Utopia

Chapter Twenty-Eight - Until You Say

Needless to say, she wouldn't speak immediately. When the shaking had mostly stopped, when she could eat, when she could sit in a room and understand what was going on, they plopped her in a room with five strangers.

One, who wore a staid button up and jeans, who sat back in his seat with his right ankle on his left knee and watched them, spewing only soft words in a soft tone in soft questions. An older woman in a sweatsuit. A man who always wore jeans and a t-shirt no matter that it always got cold in the room. A teenager who always looked bored and yet spoke more than any of them. The last of them, besides Kira, was as shodden and as silent as she was.

It was a game between them, to see who could go longer without speaking. The day Kira joined the group, the staid therapist made them all introduce themselves, and then the war had begun.

Six months wasn't so long to wait. Especially since she had already lost a month to detox. When she awoke, when they made her take a shower that felt like it would rip off her skin before it cleaned it, when they gave her fresh clothes to wear, she made them tell her the date. Made them tell her the date she arrived, the date she could leave.

Kira counted the days. Tallied each of them with a single crayon and a section of the wall behind her pillow. They wouldn't let her have anything sharp to write with, so she'd swiped the crayon from a cleaning cart and used the wall for simple spite.

Three months was just colloquialism. Really her term was ninety days. On day forty, a court representative came to talk to her. He asked her how she was faring. What she felt her progress was. If she thought this was helping.

Kira was as vocal with him as she was in therapy, until she told him that she knew he had gotten his report from the facility first.

He looked surprised, and then contrite. Then he said, "Part of your sentence requires that you participate in the rehabilitation process. The twenty-two days it took you to detox will be counted, but another eighteen days will be added to your time here, and so on and so forth, until your therapist reports progress."

"I thought therapy was confidential," Kira returned tightly.

"Therapy remains confidential unless called upon by a court warrant," he corrected. "In this case, the content of your sessions will remain confidential, but whether or not you participate has been called upon."

Kira didn't know enough to wonder why they were taking so much interest in her. She had been out of touch with the world for a while. She had friends she'd thought had given her up.

But she was locked in a closed circuit, and she only had this man in front of her, telling her unfavorable things, and so she could only be angry with him. So she slouched further in her seat, arms crossed, and crossly promised, "I won't talk in front of a," she cursed, "group."

~/~

Kira went to graduation to cheer for Susannah. She sat with her friend's parents, and even though they didn't really like her, they all cheered together.

Kira had gotten the first C in her high school career that final semester, but it still hadn't brought her to the credits she needed. They had offered her a fifth year, but she had declined. Even when her parents tried to argue, it was her decision. Kira was eighteen.

Susannah had offered to skip the school-sponsored graduation celebration, but Kira had insisted she go. They were taken to a water park where they would be the night's only patrons.

Kira went to the drive-in, ate cheap popcorn and popsicles. It was a triple-feature in honor of the end of the school year. An animated toy's great journey for the kids. A shark movie from the seventies for casual viewers. And the newest superhero movie for the truly dedicated. She only had to contend with ten other cars at the exit when the final movie ended.