Page 17 of Mad Girl

“Why do you feel so threatened by me?” you asked, keeping your head cocked—and that thoroughly pissed me off.

“You do not”—I laughed bitterly—“threaten me.”

“I’m here to help your dad however I can. That’s all.”

“I don’t need your help. My dad and I? We don’t need help from anyone.”

“It’s okay to let new people in,” you said. “It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. If you give me a chance, I think we could be friends.”

“I don’t need another friend. You and I will never be friends.”

“That’s rather unfortunate,” you replied, your eyebrows knitting together. “I hope you’ll change your mind, because it looks like we’ll be spending quite a lot of time together.”

Doubting my ability to respond in a way that didn’t include violence, I stomped upstairs and slammed my bedroom door.

Every day the following week, I stormed home from school and went straight to my room, and it was hell. It was like being grounded, but you weren’t watching me. No fucking way. You were there each day, waiting for me on the stairs, the first thing I saw when I walked through the front door. When you asked about my day, I shot you a death glare and refused to speak, but that didn’t deter you from asking anyway. You even left snacks outside my door. Once, you left apple slices. Fucking apple slices, Casey. Like I was five.

Determined, I spent an alarming amount of time devising ways to make your life a living hell like I’d promised, but I didn’t know you well enough yet to know what made you tick.

On nights and weekends, I hid in my room until hunger made it absolutely necessary to emerge. There’d be a plate saved for me in the fridge, waiting to be warmed up, but I’d scrape that food—no matter how appealing it looked—into the trash and grab something random from the pantry instead.

That one time, I found you and Nic talking at the kitchen island, and I can picture the scene so clearly. The dark blue-gray of the cabinets. The black soapstone counters. The big brass faucet in the island, burnished with age. The glossy, pearlescent square tiles on the backsplash. Your copper teakettle, sitting on the middle eye of our French range, its aged brass knobs matching the brass handle of your kettle. The mahogany stools where you and Nic sat, both pausing to watch me as I grabbed a protein bar from the pantry.

“I miss seeing you downstairs, Elliot,” Nic said. “I wish you’d start joining us for dinner.”

It did look like Nic missed me, and that pissed me off. Because Nic had chosen this. He had. I slowly walked over to the fridge, grabbed my dinner from the middle shelf, and while the two of you watched, dropped the plate into the sink. Dropped it so hard the porcelain shattered into three separate pieces.

Now I’m not saying my behavior was mature, Casey, or even close to being right. I’m ashamed of how I acted back then. But as I left the kitchen that evening, I felt justified in my anger. Giving my dad the silent treatment was the only thing that gave me some modicum of control in a situation where, once again, Nic had completely stripped me of it.

LETTER FIVE

93 WEEKS LEFT

Today didn’t go as planned.

I pissed off my cellmate again, because the bruise she gave me last week had faded to a barely detectable yellow smudge on my cheek. So yesterday morning while she slept, I ripped open her packets of instant coffee and emptied them all over our squatty little sink.

When she woke up and saw what I’d done, she snatched me off the bottom bunk by my hair, dragged me across our cell, and smashed my face against the side of the toilet seat. I fell to the floor, laughing, which only enraged her more, so she yanked me up by my hair again and kneed me in the eye. I writhed next to the toilet, clutching the right side of my face, moaning, “Oh my God. Yes. Thank you. Yes.”

That bitch gaped at me, half in awe, half disgusted. Because, I mean, the sounds I made, Casey, they sounded like sex sounds, even to me. She said, “The fuck. You wanted that, didn’t you? What special kind of fucked up are you, rich girl?”

I refrained from telling her: The worst kind.

The girls in the cells surrounding us wanted to know what had happened, and she happily dished.

So they all know about my fucked up relationship with pain now.

Even in here, I’m a freak.

When the guard brought me out to the visitors’ lounge today, and you saw that angry bruise on my cheek—my right eye, completely swollen shut—you straightened in your chair, horrified.

Not even thirty seconds ticked by before you finally gave it back to me: the warm melody of your voice.

“What’s happened to your face?” you demanded, instantly soothing me, better than any balm ever could.

I gazed back at you—through my good eye—but didn’t respond.

“Wait,” you said, your eyes narrowed to slits. “Did you do this on purpose? Did you do this because I stopped speaking to you?”