Sealed

There’s a chip in the paint on the wall. Right at eye level, a pale green iris. It’s annoying. Who paints a room green, anyway? Someone obsessed with vegetables, probably. Or grass, or snot. Not to yuck anyone’s yum, but whoever said green was a calming color probably had a snot fetish.

“Rebecca, we need you to tell us what happened, in your own words.”

I cock my head to the left and refocus on the woman across from me. My social worker, Rita. Not my first, but not one of the distinguishable ones, either. Just another who insists they know what’s best after only knowing me a week. I smirk a little, just the slightest uptick of the right side, and blink slowly. Waiting.

She doesn’t disappoint. The trained, professional smile fades to a thin, pressed line. The carefully friendly twinkle hardens as her gaze twitches down to her freshly interlocked fingers. A pause, a reestablishment of stern eye contact, and “We can’t help you if you don’t help us,” spoken in that tone only exasperated adults who desperately want to believe they’re good with children can pull off. Typical.

“It’s always like this, Ms. Levine,” my mother answers for me. “She can scare me half to death Lord knows how many times, but accepting help is always out of the question. No one hurts like Rebecca, no one knows better than - don’t snort at me, girl.” The steel of her presence, previously molded to covet Rita’s sympathies, flicks a barbed warning against my pride. “I bent over backwards to get you into this facility and you are going to do the work you need to come home, you hear me? This isn’t a joke.” They always believed me. I could have put you in jail. You would do well to thank me.

It’s too much. My ire, already boiling, bubbles over at the petty slight. Of course I know it’s not a joke. I’m not stupid. This isn’t my first rodeo. But I also know what’s in my file. I know that this entire stay is nothing but a big charade put on by comfortable adults looking to pat themselves on the back for slapping a bandage on Pandora’s box. Even if it wasn’t, nobody believes teenage girls branded with a scarlet “Liar.” There’s no point. Nobody’s ever going to look deep enough to question. No one’s ever going to notice the discrepancies. Nothing I say today will matter. Nothing I ever say will matter. The heat in my body shifts, and a scarlet haze of helplessness floods my vision, clouds my connection to Earth.

I feel my eyes roll before I can stop them.

I freeze, preparing for the consequence of such a dire mistake.

There’s a crash, and shards of her phone’s screen trickle like diamonds down onto the carpet. The crunch of the brick’s collision slides to a brief thunk as the sheetrock rejects its new ornament. “YOU WILL ANSWER ME, OR SO HELP ME GOD, I WILL MAKE YOU REGRET BEING BORN.”

My foot twitches. One, two, three bounces to resurface -

“See what I mean? I swear I don’t know what to do with her anymore.” My mother huffs back against her chair, her arms half raised in a gesture both pleading and resigned. Her best “concerned parent” face always looked that of a constipated owl on a stubborn hunt to me, but it seemed to do the trick for yet another clinician.

“It’s normal for them to be uncomfortable at this stage, what with this being a new placement and all,” Rita assures her, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the shock of new placement wears off after the seventh or eighth time. Seriously, no one listens to kids. “Why don’t we focus on you for the moment. Can you tell me…” 

“...WHAT DID YOU THINK WOULD HAPPEN? YOU REALLY THOUGHT YOU COULD SNEAK AROUND LIKE THIS AND I WOULDN’T NOTICE?”

I’m frozen in front of the half-packed suitcase on my bed. My mother, leaning against the doorframe for support, stabs a finger in my direction as an apparent accent to her point. Jean, Dad’s girlfriend, my haven, moves to stand slightly in front of me.

Bouncebouncebouncebounce - 

“...and the awful things she says about us, about her placements, all unsubstantiated of course. You have that down, right?”

“Angela, you knew we were coming to get her--”

“THE HELL I DID!” She takes a step forward.

“Angela--”

“SHE’S MY DAUGHTER, YOU HEAR ME?! ONLY SNAKES WOULD CONVINCE HER OTHERWISE, TO BETRAY ME!”

Jean steps up to meet her, reaches for her. “You’ve been drinking, let’s talk about this in the morn--”

“SHUT. UP.”

“Why do you think she says those things?”

“To hurt me, I assume.”

There’s blood. Blood everywhere. Painted on the jagged edges of the holes in the window, streaming between Jean’s fingers, covering what’s visible of her face behind her hands, trickling down her arms, blood and -- something clear? She pulls her hands away to reveal a shard of glass lodged in one of her pale green eyes. The other’s wide with fear. I feel myself drop.

“OH NOW YOU’VE DONE IT, REBECCA. NOW I HAVE TO CALL AN AMBULANCE. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO EXPLAIN THIS? TELL ME, REBECCA!”

“I…” I want to rush to Jean’s side, clean her up, sit her down, get her out of here. It’s my fault she’s here, my fault she’s hurt. If I was better at taking care of myself, if I’d tried harder to hold down a job, to hide a car so I could drive myself, or just left with Dad when he - I don’t know just something other than sitting here, watching her bleed - 

“I did it,” I hear a small voice - my voice - say. “I pushed her.” 

Rita’s expression softens, a particular blend of sadness and relief that I’ve seen on the faces of health workers known to both fear and take offense to their clients.

“We’re here to help you, in any way we can, okay?” She tries to smile, does whatever it is adults do that makes the parental aura emanate at maximum power. “I know you’ve had a rough go of it, what with the circumstances of your parents’ divorce. I can only imagine how confused and alone you feel right now. But that’s no reason to hurt others, okay?”

Having sealed my fate, I return my gaze to the wall. 

A single green eye dares me to correct her.