Bitter

epilogue

It was like I had an itch. When I heard he wanted to see me, I'd said yes, he could. Ever since that decision, I could feel this itch growing. Growing. It was just below my skin. All morning, crawling through me. It made my fingers twitch, my leg bounce up and down restlessly. It tickled my brain. It made me laugh.

Rain was drumming loudly on the roof and I found it so fitting. It was energizing, exciting to me. It brought back the memories of the last time it rained. Weeks ago, when I had attempted to kill Meg Sadler and Lydia Bosher and Cal Warrick. I heard they'd all lived which was a shame. And so had I. I hardly felt alive right now though. In a place like this? Patterson? The food was terrible, disgusting. I was bored. I was tired. I was sick of everything.

Most of all, I was sick of being on my "best behavior." I took my medication, I refrained from talking back to the nurses, I did as I was told. Always doing as I was told. I'd been doing it all my life actually. I was pretty good at it, I just didn't like doing it. So it was as simple as that, I crushed Dad's rules. Forget staying in line. I would cross that line. I was gonna do what I wanted to do. End of story.

That itching I mentioned earlier was getting worse now. Sparking in my veins. Tapping on my skin, wanting to be free. It wouldn't stop and I didn't know how to make it stop. I didn't know if I wanted it to actually. It was building up within me, making my limbs feel all fuzzy, like static. I started to laugh, silently to myself, staring at the TV before me displaying some nature show. The sharp, mountain peaks from the screen burned into my mind and I started thinking about my switchblade.

   It was like a reflex. My fingers curled tightly and I actually expected it to be there. To feel the cold metal against my palm. Instead, my hand was now balled into a fist as the switchblade dangled in my mind, out of reach. Those mountain peaks on TV suddenly grew sharper and as the blue light from the screen lit up my face, I wanted nothing more than to have that switchblade back and stab—

   "Excuse me," a soft voice spoke on my left side. "Mr. Haley?" A hand landed on my shoulder and I slowly turned to look up at the nurse smiling down at me. I could see the fear in her eyes.

   "It's West," I snapped, smacking her hand off my shoulder. "And don't touch me." Turning back to watch the TV, I swore under my breath, except it wasn't that "under my breath." I wanted that nurse to hear exactly what I thought of her.

   The nurse was silent for a moment before speaking again. "I'm sorry, West," she stumbled on her apology, "I just came over to let you know that your father is here to see you."

   Just hearing those words, "your father," made me start shaking with a rage I was barely keeping a hold on. I allowed him to visit me here in Patterson, but that also meant the memories of everything he'd done to me visited too.

   I stood up from the couch I'd been sitting on and when I turned around, there he was, fifteen feet away. He was at a table and he waved at me, smiling like he was actually happy to see me. There was no way he was. He wanted something. That's always how it went with him.

   I was not going to call him Dad. As I trudged over to the seat across from him and slumped down into the chair, I made the decision that me and the man across from me weren't related. I just waited for him to speak first, my eyes never leaving his. I wanted him to look away, to back down, but he didn't. He grinned again while the nurse watched the two of us from a few feet away.