Part 23 (1/2)

I'd been down that highway so many times, they might as well call it the Perry Expressway.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

I was so livid and defeated when I left Doctor Freedman's office that I couldn't remember what happened afterward. We must have dropped Ada off at school, we must have gone to Walgreens to fill the prescription for me. But I couldn't recall any of that. My memory was wiped.

I was just suddenly in the pa.s.senger side of my mother's car, my hands smelling like vinegar salad dressing, the clock on the dashboard indicating at least two hours had pa.s.sed.

We were leaving downtown going over the Burnside Bridge, the river water below reflecting the dull, colorless sky above.

I was. .h.i.t with a wave of nausea, followed by another wave, a warning, that something extremely terrible was about to happen. A feeling of absolute dread. I looked at my mother like it might be the last time I'd see her. She was driving cautiously, her hands gripping the wheel so hard her bony knuckles protruded. She had her sungla.s.ses on even though it was frighteningly dark for the late afternoon. She'd looked exhausted lately I knew it was because of me. Tiny lines had a permanent home at the corners of her pinched mouth.

”Mom,” I said carefully. Scared.

She jumped a little, then covered it up with a quick smile. ”What is it, Perry?”

”I don't feel well.”

And it was suddenly the world's biggest understatement.

The most revolting, violating feeling flushed my insides. I wasn't alone in my head. Someone else was inside me with me, waiting, perched just out of the corner of my eyes. They were in me, watching me, monitoring these very thoughts.

Then my world stretched forward in a horrific display of tunnel vision. I was thrown back, back into oblivion, but only my mind, not my body.

I watched as I raised one hand in the air, waving it slowly in front of my face. I wasn't doing it. I wasn't in control. I wasn't the one in charge.

Mom! I shrieked.

But I was only screaming in my head, not out of my throat. I didn't have control over that anymore. My throat wasn't mine.

I was being held hostage in my own body.

And at that realization, something inside churned with anger.

The arm I was holding in front of my face, which was now drawing a curious glance from my mom, suddenly shot across to the wheel, gripped it and swung it violently over to the right, toward the cars in the other lane.

Toward the barrier.

Toward the edge of the bridge.

And the river far below.

My mother screamed as the car careened into the other lane, nearly clipping a BMW. There was a horrid screeching in surround sound and the smell of burning tires and my mother's screaming and the screaming I was doing in my own head. With every bit of strength I could concentrate on, I pushed hard and felt a pop inside my chest and suddenly all feeling rushed back to me like I was being brushed with pins and needles.

I let go of the wheel and braced myself on the dashboard and my mother got the car under control seconds before we slammed against the barrier. If we had hit, we would have flipped and gone over.

Other cars sped past us, honking, waving their fingers, mouthing swear words, while mom slowly, gingerly applied the gas. She was shaking and her Kung-Fu grip on the wheel was the only thing keeping her from bouncing out of her seat. We crawled down the bridge and at the first opportunity to pull over, she did.

Acting like she was in a dream-like state, she flipped the car into park, turned off the engine and turned in her seat to face me. She lifted up her sungla.s.ses to reveal smudged mascara and blue eyes magnified by tears. Her expression matched that unforgettable look I saw in my father's face as he hauled me up from the roof. But there was something else. Almost an understanding, like she was recognizing me for the first time and seeing the monster I really was.

”Perry,” she breathed.

”I said I didn't feel well,” I told her glibly.

Then I pitched myself into uncontrollable laughter that lasted most of the car ride back home.

The minute I burst through the front door, I rushed to the downstairs bathroom to puke. I keeled over the toilet and brought up everything until my throat burned raw. It turns out I had salad for lunch. That explained the salad dressing smell earlier.

When I was empty and exhausted I looked at myself in the mirror. My heart dropped in my ribs.

I looked like a different person. No, not different. I looked like I was barely even alive. My cheekbones jutted out of my face, the circles under my eyes had spread. My lips were dry, cracked and bleeding. My eyes themselves were fully dilated into black holes. My neck was red and teased with scratches that I knew led down into my chest. I wondered how Doctor Freedman could chalk up any of this to a measly broken heart. I looked like I should be locked up and put away, like the asylum ghosts at Riverside Inst.i.tute.

I couldn't look at myself anymore; it was making me sick again and I didn't have any food left to throw up. A piercing pain jabbed at my temples instead. I turned off the light in the bathroom and stepped out into the hallway.

My mom and dad were in the kitchen talking to each other in hushed, frantic voices. Three guesses as to who they were talking about.

I stood in the doorway and they shut up with nary a guilty look on their faces.

My mom waved me in.

”Come sit down, pumpkin,” she said, and poured a gla.s.s of water for me. I wondered how she could still call me such an endearing term after I tried to kill her.

The tea kettle on the stove boiled over and the piercing whistle made me wince in pain, exaggerating the pain in my head.

”Sorry,” she said, and quickly took it off the burner.

”Perry, I heard what happened,” my father said. He looked down at the cuffs on his red and white striped s.h.i.+rt and started smoothing them out. ”I can't stress the importance of these pills that the doctor gave you.”

My mother smiled forcefully and plunked a pair of yellow and pink pills beside the gla.s.s of water. I eyed them wryly.

”I'm not taking these,” I said. Before anyone could protest, I rushed on, ”Doctor Freedman said I could make my own choices. I'm twenty-three. You can't force me to be medicated.”

”Not yet,” my father said.

I raised my head sharply at that.

”That's OK, Perry,” my mother cut in. ”You're right. You don't have to take them. It's just...you need them. You're not well. The doctor said so himself, and I think you know it yourself. In the car...I...”

Feeling a bout of shame, I looked down at my hands. The scratches seeped clear fluid. It didn't even faze me anymore. I was becoming someone else and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The pills would be futile except make it easier to give up. If I wanted to go, I wanted to go in my right mind with every fighting ounce I had left.

”If you don't care about us enough to take them, think about your sister. Or think about yourself. Your self-hate can't run that deep.”

My chin jutted out defiantly and I met her eyes. ”I don't hate myself. I hate what I've become.”

”Become?” my mother said with a hint of irony in her voice. ”Pumpkin, you've always been like this.”