Not bad. As I’d expected, the newly dyed ends of my hair weren’t as bright pink as what was shown on the box, but it was still a pretty nice color. The highly saturated color made my hair seem even paler by comparison, making it look almost white instead of blond.
Now, when people looked at me, the first thing they noticed would be a bright flash of artificial color. Not my naturally blond hair or blue eyes, but rather a feature I chose myself.
It was also something the bell ringers never would have approved of for one of their “angels”.
Nodding in satisfaction, and with some newly regained confidence, I took a quick picture of my new look before heading out of the bathroom. As soon as I opened the door, I could hear the sounds of a party starting down the hall and a smile came to my face.
The atmosphere at the recovery center could often be very gloomy due to the nature of its work, so the staff and patients took every opportunity they could to lighten the mood.
And why shouldn’t we celebrate?
It was an important day for me, after all.
Nearly two years of hard work, and I was finally “graduating” from the facility.
There wasan odd mix of guests at my party. I recognized all the staff, but a lot of the patients were unknown to me. There had apparently been a wave of new arrivals that I hadn’tnoticed while I’d been focused on getting ready for my upcoming graduation.
It wasn’t like a high school graduation, though getting my GED had been a part of it. In this case, “graduation” just meant that I was finally stable enough to leave the facility and live on my own. I had a job and an apartment all lined up. My therapy sessions were down to only once every two weeks, and I hadn’t had a panic attack in months. I was deemed to be as “cured” as I was going to get while living here. Now, it was time for me to get out there and start living life on my own.
It was terrifying, but also exciting. I’d been pursuing this goal for so long. Now that it was here, I wasn’t entirely sure what to feel.
The facility’s rec room had been set up with festive decorations. Paper streamers hung in loops from the ceiling, and a banner that read “Congratulations” had been positioned slightly crooked over the door. Two dozen balloons of different sizes and colors drifted over the floor. The facility couldn’t afford helium to make them float properly, but their bright colors still looked cheerful.
A sheet cake covered in rainbow frosting sat on a table at the center of the room, surrounded by paper plates and plastic utensils, just waiting to be cut into servings for everyone.
Altogether, the party probably cost no more than fifty bucks. The recovery center was mostly funded by donations, so they didn’t have a lot of extra money to spare. Yet, I still felt choked up just looking at everything that had been set up for me.
I’d never had a party before. Maybe, before I was taken by the bell ringers, I’d had birthday parties like every other normal kid. I wasn’t sure how young I was when they took me, because I didn’t really remember anything before my imprisonment.
So, there was a chance this wasn’t the first party I’d ever had, but it was the first one I remembered, and that made it the most important.
After a speech from the head of the recovery center, where the woman talked about how proud everyone was of my progress, each of the therapists and nurses that had worked with me stepped forward to say something about my time there. It had mostly been lighthearted anecdotes, including the time I’d sleepwalked down to the kitchen and proceeded to rearrange every silverware drawer.
Until then, I hadn’t even realized that I had a sleepwalking problem. While living on the street, it wasn’t uncommon for me to wake up in a location where I didn’t remember falling asleep, but back then, I assumed it was just a symptom of exhaustion and malnutrition. Not to mention I frequently disassociated during my more unpleasant… “jobs”.
Compared to that, not remembering where I fell asleep seemed like a simple problem, but no. Apparently, I’d been wandering the streets of San Francisco while completely asleep. It was a miracle I hadn’t been hit by a car.
I’d been told by the nurses that sleepwalking could be a symptom of stress, and that seemed to be the case for me as well. As I recovered, my sleepwalking episodes had decreased. It had been over a year since my last one, so hopefully, they were gone for good.
Once everyone had said their piece and congratulated me, the kitchen staff brought out a knife to cut the cake. There were no candles to blow out, as apparently that was considered too much of a fire hazard, but I was given the first piece. Right off the corner, so I got the most frosting.
Because, as everyone knew, cake was really just a vessel for transferring frosting into my mouth.
Once I had my piece, I thanked the staff again before retreating into the corner of the rec room so the others could also get some cake as well. Many of the patients, especially the new arrivals, didn’t like being crowded by other people, so I gave them as much space as possible.
Fuck, a lot of these patients looked young. At twenty-two, I wasn’t exactly old myself, but some of these new faces looked like they hadn’t even hit puberty yet.
It was like looking in a mirror. The heavy bags under their eyes, their defensive posture whenever someone came too close, and the way they kept flinching over nothing like they were waiting for pain that never came.
Yeah, I recognized it all. That was exactly what I looked like when I first arrived here.
It would have been a depressing sight, except, I noticed that every time one of the patients was handed a piece of cake, their faces still lit up into a genuine smile.
I laughed to myself as I took a bite of my own cake and savored the way the sugar melted on my tongue. It really was the simple pleasures that mattered most.
I was about halfway through my cake when I felt something tug at my sleeve. At first, I looked to my side with my face tilted slightly up, expecting it to be one of the facility staff who were all a little taller than me, but I saw no one there. It was only when I adjusted my gaze down, very far down, that I noticed the young girl standing next to me.
Based on her face, she looked to be about sixteen, but her short stature and stick thin body made her look more like she was twelve. The way she fidgeted like a nervous mouse didn’t help her young appearance, either.
