I scream until my scream has nowhere else to go and so tails off of its own accord. Our mother watches my scream fade away and part of her seems to disappear with it. Her panting slows and we reach out for each other.
Then her arms drop, in a clunky, bent-elbow motion, like a Barbie’s, and her face recomposes itself into something different, something bitter and blameful. She looks at me and doesn’t like what she sees. ‘Why don’t you ever cry, Justine? You never cry.’
I touch my cheek in reply but I don’t need my finger nor our mother to tell me that my face is hot and swollen but still dry.
Dad drags her off as she starts to howl again, more subdued this time, and her howls fade until the only screaming left is mine.
I call after them, even though I can’t see them any more. ‘Please don’t leave me here, please Daddy.’
I’m stuck between the door and the doorjamb, the metal chain slicing into my neck. I go limp and hang there as Hilary stands, her clipboard still in hand, and watches me from the reception area. Mark and Leroy reappear. Mark – or the one I think is Mark – stands to one side of the door to the intake room. He stomps on my foot like an anchor and grabs me by the arm as Leroy unhooks the chain. They slip me out of the room and Leroy takes hold of my other side. Mark reeks of BO and Leroy’s hands are rough like packing boxes. When I struggle against him, my skin chafes. I stop struggling.
‘Your parents have asked to leave you here for a three-day evaluation,’ Hilary informs me. ‘After that, we’ll report back to them with our recommendations. Do you understand?’
No, I don’t understand, I don’t understand at all. This could not possibly be right. ‘I’m not a drug addict, I’m not any kind of addict. I don’t have a problem.’
‘Well, your parents are very worried about you. And frankly, based on your behaviour here this morning, Justine, I think they’re justified.’
‘But I don’t belong here. You can’t keep me.’
She considers that. ‘In fact, we can. Do you understand? We can.’
I shake my head. ‘It’s not right.’
One of the double doors swings open again and our father strides back into the centre. A wave of relief washes over me. It’s OK now. They’ve changed their minds, come to their senses at last.
Dad walks up to me and he’s going to throw his arms round me, he’s going to apologise, kiss my burning cheeks and take me home.
‘Oh Daddy,’ I blubber.
Our father isn’t such a bad man really, he loses perspective sometimes, but he’s got a heart and soul and mind that tells him what’s reasonable and what’s not, what’s right, what’s not.
He approaches then stops abruptly. He hauls something out of his pocket – a handkerchief? One of Mom’s Tic Tacs? The denture fob with the keys to the car that has drying vomit in the back seat but who cares because that’s the car that’s going to take me home and I’ll never be nauseous again?
‘You forgot your retainer, Justine,’ our not-unreasonable father tells me. ‘You know better than that. That’s expensive orthodontic equipment and you need to treat it with some respect.’ He places the retainer in my hand, then makes to leave again.
‘Daddy. Please.’
I can see the lines round his eyes, dragging everything down. ‘Justine,’ he says, ‘you must believe me. It’s for your own good.’ And perhaps he means the retainer or Hilary or this godawful day or all three. Is he being our father or Jeff Ziegler, orthodontist extraordinaire, or someone else entirely? Whoever he is, he spins on his heel and heads for the door. The smear that the garage door bestowed on his suit jacket is the last I see of him. I hope no one tells him about the smear, I hope it sits so long that the grease becomes well and truly ingrained so that even a dry cleaner can’t budge it – that stain will be there for ever and his shirt will be ruined. A reminder of this day.
The double doors squeak on their hinges and swing shut and my stomach does something funny at the sound of it. The ground falls away and, though Mark and Leroy’s hands are still on me, they feel like feathers. My body is numb.
‘Do you understand now?’ Hilary repeats. Simultaneously, Leroy and Mark tighten their grip and still I can hardly feel their fingers. ‘Do you understand, Justine?’
I nod. My eyelids are dry and rough like the boxes Leroy has been packing and they chafe against my eyeballs.
‘Very good, then. Welcome to Come Clean.’
I’m still nodding as my knees buckle and I swoon into blackness and Mark’s stinking embrace.
When I come to, I’m in a room smaller than the intake room and it’s dark. There are no windows and the only light is eking through beneath the door that I don’t even need to touch to know is locked. My tartan skirt has hiked up to expose my legs and the soft skin at the backs of my thighs is sticking to the cracked leatherette cushions of the couch I’ve been laid out on. I can’t breathe. I wonder for a second if my lungs stopped working when I fainted because I’m puffing now like I’ve been under water: like when you used to dunk me at the swimming pool and I’d get chlorine up my nose and I couldn’t breathe, and you’d hold my head under while you chanted Marco Polo Marco Polo, and I couldn’t wait to do the same to you once it was my turn. My other vital organs feel as if they stopped and started again too. I’m hot and cold at the same time and my heart is thwacking inside my chest.
I don’t know how long I’ve been in here, hours probably. I try to read my Swatch, my favourite Christmas present last year. I love it, I’ve always loved everything you gave me. Even though it’s near impossible to tell the time because there isn’t a second hand and no numbers. You’d tease me by saying I was the ditzy one – spatially retarded in fact – not the watch. Retard, you’d call me, but you’d say it with affection and that’s how I’d hear it too. In the dimness, the hands are too fuzzy to discern at all. The room has an undisturbed air about it, like no one but me, twisting in my unconsciousness, has moved in here for quite some time.
My memory is one thing that didn’t stop working when I passed out. I know exactly where I am, if not the precise location within the building.
And I know I’ve got to escape. I try to retrace the route in my head so I can tell Cindy. But what the heck is the name of the road, Justine? Is it right or left off the main drag? And how many miles after Harvey’s? I don’t know. Cindy will figure it out. She has to. She and Lloyd will find a map and find a way, they’ll get me out of here.
I’ve just got to reach a phone so I can call her. I survey the room, my eyes adjusting to the dark. I can make out forms though colours and textures blur into shadow. There’s the couch I’m lying on, about a foot shorter than me, and two folding chairs, leaning up against the wall to the right of the door, and a trash can, wicker maybe, looking empty and skeletal even in the dimness, and framed things on the wall, yet more needlepoint godsquad pronouncements I’m sure. To the left of the sofa where my feet have been dangling is a spindly side table and there’s something on it. It’s not a phone, though, that’s clear. It’s smaller, looks like a tube or canister of something. I lean in and squint. No, it’s a cup, a plastic cup, but it’s tipped over on its side, thanks apparently to a collision with my feet. The tabletop is a pool of liquid, dripping into the carpet. I dab my finger in it. Water, my glass of water.
I remember how thirsty I am. My lips crack with rawness and when I lick them my tongue sticks like it does to my teeth and the underside of my still foul-tasting retainer. I would hock my Michael Jackson collection and all my Esprit sweaters for a drink of water.
Why would anybody put a glass of water in a place like that, where a person