Henry

Chapter 1: Fall

"Don't listen to her," Lu said, "she only wants you to believe you're fine." Lu went on as Shelia continued to talk over him. Lu did not like Sheila that much and I didn't know why. All Sheila ever wanted to do was help me and make sure I was doing well. She brought me into this room, her office as she called it, every day for an hour to make sure I was still doing well. The huge wooden desk in the middle of the room stood between Shelia and me, her behind it and me infront of it. I've tried to tell that to Lu, about Shelia, but he was so stubborn and I didn't know how to handle him. He always seemed to take over me; however, Sheila has helped me with controlling him and keeping him in.

"Stop lying to yourself!" Lu yelled, "You know deep down all she wants to do is laugh at your failure."

Not too long after, I felt the chills of DD's voice jump to life in my ears."Yes! It's true, Elana. You are not important to her. She wishes you would leave just like your family did. You thought your family wanted you? Ha. Why do you think they sent you here? It wasn't because they thought you were crazy. They wanted to get rid of such an awful child. They couldn't even stand to be in the same house as you, Elana."

"Elana, sweetie? Are you paying any attention? Oh honey, are the voices back? Just ignore them and listen to my voice only okay?" Shelia spoke to me as she reached out to touch my arm. However, there were many things I didn't understand here and that was one of them. Why she would call me sweetie or honey when all she tried to do was get me to say all kinds of harsh things. These things were supposedly in my head. She once explained to me I needed to tell her what I remembered about my sister dying. I thought she was crazy because I didn't have a sister and I never have. The only people in my life were my mom, dad, and me. I never had a sister or a brother. We didn't even have family come over at all. Not on Christmas or Thanksgiving, it was only ever us three.

She told me I've had a hard and troubling life, but I didn't know any of it; therefore, she said I needed to think about those bad things. How could I think about those bad things when I didn't remember any bad thing that happened to me? I didn't even remember when my birthday was. Everything to me was just hazy and slow-moving for the past couple of weeks. Like I was dreaming and everything was just a blur. People were feeding me lies and forced me to say things I didn't want. They only wanted me to remember. I knew I had to remember.

I wanted to listen to her, but was she really being honest to me? Henry told me that she was just lying to make me feel better. He said that she just wanted me to tell her everything so she could take it all away. What if she thought I was stupid? What if she didn't like me? I knew I needed to remember what happened, but at what cost? If remembering these things meant I had to feel pain, then why would I want that? Henry told me these things in my sleep. Out of the three of them, Henry was really my only friend. He liked me and I liked him.

I never told Shelia or anyone about Henry but I have told them about Lu and DD. Shelia informed me that the voices were just thoughts that I had and that I wasn't allowed to name them; they weren't real. When I talked about them she made me call them The Voice, Lu, and Voice Two, DD. She said that soon, the voices would be gone for good; she was going to give me candies — her way of trying to make the word pills seem less scary — to make them go away. Happiness flew through me when she said that because they were so mean to me. The thought of them just being fake, though, made it hard for me to believe that. How could they be fake when they had differnent voices? Different images? They even looked different, I've seen them before!

Lu wasn't as bad as DD, but Lu was very aggressive and here more often. Lu and DD were nothing like Henry. Henry had a very smooth voice and I knew he wasn't just a thought, I've seen him before, many times. From his sandpaper-colored hair to his emerald green eyes; he was there when I was sleeping and I knew it. Shelia said that I did not sleep much, but, again, that didn't make any sense to me. I did sleep, all the time and Henry talked to me in my dreams. He showed me all kinds of crazy stories and ideas he had; I loved hearing stories. The only reason I didn't tell Shelia about Henry was that he said he was scared of her. He was scared she'd take him away from me. I could not lose him, he was my only family now so I kept him to myself.