shared. Not everything. Nowhere near it. But more than I’d ever told anyone else—much to the frustration of countless therapists, counselors, and doctors.
Aria stayed silent through it all, her pleasantly blank shrink mask quickly falling to reveal sisterly horror and anger.
Once I was done, she still didn’t speak. Her narrowed gaze was aimed at the wall, but I doubted she saw anything. I was pretty sure I was supposed to offer some reassurance or console her in some way, but my multitude of drugs had kicked in, and I was back to blissfully numb.
After a few stretching minutes, my sister finally dragged her gaze to me. Her beautiful face was set with stubborn determination, and when she spoke, her voice was firm.
“You’re not going back there. You’re coming to live with me.”
Chapter One
Dead
Briar
For Aria
I WISHED I were dead.
That wasn’t an exaggeration. It wasn’t dramatics. It wasn’t residual teen angst flowing unbridled through my twenty-one-year-old mind.
It was the truth—cold and unrelenting like the very death I craved.
Okay, fine. That was definitely skating the line of emo dramatics. Very Poe-esque. Or maybe Plath—she’d killed herself by sticking her head in an oven with the gas on. If that wasn’t theatrics, I didn’t know what was.
The point was, when my group counselor at Redmond Mental Health Center asked me how I was feeling, my first thought was that I wished I were dead. Not that I said it out loud, of course. Giving voice to the feelings that haunted me would ensure an involuntary stay in a special facility.
Again.
No, as I looked at my counselor’s stamped-on smile, I forced one of my own. And then I lied as easily as I breathed. Easier, actually. “I had a really good week. I’m finally moved into my new apartment. It’s small but really nice.”
“I’m glad,” he said, though his tone sounded anything but. I gave him another two weeks—a month, tops—before he quit.
They all quit eventually.
It was that, or they would end up putting a bullet in their heads. Listening to a bunch of clinically depressed people turn even the brightest rainbow into a rainstorm wore on anyone after a while.
And Derrick—who’d started out calm, cool, and filled with a bright-eyed optimism—had seemingly reached that point.
“Having your own space is very important,” he continued, saying shit I already knew. “Do you know why?”
I absentmindedly stroked the ends of my long hair. “It gives me a sense of responsibility, belonging, and control.”
Which does jack-fucking-shit to calm the unease that boils under my skin every second of every hour of every day.
“That’s right.” Derrick’s smile grew a little less artificial, as if my answer gave him a momentary validation that he wasn’t wasting his time.
He was.
But it was nice he could still believe he was making a difference, so I returned his smile.
Hey, just because I lived my life with death lurking over my shoulder and pessimism fueling my thoughts didn’t mean I believed everyone else had to.
We moved on from me quickly, switching to Jenna who was having a fit because her hours at work were changing and she just could not deal. The horror. The insult.
The humanity!
Depression was hard enough to deal with. Depression with control issues was worse. Jenna had both with the addition of an unhealthy dose of narcissism—the trifecta of terror.
She wasn’t the only one in a mood that afternoon. It wasn’t uncommon in the young adult group. Actually, I was willing to bet it wasn’t uncommon in any group. It made me wonder how effective that form of therapy actually was. Everyone seemed to feed off one another, making them desperate to be seen. To be heard. To receive confirmation that they hadn’t sunk into the nothingness of full adulthood, all hope and excitement gone from their young lives. Their stories fueled one another to top them, each determined to be the very best.
Well, the very best at having it the very worst.
They knew the squeakiest wheel got the oil—or attention, in our case—so squeak-squeak they did.
I didn’t want the attention.
I didn’t want to share and listen and progress.
Nope, I just wanted the aforementioned death.
As if magically sensing my mood, the one human bright spot in my life walked down the hall with a cluster of people. They paused on the other side of the large, shatterproof window, glancing in like we were a zoo exhibit for them to observe. Before it could set me on edge, she took the opportunity to give me a goofy wave and a goofier thumbs