Authors: Tabitha Freeman
My mother didn’t stay long. She was excited to get home and get my bedroom livable in again. I mana
ged some weak smiles and laughs
, and had her convinced with a tight hug when she left that I was happy to be leaving Craneville.
I didn’t leave my room for the rest of the day. When Henry and Shakespeare stopped by to see how the meeting had gone, I refused to talk to them. I just lay there in my bed, asked them to come back tomorrow, and closed my eyes to force sleep upon myself. But it never came. All night, Conner was the only image in my mind. What if I didn’t see him before I left? Would Julianne tell him I was leaving so I could see him one last time? Would she grant me that courtesy? Surely she didn’t dislike me so much as to hurt me like that, even if she thought it best Conner and I stayed away from each other.
I opened my eyes the next morning and decided that I would welcome the day. I had to face this goodbye. I went to breakfast and immediately found Henry and Shakespeare, both wide-eyed, eager for any news I was about to give them. I sat down at the table slowly, letting out a heavy
breath as I did.
“I’m leaving.”
They knew this, of course, and didn’t even try to look surprised.
“Why?” was Henry’s quiet reply. I looked down at the food on my plate and shrugged.
“Because I’m ‘all better’,” I answered him, hoarsely. “I’ll be out of here Friday.”
“Friday!” Shakespeare exclaimed, rather loudly. I looked up at him, frowning. His dark eyes were wide and sad.
“How can you just be released like that?” Henry asked me. “It’s Tuesday. Did you even go through a final evaluation?” I shook my head.
“I-I’m sorry,” I whispered, letting my head drop again.
“Why are you sorry, Av
a?” Shakespeare asked me
.
“Because this is wrong,” I said, an unexpected tear rolling down my cheek. “I’m not ready to leave. It isn’t fair. If I hadn’t been….if Conner…” I couldn’t find the words.
“This is what you’ve wanted for so long,” Henry pointed out. “And now you get to go home. To your mother. To your own world.”
“I’m so scared,” I whispered, as more tears began to roll down my cheeks. I looked up at them. “That big world out there…I barely remember it.”
“Well, I’m sure the world is sc
ared, too, Ava,” Henry joked
gently, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. “It barely remembers you.” I chuckled at this and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.
“Does the shrink’s son know you’re leaving?” Shakespeare asked me then. I shrugged.
“He’ll be gone all this week,” I told him. “He’s doing rounds somewhere else. And at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Julianne had decided just to not tell him.”
“Will you be with him when you leave?” Henry asked. I refused to meet his inquisitive gaze.
“It’s not that simple,” was my answer. He sighed and I winced, knowing a lecture was coming. I was surprised when he was quiet and didn’t say anything more.
“I’m sure your
mother was very happy,” Shakespeare spoke up. I nodded.
“I’ve never seen her so excited,” I said. “I’m sorry, I can’t think about this. It’s not real to me yet. Can we pretend I’m staying?”
Henry and Shakespeare exchanged glances. I let out a loud laugh.
“Well that’s the first time someone inside this place has actually looked at me like I was crazy,” I smiled.
They both laugh
ed and began to eat again.
“Any more word on Aurelia?” I asked, grateful for the broken tension. “Have they found out how she got the rope? Or why she did it?”
“I don’t think anyone’s focusing on the why as much as the how it was made possible,” Henry told me. “I mean, no one really searches for a reason when suicides happen in a place like this. It’s almost self-explanatory…usually the reason most people are in here in the first place.”
I looked away, turning red.
“Oh, sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t mean that towards you specifically. I’m a prime example myself. I haven’t heard anything on how she got that rope. I keep trying to think if she had any visitors in the last few weeks, but she was
lying
so low recently, that I barely saw her as it was.”
“What about Channing?” I frowned. “I haven’t heard from her. I’m worried.”
“She’ll be all right,” Henry assured me. “She’s a tough girl. I’m sure she’ll be in touch as soon as she has some answers.”
“Hopefully before I’m gone,” I muttered. Henry just looked at me.
“I’ll miss you,” he said through a mouthful of eggs. “But it’s time for you to g
et the hell outta this place
before you
really
go crazy.”
“Ava!”
I turned around in my seat and saw Julianne approaching me with a very practiced smile on her face.
“Hello, Henry, Shakespeare,” she nodded to them once she was standing next to our table. I looked up at her, puzzled as to what she wanted.
“Ava, I’m glad I caught you,” she was still smiling, which made me kind of sick to my stomach. “I’m leaving early today, so I won’t be seeing any of you for any sessions today. Ava, I’ll need you to come to my office tomorrow morning at around ten, all right? We’ve got to hold a final evaluation for you before I can get your papers turned in for leave.”
“A final evaluation?” I questioned. “I don’t understand. I thought it was for sure that I was leaving.”
“Well, so did I,” Julianne replied. “However, it’s been decided that you’ll have to pass this evaluation successfully to leave.” She was still smiling, but I wondered if she was happy about this required evaluation. I had th
e feeling she wanted me
out of Craneville as soon as possible.
“Okay,” I just nodded. Her smile widened and she looked at Henry and Shakespeare again.
“All right, well I’ll see all of you tomorrow,” she said, pleasantly. “Enjoy the rest of your day.” And she was gone. I turned back around, shaking my head.
“Was that weird?” Shakespeare frowned. Henry nodded with a chuckle.
“Very weird,” he agreed and I just rolled my eyes.
I didn’t sleep that night. I lay in my bed, waiting. I longed for Conner to sneak in my room, so that I could see
him one last time before I left
so that he wouldn’t think that I had abandoned him.
T
he
next morning, I w
alked
reluctantly to Julianne’s office. What would I be asked? Would my answers be good enough? Did I want them to be good enough?
Her door was already open and Julianne was sitting at her desk, shuffling through a stack of papers. I cleared my throat loudly as I walked into the office and Julianne looked up, flashing me another one of her fake smiles.
“Have a seat, Ava,” she nodded towards the chair in front of her desk. “And close the door behind you, please.” I did as she asked and then sat down. She shuffled through the papers on her desk for another minute, before finally looking at me.
“All right,” she said, resting her forearms on the desk and examining me closely. “There’s no need to be nervous, Ava. I’m just going to ask you a few important questions. I think you’ll do just fine.”
I didn’t say anything. I began looking around the room nervously, searching for some kind
of calming distraction
. My eyes landed on a family picture on the bookshelf in the far corner of the office. Conner’s face. I wanted to see him again. I wanted him here.
“Ava.”
I looked at Julianne again and her smile was gone. Finally, she was being
genuine
with me.
“Yes?” I whispered.
“Are you ready?” she asked. I nodded. She looked at me for another moment.
“Why do you want to live?”
There it was. S
traight to the point.
“I am broken glass,” I m
anaged to say
, after a long moment’s thought. “I am broken glass that everyone from my life outside this place, including you, has walked around since…well, since I lost Tyson.”
I couldn’t believe it. I’d said his name. And with such conviction, such ease. I’d thought I’d never be able to do that again.
“I’ll always be broken,” I went on. “Because when I came here, no one fixed me. It’s not t
hat they didn’t care to fix me. T
he
se
crazy, wonderful people I met at Craneville didn’t fix me because they didn’t think I needed to be fixed. And it wasn’t because they were ‘crazy’…it was because they were the only people who knew that I could only face the world out th
ere again as someone different. A
s someone who wasn’t perfect, who wasn’t normal, who didn’t have all the answers…someone who was somehow ‘fixed’ by being broken.
“I attempted to kill myself three times, Julianne. No, wait, I mean…the ‘normal’ Ava who wanted to glue herself back together immediately attempted to kill herself three times. But
me
, Ava Darton…
me
, who flew over the cuckoo’s nest …
I
don’t want to die. I want to live. I want to live so that I can step outside these doors again and see the world
—
the beautiful world
—
for the first time
. And I want to show all thes
e amazing people in this place;
Henry, Shakespeare, Channing, and even Aurelia, that the world needs us to be
as
flawed as we are. Everyone here needs to know that to get better. To know that they don’t need to be fixed.”
Julianne was looking at me with this incredibly surprised expression on her face.
“I’ll never be completely healed from this,” I said, quietly. “B-but I have something now that I didn’t before, and that’s hope. Just…
hope
.”
For a split second, I saw the old Julianne in her eyes; kind, concerned, determined. But it was gone as soon as it had come.
“Okay,” she wrote some things down on a piece of paper in front of her. “That is all, Ava.”
“Wh-what?” I stuttered, surprised. “No more questions?”
“No more questions,” she did not look up at me. “I’ll see you at the group therapy session a little later, all right?”
I didn’t know what to do. Clearly, I was being dismissed, but why? Was my answer not good enough? Did she think I would have to stay here after all, ruining her plan to get me away from Conner? I didn’t understand.
I got up slowly from my chair and walked over to the door, glancing back at her. She was still writing, totally oblivious to me now. I wanted to say something to her. To ask her why she was so
angry, to tell her how much she ha
d done for me. But I didn’t say anything. I walked out of her office without a word.
24
.
When I woke up on Friday morning, I was incredibly surprised to see my mother in my room.
I sat up in my bed slowly, blinking fast so everything would come into focus. My mom was putting things into boxes.
“Mom?”
She stopped what she was doing and looked over at me.
“Hey, sunshine!” she said, brightly, smiling.
“What are you doing?” I asked her, throwing my legs over the side of the bed and standing up.
“Packing up your things,” she said. “You’re leaving today, remember! Julianne said your evaluation went wonderfully!”
I just looked at her, not saying anything. I stood there, confused and wondering if I was still asleep. Julianne hadn’t said a word to me about leaving over the past two days, so I’d just assumed I’d done horribly in my evaluation and I’d be staying. Even Henry and Shakespeare had agreed with me on this conclusion. Mom stopped what she was doing and walked over to me, resting her hands on my shoulders.
“Honey, you’re well enough now to come home,” she said, softly. “Don’t you understand? You’re finally better. You’re finally better.”
I raised my left eyebrow and didn’t reply. Instead, I walked past her and out of the room. I went straight to Julianne’s office. I knocked loudly. She didn’t answer. I tried the knob. It was locked.
“She took sick leave, baby,” Nurse Josephine said from the nurse’s station behind me.
“Is she sick?” I asked, turning around.
“No, her husband is,” Josephine replied. “She won’t be back for a week, she said. When you have all your things
ready, baby, just lemme know and
I‘ll sign ya out.”
“Oh,” was all I said. I went back to my room to help my mother finish packing up my things. As I was changing out of my pajamas into some cheerl
eading shorts and a t-shirt
, my mom stopped what she was doing and stared at me.