Loud thumps come from all around me.  The sound of my own heart beating surprises me, my own body having turned traitor long ago.  Ali's gasping stops and her neck goes limp in my grasp.

I pull away, shocked.  I look at my hands, the little traitors.  I look at my friend, Ali, sprawled on the floor of her living room.  Purplish bruises from my hands are already forming on her delicate neck.  It was so easy to break.

But I didn't break her neck, no, just blocked her airways.  My brain is now running rogue.

Ali's mother walks into the room and smiles when she sees me; I haven't been here in so long.  But when she see Ali, dead on the floor, she screams.  My legs, now the only ones I can trust, help me make a fast getaway.  Down the steps, bursting out the door into the street.  All these people know my name.  Their eyes would burn with hatred if not for my gray hoodie, pulled around my face.

I ran to the first place I could think of--Mr. Edgar's house.  I always want to be the first one to tell him.  Surprise had registered on his face; he's never heard of me killing someone before.

Without giving me a chance to explain, Mr. Edgar sent me away, told me we would work it out the next day.

It was all over the news that night, with my picture.  Watching a television through the window of someone's house, I found that my best friend was dead.

I escaped, ran to talk to my lawyer the day after they took me into custody.  Plead insanity.

The thumping increases and becomes much more intense, now accompanied by some shouting.

I'm startled awake by a neighborhood boy thumping on the tube slide I'm sleeping in.  "Hey, ratty girl, wake up!" he screams, and I'm out in a flash.

"What did you call me?" I ask menacingly.

The boy gets a good look at my face and slouches over.  "Nothing," he whines, starting to back away.  I get my fist ready and pack a good, hard punch into the side of the boy's face.  He yells and runs out of the playground and down the street.

I look down at my fist, whistling in admiration.  My hand has been given the power to make sixteen-year-old know-it-alls fall down at my feet.  Truly amazing.

I go back over to my tube slide and sit down on top of it, waiting for some nebby busy-body to see me out their window and call the police.

When the police do come, I ask them snarkily, "What took you so long?"

"Don't be smart with us, kid," one of them says gruffly.

Snapping handcuffs on my wrists, another officer says, "Your trial is today.  Come on."

I easily slip my wrists out of the handcuffs and say sweetly to my escorts, "I'll be just fine without the pretty bracelets, thank you."

One of the officers looks at the other, raising his eyebrows.  The other one shrugs and shoots me a look, clearly making the decision for both of them just to leave me alone.  "You better behave yourself," the first officer growls, and he takes one of my arms, leading me to the marked car.

We ride to the station in silence, only broken by the very faint occasional humming of one of the officers.  The driver is humming measures of the Sesame Street theme song, and the other one is humming and sometimes mouthing snippets of "Let it Go."

To annoy them, I start singing "On the Good Ship Lollipop" in my obnoxiously high voice.  When I get to the second verse, the officer riding shotgun says, "Shut up."

"Yeah," the other one agrees, keeping his eyes on the road.  I start singing "Row, Row, Row your Boat."

"Are we almost there?" the officer riding shotgun whines.

The driver grips the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turn white.  "Almost," he says through gritted teeth.  The shotgun-rider sits back in his seat, crosses his arms, and sighs loudly.  I stop singing and sigh even louder.

The police officer riding shotgun sighs even louder.  I top his sigh, even adding a little groaning into it.  The officer sighs very harassed-like.  I sigh even more harassed-like.   With that, the driver screams very harassed-like and pulls the vehicle into the parking lot a eighty miles an hour.  "Get out," he orders me, and I willfully oblige.

"Hello, I'm Mrs. Grayling."  I nod hello to Mrs. Grayling and sit down across from her at her desk.

"Now I understand you tried to plead insanity in court for," (she begins to read from a paper), "breaking into a house of one of your peers, whom you knew, and making small conversation with her before wrapping your hands around her neck to throttle her and commit murder."

I nod.

"Your full name is Emma Forr Giv Ness?"

"Yes."

"You were born on August third, thirteen years ago?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure you're thirteen years old?"

"Positive."

Mrs. Grayling stops to examine me over the top of her glasses for a second before continuing.  "I have been told to use all tactics necessary, (up to and including physical abuse), to determine whether you are able to plead insanity for this murder.  Is everything clear?"

"Yes."

"Alright, well then, let's begin.

"First, I'm going to ask you to describe to me all the crimes you have committed in the past.  Don't be afraid to add in opinions and such."

I look around the small, cream-colored room with the shaggy carpet.  I'm currently sitting in the center of the room, on one side of a black metal desk.  Mrs. Grayling is sitting across the large desk from me, in an identical plush armchair.

"You mean my nightmares," I correct Mrs. Grayling.

"Yes, well, your nightmares," Mrs. Grayling allows herself to be corrected.

"I can't tell you."  Mrs. Grayling looks slightly troubled when I say this, and writes a note on a sheet of paper.

"Well, then, let's move on to a different topic for now," Mrs. Grayling says.  "How about your family?  What can you tell me about your family?"

I need to open up a little if she can think I'm crazy.  Besides, what do I have to lose with this meaningless lady in this meaningless world?  "I don't have a family anymore.  My baby sister died one afternoon of  'unknown causes,' and my parents were shot."  I let out a sob for dramatic effect before continuing.

"I was ten.  We were a strong Catholic family, and one Saturday we went into Church for confession.  Suddenly some guy walked out of the Confessional with a gun in his hand, and the Priest came running out after him.  We were all sitting there praying, when the guy with the gun started shooting randomly.  The Priest came running up and threw himself over me to protect me.  The Priest took all the bullets for me before the police arrived.  I was completely unharmed, but the Priest and my parents were dead.

"That's why I hate Churches, Catholicism, and all Catholics.  Because that day, the Priest sacrificed what I used to consider his 'precious' life to save my life, but he didn't save my parents.  I would rather have my parents live and myself die, because at ten years old, I loved my parents more than anything else in the world. 

"Now I know how independent I can be.  I never needed my parents; I should have known better than to let something so material establish such a large place in my life. Nonetheless, when my parents died, a part of me died, too. 

"That's why I tried to kill her, Ali, my best friend.  Even though my parents were dead, I was still expected to go to Church.  So I'd go, pretend to be happy.  I'd see Ali there, truly happy, and get boiling mad.  It's not fair that she can be the happy one, and I can be the one stuck with parents killed by a priest."

"If I may say something," Mrs. Grayling interjects, worry etched across her face.  "The priest didn't kill your  parents--I'm sure he would have saved them if he could.  But you should be grateful that he chose to save your life."

I shake my head.  "He shouldn't have bothered--my life is meaningless."  Too late, I realize that someone crazy wouldn't get so deep with their emotions.  "I mean, what are you doing, sitting here criticizing me?!  You never watched your parents get killed, you hardly even know what death is!  Death is ultimate irreparability!  Did you ever experience that?!  Never being healed?!"

Tears start running down Mrs. Grayling's face as she shakes her head.  She stands up and starts to hurry out of the room, but I keep screaming.  "Go jump off a building and then come back!  Then you'll know what it feels like!"  I break into very convincing crazy laughs until I'm sure Mrs. Grayling is out of earshot.  Then I laugh normally to myself, shaking my head.  I am just too much.

I still remember the day I stopped going to Church.  The rain poured down on my head as I was about to step inside to go to Mass, but then I stopped.  I sat down there out in the rain like some creepy gargoyle as people passed me, staring at me.  It never stopped raining as I sat there, listening to the hymns and the readings and all the prayers.  I heard it end, the sound mixing with the rain dripping into my ears while I sat there. 

People stared at me again as they walked out, but no one said anything.  When they were all gone, I picked my wet self off the ground and walked to my tube slide to shiver, cold, wet, and alone.

I never went to Mass again, ever.  It didn't mean anything to me anymore, so I didn't bother.

My head lolls over onto my shoulder as spasms hit my neck.  My fingernails dig into the soft flesh of the palms of my hands, searching for blood.  I grip my side in an attempt to stop the sharp pains reaching into it, trying to grab my organs and run.  It feels like someone angry is thrusting a sharp spear into my side.

I grip the jungle gym ladder for balance as the pain slowly diminishes.  I lift up my dirty t-shirt tentatively, afraid of what I might see.  A deep gouge stands out, squirting blood and water onto my shirt, slowly ebbing.  Like a grotesque fountain of blood and water shutting down, it finally stops.  With inhuman speed, the gouge fades into a long, pink scar that hurts inhumanly when I touch it.  Right now, I decide not to touch it.

I roll my t-shirt up so it only covers my "bathing suit zone," and I walk away from the jungle gym, wincing with every step. I lay down under a tree in the grassy area of the playground and think about my side, my side that was perfectly fine just earlier today.

I look at the pink scars that still hurt on each of my hands, each of my feet.  One, two.  Three, four. Five.

My mind in a panic, I think back to when I acquired the scar on my right foot.  The pain, the pain.  It was a month before the trial before my last one.  So, two crimes ago.  Ten things I've done wrong now.  Five wounds now.

My mind wants to take me down a road, the road I know leads to the connection of these two numbers.  But the road is clear, and I can see well enough without actually going down it; I really, really don't want to go down that road.  I want to shut my mind off, because there's no way.  It's all just a coincidence, a crazy coincidence.  Maybe my wounds are all just in my imagination; no one ever commented on them before.

I stare up at the sky.  "I'm scared, mom and dad.  I'm scared," I whisper. 

I curl up on the ground, right there, to go back to sleep.  Involuntarily, I whisper,"Ali," before I fall back asleep.

"Oh, god of cute boys, I pay homage to you."  I knelt before a giant framed poster advertising men's clothing.  "Oh god of cute boys, please make this swimsuit model drop from the sky and appear in front of me right now."

Nothing happened.  "Hey, are you listening? You're the only one listening, and I'm the only person stupid enough to steal this poster and faithful enough to pray to you!"

Nothing happened after that but a police car pulling up to the curb to haul me away for the first time.

"Are you paying attention, Emma?" Mrs Shodenmire snaps at me. Her gray hair used to be swept up into a graceful bun, but by now, most of it has been pulled out in frustration.

"Now you see, Emma, as I was saying, you honestly don't look insane to me."

"Oh, go jump off a cliff," I mutter.

"Excuse me?"  Mrs. Shodenmire asks in that annoyingly high voice.  A high voice to match her high cheekbones, high heels, and high collar.

"Oh, never mind.  So why don't I seem insane to you?" I shout the word "insane," but Mrs. Shodenmire doesn't flinch.  She doesn't even twitch.

"You act like a completely sane person, Emma.  Maybe a little flighty, but I think you're just putting on an act."

"Oh yeah?" I scoot my molded plastic chair backwards and stand up, on the opposite side of a coffee table from Mrs. Shodenmire.  "I feel broken, like there's a crack right here." I point to my chest.  "I know you can fix it."  I put on my most desperate voice and face, and lean over the coffee table to stare straight into her eyes.  "I know you can fix that crack that gets bigger every single day.  PLEASE fix it, and I promise I'll be better.  I just miss my parents and my life and happiness, and I need you to fix that crack."

Mrs. Shodenmire looks pretty convinced now.  "Alright, alright, keep seeing me.  If I'm convinced, I'll sign the papers.  Come back here to my office every day, okay?"

"Okay." I nod and force a tear to roll down my cheek.  "See you tomorrow."

I walk out of the room and skip down the hallway.

Once I'm out of the doors and onto the street, I sprint crazily to my lawyer's house to tell him the good news.  Mr. Edgar opens the door to his yellow house with green trim on the first knock, and I spit out the whole story between gasps.

"...so I mostly convinced her...and I'm going back to her office every day...and she'll decide if I can plead insanity or not." 

Mr. Edgar nods.  "Come inside," he says, motioning me to follow him.  Once I've crossed the threshold, he sticks his head out the door and looks around before closing it, suspicious of the setting sun.  While he shuts his oak door, I walk down the hallway and into his office, sitting in my normal chair.

"So what you need to do," Mr. Edgar begins, sitting down across from me (why does everybody always sit down across from me?), "Is play it up big. The most important thing you need to do is make it clear you need her help to get better."

"That's what I did today."

Mr. Edgar nods.  "Good.  I'll go print you out some information right now that should help your acting, to make sure you convince her well."

"Thank you," I say, though I'm not sure why I'm thanking him to spend ten dollars maximum printing out some papers for me while I'm paying him two hundred.

While Mr.Edgar is out of the room, I take the time to examine his office for the millionth time.
 
The ceiling is as sharp blue as it's always been, the wooden furniture just as worn and scratched.  Mr. Edgar's desk is piled up with just as much junk as always, from bobble head dogs to crumpled papers to pens with little pink flamingos on top of them.  The ceiling is barely higher than the top of Mr. Edgar's bald head, and the room itself is about as big as two walk-in-closets, small enough to incite claustrophobia.

My lawyer walks back in just as I have my head all the way back to examine the wall behind me from the position of upside-down.  I snap my head back to where it should be, and Mr. Edgar looks at me strangely.  "You're getting pretty good at that whole insane thing," he comments.

"Ditto," I snap back.  Mr. Edgar ignores me.

"Well, here are your papers." Mr. Edgar hands me the stapled packet of paper he walked in with.  "The first part is the condition your mental state needs to be in for you to be able to plead insanity, and the second part is the condition your mental state needs to be in to be accepted into a mental health hospital.  Surpass the first conditions, but DO NOT surpass the second conditions.  Got it?"

I nod.  "How much do I owe you?"

"Two hundred," Mr. Edgar says without hesitation.  He's been thinking about this for a while, I can tell.

I dig two hundreds out of my pocket.  "There you go, Mr. Edgar."  My coffee-stained teeth haunt Mr. Edgar as he grabs the bills without looking.

"Thank you," my lawyer says.

My smile widens.  "You are very much welcome."

I walk quickly and purposefully through the store.  I cringe every time someone looks at me, as if they could see right through my skin and into my soul.  I keep my head down and walk faster.  A toddler I pass stares at me, and I shiver.  What if someone knows what I'm going to do? No, they couldn't.  The real thing I need to be worried about is getting caught.

What if I get caught?

I'll go to a juvenile detention center.

What if I go to a juvenile detention center?

I'll bust out.

Then what are you worried about?

I don't know anymore.

I reach the jewelry section and pretend to browse the earrings as I take a look around.  No one behind the counter, no one in either of the two aisles, no one by the glass cases.

Very carefully I get a golden cross necklace that looks like it would weigh someone into a hunchback in my line of vision.  Nonchalantly, I make my way over there, peeking through my bangs and out the corners of my eyes.  As soon as I’m about a foot away from the case containing the necklace, I prepare myself, then execute my plan swiftly and flawlessly.

The screw driver I picked up in the hardware department smashes into the case and I thrust my hand into the mess of broken glass.  When my fingers close around the necklace, I jam it into my pocket and run, away from the employees who are running after me, away from the crowd of onlookers, some dumbfounded, some terrified, and some excited.

I break free of the suffocating clutches of the store, but unfortunately fall right into the hands of the local law enforcement.

“Emma!”  Mrs. Shodenmire snaps her fingers in front of my face irritably.  “Can you please stay focused?”

“Sorry,” I lean back in my chair.  “Okay, so what were we just talking about?”

“You were telling me about your ‘nightmares.’”

“Oh, right.  Well, you see, every crime I’ve committed in the past comes back to haunt me sometime every day.”

“Hmm.” Mrs. Shodenmire writes something down.  “Well, if you ask me, you seem pretty calm about the whole business.”

Sighing, I say, “You get used to it after a while.”

“So they don’t bother you anymore?”

I look at my side, hands, and feet guiltily, swallow, and tell Mrs. Shodenmire, “Nope.  They don’t bother me a bit anymore.”

“I see... Emma, tell me what your day was like today.”  Mrs. Shodenmire takes on a new air, one of interest to replace bored attentiveness.

“I came here.”

“No, what was your day like before you came here?”

“I woke up.”

“Emma, where did you wake up?”

“In a tube slide.”

Mrs. Shodenmire sighs.  She looks around the room, looks up at the ceiling, and whispers, “Oh, god.

“If you’ll excuse me for a second,” Mrs. Shodenmire says, her voice tight as if she’s trying to hold back tears.  She gets up and quickly exits the room.  I see her shadow through an open doorway, nervously pacing back and forth, back and forth, like a doll that’s wound up too tight.  Her voice rings out on the phone, sharp and clear, with words I’m surely not supposed to hear.

“I didn’t sign up for this...yes, I know, but she’s homeless!...I know no one ever explained that to me, that’s why I called...why don’t they give her foster parents?!...I see...I see…I see...yes.  Alright...thank you...yes, good bye.”  Mrs. Shodenmire returns, smoothing her skirt and patting down her hair.  “Okay, from now on there will be a slight change of plans in your life…”

Mrs. Shodenmire goes on to tell me that I will be living with her until further notice.

“No!” is my immediate reaction, before I clamp a hand over my own mouth.  Why don’t I want to live with her?

This will be a perfect chance to convince her of my insanity.

But I can’t handle the stress of acting all the time, can I?

But if I do, I will be rewarded greatly.

I really don’t want to go to jail.

So I uncover my mouth, and change my tone of voice.  “Thank you so much!” I gush fervently.  Right, the next thing I’ll be doing is falling on my knees at her feet and kissing her hand with my own hands clasped towards the Heavens.

Mrs. Shodenmire smiles, her eyes shining.  “I’ll be happy to help you, you poor dear."

The couples flaunt themselves in front of my face, shoving their love and desires up my nose.  I want to shove myself, my own secret passions and impulses and desires, up their snotty noses.

But I can’t, because according to them, they have everything and I have nothing.  They have each other.  They will have each other forever, forever, and forever.  If infinity existed, that’s how long they would have each other.  They would guard each other to the moon and back.  They would hold themselves close during the zombie apocalypse, and if one came to eat their brains, they would tell it to hold off for a second so they could finish one last romantic kiss.

Walking past one such couple, I slap the back of Jeanine’s head while she leans in to smooch with the latest boyfriend.  When the flash of pain hits her, she turns around in surprise with an exclamation of a familiar interjection.  “Hey!  What’d you do that for?!”  But when she sees it’s me, her face goes pale.  “Oh, uh...uh...Emma, what’s up?”

“Through your stupid bloody heart, that’s what’s up.”

Jeanine and her boyfriend look taken aback, yet they persevere in their togetherness, holding each other until the very last second of time and the world will pry them apart from each other.

I shake my head and walk on, stopping once I’m around a corner with a deserted hallway stretching before me.  I sit down heavily, breathing hard and looking into the eyes of the mental image of Jeanine’s boyfriend; I shiver to myself.

I wake up, breathing heavily, staring at a ceiling through semi-darkness; the source of light is a nondescript night-light plugged into the wall in a corner of Mrs. Shodenmire’s guest bedroom.  My gaze shifts from the ceiling to the open door as my brain ticks away at an idea, having been quick to wake up and form a plan.  Slowly, I open my mouth, and begin to scream.

“What is it?!  What is it?!” Mrs. Shodenmire runs in wearing sweat pants and a baggy gray t-shirt, holding her head and looking around in search of an axe murderer.  “What happened?! What happened?!” she repeats until I stop screaming and pretend to pant, my throat scratchy and sore.

I take a deep breath in, pretend to have trouble exhaling, and gasp out, “My nightmares!  They’re haunting me!”

Mrs. Shodenmire breathes a quick sigh of relief before she again resumes her mask of concern.  Sitting down on the foot of my bed, she asks gently, “What do you mean, your ‘nightmares?’”

“I...I was back in my old school. It was like I was actually there.”

“And?” Mrs. Shodenmire looks excited.

“And nothing.  Nothing happened.”

“Oh.”  Mrs. Shodenmire’s face falls.  “Well, what was so scary about it?”

I hug my knees to my chest, the rough fabric of a nightgown that’s too big for me brushing my exposed legs.  “It was just so real.”  I begin to rock myself back and forth.

Mrs. Shodenmire puts a comforting hand on my right shoulder.  “Well, if you need anything, feel free to yell for me.  Okay?”

I force my voice to come out a pitiful whine.  “Okay.”

Mrs. Shodenmire smiles at me, walking out of my room and returning to her own.

“Emma, I know you’re lying to me.”  My mother puts her hands on her hips, glancing down at the flour covering her apron before looking back at me with reprimandation in her eyes.

“Emma, I know you hit Devin Calor today in school.  The principal called me.”

“Mom, I didn’t do it!  Devin Calor is a liar!”

“Emma!  I know very well that you did it!  Nearly the entire school witnessed it, including several teachers and the principal himself.  Now admit to it at once or go to bed early tonight!”

“I didn’t do it!  Why can’t you believe me!?  You never trust me, you’ll take anyone else’s word for it, just not me!  You don’t care about me!”

“Emma!” my mother sounds taken aback, offended greatly.  She reaches out and pulls me to her side without giving me a choice in the matter, hugging me so close that I turn my head and my cheekbone is digging into her muscled stomach.  “Emma,” she rocks me back and forth, my feet glued to the tiled kitchen floor.  “Emma, you know I love you and I care about you greatly.  I just want you to tell me the truth so that we can all, you, your father, and myself, move past this together.  You understand this, don’t you?”

Tearing myself away from my mother, I growl, “If you loved me then you wouldn’t accuse meof anything!”  I run, effectively extracting myself from the situation.  I run out of the kitchen and through the house, out the front door and over the manicured lawns.  I run over many more manicured lawns before the sound of my mother’s quiet sniffles and loud tears leave my ears.  Only then do I stop sprinting and sit down on the old dump of a playground.  Only then do I sit down and shed my own tears, mostly for my mother, who wants to prove so badly that she is right, and that everything she is doing is right.  Because she is right, always.

My father finds me on the swing set hours later, my feet playing forlornly in the sand, drawing circles and shapes lightly resembling triangles.  “Hey,” my dad says, sitting down heavily on the only swing next to mine.  “I talked to your mother.”

I nod, staring down at my feet, which keep on drawing.

“So are you ready to come back home now?”  Out of the corners of my eyes, I watch dad glance at me, then look down at his own piece of dirt spread out before him.  Drawing with his own feet is tempting, but he’s wearing his nice shoes that he only wears to work when he’s meeting with his boss or a co-worker.

I shake my head no in answer to his question.

After a pause, dad asks, “When do you think you’ll be ready to come back home?”  When he doesn’t get a response, he takes one of my cold hands in between his two warm ones, and holds it there, gently massaging the palm and back of my hand.  “When’ll you come home, Emma?  We really miss you, your mother and I do.  We really need the company.  You know, when you’re not around, we just sit around the house doing nothing, staring at stuff and wondering what you would say, wishing you were home to say it.

“And you’re definitely ditching us for the wrong crowd,” dad cracks a smile.  “They always told us, ‘your practically almost pre-teen will try and hang out with the wrong people.’  Well, they never mentioned that the ‘wrong people’ might end up being inanimate objects.  But I mean, seriously, even as far as inanimate objects go, these guys are pretty lame.  What do they do?  They sit around and rust and squeak.  Like, look at that tube slide over there.”  My father points to the tube slide, chewing on his bottom lip.  “That thing looks pretty unshakeable, I’ll bet it’ll be around for a couple more years.  But the rest of this stuff, I think they condemn it soon for being a public eyesore.  Now, I really don’t want my daughter to be condemned along with the rest of the playground equipment because she was there so often, they thought she was just part of the scenery.”

Dad laughs quietly to himself, and I resist smiling through the quickly cooling air.

Dad turns his head and looks at me, trying to meet my averted gaze.  Finally, he says, “Emma, you’re my baby girl, and I know you hear this every second of every minute of every hour of every day  of every week of every month of every year, but I love you.  You understand that, don’t you?  And you understand that I want the best for you, which means I want you to understand everything about this world?

“Look at this world, spread around you.  How beautiful it is, and how many secrets it holds.  I want to help you discover those secrets, and I have faith that Catholicism will lead you there.

“Emma, I know people say that faith is being blinded, that faith is idiotic and faith doesn’t have any compass whatsoever.  But faith is that beautiful compass, the one that points me in the directions I go in, the compass that led me to your mother.  That compass wakes me up in the morning, and helps me fall asleep at night.  The winds come and try to blow away my compass, but I won’t let them do it.  I say, ‘You can just give up now, because I’m not ever going to let go of my compass.  Not ever.”

My father holds my hand tighter.  “And I’m not ever going to let go of you, either.”

My father disappears, fades into dust, a swirling dust storm that eventually lies flat on the sand.  I scream, letting my terror escape me as the playground fades, the sand all gets blown away, even the tube slide is gone.  Then I’m gone.

My mother, my father, the Priest, all lay flat on the floor of the Church, blood quickly seeping out of their veins to stain the light blue carpet.  “Mom?  Dad?”  I look at my mother, bullet wounds in her forehead.  I look at my father, sinking down next to his body.  Bullet wounds pepper his chest and face, leaving deep gouges in what used to be his smooth skin.  “Mom?  Dad?”  Nothing. 

“Are you alright?”  Mrs. Shodenmire is back.  But this time, instead of acting, I am actually shaking in fear.  My body vibrates to the tune of my stamping heart, and I breathe with more urgency than I did before. 

“No.”  I can’t breathe, I am dying.  This must be what it feels like to be suffocating.  “No, I am not alright.”

“Do you need a glass of water or something?”  Mrs. Shodenmire puts a hand to my forehead.  “Well, no fever.  Do you want some water?”

“No, I’m not thirsty.  I’m alright, but thank you.”

“Are yous sure you’re alright?  Do you want me to stay with you for a little while?”

I continue shaking, the bottom half of my spine involuntarily twitching back and forth spasmodically.  “Yes, can you stay with me?”

Mrs. Shodenmire lays down on the double bed next to me, putting her arm over my shoulder and hugging my body to hers.  It’s similar to what my mother used to do when I showed up in my parents’ bedroom late at night, terrified of one thing or another.  Mrs Shodenmire pets the back of my head and gently moves her palm in circles over my back until I finally stop shaking.  I lay still, at ease at last, while Mrs. Shodenmire begins humming a sleepy little lullaby.

I think to myself, Mrs. Shodenmire must have been a really good mother at one time. 

But she’s way too young to have a child who’s already grown up.

What happened?

A deep fire burns somewhere within me, turning my lungs over and over.  I flex my fingers, preparing to snatch at the exact right moment.

I stand, looking about myself nonchalantly, until he walks past, quickly, I begin walking towards him, but turn at the last second, brushing my hand into his poceket and grabbing hold of the money.  We both keep walking in our opposite directions while I thrust my hand back into my own pocket, fingering the paper-y money lovingly.  I watched him count it earlier; he was in possession of at least three hundred and fifty dollars.

My lungs stop turning over and the fire dies down, thinking that the large sum of money is now in my hand, touching the fabric of my pocket, instead of peacefully sitting in his pocket, ready to serve any purpose but mine.

I walk back to the playground, sit in the slide and count my money.  One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, three hundred twenty, three hundred forty, three hundred forty-five, three hundred and fifty.

“Hey!” the annoying kid shouts down my slide.  “What’d you pick up?”

“None of your business, rat!”  I yell back up the slide.  “Why can’t you just stay away from me?!”

“I saw you carrying something!”  Trent lives under the jungle gym, and insists that I be more neighborly.

“I wasn’t carrying anything!”

“Don’t you try an’ tell me you wasn’t carrying nothing!  I saw you!”

“Oh, go stick your head in a dumpster!”

“Can I just have five bucks?  Please?”

“Oh my god, just leave me alone!  Isn’t there someone else you can bother?  Oh, wait, no, there isn’t; the other kid died last week.”

“What?!”

“I was just joking.  God, can’t you even take a joke?  It was supposed to be funny.”

“Oh.”

“Now leave me alone!” I yell loud enough to make anyone wince, even Trent.

“Fine, whatever.  I’m leaving.  Right now.  As in, I’m walking away.”

“Good riddance!” I yell, looking back down at my handful of green bills.

“Are you alright?”  It’s morning, and Mrs. Shodenmire is back to looking at me with concern over the table in her office.

“Yeah, whatever, I’m fine.”

“Did you hear what I said to you before?”  I shake my head, and Mrs. Shodenmire sighs.  “I said, ‘Do you want to go shopping with me?’”

“What?”

“I said, ‘Do you want to go shopping with me?’”

“No.”

“Too bad.”  Mrs. Shodenmire stands up and walks towards the door, beckoning for me to follow.  “You’re going anyway.”

After a long, quiet, and sullen (on my part) ride to the local Superstore with Mrs. Shodenmire in her small gray snail of a vehicle, I end up standing inside the store with Mrs. Shodenmire, basking in the glory of thousands of seemingly unrelated goods and imports under one roof.  Before Mrs. Shodenmire asks to hold my hand so that she can lead me through the store like a little kid, I start to drift away and tell her, “I’m going over here.”  I point in the general direction of Away From Her.

“Okay, fine, meet me by the checkout in an hour,” Mrs. Shodenmire says without looking up from her extensive shopping list.  With a wave of her hand, she formally dismisses me, and I walk off into a meagerly populated area.

I shove my hands down into my front pockets and hum softly, looking casually at the make-up surrounding me.  I keep walking and come to the nail polish.  Still walking, I see hair dye.  Still walking, I see vitamins, stomach acid reducers, and pain killers.  When I begin to approach an aisle stuffed with paper towels and small plastic baggies, I make a right turn and come to the jewelry section.

My tongue pokes out of my mouth to wet my lips, and I crinkle my nose to get rid of an itch.  The last time I was here, I tried to steal a...necklace.  No, a bracelet.  A necklace and a bracelet?  Or was it earrings?

It was earrings, you dingo.

Are you sure?

Yes.

Positive?

Positive.

How do you know?

Because I do.

That’s not a complete sentence.

What makes you so smart all of a sudden?

It was a necklace.

Sure, whatever you say.

It was!

I don’t care, I’m not the one driving this boat.

Yes you are!

No I’m not.

Yes you are!

No I’m not.

Yes you are!

Do you want to empower me?

Yes.

You’re an enabler, that’s what you are.

Why thank you for the compliment.

You’re welcome.  And it was earrings.

Necklace!

Earrings.

Bracelet!

Earrings.

Crucifix!

Crucifix?

Was it a Crucifix?

How am I supposed to know?

Maybe it was a Crucifix.

What’s a Crucifix?

Oh shut up, you know what a Crucifix is.

Well than what is it miss sassy pants?

What if I don’t want to tell you?

What if I don’t want to talk to you?

If you don’t want to talk to me, then why are you doing it?

Because you’re lonely.

No I’m not.

Admit it, you are.  You need my company.

You’re me, you can’t give yourself company!

Oh can’t I?  I’m doing it right now.

Anyway, I’m not lonely.

Yes you are.

No I’m not.

Then why do you play games with yourself?

What games?

Don’t you ‘what games?’ me, you know what games.

Shut up.

Gladly.

I look around carefully, scan the area for staff or shoppers, and quickly reach my hand into the case.  When I withdraw it, I’m holding a pocket knife with a golden handle (engraving 50% off!) and a sterling silver bracelet with a little polar bear charm hanging from it.  I take a deep breath, shove the items into my pocket, and take off running in the direction of the doors.

At first no one pays attention to me, crime usually being masked with a nonchalant figure than rather than a runner bolting for the door, but as I pass through the doors and the alarms on the detectors go off, people start to look.  And chase.

I make it two yards down the sidewalk before staff make it close enough to yell “Stop, thief!” at me, and I make it about the length of a football field more before the police arrive and pull up to the curb a little ways in front of me.  The officers get out of the car very professionally and calmly, and stand on the sidewalk, blocking me path.  I have two options: run over someone’s yard to avoid the officers and start an epic chase, or let the officers stop me.

Determining that any sane person (pretending to be insane) would let the police stop them, I come to halt directly in front of the two officers.

“Good morning,” I say, smiling at the police officers.

“Good morning,” one of them returns, pleasantly taken aback.  The other remains as still as a statue, thumbs hooked through his belt loops and standing like the Great Wall of China in front of me, with no intention of moving.  The statuesque police officer suddenly moves with grace and agility, quickly placing one of his calloused hands on my upper arm.

“What did you steal?” the serious police officer asks me in a deep, gruff voice.

“This,” I say, smiling and removing the sterling silver bracelet from my pocket.

The police officer takes it quickly.  “This it?”

Just then Mrs. Shodenmire runs up panting, barefoot with the heel broken off one of her shoes.

“Mrs. Shodenmire,” I say, smiling, before the sharp point of my mind breaks off with rust and erosion and falls, down into a black, black bottomless pit of unconsciousness.

The knife blade flashes in the high sun of noon when I hold it up above my head.  It flashes again, temporarily blinding me, before it descends onto Mrs. Shodenmire’s wrist.  Fascination curls it’s cool steel fingers around  my face as I watch Mrs. Shodenmire’s wrist and hand erupt in spurts of thick red liquid.  When the liquid hits the sidewalk it kind of sizzles with the heat, and soon turns a muddy brown color.

Mrs. Shodenmire screams, mouth wide open like her eyes.  The police officers yell, lunging about, clumsy yet as poetic as the sun, dark as the far side of the moon but showing no restraint, as competing for justice and ethics, what they believe to be the speck of hope and goodness in a field of dust.

I am herded into the car like a dog, the knife having been wrenched from my hands a long time ago.  I caress the smooth golden handle of the knife in my mind while the police drive, sirens flashing, along the empty road.  I don’t know where they’re taking me, and I certainly don’t care.  Jail?  Bring it on.  I haven’t fought my battles or conquered my foes yet.  I am on top of the universe, tap dancing and stomping down all the mountain ranges because there is no place left in the world for me.

“But there is a place left in the world for you.”  A whisper, quiet, makes it’s way to my ears.  Or maybe it was shouted.  My mother, my mother’s dead voice.  Mrs. Shodenmire?  Do I have my head in her lap, is she stroking my hair, caressing it like a mother?  “Hold on.”  A drop of blood drips onto my cheek, so I close my eyes.

He smiles, smiles at the deceptive tricks we have played to end up here alone, together, his girlfriend nowhere to be seen. 

He sits down next to me, and puts his hand on one of my shoulders.  Until he caught me watching him and Ali, I never imagined him the physical type.

“Ali?” I tease him, and he smiles.

“No one cares about my ‘girlfriend,’” he he says with a smile in his voice.

He gets up, taking his hand with him, and goes to sit on the edge of my bed.  For a second he looks worried, fear slashing its way across his face.

When he asks me, I reply with, “Of course.”

Gasps surround me and spread like fire.  Nosey fingers stick themselves into my side.  The little holes in my hands, my feet, until I know for certain that I never imagined them.  Some swear, others are silent, all reach a decision.  The old familiar Priest gasps also when he sees them.  When he touches my face I open my mouth to bite his fingers off, but his reflexes are much faster.  He shakes his head and admonishes me.  Would my parents be proud of me?  It was a rhetorical question.  Of course they wouldn’t.

I spend long days and nights.  When they give me toys I throw them at the wall, when they touch me I kick and open my mouth to scream, when they move me to a new facility I make their lives living Hell.

When they give me a tennis ball and tell me to throw it I hold it tighter, when psychologists come in to talk to me I either spill all my life stories because I can no longer shelter and hide my pain from the universe, or I pretend to be shy and mute.  When Mrs. Shodenmire comes in with a bandaged wrist I pretend not to recognize her, and she eventually stops coming.  When rackets ensue, I play games in which I pretend to be deaf, and the voice inside my head no longer speaks to me or criticizes me for playing games.

I play games all the time now, little games with myself.  How fast can I try to bite this finger poking me?  How long can I go without eating?  How long can I lay still without blinking or twitching?  How many worlds can the blank wall across from me morph into?  How long can I speak gibberish to myself before even I notice?

The blank wall stays blank, and the people stay blank.  This place that I’m in stays blank.  I get the feeling nowadays that this place is my final destination.  Maybe I’m in Hell right now, or Purgatory.  Or maybe this is what Heaven is, an empty place like all happiness; what is uncovered when that happiness is delved into and examined.  This blank tile is where people reside forever in limbo, no longer on the Earth but with no place to call home.

Or this place might be where people like me go, the people that didn’t believe anymore.  Yes, that makes me feel good.  It makes me feel good to think that my parents and all those good people who peeled away the layers of happiness to find more happiness have gone to a better place than I, one where they are more happy than ever.

This world owns a seeming fraud, mathematics.  The concept whose existence cannot be proven, yet can be proven at the same time.  It cannot be seen, it is tested every day, and everything true points to the fact that it is real.

Mathematics drives the Earth, explains everything.  But there is a greater mathematics that encompasses everything else, that surpasses all laws of Earthly mathematics and allowed for the creation of the world.  Mathematical formulas in our head create ethics that can be agreed upon, and laws and justice and the ability to choose.

As I’m asleep and awake, Ali appears.  She walks over to my blank wall with tennis ball dents and hangs something on it.  I have to squint to prevent being blinded by it, a Crucifix.  An old argument resurfaces: what’s a Crucifix?

I can see it now.  Wooden cross.  Hill, three men.  Center.  Bloody.  Bruised.  Beaten.  Dead.  Love.  Hate.  Remorse.  Penitent.  Forgiving.  Blood dripping.  Crown of thorns.  People.  Awe.  Wonder.  Amazement. Closed eyes.  Nails.  Hammer.  Dice.  Garments.  Water.  Vinegar.  Gall.  Storms.  Mother.  Son, new.  Spear.  Side.  Hole.  Hand.  Hand.  Foot.  Foot.  Five.  Five, total.  One.  Twelve.  Twelve men.  Eleven.  Eleven men living.  Ten.  Ten rules.  Ten rules broken.  Nine.  Nine, eight, seven, six.  Five, four.  Three.  Three persons.  Two.  Two natures.  One.  One Great Mathematician.  One God Who started everything and controls everything, makes the formulas for everything.

Ali smiles a small smile and whispers that she will forgive me.  My mother and father both hold my left hand, squeezing it tight with compassion.  Mrs. Shodenmire has my right hand in her own, her tears dripping onto my arm.  But my tears are still.

I don’t expect that I’ll meet the Great Mathematician now, but as I feel the life leaking out of my body, I start to scream.  Gibberish mixed with coherent English words, words that go something like this:  I am sorry.  Worshipping frauds, disrespect, skipping source and summit, disrespecting victims who sacrificed so much, murder, adultery, theft, deception, jealousy.

Ali speaks.  “I forgive you, and He will too.”

I don’t have to ask who He is.  Everything goes black, and I feel a spark lighting inside me, a single candle lit.  It fills me with joy, and for the first time in my life, I can peel back the layers of that joy and find that it’s still there.