Never Alone

Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

I couldn't sleep at all. Aideen was restless, tossing and turning in her bed all through the night. She would kick off her covers one minute, only to pull them back over her body again the next. I could also hear people moving outside our bedroom door. Lorelei checked in on us every two hours. There was nothing in this room we could hurt ourselves with besides our sheets, but we would have to use them to hang ourselves, and there wasn't anything in the room we could hang from.

The anxiety I felt knowing our door could probably be opened by anyone on staff at R2L was too much for me to handle. Every little sound made me jump, my body folding in half until I was sitting up straight, my wide eyes focused on the door, waiting for someone to come in. They never did, unless it was Lorelei checking on us. At midnight, she came in one last time and whispered to me. "Still can't fall asleep?" I shook my head and lay back down. I tried to still my quickly beating heart. I could hear my pulse thumping rapidly in my ears. Hearing the door slowly slide open had done me in.

"I'll be okay," I told her. I was used to telling everyone that. I'd been doing it for months. I knew it wasn't the truth, but that didn't matter. Adults didn't always want the truth; they wanted the answer that made things easier. They wanted to hear whatever made them feel like they hadn't done anything wrong.

The first time someone cut my hair during class, I'd cut the rest myself at lunch. I thought maybe I could pretend I was in control. She'd chopped a large chunk from the back as I sat in third-period English, and laughed with her friends about it. I didn't cry until that night. My parents pretended to like it, but Luke had heard what happened. He stomped passed me and hissed, "You shouldn't have cut it!" I didn't have much of a choice unless I wanted to walk around with a large bare spot in the back. Now every noise made me jump.

"I'll be back tomorrow afternoon. If you want to take a nap after group I should be here. I'll sit on the end of your bed the whole time." Lorelei didn't ask any questions. She didn't poke around and try to figure out why I didn't like any sort of surprise. She just accepted it and moved on. Maybe that's why she was one of the few adults in a while I could tolerate. I nodded and tried to settle myself back into bed.

She checked on Aideen, flipping the washcloth again so the cool side was on her pale skin. She didn't look good, but she wasn't as miserable-looking as she'd appeared earlier.

When the door shut behind Lorelei, I knew I had another two hours before anyone came to check on us. I had to get some sleep. The more time that ticked by without the ability to quiet my thoughts, the more the darkness would seep in and I was already in that space where my mental health was causing my body physical pain. I couldn't take it much longer. I grabbed my pillow and the top blanket from my bed and made my way over to the floor in front of our door. It wouldn't be the comfiest place I'd ever slept, but at least maybe I'd be able to make the thoughts go quiet for a little while.

I dropped the pillow onto the floor and lay down on it, curling on my side so my back was pressed up against the door. If anyone tried to come in, I'd feel it immediately. I shook out the blanket the best I could and pulled it up over my shoulder, curling my body into the fetal position to keep myself warm and protected. My eyelids felt heavy, and I felt my breaths evening out, but my thoughts were still flitting around like butterflies on a breeze.

I thought of Luke. I wondered if he was better now that I wasn't at home. I wanted that for him. I wanted him to be okay. My eyes fluttered closed, sleep pressing in on me as I remembered my brother before all the darkness found us. I remembered all the light, the brightness of the sun rising on an early morning soccer game as he stood beneath the goal, all the golden-blond curls that flipped out from beneath his flat-billed hat as he sped away from me on his skateboard, and all the glowing candles as we celebrated his fifteenth birthday last year before everything had gone to shit.