Cut: A modified story

Chapter 1

You say it's up to me to do the talking. You lean forward , place a box of tissues in front of me, and your lack leather chair groans like a living thing. Like the cow it used to be before somebody killed it and turned it into a chair in a shrink's office in a loony bind.
Your stockinged legs make a shushing sound as you cross them. "Can you remember how it started?" you say.


I remember exactly.


It was at the last cross-country meet, right around the four mile mark. Everybody had passed me, just like the week before and the week before that. Everybody-except a guy from the other team. We were the only ones left in the last stretch of the course, the part that winds through the woods and comes out behind the school. Our shadows passed along the ground slantwise; slowly they merged, then his shadow passed mine.

The soles of his sneakers swam up and down in front of me, first one, then the other, a grid of ridges that spelled out the upside-down name of the shoe company. My steps fell in time with his. My feet went where his feet had just been. He leaned in around a corner, I leaned in around a corner. He breathed, I breathed.

Then he was gone.

I couldn't even picture him anymore. But what scared me, really scared me, was that I couldn't remember when I stopped seeing him. And I knew that if I couldn't see him, no one could see me.

Sounds from the track meet floated by. A whistle trilling, muffled applause, the weak sputtering of gloved hands clapping. I was still running, but now I was off the path, heading away from the finish line, past the cars in the parking lot, the flagpole, and the HOME OF THE LIONS sign. Past fast-food places and car repair shops and video stores. Past the new houses and the park. Until, somehow , I was at the entrance to our development.

It was starting to get dark now, and I slowed down, walking past houses with windows of square yellow light where mothers were inside making dinner, past houses with windows of square blue light where kids were inside watching TV, to our house, where the driveway was empty, and the lights were off.

I let myself in and flipped the light switch. There was an explosion of light. The kitchen slid sideways, then righted itself.

I leaned against the door. "I'm home," I said to no one.

The room tilted left, then right, then straightened out. I grabbed hold of the edge of the dinner table and tried to remember if we stopped eating there because it was piled with junk or if it was piled with junk because we stopped eating there.

On the table there was a roll of batting, a glue gun, a doily, a 1997 Krafty Kitchens catalogue. Next to the catalogue was a special craft knife with the word EXACTO on the handle. I was sleek, like a fountain pen, with a thin triangular blade at the tip. I picked it up and laid the blade against the doily. The little knots came undone, just like that. I touched the blade to a piece of ribbon draped across the table and pressed, ever so slightly. the ribbon unfurled into two pieces and slipped to the floor without a sound. Then I placed the blade next to the skin on my palm.

A tingle arced across my scalp. The floor tipped up at me and my body spiraled away. Then I was on the ceiling looking down, waiting to see what would happen next. What happened next was that a perfect, straight line of blood bloomed from under the edge of the blade. The line grew into a long, fat bubble, a lush crimson bubble, that got bigger and bigger. I watched from above, waiting to see how big it would get before it popped. When it did, I felt awesome. Satisfied, finally. Then exhausted.


I don't tell you any of this, though. I don't say anything. I just hug me elbows to my sides. My mind is a video on fast-forward. A video with no soundtrack.

And finally you sigh and stand up and say, "That's all we have time for today."

Chapter 2

Twice a day we have Group. Group therapy, according to the brochure they give you at the admissions office, is the"keystone of the treatment philosophy" here at Sick Minds. The real name of the place is Sea Pines, even though there is no sea and there are no pines. My roommate, Sid, who has a nickname for everything, calls it Sick Minds. His nickname for me is S.T., for Silent Treatment.

We, by the way, are called guests. Our problems are called issues. Most of the guys are overweight lardo's who got hooked on fast-food. They're called guests with food issues. some are druggies. They're called guests with substance-abuse issues. The rest, like me, are assorted psychos. We're called guests with behavioral issues. The doctors are called attendants. And the place is called a residential treatment facility, not a loony bind

There aren't assigned seats in Group, but people tend to sit according to issues. The food-issue guests: Terry, a really skinny guy (keep in mind that most of the people in my Group with food issues are skinny) who has to wear a baseball cap to cover a bald spot where his hair fell out, Bill another skinny guy who wear white little-boy shirts that pool around his waist and who came straight here from a hospital after he had a heart attack, and Dan, a really, really overweight guy who says she's been here the longest, sit in a cluster of orange plastic chairs next to Claire, the group leader. The substance abuse guests: Sid, who says she's addicted to every drug she's ever tried, and Mark, who seems normal but is here instead of going to jail for smoking crack, sit together on the other side of Claire's chair.

I sit by myself. I pick the chair the farthest from Claire and closest to the window, which they never open, even though it's always about a hundred degrees in here. Today, when Claire invites someone to start off, I decide to work on memorizing the order of the cars in the barking lot. Brown, white, white blue beige. Brown, white, white, blue, beige.

"Alright," says Claire. "Who wants to go first?" Claire makes a little tent with her fingers and waits. I lean back in my usual spot in the circle, out of her line of vision.

Terry tugs on his chair, Dan smooths his sweatshirt over his stomach, and Bill slides off his chair and sits on the carpet at Dan's feet, his legs sprawled out under the chair. No one answers.

Dan cracks his weight control gum. Mark, who for some reason always always has a duffel bag with him, on his lap, fiddles with the zipper.

"Ah, come on," Claire says. "Yesterday was visiting day. Surely somebody has something to say about that."

I add new cars to my list. Brown, white, white, blue, beige, green, red. Brown, white, white, blue, beige, green, red.

"OK, OK." Dan says this like everyone was begging him to talk. "I might as well go first."

There's scattered squirming. Mark rolls his eyes. Terry, who's so weak from not eating that she dozes off a lot during group, leans her head against the wall; her eyes droop shut.

"It was terrible," Dan says. "Not for me, but poor Bill." She give Bill's thin shoulder a gentle pat. "Wait till I tell you what-"

Mark sighs and his enormous chest rises and falls. "Not for you, Dan? Then how come I saw you at the nurses' desk last night begging for an escort to the vending machine?"

Dan turns red.

"How come you're always so willing to talk about everyone else's problems?" Mark says. "What about yours? What happened at your visit, Dan?"

Dan regards him. "Nothing really."

"Really? Sid says, not unkindly.

"Really," says Dan.

"That's crap," says Mark. Little drops of spit fly out of his mouth.

For Dan, this is a swear. He hates it when people swear. The temperature goes up to about 110 degrees.

"Dan," Claire says gravely, "how do you feel about what Mark is saying?"

Dan shrugs. "I don't care."

Sid points a shaky finger in Dan's direction. "You do so," he says. "You're pissed. Why don't you admit it, Dan?"

Everyone waits.

"Well, I'd rather that he didn't swear." Dan addresses this comment to Claire.

"Why don't you look at me?" Mark says. "Why don't you say, 'Mark, I don't like it when you say crap. Could you please watch your goddamn mouth?'"

Terry laughs. Sid tries not to.

Dan's mouth stretches into a tight smile, then her chin starts to quiver; I wipe my palms on my jeans.

"I know you all hate me because I'm not like the rest of you," she says. The effort of trying not to burst out in rage is making her face very red.

"I don't hate you," Bill says, craning his neck up toward Dan.

"I don't know about the rest of you, but i want to graduate," Dan says. "I don't want to just sit around here listening to people complain about their rotten childhoods."

Mark lifts his palms to the ceiling, charade for "I give up"

"Anyone else care to comment?" Claire says.

I hold very still. Claire's a hawk for body language. Biting your nails means you want to talk.
Leaning forward means you want to talk. Leaning back means you want to talk. I don't move.

Sid clear's his throat. "I don't care if we talk about my visit," he says.

People exhale.

"My mom kept spritzing her mouth with Binaca but she'd had a couple of pops before she got here. My dad kept checking his watch and making calls on his cell phone, and my sister st there doing her math homework.

The formula for converting Fahrenheit into Celsius enters my head uninvited. I try to calculate what 110 degrees Fahrenheit equals in Celsius.

"For my family..." Sid taps the end of a pen, flicking and imaginary ash off the end of her imaginary cigarette. "... that's quality time."

People laugh, a little too hard.

"How did you feel when they were here?" Claire says.

"Fine." The smile on Sydney's face wilts slightly. "I mean, it's just like home."

This is a joke. No one laughs. Sid surveys the group.

"Look. I have a strategy. Why expect anything? If you don't expect anything, you don't get disappointed."

Terry raises her hand. "Were you?"

Sid doesn't understand. " Was I what?"

"Disappointed?"

Sid still looks lost.

"I mean, I hope you don't take this the wrong way," Terry says. "But a minute ago you accused Dan of pretending not to be pissed. Well, I think maybe you're pissed. At your mom and your dad and your sister." Terry sinks back into his chair; he gets tired just talking.

"I'm not mad at my sister," Sid says. "It's not her fault. I mean, how would you like to spend your Saturday afternoon with a bunch of freaks?" He claps a hand over his mouth. "No offense or anything. I mean, we spend all our time with freaks, but that's different. We are freaks."

A couple of people laugh.

Sid goes on. "I don't care about my mom. I mean, for happy hour? Yeah, right. But my dad...."
I unfold and refold my arms across my chest. Bad move. Claire notices. Luckily, Sid keeps talking.
"I don't know. He's not very good at stuff like this..." Sid wrings the hem of his shirt; his hands are really shaking now. She laughs sort of. Then, with now warning, he's crying. "I'm not pissed," she says. "It's ... I'm just.... I don't know, disappointed."

I squeeze my arms to my chest and feel embarrassed for Sid, the way i used to in grade school when someone wet their pants. I hate Group. People always end up saying things that make them look pathetic.

"At least they came," says Mark. "My dad didn't even show."

Something else comes into my mind uninvited. It's an image of a dad walking up the sidewalk on visiting day, his hands stuffed in his jacket, his head tucked down against the wind. I tap on the window in the reception room. He glances up and I see that he has glasses and a red face and he's not my dad at all; he's someone else's dad. I go back to memorizing the cars in the parking lot.

"How do you feel about that?" Claire says to Mark.

"Screw him. That's how I feel."

I cross and recross my arms.

Claire pounces. "Callie?" <------ only girl in group

At the sound of my bane the heat closes in on me. I squint my eyes like I'm trying to make something out totally fascinating in the parking lot and think Brown, white white, blue beige. I lose my place and have to start again.

"Callie?" Claire's not giving up. "Do you want to tell us about your visit yesterday?"

There's a fly caught between the window and the screen. He seems sort of surprised each time he bangs into the glass. But he just staggers away, then rams into the glass again.
"Callie?"

I pull a curtain of hair down in front of my eyes and wait. After a while, someone from the other side of the circle starts talking. I can't really make out what she's saying though. All I hear is the zzzzzzt- zzzzzt of the fly banging into the window.


There's a burst of chatter as everyone files out of Group. I hang behind the other people, then go down the hall and check out the chalkboard next to the attendants' desk. On the board is a list of everyone's names and the treatments they go for after Group. Mark goes to Anger Management. Terry goes to Relaxation Therapy. Sid and Mark also go to the infirmary for urine tests- to make sure they aren't taking anything. Bill, Terry, and Dan go too- to make sure they are taking things: vitamins and food supplements for Terry and Bill, heart medicine for Bill, Prozac for Dan. After that, Dan goes to an exercise room where a trainer puts her on the treadmill. Terry and Bill get taken on a slow walk around the grounds to make sure they don't get on the treadmill.

There's nothing on the board next to my name. I don't get taken anywhere.

I duck around the corner before anyone can see me checking the board, because the other day i overheard Dan, who spends a lot of time hanging around the attendants' desk, telling Bill that the people at Sick Minds were still trying to figure out what to do....
.... with me.

Interesting. Keep going.

I like this one. Your writing technique is amazing, and the words seem to flow together. (I'm also kind of obsessed with writing books that have psychological controversies and whatnot, so this kind of stuff always catches my interest.)

The only thing that I can ask of you is to change the format of any flashbacks. Like maybe italicizing. (That's the way most people do it.) It'll just help the reader understand what's going on in the present, and what the narrator is recalling.

I love stories like these in treatment and such,
I almost got sent to one,
I like your writing technique although I get confussed when you say he, she, her, him on who's a boy and who's a girl because sometimes you said one was a boy but it says her, that's all that confussed me.
Can't wait for the next chapter =)

Chapter 3

When you're a Level One ( an new guest, or a guest exhibiting Inappropriate Behavior), your aren't allowed to go anywhere unsupervised. Level Twos (anybody who's accumulated ten points for Appropriate Behavior) are allowed to go to the day room and to their appointments on their own, but they have to get escorts to go to the laundry room or the vending machine. Level Threes (people who are about to graduate, like Dan) are the escorts. But even Level Threes with food issues have to get attendants or other Level Threes to escort them to the vending machines. It's complicated learning the Sick Minds system. It's easier being a Level One, if you ask me.

Since I'm a Level One, the only place I can go while everyone else is at treatment is Study Hall. It's supervised by an attendant named Cynthia, who sits in the front of the classroom answering multiple-choice questions in a big workbook. The only good thing about afternoon Study Hall,besides the fact that I'm usually the only one here, is that it's quiet. There are signs all over the place politely reminding us guests to respect each other's needs for silence: at least in here, I'm actually displaying Appropriate Behavior.

The walls are lined with cork board that other guests have covered with graffiti. I spend a lot of time reading their messages- names and comments like "This place suck," or "Mr Bryant is a bitch." (Mr. Bryant is either the guy who works in the admissions office or the head of the place, I'm not sure.) Mostly I listen to the rustling of paper as Cynthia turns the pages in her workbook.

I take my favorite seat in the back of the room, in the corner farthest away from Cynthia, and pretend to do the geometry assignment that my school faxed in. Really, I watch the dog who lives next to the maintenance shed. All he does is sleep and pace. Mostly he sleeps, but right now he's pacing back and forth in front of his doghouse. He's barking like mad at a delivery truck that's coming up the driveway. he trots to the end of his chain, bark, then turns and trots back. Then he turns around and does the same thing all over again. He's gone back and forth so many times, he's worn a dirt path in front of his house.

I sit there watching the dust fly as he paces back and forth, back and forth while nobody pays attention to him. after a while I get up and move to a desk facing the wall.

____________________________________________

Ruth, a Level Three from another group, arrives at the door, on time as always, to escort me to Individual. Ruth is this very shy girl with bad skin and a way of ducking her chin inside her turtleneck: she just appears at the door everyday at the same time, waiting for me to notice her. She looks so uncomfortable with her chin jammed into her chest and her hands shoved into her pockets that I always just get up and go with her.

The truth is, I don't mind being escorted by Ruth. I sort of like listening to our sneakers squeak along the hallways and not worrying that Ruth is going to try and make me talk. And I have a feeling that maybe Ruth doesn't mind escorting me either, because when we get to the waiting area outside your office, sometimes she hangs around a while, even though technically she doesn't have to.

After she goes, it's just me and the little white plastic UFO on the floor outside your office. Mr. Bryant, who gave me my tour on the first day and who I've never seen since, said that the UFO- which look like a plastic party hat with a motor inside - is called a white-noise machine. She said all the therapists have them outside their doors so people in the hall can't hear what the guests inside are saying. (The UFO's don't, however, drown out the yelling or the crying.)

Since I'm not talking (or yelling or crying,), you could turn the UFO off during out session: that way, Sick Minds could save a little on the electric bill. I think about telling you that, but of course that would require talking, which would require turning on the UFO.

You open your door and invite me to come in. I consider lying down on the couch, thinking how nice it would be to take a nap there for the next hour, but I sit in my usual spot, the corner farthest from you and your dead-cow chair. You sit down and ask about visiting day. "How was it for you?" you say.
I study your shoes. They're tine black witch's shoes with silver buckles.
"What was it like seeing your family?"

I consider saying something totally stupid. Something so boringly normal that you'll finally give up and leave me alone. I think about telling you that my mom wore her good wool coat, the one she wears to church and to doctor's appointments. Or about telling you that she looked tired, like the before people in Before and After pictures in her magazines. Or about how she started massaging her forehead as soon as she walked into the reception room....

Chapter 4

Sam looked scared and excited all at once. He also seemed skinnier than ever; even though he was wearing a bulky red sweatshirt, his inhaler made a big bulge from inside of his shirt pocket. He let me hug him, then shoved a card at me. "I made this for you." he said. The card had pictures of cats all over it. Cats dancing, Cats jumping rope, Cats drinking tea. Cats playing basketball.....

Sam's a really good artist for a third-grader, I imagine myself telling you, in a smart, sane voice. But his spelling really sucks. The card, which I hid under the mattress back in my room, says "Hop you feeling beter." It's signed by Sam and Linus.

Linus is our cat, I'd explain to you. You'd nod thoughtfully and I'd go on to explain that Linus has to live outside now, since the doctor said she was on of the things making Sam sick. I'd tell you that we named her Linus, even though she's a girl, because she used to carry around a sock in her mouth when she was a baby. It looked like a security blanket, so we called her Linus, I'd tell you. You'd smile. We'd make small talk. Except that I don't make talk, small or otherwise.

It was weird not saying anything to Sam when he handed me the card. I patted him on the head instead. Then my mom started sniffling, so I was able to walk away and get her a tissue from the coffee table. That's one good thing about this place, I'd tell you. There are tissue boxes everywhere.
I steered my mom and Sam over to a couch in the reception room. Sam looked around, his mouth hanging open like it does when he watches TV. "Why is this place called Sea Pines?"

He was waiting for me to answer, I think, but I was too busy pulling on a loose thread on the seat cushion. I pictured the whole couch coming unraveled and the three of us sitting on the floor in a giant pile of couch thread.

My mom was rubbing her temples. "It's just a name, Sam, like Pennbrook Manor, where Gram lived," she said finally.

"Where Gram died, you mane," Sam said.

"Well..." She gazed past Sam, around the reception room, trying to see what the other families were doing.

"That place smelled bad," Sam said.

"Well, Sam, this is different," my mom said. "This is a perfectly nice place."
"but what is it? Why is Cal here, anyhow?"

"Lower your voice," she said. "I already told you. She's not feeling well."
"She doesn't look sick."

"Shhhh," she said. "Let's talk about something pleasant during the time we have, shall we?" She folded a tissue in her lap, then turned to me. "How's your roommate? Is he a nice guy?"

I got up and stood by the window, scanning the parking lot for my dad. I saw a man coming up the sidewalk and I tapped the window; he lifted his head and I realized he wasn't my dad at all. The sliding doors opened and the man came in and gave Terry a big, fatherly hug.

"If you're looking for Dad, he's not coming," Sam said.

My mom blew her nose.

I kept looking out the window; I didn't expect to see our car in the parking lot, since my mom doesn't drive anywhere anymore. She's terrified of big trucks and of missing her exit on the highway. She's also terrified of E. coli in hamburgers, child nappers at the mall, lead in the drinking water, and of course, dust mites, animal fur, molds, spores, pollen, and anything else that might give Sam an asthma attack. I don't know what I expected to see in the parking lot. But I kept watching.

"Mommy," said Sam, "can I get some candy?" He was pointing to the vending machine.
My mom said yes and I thought about how Sam could just walk over there and buy himself a Snickers, without an escort. My mom gave him a bunch of quarters, and he skipped, actually skipped, over to the vending machine.

"Daddy's putting in some extra hours," my mom whispered when Sam was out of earshot. " He's trying to make a little extra money."

She folded her tissue into a neat square, then a smaller one, then an even smaller one. Keeping tack made me dizzy.

"We got a letter from the insurance company." She was speaking so quietly, I had to lean in to hear her. "They wont pay for your.... your treatment here."

The reception room lifted off the foundation, floated for a second, the became solid again. I checked to see if my mom noticed.

"They say they won't pay because this thing you do, you know, cutting yourself, they say it's self-inflicted."

The room hovered in the air again, then the floor slid away and I was on the ceiling looking down at a play. The character who was the mom was still talking; the one who was me was fiddling with a piece of thread from the couch. Offstage, a Snickers bar clattered down the insides of a vending machine. I tried to concentrate on what the mother was saying. Something about seeing friends at the mall. "I told them your were under the weather," she said. The tissue, now a tiny, tiny square, wobbled in and out of focus. "Are you keeping up with your schoolwork?"

The mother's mouth was moving but the character who was me was walking away, through the maze of sofas and coffee tables and more sofas until finally I was in the visitors' restroom, rubbing my wrist along the teeth of the paper towel dispenser. It was like my whole body was just this one spot on my arm that was begging to be scratched, carved, cut - anything, anything - for relief. There was a jab, bright beads of blood, and finally I was OK. I pulled my shirtsleeve down, pressed my cheek against the cool tile wall for a minute, then walked back into the reception room like everything was fine.

Except that the reception room was practically empty. I'd been in the restroom only a minute, I thought, but my mom and Sam and just about everybody else were gone. I made my way through the grid of coffee tables and sofas, forcing myself to concentrate, to slow down, so I didn't break into a run.

I finally found Sam down the hall, sitting by himself in the game room, this dark little library-type
place where they keep board games and cards that nobody ever plays. The game room is my favorite place here; I go there just about every night during free time to get away from the fake laughter from the TV in the day room, and the fake applause from the TV at the attendant's desk, and all the radios and the blow dryers in the dorms. When I came in, Sam turned around and grinned, showing off his big new rabbity front teeth.

"Cal! Look what game they have," he said. "Connect Four."
Connect Four, a kind of tic-tac-toe where you have to get four checkers in a row in a plastic stand, is our favorite game we play together. We started playing it when Sam first got sick and he wasn't allowed to run around anymore. In the beginning I let him win, because he was younger and because he was sick. Now he beats me every time.

I don't know how he does it, but Sam has this way of seeing two or three ways to win. Meanwhile, I use up all my moves trying to block him- or trying to get four in a row in a straight, up and down line- until Sam yells "Gotcha," and points to some diagonal row I completely overlooked.
"Wanna play?" he said.

I checked to make sure no one was around. Sure, I wanted to say. Sure. I willed myself to speak, but nothing happened. I sent commands from my brain to my mouth. Nothing. I wondered if a person's voice muscles can forget how to work if they're not used for a long time.

I stared out the window for a while, like the answer might be out there. I nodded.

Sam took the black checkers, I took the red. That's the way it always was. We don't even have to discuss it. The only sound, as we sat at the card table playing, was the click of checkers dropping into their slots. I imagined myself saying chatty, big-sister things - about Linus, about Sam's hockey card collection - but just thinking about talking was exhausting.

Sam plunked a checker into the plastic stand; he pointed to a row of four black checkers that seemed to appear out of nowhere.

"Gotcha," he said. "Wanna play again?" He didn't wait. "OK," he answered himself.

It dawned on me then that Sam understood. Somehow, he knew - in his weird, wise, eight-year-old way - that I wasn't talking. So he talked for the both of us. I answered by putting a red checker in the center slot. It was my favorite opening move.

"Cal," he said, shaking his head, an old, tired Sam who pretended to be disappointed in me. "You need to thing laterally."

I watched while he put a black checker in the last row.

"That means seeing things a couple of different ways," he said. "Mr. Weiss says I'm good at that."

I put another red checker above the first one and wondered who Mr. Weiss was.

"He's my tutor." Another black checker went in, blocking my row. "He comes to the house."

That meant Sam was too sick to go to school again. Which meant my mom must be more upset than ever. Which meant my dad would be spending more time than ever at work - or more time out with customers, or people he hoped would be customers but somehow never turned into customers.
"Don't worry," said Sam. "We don't have to pay for it. School pays for it."

I had no idea where to put another checker, so I tried to start another row from the bottom.

"Gotcha!" Sam pointed to a diagonal row of black checkers. "Lateral thinking, Cal."

He set up another game so we could play again.

"Mom went to talk to one of your, you know, your teachers." Something about the way he said that, something about how it was such a little-kid thing to say, made me feel bad.

He put a black checker in the last row. "She went to find her when you were in the bathroom."

I put a red checker in the center slot again. I didn't have the energy for lateral thinking.

Sam held his checker in the air, poised to move. "When are you coming home, Cal? No one will tell me anything."

We sat there a while, I couldn't tell how long. Sam's face went from hopeful, to serious, to worried, to something I couldn't quite read.

"It's OK," he finally said. "It's just that Linus misses you."

_____________________________________


I look up and take in the sight of you, still sitting there, your ankles crossed, your notebook in your lap. I hate that notebook because I know some random thing - like you chair reminding me of a dead cow - could end up in there, proof that I'm crazy. But what I really hate is how every day when I come in, you turn to a fresh page and write in the date, and and how every day when I leave you walk me to the door, I can see that the whole page is empty.

You cap your pen and stand up. It must be time to go.

Ei your an awesome writer! Please. Keep on going!

aw....... an unfinished story

^_^