Notable Occasions on the Calendar of Dread

I swing my head from side to side and bring my fist down on the tiled counter, only to have it come back red. Before I exit, I splash some cold water on my face and practice my smile in the mirror.

"Good morning, Jade," a warm voice sang over to me as I exited the bathroom; it was Barbra, whom, like Ernie I deem my parents more than my birth parents.

"How are you?" She asked.

"Great," I lied.

"Our group will be getting some outside time today," she whispered as I approached her, while she then stood up to place the list of activities on the nurses station.

• 10:30am-11:30am Art Therapy
• 11:30am-12:00pm Bathroom Breaks/Free Time
• 12:00pm-12:30pm Lunch
• 12:30pm-1:30pm Outside/Free Time (for those restricted)

I stopped reading after that; I saw our ticket out.
Art therapy was nothing more than it usually was, we physically reprsent what we plan to produce on the paper. And today, since we are going out side for the first time this season, the therapist thoughtfully provided us with the idea to become trees.

Instead, and not just because my lack of desire towards my aritistic abilities, I sat on the floor picking at my nails and the fraying string from my boots.

"Jade, you can't very well be a tree all the way down on the floor, now can you?" the therapist questioned.

"I'm not, I'm a bush," I sneered back.

"Yeah, you have a bush!" Anna yelled in my direction, as if she was handed a personal invitation to the conversation.

My feet slid out from underneath me and correlated with Anna, causing her to lose her balence and collide with the wooden floor.

"Yeah, and now you have a bruise," I spat, collecting myself again.

The orderly that was in the room with us made his way over to me, gripped my bicep firmly and pulled me up as if I was child that just threw a toy (technically, yes, I did). He yelled into my face not to behave like that, and I yelled back that it's not for him to decide how I behave.

He pulled me out of the room, hand on my arm, where there must be, by now, a permanent mark from all the times the orderlies had done this, he pushes me up against the nurses station. Just in time for me to hear Genevieve in the adjacent phone booths.

"Jade, well, she's an acquired taste. She also thinks she hot shit because she's a borderline," she said.

"You should'nt be behaving like this, Jadelyn, or you'll end up back in the isolation room." The nurse sneered at me like it was some sore of punishment, while flipping through papers to document my actions.

Genevieve stalked over from the phone booths and came into my personal space whispering about what kind of car we are looking for, and how we're going to make it out of view fast enough. She pulled me down the hallway to our desired spot, a wide smile on her face, mixing with the vanilla lotion on her hands.

"Jake will help," she said, repeating herself from earlier. Jake must've been the one that lasted two weeks, not Jack. Genevieve doesn't have a good track record with boyfriends, among other things, like sanity.

"We'll just have to run like hell," she added.

I called for my quarters to be unlocked, saying I was going to change before lunch and before we go outside depending on how the weather was going to be, as an excuse.

When my my wish was granted I told them I would be a few moments, although the orderly stood outside my door despite my best efforts of telling them I was feeling safe.

In my room, my eyes darted around the walls, cracked and dusty, with paint that chipped like my nails. I walked over to my window and opened it the entire two inches it would allow, sunlight coming in through the bars, dancing around the room and locking hands with my emotional state. Was I really ready to leave? Go live a life or refuge and watch my every move? I knew this place was my home--the closest thing I had to it at least. I looked over at my near stack of clothing, pulled all sorts of pieces out, black jeans, leggings, black shirts and cardigans, black being such a happy color. I quickly remember my promise to be quick, and settled for leggings, a black shirt with the moon on it, and a black cardigan, which must belong to my brother, seeing how it could practically swallow me whole. I looked around my room for the last time, the chaos and awfulness about it, and hoped I wouldn't be seeing it again.

Notes