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The girl frowned. “Why are you whispering?”
The smile stuttered.
“I don’t know how to connect with anyone,” Amara told her new therapist, a nice middle-aged black man with an office close to the university campus. “People always ask why I can’t speak normally and I can’t really tell them that I screamed too much now, can I? I don’t think torture is a part of the polite conversation!”
Dr. Nelson watched her quietly, letting her vent the acid out.
“I can’t go out without the bracelets or scarves because one time this boy saw my wrists and asked me what happened. Can people not see it’s something traumatic? Can they not be more sensitive? I miss being myself. I miss being able to just be myself without feeling that I’m broken.”
She stared at the ceiling, watching the fan move slowly, heart thundering after waking up from a nightmare. Her studio apartment was dark, and she was alone. Anyone could break-in. Anyone could take her from her bed. And she wouldn’t be able to even scream for help.
She watched the ceiling, wondering why she was even there, wondering how high the fan was from the floor, wondering if it could hold enough weight.
Then she flushed those thoughts out.
“Do you want me to come to visit you?” Nerea asked on the phone. “We can have a weekend of fun. You can show me around the city.”
“I’d love that, Nerea,” Amara whispered into her phone. “You’ll like the museum here.”
“Do I look like someone who’d enjoy a museum?” Nerea chuckled.
They made plans. Nerea came to see her and for a weekend, Amara felt amazing.
On Monday, loneliness encroached again.
She woke up, went to classes, came back to a dark apartment, studied, and slept.
Rinse and repeat.
Some nights she woke up shaking with nightmares, some she fell into an exhausted sleep. She always aimed for the latter, working and studying and tiring her mind.
A noise made her paus
e, her key in her door, her hand on the handle.
The noise came again, from behind the plant at the side of her door.
Amara bent down, hitching her bag higher on her shoulder, and placed the books in her hands on the floor, her bracelets jingling with the movement, and noise came again. A mewl.
She looked behind the plant to see a tiny little cream-colored kitten with the biggest olive green eyes mewling quietly.
Her heart melted. Picking her up carefully in her palm, Amara brought her up close to her face, a true smile on her lips after so long.
“You lost, baby?” she asked in a small baby voice. “How did you get here?”
The kitten blinked up at her, mewling again, before putting her head on her hand in a motion that made Amara a puddle.
She straightened, unlocked the door, and brought her companion in loneliness home.
“So, what do we call you, huh? Pixie?”
Stare.
“Pogo?”
Stare.
“Stardust?”
