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I would've cut that tether, joining my emptiness with the great vacuum of the beyond. I might have found some peace.
I can't believe my shit for luck. I should be the one the review board is talking to. Angel's just gonna tell them whatever she wants and I'll have to live with it.
Being powerless is a feeling I will never be comfortable with. I just won't. I've tried. I've been taking the backseat through this whole damned process.
Maybe I haven't pressed hard enough.
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42
-Angel
Hopefully, today is the last I'll have to suffer through. When I'm done serving up my guts on a platter, I can go back to Canyon View to rot and wait for death to take me.
Guards escort me back into the small blue room. I'm put into my seat at the vinyl-wood table. Today, I'm anxious to vomit the words. I have no intention of waiting for anyone to prompt me. But my plan is interrupted by Darren, the quiet man whose name reminds me of the guy on that old TV show about the genie.
"What happened when you woke up in the hospital?" He asks.
This throws me. "I don't remember exactly what was wrong with me."
"We have the hospital records right here, if you'd like to go over them." Quiet Darren sets his thin hand over one of the many manila folders on the table in front of him.
Tara and her tight bun are sitting beside him. She looks a little pale.
I shake my head, refusing. I don't need to see the records. My own memories are enough for now. I'll check theirs out if or when the time comes.
"I was in a lot of pain. My left shoulder was sprained, my left wrist, too. My arm was in a sling, but I'm right handed, so . . ."
My lawyer lightly shakes his head. Tara looks down. Darren sits back in his chair.
They must think I'm so stupid, that I don't realize the magnitude of what's not being said. I know I can't always trust my own mind, that's why I made the point that this proclamation is all my perception. Mine. What I saw. When I saw it.
What they don't understand is how it feels to be me.
Living with my problems is like trying to negotiate a one-way maze. I can only go forward and every passage, every choice, looks the same. All I see is the path I think I should take. Nothing is certain-there is no logic, only guess work. So what seems like the right place to turn can end up a dead-end. If I could've only gotten some distance, some height, I could've seen where I was going wrong. But I'll never get to go back, never start over. I look back now and see the wall of problems for what they were. I have accepted that I made wrong turns and am living with the dead ends.
At seventeen, I was working inside a complex problem with limited information. I didn't know I was afraid of Avery's choices. I still am. She has always tried to push things, push people and their situations. IN her mind, she needs to test every boundary, every person. She needs to know when they'll break.
When she twisted Rosa's arm behind her back that day in the girls' bathroom, I knew she wanted to break it.
Once, when she was taking a shower, her mind just went off on some tangent, wondering 'what would happen if I just stayed in here?' Because she was curious how people might react. But mere wondering is never, ever enough. She has to know the answers. Avery stayed inside that shower until the hot water was gone, until she got all pruney, until she was freezing, until someone came pounding on the door, until someone broke it down, until they physically dragged her out of the shower and made her get dressed.
Pushing, pushing, and pushing just to see what might happen when a person is faced with the unexpected.
I know Darren asked me about when I woke up in the hospital, but that doesn't seem so important at the moment. "I first saw Avery on the day of my accident. Did I ever tell you that?"
My mouth is all watery and my throat feels a mile wide. "Her mean-streak was showing the first time I talked to her. That was after my accident, after I got out of the hospital."
I have to shake my head at my own unbelievable idiocy, the same stupidity that kept me blindly comforted from the first. "It wasn't like I saw what she was doing and thought, 'Oh, she is violent!' It was more like I couldn't understand and made no judgment. I was a stupid kid."
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I was placed with my first foster family after they released me from the hospital, after the second surgery to repair my skull. Avery happened to live in the same apartment complex. I was upstairs and she was down.
On days when my head was hurting too much to go to school, I would lie in my room and look out the window at the playground behind the complex. Some days, Avery was there. Most times, other kids in the complex were out there, too. I thought, at first, that she was playing with them, but as I watched I saw that she was only playing near them. It was interesting how she didn't seem to care that the other kids weren't talking to her or inviting her to play.
I have no memory of the accident itself, only some parts that I dreamed about, but I always remembered Avery being there. I saw her on the ground, calling to me after I hit that tree.
