Patricia McCormick: Cut

She barely notices as I go past; she doesn’t ask me what I’m doing here without an escort or why I’m here when I’m supposed to be somewhere else.

I pick a stall down at the end and stand inside facing the toilet. I put my hand on the handle and imagine myself imitating the man on the radio, the man who says, “Testing. Testing. One. Two. Three.” The handle is cold and wet with condensation; I wipe my hand on my jeans and pray that the sound of the toilet flushing will be loud enough. “This is a test,” the man says. “This is only a test.”

I clear my throat and jiggle the handle.

“Everything OK in there?” Marie calls out.

I grip the handle.

“I said, is everything OK in there?”

I can hear the scrape of Marie’s chair on the tile floor as she stands up.

I push on the handle. A great roar comes up from the toilet bowl. I lean over like I’m going to be sick, but nothing comes out.

Forty-five minutes is a long time. You can divide it into nine five-minute segments, five nine-minute segments, three fifteen-minute segments, fifteen three-minute segments, or two twenty-two-and-a-half-minute segments. That’s if you have a watch. If you have to spend it hiding in the laundry room listening for the sounds of footsteps overhead telling you that people are finished with Art Therapy or Anger Management or Individual, you have to time it just right so you come upstairs not too early, not too late, so that you can slip into Group right on schedule without anyone even noticing that you were gone.

As I’m leaving Study Hall for dinner, Tara’s coming toward me carrying a bouquet of tulips. The flowers, which are gigantic in her thin, little-girl arms, are dripping, even though she’s cupped her hand under the stems.

I consider turning back, pretending I left something in Study Hall, but Tara calls out to me. “Can you believe it?” she says. “They took the vase away at the front desk. Glass.”

Here at Sick Minds we guests are not allowed to have any “sharps”—glass or thumbtacks or CDs or ballpoint pens or razors. Sydney keeps making a joke about how there’s only one difference between the employees here and the guests; the guests, she says, are the ones with hairy legs.

Tara stops a few feet in front of me. My feet drag to a stop, too. “Here,” she says. She disentangles one flower from the bunch and holds it out toward me, the way Sam did when he gave me the “Hop your feeling beter” card. Then, before I can take it or not take it, she places the flower on top of my geometry book.

She breezes past, humming. It takes an enormous effort for me to start walking again.

Sydney and I are sitting on our beds after dinner studying when the new girl knocks on our doorless door frame. She’s wearing a tank top, cutoffs, and flip-flops; I feel cold just looking at her. “It’s for you,” she says, cocking her chin in my direction.

I don’t understand. Is her outfit for me? To make me look at her? To make me feel cold?

“The phone,” she says. “It’s for you.” She turns to go, then pauses. “Hey, how do you give someone the silent treatment over the phone? I mean, how do they know if you’re even there?”

My cheeks flame. I put down my geometry book, get up from my bed, and follow her down the hall, counting the number of times her yellow flip-flops thwack against the glossy green linoleum.

She pauses a moment before turning in to her room, which is right next to the phone booth. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I won’t listen to you not talking.”

I sit down on the little curved seat in the phone booth and reach up to close the door. But there is no door. I forget sometimes that there are no doors here. I pick up the receiver, still warm from the grip of the last person, and stare at the concentric circles of tiny holes in the mouthpiece.

My mother’s voice comes out of the other end, puny and hopeful. “Callie? Is that you?”

I hold my breath. There are kitchen sounds in the background, the thrum of the dishwasher, the closing of a drawer.

“Oh, dear,” she says, the volume in her voice slipping down a notch, as if she were talking to herself. “How do I know if you’re even there?”

My back stiffens; those were the same words the new girl used. I shift around on the little seat, then cough.

“Well, I hope you’re there, Callie, because I have something to tell you.” She waits a minute, then sighs. “OK. They say you’re resisting treatment.”

I switch the receiver to my other hand and wipe my palm on my pants leg.

“Oppositional something or other, they’re calling it. Oppositional behavior.”

Oppositional behavior. It sounds so premeditated, so on purpose.

“Are you listening?”

I forget not to nod—and forget my mom can’t see me nodding.

“They say they might send you home.”

The door frame of the tiny booth quivers. It narrows, then expands.

My mom is saying something about how the people at Sick Minds might want to give my bed to someone else. Someone who’s willing to work. Someone who wants to get better.

The floor of the phone booth pitches up, then swims away.

Now she’s saying something about school. “They won’t let you back in school either,” she says. “Not until you’ve had treatment.”

I hold the receiver away from my ear. My mother’s voice grows small, long-distance—costing us good money…going to give your father a heart attack…don’t understand why…—until finally the phone goes dead and all that’s left is a faint clicking in the wires.

The floor isn’t where it’s supposed to be when I step out of the phone booth; it’s like when you step off a curb without knowing it and put your foot down into thin air. I grab the door frame, then force myself to walk back to my room. But the hall shimmers like a paved road on a hot summer day. Slick green squares of linoleum heave up in my path, then sink away underfoot. There’s an incline, a linoleum hill, a surprisingly tiring hill that gives way, without warning, to a valley, a long, low trench in the hallway between the phone booth and my room.

The lights are out and Sydney’s already in bed when I finally get there. I climb straight into bed and pull the blanket up to my chin even though I’m sweating from the walk back from the phone booth. My shirt and pants bunch up under the covers. I wrestle my shirt back into place, give up on the pants. I listen for Sydney’s breathing. It’s no good. I roll over; my shirt gets twisted around my chest. I turn back the other way and yank it straight.

I roll one way, the room rolls the other. I picture my bed, the bed that Sick Minds wants to give to someone else, falling through a giant trapdoor.

Then I hear Ruby’s footsteps coming toward our door. The rolling stops, the furniture snaps back into place. Then she moves on.

Before the floor can start pitching again, I throw off the covers and crouch down next to the bed. I lift the mattress with one hand, grope around with the other. The mattress is surprisingly heavy. My arm shakes, bows under the weight of it. Then I feel it. Way down near the foot of the bed is the pie plate. I stretch, grab it, and let the mattress come down with a plop.

“Huh?” Sydney sits up in bed, her eyes half-open.

I freeze.

Sydney falls back onto her pillow, sighs, and settles into her steady breathing.

I get back into bed, moving calmly and efficiently now, lie on my stomach, and pull the covers over my head. Inside the dark blanket tent, I fold the pie plate in half, press it flat, bend it back and forth, back and forth, like I’m following a recipe, back and forth, until the fold is crisp. When I rip it, it gives way easily and I have two neat halves, each with a jagged edge.