"I can do it myself," I said.

"I've let a lot slide this morning," she said. "Let's finish this."

I took off the robe and closed my eyes as her latex glovecovered hands slathered me in lotion. It was cold, soothing, amazing.

When she was finished, she took the gloves off, flicked them in the trash can, and handed me the bottle.

"Now," she said. "Try not to touch it. The more you touch it, the worse it gets, and it spreads."

"Okay," I said, holding the bottle close to me. I was still in my underwear and bra. I must have looked like someone at the beach who was only afraid of certain parts of her getting sunburned.

"Your a.s.sessment Diary is on the counter," she said.

Couldn't forget this now, could she?

"Here." She handed me a small white pill and a cup of water. "Take one of these. It's a steroid so it will help with the swelling. I'll come to check on you later." She washed her hands in the sink.

"You're leaving me? Alone?" I asked.

"I'll lock you in," she said, pushing the little pieces that had come out of her braid off her face. "It's a precaution for forty-eight hours."

"Forty-eight hours," I repeated, like I couldn't believe it. I felt anxiety build, traveling up from my toes to the middle of my chest where it sat on my heart, knocking around with the force of something falling down the stairs.

"You'll be safe here," Rawe said, like she could see what I was fighting so hard to keep in.

I opened my mouth to talk, but I couldn't. My throat was dry. My windpipe felt like someone was squeezing it shut. Tears started to form in the corners of my eyes. I wasn't even sad. Why was I crying?

Because Rawe was leaving me?

No, because Rawe was leaving me here.

It didn't make sense and then all at once I knew.

The thing I had tried so hard to keep in-to never, ever talk about, write about, think about. I was sitting in it, the place where the thing that happened because of the thing that happened with Aaron happened.

I was in the exact surroundings of the after.

The place where I'd been broken.

This room reminded me of the clinic. Smelled like it, looked like it. Had the cream-colored walls that were supposed to calm you, the waxy black floor, the white, white sheeted bed, the cabinets filled with instruments to take care of whatever "problem" you were there to solve. Surely it wasn't as sterile, but that was it, and I really didn't want to be locked inside here.

Not for half an hour and certainly not for forty-eight.

"Can't I stay in the cabin?" I pleaded quickly. "I won't touch anything." I felt my body start to shake, each of my joints rocking on its axis. I tried to slow my breathing, but it came out in gasps.

"What's wrong?" Rawe asked.

I looked down. The floor was blurry from the tears. They felt as hot as my itchy skin.

"Wick?" she asked. "Talk to me."

I looked up and tried to focus on her. I was not going to do this. Not in front of her.

"Nothing," I said, too upset to even realize I was answering her previous question. I dried my eyes and willed my body still. Doing anything to show her I was fine with her leaving me, because I was afraid I would crumple up into a ball on the floor if I didn't.

She watched me. "It's okay," she said, reaching out for me.

"Don't," I said, pulling away from her touch. If I let her I would lose it. I didn't do losing it, as much as my current actions made total bulls.h.i.t of that statement.

"I want to help you, but I can't if you don't want to be helped." She looked at me and waited. I almost spoke and then I saw her eyes, wet like mine with pity, but people didn't feel sorry for me. I felt sorry for people.

"What?" I spit angrily. "You're locking me in, so lock me in already."

She breathed through her nose and shook her head in that way people do to let you know you've disappointed them. "You've already locked yourself in," she said. She walked out the door and closed it behind her. I heard the bolt turn, the sound as heavy as a boulder falling.

The day my brother drove me to the clinic was hazy, from the drugs they gave me, from the sick shame I felt about what I had to do.

I don't remember much of it. I remember the pain, an empty ache, like the howl of a cavern in my guts. I remember my brother sitting in a chair next to the bed I slept on at the motel we drove to after. The bed with the too-thin comforter and sheets that were so rough they felt like sandpaper.

Each time I woke up moaning, my brother was next to me with a wet washcloth for my forehead. In the night, his silhouette was like the trace of a pebble thrown in a pond. But he was there, like always. My brother, the only man I could count on.

I didn't even want to tell him, but I needed someone over eighteen to drive me to and from the clinic and there was no way I was telling my parents. I wasn't sure how much more they could punish me beyond what they already had, but I knew they would figure something out. My mom would figure something out.

I also knew they would have made me keep it, which would have meant that my mother would have to help raise it and there was no way I was putting someone else through that.

When I told him he started to cry, which made me start to cry. It was late, almost midnight, my mother already pa.s.sed out in her bedroom. Tim and I were in the dark living room with the c.r.a.ppy halfgrandfather clock we had that ticked and ticked filling the silence that only held our tears. At that moment it made me think of the heartbeat in my belly that I was asking my brother to help me snuff out like a spent cigarette.

He asked and asked and asked who the father was so he could go and castrate him, but I never told. The thing in my belly and f.u.c.k-face Aaron and I were the only ones who knew I had been stupid enough to sleep with him.

Now, only Aaron and I knew.

I think the weirdest part of all of it was how routine it appeared to be to everyone but my brother and me. The nurse at the clinic acted no differently than the guy who gave us our room key at the motel. I guess both of them were only doing their jobs, regardless of what doing that job meant.

I guess that's what Rawe is doing when it's the three of us and she has to "stay on script." To be honest, it's easier to deal with. I would much rather have someone holding me at arm's length than trying against all odds to hold me.

I blinked, once, twice. I had to get it together. I had to calm down. Even if this room did look and smell and feel like the clinic.

I heaved myself up on the bed and sat in the corner of it. Pulled my knees up to my chest, bent my head down so my mouth rested between them. Nothing could touch me if I sat this way. The only trick was not to move.

There was a knock on the wall.

"Anybody home?" Ben asked. Even when he was covered with an itchy, pus-filled rash, he was still f.u.c.king adorable.

"Go away, Ben," I said.

"I can't; I'm locked in," he joked.

I looked up at the ceiling. It had the same fluorescent lights as the clinic. The ones that sounded like a mosquito trap and made your eyes water if you stared at them.

Yes, it was the lights that made my eyes water.

"Aren't you itchy?" I said, scratching at my own arms. I was surprised Ben wanted to use any part of his energy talking to me, when he could have used it annihilating the little pinches of itch all over his skin.

"Sure, but I'm also bored," he said. "I can compartmentalize my feelings."

"How?" I talked into my knees. They were rough, p.r.i.c.kly hairs covering them like porcupine needles.

"What else do I have to do?" he asked.

I couldn't answer. My arms felt numb, my chest ached. I was pretty sure I was having a panic attack and I had forty-eight hours to go.

"Ca.s.sie?"

"I can't breathe," I said. I felt nuts. No wonder there were so many crazy people in insane asylums-it was because they were all forced behind closed, locked doors. All forced into rooms that left them with nothing to do but think.

"Just try to stay calm," the wall said. "Everything is going to be okay."

"It's not," I said. His words should have made things better, but they were making things worse. Probably because I knew nothing would ever be okay. Whatever I had tried desperately to leave behind that day at the clinic was here now. And maybe it always would be.

"I'm here, Ca.s.sie," he said.

I covered my ears. "You, you want to hurt me," I said, the tears coming again and I wasn't even looking up at the lights.

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

What was I talking about? What hole had this room pushed me into?

This room, this stupid f.u.c.king room.

"I just don't like being alone," I said. I could taste soap on my knees. It was my attempt at some kind of explanation, because I couldn't explain.

"You're not," he said. I could hear him scratching at the wall, making circles on it like someone might in water.

I pictured him being able to break through, to come in here and comfort me with the words I kept telling him I didn't want to hear. But he was locked in, too.

I lay back and stared up at the ceiling, the same way I had in the clinic, from one corner to the other and back again. Anything to not have to see the doctor with his surgical mask covering his mouth and nose, like a monster hiding the scariest parts of his face.

"Ca.s.sie? You still there?" Ben asked.

"Where the h.e.l.l else would I be?" I asked.

"You're just so quiet," he said.

"I don't want to talk, Ben. Talking last night is what got me here." It was true; I was finally starting to let him in. Was this the universe telling me not to? Was G.o.d punishing me again?

Would I ever stop being punished?

"Does this have to do with the stuff that has nothing to do with me?" he asked.

I closed my eyes, tears rolling and hitting the tops of my ears. I was shaking so hard my teeth were chattering. Why was I afraid of a room?

But I knew it wasn't the room. It was how it was making me feel. How it was taking the anger I had built up to fight my sadness and shattering it.

"How about I try to guess what happened?" he asked.

I wiped my eyes and nose. "Knock yourself out," I said, letting myself focus on his voice.

"You were abducted by aliens," he said.

"No," I said, tears still flowing.

"You're really a demon," he said.

"No." I felt myself laugh, one of those cry-laugh combos that makes you start to cry harder.

"You were forced to perform in a circus by your demented uncle," he said.

"Are you f.u.c.king kidding me?" I choked the words out through growing sobs. I knew Ben was just trying to make me feel better, make me laugh, but it was obvious he didn't take what had happened to me all that seriously.

Not that he could have known how serious it was. Not that until I was locked in here had I allowed myself to feel how serious it was.

"Why are you crying?" he asked.

"I'm f.u.c.king sad," I said, in full-on snot-faced cry. "I'm really, really f.u.c.king sad."

"You sound sad," he said.

Luckily Ben couldn't see me, but he could hear me. He knew I was crying. I could tell in his voice that he was afraid I couldn't stop.

I was afraid I couldn't stop.

"Wow, Ben, you're a f.u.c.king genius. When we get out of here remind me to call the n.o.bel Prize people."

"Ca.s.sie," he said, "I-"

"No, you're seriously amazing. You can tell when someone is having a f.u.c.king mental breakdown, what they act like when their heart has been stabbed with twenty thousand acid-covered metal toothpicks."

"I was just trying to help," he said. "I'm sorry."

"You shouldn't be," I said. "This has absolutely nothing to do with you."

"Okay then," he said. "I'll let you be." I could hear Ben scramble up onto his squeaky bed and away from crazy, crazy me.

He had been the one to give up.

9 f.u.c.king Days to Go I woke up and found a tray with food and a bottle of water in the corner of the room.

It was some kind of meat sandwich that I would not eat. I'd never been a vegetarian before the clinic, but after that day, I felt sick to my stomach when I thought of eating anything that bled, when I thought of eating anything that had once had a heartbeat.