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Authors: Emily Carpenter
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caring that her finger was shaking and he could see it.
“Don’t you never do anything like that again, you hear? I mean it.”
She turned back to the dishes, and the boy rose from the table and went out to the front porch to join his father.
Chapter Seven
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Mobile, Alabama
I woke up late, the room bright with midmorning sun. Jay lay beside me, arms flung over his head. I rolled away from him. On a morning like this, a normal girl would’ve been feeling . . . what, exactly? Triumphant? Possibly. Or, at the very least, she’d be replaying every lascivious detail in her head.
But I’d never been anywhere close to normal, and right now all I felt was anxiety-riddled, my nerves buzzing under my skin, mind racing with thoughts of escape.
I checked the pads of my fingers for any trace of gold. All clear, completely normal. Jay’s torso and arms looked clear too. Maybe I really was getting better. I slipped from between the sheets, picked up my pants and blouse, and crept to the bathroom. I pulled open a couple of drawers looking for some toothpaste and saw it. The bottle of painkillers. Lortab.
My mouth watered and my jaw ached as I imagined the bitter crush of powder in my mouth. I shook my head. Pressed my lips together. Hard.
I picked up the bottle and could instantly feel the warmth the pills would provide; the buoyant feeling that would overtake me, if I took them. Wynn and Molly Robb and Dr. Duncan would shrink to little dots of no consequence. My dad’s words would recede into darkness. I’d be free.
For a while.
I set the bottle beside the sink and eyed it as I pulled on my clothes. On my way out, I stopped. I could take it, stash it in my purse, just in case I found myself in a bind and in need of emergency help. I wouldn’t go so far as to open it. Just knowing the pills were there would be enough to make me feel better. I twisted off the cap and poured the pills into my hand. Replaced the bottle in the drawer.
In the kitchen, I dropped the pills into a zippered compartment of my purse and pulled on my boots. A calendar hung above Jay’s mom’s neat desk, and I put my finger on the last square of the month. September 30, my birthday. Two weeks away, to the day.
Schizophrenia might be genetic, directly inherited even, but the nonsense Dad was spouting about it manifesting on the exact day I turn thirty? That was ludicrous. Medically impossible. On the other hand, if he was telling the truth about some part of it, if something really did happen to Trix, Collie, and Jinn on their thirtieth birthdays, how could I ignore that?
I felt it then—the dark, spidery thing that seemed to always hover around me, that fear or madness or whatever it was I’d held back for so long with booze and pills and now AA mantras. It was back, creeping through my brain again, just like when I was a girl.
If my dad and Dr. Duncan and Wynn were right, if I was genetically predisposed for schizophrenia, then I was going to get it no matter what happened. So I could either sit around, gulping Lortab to keep the visions of gold and red ravens at bay until Wynn came to lock me up in the nuthouse. Or I could fight. I could go back out there into the real world and face the darkness. Find out what had really happened to the women in my family.
I studied the Red Raven cigar box, sitting in the center of the island, and I felt a wave of dread wash over me. I couldn’t do it anymore, this white-knuckling my way through life. I had to find out the truth. If I could find out what had happened to my mother—and to my grandmother and great-grandmother—maybe I could figure out a way to stop it from happening to me. Their stories were the only chance I had.
I knew nothing about our family history on my mother’s side. I had an aunt and an uncle and a handful of cousins on my dad’s side, but it was as if my mother had just sprung up out of the river. No one talked about her family. And now, I had two
“Don’t you never do anything like that again, you hear? I mean it.”
She turned back to the dishes, and the boy rose from the table and went out to the front porch to join his father.
Chapter Seven
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Mobile, Alabama
I woke up late, the room bright with midmorning sun. Jay lay beside me, arms flung over his head. I rolled away from him. On a morning like this, a normal girl would’ve been feeling . . . what, exactly? Triumphant? Possibly. Or, at the very least, she’d be replaying every lascivious detail in her head.
But I’d never been anywhere close to normal, and right now all I felt was anxiety-riddled, my nerves buzzing under my skin, mind racing with thoughts of escape.
I checked the pads of my fingers for any trace of gold. All clear, completely normal. Jay’s torso and arms looked clear too. Maybe I really was getting better. I slipped from between the sheets, picked up my pants and blouse, and crept to the bathroom. I pulled open a couple of drawers looking for some toothpaste and saw it. The bottle of painkillers. Lortab.
My mouth watered and my jaw ached as I imagined the bitter crush of powder in my mouth. I shook my head. Pressed my lips together. Hard.
I picked up the bottle and could instantly feel the warmth the pills would provide; the buoyant feeling that would overtake me, if I took them. Wynn and Molly Robb and Dr. Duncan would shrink to little dots of no consequence. My dad’s words would recede into darkness. I’d be free.
For a while.
I set the bottle beside the sink and eyed it as I pulled on my clothes. On my way out, I stopped. I could take it, stash it in my purse, just in case I found myself in a bind and in need of emergency help. I wouldn’t go so far as to open it. Just knowing the pills were there would be enough to make me feel better. I twisted off the cap and poured the pills into my hand. Replaced the bottle in the drawer.
In the kitchen, I dropped the pills into a zippered compartment of my purse and pulled on my boots. A calendar hung above Jay’s mom’s neat desk, and I put my finger on the last square of the month. September 30, my birthday. Two weeks away, to the day.
Schizophrenia might be genetic, directly inherited even, but the nonsense Dad was spouting about it manifesting on the exact day I turn thirty? That was ludicrous. Medically impossible. On the other hand, if he was telling the truth about some part of it, if something really did happen to Trix, Collie, and Jinn on their thirtieth birthdays, how could I ignore that?
I felt it then—the dark, spidery thing that seemed to always hover around me, that fear or madness or whatever it was I’d held back for so long with booze and pills and now AA mantras. It was back, creeping through my brain again, just like when I was a girl.
If my dad and Dr. Duncan and Wynn were right, if I was genetically predisposed for schizophrenia, then I was going to get it no matter what happened. So I could either sit around, gulping Lortab to keep the visions of gold and red ravens at bay until Wynn came to lock me up in the nuthouse. Or I could fight. I could go back out there into the real world and face the darkness. Find out what had really happened to the women in my family.
I studied the Red Raven cigar box, sitting in the center of the island, and I felt a wave of dread wash over me. I couldn’t do it anymore, this white-knuckling my way through life. I had to find out the truth. If I could find out what had happened to my mother—and to my grandmother and great-grandmother—maybe I could figure out a way to stop it from happening to me. Their stories were the only chance I had.
I knew nothing about our family history on my mother’s side. I had an aunt and an uncle and a handful of cousins on my dad’s side, but it was as if my mother had just sprung up out of the river. No one talked about her family. And now, I had two
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