Home. Yeah, okay.
“Have you talked to Mom?” I ask.
“I left a message. A couple of them.”
“Yeah, she hardly ever answers her phone. Does she know where I’m going?”
Krys shakes her head. “No, and you shouldn’t tell her, okay? They don’t want anyone to know where you are.”
I nod. “In case she tells Mitch.”
“I would hope that if he contacted her, she’d call the police, not tell him where to find you.”
“He buys her booze,” I say, and she nods. We both know what that means where my mother’s loyalty is concerned.
“Let’s go. The sooner we get you settled in, the sooner you can come home.”
She keeps talking about “home.” Like everything is going to be magically okay once I come live with her and her husband. But how long will it be before he starts telling me I’m pretty, expecting me to suck his dick? ’Cause I haven’t met a man yet who doesn’t go the same way once he finds out what I am.
Krys hands me a winter coat, one of those light puffy ones. “It should fit,” she says. “It’s one of mine. I hope that’s okay.”
The last winter coat I had came from Goodwill and smelled like an old woman. “It’s cool. Thanks.”
“Goodbye, sweetheart,” the nurse at the desk says. The one who put cream on my arms. “You have a good life, y’hear?”
I smile at her and lift my hand in a wave. “Bye.”
Krys thanks her and the other nurses for everything they’ve done, and then we’re in the elevator, sinking.
It’s cold out. The street, the sky, even the trees, are gray. The air is thick and heavy.
“We’re supposed to get a storm tonight,” Krys says as she puts my laundry in the trunk. “I got you some slippers and a fuzzy robe so you’ll be warm.”
“Thanks.” I climb into the car. It’s nice and clean. New, and it doesn’t smell like cigarettes. I glance in the back seat. No beer cans or wine bottles either.
“How do you feel about this?” she asks. “Are you scared?”
I shrug.
“I would be,” she goes on. “I don’t know how you’ve been so strong through all of this. I’d be a wreck.”
I look at her as she drives. “Once you lose control, it’s easier to let other people take it.”
Her knuckles turn white as she grips the steering wheel. “I don’t want to control you, Lex.”
“Not you,” I say. “Other people. Like the doctors and the cops.”
“And Mitch?”
“Don’t talk about him.” Mitch was there for me when no one else was. He took care of me. He sold me. Beat me. Told me I was beautiful and said I was an ugly bitch. He said he loved me.
Nobody else has ever said they love me.
“I’m sorry.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to think about him, okay? Ain’t your fault.”
“Isn’t,” she corrects me.
I smile. “Yeah, okay.” Is it weird that I like that she cares how I talk?
I haven’t been outside in months, so I stare out the window as we drive. “Where are we?” I ask.
“West Hartford. The place we’re going to is in Middletown, not far from where Jamal and I live. We got lucky—they had a bed open up.”
“How long before I can go out?”
“You can come home with me next weekend if you want. We’ll start with day visits and then overnights. It’s whatever you want.”
Yeah, right. If it’s what I want, she’d drop me off at a bus stop.
“I’m new at this,” Krys says. “I’m going to need you to help me.”
I look at her. “Help you what?”
“Be what you need.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
She smiles, but somehow manages to still look sad. “I guess we’ll figure it out together, then.”
I don’t want to feel this hope in my chest. I want to shrug and turn away from her, so she won’t know she has power over me. I don’t want to trust her.
“Okay,” I say. Fucking traitor.
* * *
Middletown isn’t a city like Hartford. It’s a town, and not a really big one. It has Wesleyan University, though, which is supposed to be, like, a top-shit school. The main street is lined with shops and restaurants that look newer the farther south we drive.
“Is that a Thai place?” I ask, turning my head. “I like Thai.”
“There’s just about whatever you might want,” my aunt replies. “Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Indian, Mexican, Chinese, Italian. We can go to some of them if you want. And I can always bring you takeout.”
“You’d do that?”
She shoots me a glance, frowning. “Kid, I’d do that and so much more if I thought it would help you.”
I swallow. Is she for real? “Thanks.”
Sparrow Brook. That’s the name of the place where I’m going. It doesn’t have a sign out front or anything, but Krys has a pamphlet stuck in one of the cup holders and I recognize it from the photo.
It’s an old hotel or something—red brick with white trim—not far from the river and down the street from a large mental hospital. That’s where I would have gone if I hadn’t had Krys. If she hadn’t wanted me. If I’d been trouble. It’s where I heard they were taking Daisy.
When we pull into the parking lot, there’s a group of girls out by the stables, feeding horses. I can’t see them that well, but they’re different sizes and colors—the girls, not the horses.
Some of them are smiling, some of them aren’t. It’s easy to pick out which ones have been out of the life the least amount of time.
They’re the ones I want to stand next to. The ones I know won’t try to make conversation or be friends.
We’re met by a woman named Song, who smiles at me and takes me up a wide staircase to my room. It’s nicer than the room I had at the motel. There are windows on two of the walls that let early spring sunshine into the room. The curtains are light and airy, the walls painted cream. The bed I’m given is a twin, but it’s a four-poster and the sheets and comforter are new.
Clean sheets.
I have a dresser and a small closet to myself. Krys begins putting stuff away. My roommate comes in while she helps me unpack.
“Hey,” she says. “I’m Sarah.”
I nod. “P—Lex.” Not Poppy. Not anymore. Not out loud. I size the other girl up and she does the same to me.
She gives me a binder that has my name on it. “It’s got a schedule and calendar in it,” she tells me. “Plus pages for you to journal or make notes, draw—whatever. It’s part of therapy.”
“Yay,” I say, without any real enthusiasm.
She dares to smile at me. “Yeah, that’s what I said when I got mine too.”
I bristle at her tone. She doesn’t know me. I don’t want her talking to me like she understands or she knows what I’ve been through. She doesn’t know shit. But I don’t tell her that. Something keeps me quiet.