, no fully grown addicts withdrawing from what Nurse Amy liked to call “street drugs.” Belman wasn’t a scary place at all. It was just sort of depressing.

“Like I said, this is bullshit. But if I gotta stay, I just hope I can get into someone’s pants,” Sean said. “I hear crazy girls do it like—”

“I’m going to stop you right there,” Lulu said quickly. She was a pro. “For starters, we don’t use the wordcrazy.”

I closed my eyes. I really was woozy. My head felt … well,soggywas the best way to describe it. If someone could show me a picture of my brain, I was sure it would look as wet, sloppy, and useless as an old kitchen sponge.

Blame the B-52 ass-jabs, okay.

Just breathe. In and out, in and out.

I must’ve drifted off, because the next thing I knew Michaela was poking me in the ribs. “What?” I grumbled.

“Not what,who,” she said, cocking her head toward the door.