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“I get it,” I said, feeling shaky and embarrassed. “You don’t have to keep talking about it.”
She moved back to her side of the room. “Okay, sorry. But I was worried.”
I rubbed my face with my hands, hard. Sometimes it took along and disorienting amount of time to come back to the present day, and sometimes it was more like being slapped in the face. This was one of the second instances.
As my breathing calmed, Sophie just kept glancing over at me like there was something wrong with me.
Of course there’s something wrong with me! There’s something wrong with all of us in here.
Sophie said, “You did yell a bit, too.”
“I really, truly don’t want to know,” I said.
“Sorry. Just trying to be nice.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s just … well, sometimes it’s hard to wake up here, you know?”
I meant wake upin this century, but of course Sophie didn’t know that. I learned a long time ago not to bother telling roommates about my other life. I wondered, not for the first time, what it was about Jordan that made me think he’d be the one to believe me.
“I know what you mean,” Sophie said. She jabbed at the wall with a pink manicured fingernail. “There’s a bunch of marks here. Someone counting the days they were inside, I bet.”
“I think that was me,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. Sophie’s voice was suddenly quiet and serious. “I’ve been here before, too,” she said. “It was the summer I was twelve.”
“Twelve?” I said incredulously. “You rich kids are supposed to be going tocampthen. Getting Girl Scout badges or whatever.”
“If I hadn’t tried to kill myself, I guess I would’ve gone to summer camp,” Sophie said.
She looked away from me and gazed pensively out the window.She seemed different than she’d been before I … well, before I went to the castle. She was quieter. Sadder.
“Areyoudoing okay?” I asked.
She turned to look at me, and it seemed like she was trying to decide how truthfully to answer the question. But then there was a knock on the door.
“Enter,” said Sophie flatly. “If you dare.”
Jordan poked his head in. “Safety check,” he said.
Sophie’s mood brightened a little. “Bullshit,” she said. “Mitch just made the rounds.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Busted,” Sophie mouthed to me.
Jordan’s agate eyes met mine, and I tried to hide my smile.
“I have something for you, Hannah,” he said. He held out a book, but Sophie grabbed it before I could take it.
“Reasons to Live?” she read, practically howling. “God, that’s a little on the nose for a psych patient, don’t you think?” She turned the cover over. “Though I should probably read it, if I’m being honest with myself.”
“It’s a book of short stories,” Jordan said, sounding pained. He took it back and handed it to me. “They’re fiction.”
It was a thin blue book, and I could tell the copy was used. I opened the front cover. Sure enough, it saidJordan Hassanin neat script.
“I read it in a seminar last year and I thought it was really good,” he said earnestly. “It’s got nothing to do with psychiatry. It’s just these really great stories.” He shuffled from foot to foot in his dumb khakis and his hospital-issue scrub shirt. “They’re, like,funny and sad at the same time. I know you read a lot, so …” And then the rest of the sentence got strangled in his throat.
“Thanks,” I said, placing the book next to me on the bed. “That was really sweet of you.”
