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“From 1955, starring James Dean. We should leave in about an hour if we’re going to get good seats.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. “Okay.” An event like this wasunprecedented, and I felt a dizzying surge of nerves.
“I’ll come get you in your room,” Jordan said.
“It’s a date,” I said, trying to be flip. “I mean—not really. Obviously.”
He blinked at me. “Right,” he said.
My cheeks flushed scarlet; I could feel them. The world in which a person like me could go on a date with a person like him wasdefinitelya fantasy world.
I ducked my head and all but ran back to my room.
CHAPTER 55
I ripped off my shapeless, oversized clothes and threw them at the foot of my bed. In the bathroom I turned the shower on so hot that clouds of steam billowed out. When I stepped under the stream, I gasped—first at the heat, and then at the almost unbearable pleasure of all that water pouring over my skin. I closed my eyes.
I dimly remembered being bathed after my admission to Belman, but I couldn’t name the last time I’d run a bar of soap down my own arms. It was such a basic, human act of self-care, and I hadn’t done it. Hadn’t eventhoughtabout it.
That’s because you’re just trying to keep it together, I told myself.Because you have bigger problems than how messed up your hair looks.
When I came out of the shower, my skin bright pink and cleaner than it had been in days, I found a gray sweatshirt and a pair of black pants in my drawer, plus a pair of socks that seemed to match as long as you didn’t look at them too closely. I’d definitely worn better outfits in my life. But then again, I’d also been stark raving mad and half naked on a street corner, so this hand-me-down comfort wear was … okay. I wondered if Amy would let me put laces into my shoes before I went out.
I used a hospital-issue comb to brush through my knotted hair,and then, in front of the unbreakable mirror, I smiled at myself for the first time in weeks.
I’d been pretty once, I knew that. But if I had to pick an adjective to describe myself now, it wouldn’t be pretty. It would be haunted. My eyes were huge in my too-thin face and my skin was pale as milk.
I pinched my cheeks until they grew rosy, and that helped a little. Belman staff confiscated patients’ makeup, so there was no mascara to borrow from anyone. I thought about the time when Michaela, furious at having to give up her Stila liner, took a Sharpie from the nurse’s station and used it to draw a thick black line around her eyes, with Cleopatra wings in the corners and everything.
“That looks … deranged,” Indy had said to me as we watched her parade up and down the lounge.
I thought it looked defiant and glamorous. It took days to fade.
“Hello, Lily-Hannah, I’m back.”
I whirled around. Sophie stood in the doorway, accompanied by a mental health tech I didn’t recognize. Her wrist was taped, and she was struggling to hold a tiny, lopsided smile on her face.
I ran over and hugged her, holding tight for a split second before the tech moved us apart. “I was so worried.” I looked over at the tech. “She’s okay. I’ve got her.”
“No, you don’t, sweetheart,” said the tech flatly.
“That’s Bella,” Sophie said. “She’s my one-to-one.”
When a patient had a one-to-one, that meant that a staff member was assigned to watch them all hours of the day.
“Oh,” I said. “Hi.”
Bella grunted what I took to be a hello as Sophie came into the room and flopped down onto her bed.
“Don’t ever go to the Acute Ward,” she said. “It’s terrifying. I spent the whole time crying and saying how sorry I was—I had to get out of there.” She pulled the thin blanket over her legs. “I don’t know if they believed me or if they needed the bed for someone worse off than I was.”
I glanced over at Bella.
“Just try to ignore her,” Sophie said, following my gaze.
“But are you … okay?” I asked.
She put that little smile back on her face—I could tell that it took an effort. “I didn’t even need stitches. They used tape.” She held up her wrist.
