19: BRIGHT PINK
On the ride home I sat with my feet up on the dash, and Dad didn’t ask me to move them. Maybe he thought I would snap and he didn’t want to bug me. Or maybe it wasn’t a good time to make a big deal about small things. The sun was going down by the time we left the town and were on the highway. We had three hours ahead of us, and Dad said we could stop anywhere I wanted to. All I had to do was speak up and say so.
“I just want to go home, to be honest.”
“Your mum would like to come over and see you.”
“You’re okay with that?” I knew he was okay with that. They were completely okay with the split. And it was me who still couldn’t get used to having parents that were friendly, and not in love. It was just one more thing to add to my list of things to think about.
“Of course she can come to the house. You know that, Val. And you can go to hers. You can even live with her like she’s offered several times.”
“I’m not leaving or going anywhere.”
“I didn’t say you had to. I just want you happy again.”
The highway was spread out ahead of us, and it was almost empty besides our car. The coast was to the right of the car, and if you flew up over the guard rail, there was still some land to drive over before going off the edge. It was safe. Someone had thought things through before putting the highway right next to the ocean.
I’m sorry for scaring you.
He didn’t say anything. His eyes stayed on the road in front of him, and I waited for some kind of response from him to let me know he could listen if I spoke up. But he stayed how he was. Completely still. He had both hands on the wheel, he didn’t even tilt his head my way. It was like I was alone.
I held a gun up to my head and I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t been interrupted. I kind of do know, though. And I really regret it. It feels horrible to know what could have happened…I don’t feel like that was even me.
There was so much road in front of us, and Dad kept his eyes on it while I glanced off to the side and pictured what it must be like to know you couldn’t control your kid’s happiness anymore. There wasn't a happy switch that could be turned on or off by showing someone a toy, or taking them to fun places. Joy and happiness and being okay were all things in themselves, and seemed to come and go regardless of the surroundings. It had to be hard knowing that I was prone to saddness no matter what he did. But it was going to be okay as long as Dad knew it wasn’t his fault or anybody else's.
“Dad I haven’t felt good in a while.”
He looked over at me.
“And it’s not because of the split or anything like that…I mean I’m sure that adds to it, but still. I’ve just been feeling like this and I don’t know why. I’ve been acting different, and doing things I wouldn't normally do this past year. I feel…exhausted.”
“I understand.”
I had so much to tell him. But I was still coming to terms with it myself, and I wasn’t ready to talk to people I knew. I had been aware that I wasn’t feeling well for awhile. And I didn’t want anyone to know because I didn’t have a reason to feel bad or hate myself. I was a good person, with good grades, and a good life, and I was embarrassed to be depressed. Mum and Dad didn’t deserve to have a daughter with problems.
“Val, you just scare me sometimes. You scare both your mum and I. It’s why we wanted you to go in that program.”
“I’m sorry for being how I was.”
“You don’t need to say you’re sorry—just show me you’re sorry.” He turned and looked at me. His eyebrows came together into one long one. He was angry with me, but trying to hold back for my sake. “Do differently, act better. Stop getting in trouble. Accept help for yourself. That is the ultimate sorry.”
“Okay.”
New Horizons was in the background somewhere, behind us. It would be always something I remembered though. Like Sharon suggested. Because we were allowed to remember everything about our lives. Bad and good things. It was all we could do on our own. Cabin 519 had woken me up, shocked me to life, and I hoped it was enough for the other residents inside of it too.
“I’m just glad it was you they found and not the other girl.”
“Who else would it be out there?” I said. There couldn’t be too many people wearing my ugly clothes. It was the middle of nowhere, and it was pretty easy to see who I was.
“The other girl,” Dad said.
“The other girl?” I had no idea what he meant by that.
“The other one who got out,” Dad said. “She’s still missing.”
“There was no other one. I got out on my own.”
“No, before you,” Dad said. “Officer Marks said they’ve been looking for her since before you went missing.”
My eyebrows must have been on the very top of my head. Because they couldn’t have been talking about who I thought they were talking about. The girl who had asked for my help the night at the ward. The girl who had used me to escape out a window—-
“She’s still missing,” he said.
“Jenny?” I said. Jenny Shoulders. There was no way she had gotten out. She had a broken leg. She had no chance. “How the hell did she get out?!”
“I don’t know. I could ask you that too.”
And there it was. The real truth. The hole in the system wasn’t one that I had only found. Because it was something else that people had talked about, had known about, and I had happened to stumble upon. I had gotten lucky, whereas she had been planning it. Jenny Shoulders had jumped from a window, and Jenny Shoulders may or may not have broken her leg, but Jenny Shoulders had gotten out. Just like Lisa Hatcher had said, just like I’d seen, just like I had told little Bambi—
And Guy had lied. Like he was supposed to do because it was his job.
I sat and listened to the radio come in and out. Dad kept switching the channels, trying to find one with a clear signal. About an hour and a half later it switched out again, and he turned it to country. I didn’t even like country but it was relaxing to hear something you couldn’t hum along to. I just sat there and listened.
“Oh there’s a package in the back for you.”
I looked over my shoulder. There was a small box. The flaps were closed but not sealed with anything. I reached back and pulled it onto my lap.
“One of your counsellors said for me to give it to you.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know her name.”
“Was she old?”
“Yes.”
I pictured old Sharon handing him the box. Telling him to give it to me because I was still crazy and needed my junk to stay well in the real world. I opened the box and pulled out the first thing that was taking up the most space. It was my water jug, with the number 49 written on the front, and it was completely empty. That was something you didn’t want to happen. Beside the jug was a colourful dream catcher.
I smiled.
Somewhere in the real world, maybe somewhere close by, maybe somewhere far away, was a girl I had temporally named Karen, a girl who had showed me a version of herself, a girl who had given up her interpretation of a dream catcher to me. That girl left with a black one instead of her original design, which was sad to think about. But I imagined her rolling her eyes at her plain dream catcher, remembering me, which was wonderful and worth it, and then I pictured the other girls too, and wondered where they were at. I pictured Kenzie back home with her ears filled in with metal again, like she wanted, and Brooke lying about something disgusting to her mom, maybe that she had held in her piss the entire time, and then finally, Twin with a cigarette in her mouth, because I didn’t know any other way to picture her. I didn’t really know Twin, but then again, I didn’t know any of them, and that was the nice thing about strangers.
Outside the car the sun was finally going down. There were so many different colours spread out across the sky. There was orange, and red, and yellow, and bright pink. All wild and crazy colours
that only popped out once in a while to say goodbye before the day was done, and give us hope that things were pretty sometimes.
I pictured Jenny Shoulders, and I imagined her to be free somewhere, hitch hiking, and running the same triathlon I had run. There were options when you wanted out. Bambi had taken her life in one way, and that Jenny Shoulders had taken it in another. If you wanted to get away, you didn’t have to kill yourself—you could take your life somewhere else, away from people and their problems, and try again, instead of not at all. Sometimes, a change in scenery could fix a few things.
“What’s all in there?” Dad asked.
“A bunch of garbage I had in the program.” I looked at the very bottom of the box. There was one last item I pulled out.
It was a letter.
I first assumed it was from Sharon telling me to be good in the real world, and I wanted to yell “Yeah, I’m going to do just swell”. But it was much worse than that when I opened it.
Hey Valerie.
I just wanted to let you know a few things in case you’re listening somewhere else. It doesn’t matter who you are, or what you do—you’re always going to have your past as a constant reminder of what you have been. And even though you think this program fixed something inside of you, I want you to know something——
You’re still all in there.
Your life is all in your head. The good and especially the bad. But if you keep yourself as a buddy, nobody else can mess with you.
In case they brainwash you into thinking you’re fixed, I just want to remind you that nothing was ever wrong with you in the first place.
You’re fine. It’s in your capacity to have a messed up life or not. Decide to be good, and everyone else can go fuck themselves.
Don’t let them get you.
-Val
Instead of ripping up the letter, I recalled the anger of the troubled soul who had the tools in her bare hands to do well—to stay sane. The truth to my problems were in those scribbled lines, something I had written out myself. I felt a wash of disappointment deep in my gut for not understanding it sooner—-
At the bottom of my letter was my paint chip. It was stapled to the letter, dangling off the page. The wrinkles from crinkling it up were still there, but someone had attempted to smooth it out for me. I pulled the paint chip off the page, lifted it up in front of my face, and stared at it until it and the sky became one blur of bright pink.
“You okay, Val?” Dad asked.
I laid my head back on the seat and looked through the windshield as slow tears dripped out of the corners of my eyes. Maybe I was going to miss that place, miss Sharon, miss the chance of getting to know Tracy and the other girls outside of their issues. And maybe it was going to be something I would get over as new people came into my life, and replaced the old.
Way out in front of me was the line of the horizon. It was a perspective, and something that didn’t actually exist anywhere but from far away. I’d never thought about it like that until right then—that I couldn’t go out and touch the line between the sky and the earth, or, if there even was a line. To me, a horizon just seemed to be two things gradually coming together, but never crossing over.
-Editing by LC-
-Cover design: Jake Caleb-
https://www.jcalebdesign.com
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