The attendant in the game room that night is one I’ve never seen before, young, smily and obviously new. She says hi and asks if I want to play Scrabble. “How ‘bout Trivial Pursuit?” she says. “I’m really good at that.”
I get out the Connect Four box and sit down with my back to her. Then I start playing against myself. I imitate Sam’s lateral thinking strategy, making moves all over the place, instead of starting with the same opening move and the same boring way of trying to build an obvious straight line. After a while the smily young attendant gets up and leaves to talk to another attendant at the desk, keeping an eye on me through the window.
Soon the Connect Four grid is a hopeless mess of red and black checkers; there are blocked rows everywhere and no way to make a straight line. I’m staring at the game when a shadow comes over the table.
You’re standing next to me suddenly, in a long blue coat and scarf, holding a purse and keys. I sit up—and wait for you to tell me, in your real-life clothes, with your car keys and your house keys, that you’re leaving, that you’re quitting, that you’re giving up on me.
But you don’t say anything. The room gets warmer and warmer and the minutes stretch out and fold back on themselves the way they do in your office and you just stand there, tapping your upper lip with your index finger and studying the game. I decide to pretend I don’t care that you’re there.
I pick up a red checker, hold it a minute, poised to drop it into the center slot, then pull back, seeing right away that this would be a dumb move. I move the checker, hold it above another slot, study this possibility, and see that it would be a mistake, too. Finally I put the checker on the table, lean back, and hide inside my hair.
You shift your weight from one foot to the other and I catch a hint of fragrance. It’s a cool, familiar smell, sort of like the lavender sachets my Gram used to make.
You pick up the red checker and drop it into a slot on the end. All at once a diagonal row of four checkers appears—surprising and obvious at the same time.
“There you go,” you say. “I think that’s the move you were looking for.”
You rest your hand on my shoulder for just a second, and I feel sleepy suddenly, the way I did in your office this afternoon. Then you’re gone. I don’t play another round. I just sit in the game room until the last trace of lavender evaporates.
The next day, after everyone else comes in from the smoking porch and we take our regular seats in Group, Claire announces that a new girl is joining us. She asks if someone will get an extra chair. “Put it there, please,” she tells Sydney. “Next to Callie.”
I sit very, very still.
The door squeaks open and the new girl comes in. She’s tiny, with dyed black hair held back in kiddie barrettes, red lipsticked lips, and the palest, whitest skin I’ve ever seen. She’s wearing ripped jeans and a sweatshirt.
Claire gestures toward the empty spot next to me and invites her to sit down. The girl slides into the chair, then grabs the seat, scraping the legs back and forth on her little patch of floor, trying to get settled. Her chair bangs into mine. The impact reverberates all through me.
“Oops,” she says.
Claire asks if anyone is willing to make the introductions, but it seems like everyone has suddenly gotten shy. So Claire goes around the circle giving names but not issues.
The new girl says her name so quickly I can’t tell if it’s Amanda or Manda. Then, when no one says anything, she says, “Jesus Christ, it’s hot in here.”
Claire asks Amanda/Manda if she wants to tell us why she’s at Sick Minds. Amanda/Manda pulls off her sweatshirt; I feel every movement through my chair.
There’s a gasp from across the circle. Debbie’s hand is clapped over her mouth and the other girls are staring at the new girl.
Her sweatshirt is on the floor and she’s sitting there in a little white undershirt holding her arms out so everyone can see a geometry of scars crisscrossing her inner arm: scars in parallel lines running up to her elbow, bisecting lines, obtuse angles. Scratched into the skin above her wrist are words. In pink scar tissue on one arm it says “Life.” On the other it says “Sucks.”
I pull my sleeves down around my thumbs and pinch the fabric tight.
“I don’t really need to be here,” she says. “Some dogood English teacher thought I was trying to kill myself.”
There’s scattered fidgeting, then silence. “You’re not?” Sydney finally says.
“As if,” Amanda/Manda says.
“Then why do you do it?”
“Beats me,” she says. Then, right away, “Low selfesteem. Poor impulse control. Repressed hostility. Right?” She addresses all this to Claire.
Claire doesn’t answer, so Amanda/Manda turns back to Sydney. “Listen, I don’t see how what I do is so different from people who get their tongues pierced. Or their lips. Or their ears, for Chrissakes. It’s my body.”
She glances around the circle; no one budges.
“It’s body decoration. Like tattoos.” She keeps talking, like she’s been in the middle of a conversation that everybody else happened to walk in on. Like we’re new, not her. “It’s better than people who bite their nails till they bleed. I mean, they’re actually eating their own flesh. They’re like cannibals.”
Tiffany, who bites her nails until they bleed, tucks her hands under her thighs.
“I mean, why is everyone so upset? It’s freedom of expression, right?”
I grind the hem of my sleeve between my fingers. The frantic barking of a dog rings in the distance. Amanda/Manda is saying something about an article she read in a magazine. I turn my head ever so slightly to catch the words.
“You know, they used to bleed people all the time back in the old days,” she says. “When they were sick. It’s an endorphin rush.”
“And…” All heads swivel in the direction of Claire’s voice. “Does it make you feel better?” Claire says.
“Absolutely.” Amanda/Manda shifts in her chair. “It’s a high. I mean, you feel amazing. No matter how bad you felt before. It’s a rush. Like suddenly you’re alive.”
“And you want to do it again, don’t you?” Claire says.
My fingers are numb from pinching my shirtsleeve.
“Yeah. So?”
“Let me rephrase that,” Claire says slowly. “You need to do it again.”
The new girl leans forward in her chair, her dark eyes blazing. “Not me,” she says. “I can control it. I always control it.” She folds her arms across her chest; her elbow nudges mine. I jump.
“What about you, Callie?” Claire’s voice is loud. “Can you control it?”
The room is dead quiet. Debbie stops cracking her weight-control gum. Even the dog stops barking. Far off, down the hall, a phone trills, once, twice, three times. It’s answered by an invisible voice.
“Callie?”
I feel the new girl turn to regard me.
I nod.
And I can feel the rest of the group exhale.
I spend the rest of the session counting the stitches on my sneaker and hating this Amanda/Manda person, hating Claire, hating this whole stupid place. Because now everybody knows why I’m here.
I’m at my usual place at dinner that night, at the far end of the long rectangular table, trying to make each mouthful last for twenty chews. That way, it takes me just as long to eat as it does for everybody else to eat and talk. The other girls are turned away, discussing some kind of petition. Sydney says she wants pizza. Tara suggests lowfat yogurt. The petition, I deduce, must be about the food. Becca says she wants croutons without gluten, whatever that is.
“How about an ice cream bar?” Debbie says. “Like a salad bar. You can go back as many times as you want.”