Page 96 of The Sun Sister

That afternoon, to work off my lunch, I went for a run along the nature trail that looped around the perimeter of The Ranch. As I ran, I remembered my trek up the mountain behind Atlantis over a month ago and how much better I’d felt after it. Even though the dry, hot Arizona air burnt in my lungs and stung my nose as I breathed, I kept going.

I came to a halt near the water cooler and poured myself a cup which I drank down thirstily, and then another which I sprayed all over me. I plopped down on a bench and enjoyed the feeling of...well,feeling. Despite my reluctance to embrace The Ranch’s spiritual approach, just sitting here with the mountains behind me, the blue sky against the red of the earth was calming. Naturewascalming. The air carried the scents of the low green shrubs that were unfurling in the sun. Incredible flowers and cacti were dotted all across the desert’s arid beauty – some over ten feet tall, their green spiky trunks filled with water to keep them sated until the next rains.

For the first time, I pictured myself back in my New York apartment and felt trapped, like an animal in a cage. Somehow, what was around me here felt like more natural territory for me, as though it suited who I was. The heat didn’t bother me like it bothered Lizzie, and the open spaces made me feel alive.

As I sat there, I felt my lips form into a smile.

‘Why?’ I asked myself.

Just because, Electra...

As I stood up to go inside, remembering group therapy was about to start and I’d have to go in my running gear, I suddenly realised I hadn’t thought about having a drink or doing a line for the past two hours. And that made me smile all over again.

When I got back to the dorm later, desperate for another shower, Vanessa was still curled up on her bed. She was now shaking violently and Lizzie – whose bed was sandwiched between us – was sitting there watching her.

‘She’s not in a good way, Electra,’ she sighed. ‘I’ve called the nurse and she’s given her another injection of whatever it is she needs, but...’

‘She doesn’t look good, no,’ I agreed, as I grabbed my towel and went in for a shower. Coming out, I dressed in a clean pair of track pants and a hoodie. ‘Are you coming to supper?’ I asked Lizzie.

‘No, I’m going to stay here and just watch Vanessa for a while. I’m worried about her.’

‘Okay, see you later.’

Feeling low, because I really didn’t want to stick around to see Vanessa going through what I had, I went into the canteen. I avoided what I called the ‘woo-woos’: those who had taken up The Ranch’s spiritual ethos and only spoke in quotes like a bunch of walking, talking self-help books – and piled my tray with steak and sides. Not wanting to go back to the dorm once I’d finished eating, I grabbed some paper and pens from the side table and thought about what we had discussed at the AA meeting that morning. I was on step number nine, the one where I had to write an apology letter to anyone I may have hurt when my substance abuse had gotten out of control.

Okay, so who do I have to apologise to?I thought to myself.Ma?

Yes. I knew that I’d been a huge pain in the butt as a child and she had always been so patient with me. I’d definitely write her a note. But then again, I thought as I wolfed back some cheesecake, were these apologies about being a bad person, or being a bad person because of my substance abuse? I’d hardly seen Ma in the past few years, and rarely called her up.

Then she deserves an apology for me ignoring her, I thought, and gave her a tick on the list.

Maia? Yup, she definitely deserved an apology for my shitty behaviour after Pa had died and we were in Atlantis, and in Rio. If it hadn’t been for her calling Mariam, I might have died. She’d been wonderful and I really, really loved her. I gave her a big tick.

Ally: she should get one too. I stared out of the window, thinking back to when we’d been at Atlantis together last month and how rude I’d been to her. I wondered then why Ally had always irritated me, because she was such a good person. Maybe that was it: the fact that shewasa good person, and so sorted and together, even though she’d lost the love of her life and had a baby. It had always made myuntogetherness more obvious.

Star: my mousy little sister, who would never say boo to a goose. I had no idea if I liked her or if I didn’t, because she’d always said so little; she’d been the silence to my big noise. Ally had said that she had met some guy and was living in England with him. Maybe I’d make the effort to go see her when I got out of here. I had always felt sorry for her and the way she was overshadowed on every level by my nemesis sister, CeCe. I’d write Star a letter anyway, just to say hello, because I couldn’t think of anything bad I’d actually done to her specifically.

CeCe. I ground the nib of the pen hard into the paper. She and I had never gotten along; Ma had always said we were too similar, but I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t like the way she’d dominated Star, and sometimes when we were younger, we’d fallen out and had physical fights that Ally had to break up. I’d been glad when I’d heard that she’d moved to Australia.

‘Basically because Star dumped her for a man,’ I murmured maliciously, knowing Fi and the group therapy crowd wouldn’t like that negativity, but you couldn’t like everyone in the world, could you? Although apparently, you could get them to forgive you.

For now, I put a question mark against CeCe’s name and then moved on to Tiggy.

As an adult, she had definitely morphed into the kind of person who could probably apply for a job here. Then I metaphorically slapped myself for being bitchy about her, because she didn’t deserve it. She was sweet and gentle and just wanted to make everybody happy. We were polar opposites, yet I aspired to be like her because she could see the good in everything and everybody, whereas I was wired the opposite way around. I vaguely remembered Ally telling me at Atlantis that she’d had a health issue. To my shame, I hadn’t even dropped her an email to ask how she was. Tiggy was definitely going on my list of apologies.

I then sat back and wondered whether, if Pa were alive, I’d be wanting to write him an apology. No. I felt he should be writing me one, having died when I was still so young and leaving me to deal with all this stuff. Including Stella, my grandmother. Anyway, I didn’t want to think about all that, so I moved on to my New York life.

Mariam:MASSIVE APOLOGY, I wrote. She was by far the best PA I’d ever had, although I had no idea whether shewasstill my PA. I put that on my list to ask Maia when I replied to the email she’d sent me a couple of days ago. We were allowed our laptops and cell phones for an hour each day, but everything we wrote was monitored, so I hadn’t written to anyone so far.

Stella, a.k.a. ‘Granny’. I paused and chewed the end of my pen as I navigated the brain fuzz that was the last few weeks before I’d come here. Truthfully, I couldn’t remember much about our conversations, though I did remember waking up and her sitting in the easy chair by my bed. I also thought I remembered her singing, but maybe that had been a dream. Although even in the haze of my couple of meetings with her, I remembered that she was truly one of the scariest humans I’d ever met.

Before I could decide whether I should write her, my attention was caught by a super tall black guy who walked past me with a tray of food. Unlike most of the inmates who wore hoodies and track pants like me, he was dressed in a crisp white shirt and chinos. I hunched over my paper with my head down as he went to sit at the table opposite. I normally didn’t give a shit who saw me looking as rough as hell, but I glanced to my left and saw he was crazily beautiful, and had a certain elegance about him. Before he could spot me, I put my hood up, picked up my tray and the pen and paper and left the canteen.

When I arrived back at my dorm, Vanessa’s bed was empty and Lizzie was involved in her usual night-time beauty regime, her desk transformed into an expensive cosmetics counter.

‘Where’s Vanessa?’ I asked as I watched her lather cream onto her face, use a pipette to put drops of what she said contained gold flakes onto her neck, and swallow a series of pills that had been okayed by the doctor, so must contain a bunch of nothing.

‘The poor little mite started having a seizure, so I called the nurse and she’s been taken back to the clinical detox ward,’ Lizzie sighed. ‘I just hope it’s not too late.’