The Yellow Ones
Barely a month into my sophomore year of high school, I stopped going to classes. I was a good student. I got mostly As, and even though I was behind in math, it was never for lack of trying. I was the type to chase validation from teachers, always motivated to do my best. But something inside me had begun to deteriorate. I’d always felt a little uncomfortable being around other people, but now the world outside felt downright hostile, and school was the worst of it. It was something I found I could not explain to other people, the fear and panic I felt when I stepped foot in that building—the claustrophobia I felt. The way the walls felt like they were closing in. The way my rib cage felt like it was doing the same, like it was getting smaller and smaller, and eventually it would crush my lungs and my heart, my whole body collapsing in on itself like a dying star.
Eventually, it became so hard to push through that I could not get out of bed in the morning. The dread was heavy and tied around my ankles. I was constantly late. The few times I was able to get up and get to school on time, I’d wait for my mom to drive off, and then I’d sit for hours on the steps out front in the sickly humidity.
I had no friends at this school. I had made some acquaintances at the beginning of the year, but those relationships had all fizzled out. I wasn’t bullied. For the most part people didn’t pay me much mind at all, but I hated sitting alone at lunch, and walking the halls with no one next to me. I couldn’t start conversations, I couldn’t even continue them when other people tried to throw me a bone. There had always been this wide canyon between me and other people, one that I wasn’t good at crossing, and as I got older it seemed to grow larger and larger. I often thought about finishing high school without connecting with a single person, and the same thing happening in college. I’d think about how eventually my parents would die, and my cat would die, and I’d be all alone with no one to talk to. There would be no one left who knew who I actually was. Eventually, the absences piled up, and my parents pulled me out of school altogether.
For the following weeks, I stayed at home, isolated. I barely left my room, and I certainly never left the house. My parents seemed at a loss, and I was apathetic. I didn’t want help, and when they raised the issue with me, I would leave the room.
In October, their strategy changed. They decided to send me to what they delicately called a “treatment center.” But when I googled the place, Roger’s Behavioral Health, I found that it was a mental hospital.
“It’s clear your anxiety has gotten worse,” my mother said, her overly gentle tone grating on me. “This is going to help you.”
I fought this decision tooth and nail. I spent the whole multi-day car trip to Wisconsin in full negotiation mode, desperate to change their minds. I insisted I wasn’t actually anxious or depressed, I was simply lazy. I begged them to give me another shot, to put me back in school. I promised to try this time. They were unmoved, and we kept driving northward.
“It’s pretty nice in here!” my dad says. “Looks sort of like my dorm in college. It’s actually a little bigger.” I don’t say anything. I just put my duffle bag on the floor, and begin digging through it for the sheets I brought. When I find them, I make my bed.
“I know you’re angry,” my mother says as she grabs one side of the fitted sheet to help me out, “but it’s just for a little while.” I don’t say anything to her either. At this point, I’m so angry I just want them both to leave. I start putting my clothes into the wooden dresser on my side of the room.
The heavy door to the room opens and in steps Shauna, my assigned therapist, and a girl around my age. She greets my parents and then turns to me.
“Savannah, this is your roommate, Chloe,” she says, gesturing to the girl.
“Hi,” I say, awkwardly.
“Hello.”
Chloe and I coexist silently in the shared room for about an hour before she finally asks: “Why are you here?”
It’s a blunt question, but her voice is not unkind.
“I stopped going to school,” I tell her. “It makes me too anxious.” I’m waiting for her to ask more questions, like most people do, but she just nods. “I kind of stopped leaving my house.”
She nods again. I glance over at her.
“Bad OCD,” she answers my silent question like she’s reciting something she’s explained a thousand times. “And an eating disorder.”
I nod and move from my bed to my desk chair so that I can set up my alarm clock. I lean ever so slightly back into the chair, and it rocks back suddenly. I exhale in surprise and look down to see that the desk chair has a base like a rocking chair.
“It’s so you can’t stand on it to hang yourself,” Chloe explains matter-of-factly. There’s a bit of dark humor in her voice that I’m not in the mood to appreciate.
“I didn’t think this was the suicide ward.”
“It’s not. That’s why they let you keep your shoelaces,” she says, gesturing at my Converses. “But they still take precautions. The windows don’t open either.”
Shame winds itself around me, and I give up on the alarm clock, moving back to lie down on my bed. I hate that I’m so broken I had to be sent away, tucked into some corner in the Midwest, far from home, so that my parents, teachers, and everyone else I’ve disappointed don’t have to look at me anymore.
I glance over at Chloe again, and she’s picking at the skin around her fingernails. She looks worried, like she thinks she might have upset me. I feel lousy, like I’ve been a bad conversation partner. Like maybe she’s already wishing I wasn’t here.
For the first couple days, I refuse to get out of bed for breakfast. The prodding from the RCs (the resident counselors who keep an eye on us throughout the day, mostly grad students) is sickeningly motivational. Shauna comes back in, and I get the same life-coach routine from her. Barbara, the lady who sits at the front desk during the night to make sure no one tries to make a run for it, even comes in at one point.
“I always hate the ungrateful ones,” she says. “Do you have any idea how much it cost your parents to put you here?”
I don’t say anything to her, I just lie still on the bed like I have all morning, and she leaves.
I can only hold out for so long, and I soon fall hesitantly into the daily activities. Three meals in the dining hall, therapy (individual or group, depending on the day), two hours of schooling on weekdays, cognitive behavioral therapy sessions, exposure therapy and sessions. We get a couple hours of free time each day, and I spend mine in my room reading. When I finish my books, I take out my IPod and listen to all my songs twice over. I even go into the phone room and call my mom. It’s only then, a week and a half into my stay, when I’ve exhausted all my other options, that I go out into the common room with everyone else.
Wall-E is playing on the TV. A few kids sit on the two garish orange couches watching, while some others are gathered at a table in the back playing cards. Everyone stops what they’re doing to look at me. When I freeze, like a mouse in a trap, everyone quits staring and goes back to their chosen activities. My eyes find Chloe, who’s sitting with the group playing cards. Beside her there are two boys. I walk over and sit at the table. The group stops to stare at me, but they seem more awkward than hostile.
“What are you playing?” I ask.
“Texas Hold ‘em,” one of the boys answers. “Want us to teach you?”
“Sure.”
I learn the boys’ names, Jackson and Zak. I notice how they both seem to have vocal tics and how Chloe doesn’t touch the cards directly, pulling the sleeves of her shirt over her hands to avoid direct contact with them. I sit with the four of them at dinner and feel better than I’ve felt in months.
Chloe and I are both shy, and at first, this is an obstacle. Neither of us is confident enough to break the ice, so instead we shave it away slowly. There are often long silences between us, but they are not uncomfortable, and I feel no pressure to fill them. We exchange small inconsequential parts of ourselves. She is from Oregon, I’m from Georgia. She reads poetry, I like fantasy novels. We’re both cat people.
One morning, Chloe’s parents pick her up for the day, and when they drop her off in the evening she tells me that she’s texted one of her friends, and that he’s going to send her a care package with something fun inside. I don’t think much of it. Most people in the ward have received some kind of package from family and friends, myself included. They usually contain snacks, DVDs, and other goodies. A week or so later, she pulls me into our room pressing a small box of Sour Patch Kids into my hand. She tells me to open them. Confused, and a little suspicious, I obey. When I open the box, I realize I am not the first to have done so, the box has been resealed from the inside with a small clear piece of tape. The contents of the box are 99% normal, but mixed in with the array of yellow, red, orange and green child-shaped sour gummies are two red, square gummies that are different.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m lost, what’s this?” I hold one of the unusual gummies in front of her, pinched between my thumb and index finger.
“It’s Delta 8,” she explains, and when I don’t indicate understanding, she continues, “It’s an edible. Like weed, but a little bit different.”
We wait until lights-out to eat them, so there’s less of a risk of someone catching us high. I spend the first hour or so thinking I must have some kind of immunity because I feel nothing. Chloe and I read in companionable silence. Gradually, I start to find it difficult to concentrate on the words in front of me==each sentence is forgotten as soon as I read it. I close my book and stand up. Everything, including my own thoughts, feels incredibly distant, like my brain has been dropped into a vat of syrup. I must have been standing there next to my bed for longer than I realize because Chloe looks over at me. It’s only when she starts laughing that I realize my mouth is hanging open, and I close it quickly, suddenly intensely embarrassed. But when my eyes finally chart a slow path over to her face, her expression is kind, and I remember who I’m with. There is a warm golden feeling in my chest like I’ve swallowed sunshine.
It soon hits her too and we end up sprawled out on the floor next to each other. We try at first to build a blanket fort, connecting both our desk chairs with her comforter laid over top, but it falls and neither of us can be bothered to get up and fix it. We talk, and the conversation goes from TV shows to politics to religion to celebrities to our childhoods to our fears. Sometimes we start talking about a topic only to realize we’ve already talked about it. When we can’t think of anything else to say, we start asking each other nonsensical “would you rather” questions. I begin to feel tired in a way I never have before, like a weighted blanket has been laid over my body. Lying on the moldy smelling carpet, I am the most comfortable I’ve ever been.
“I’m so hungry,” she whines, and I hate the distress in her voice.
“Have the Sour Patch Kids,” I tell her. “I feel nauseous anyways. I don’t want any.”
“Really? Are you sure?” she asks, but I can hear her standing to grab the box already.
“Yeah, just save me one or two yellow ones, for in the morning.”
She thanks me, and it takes me too long to respond. I open my eyes and she’s lying the other way now, her feet next to my head, and her head next to my feet. She has a small mole on her ankle.
“Have you been checked for skin cancer?” I ask her. She laughs.
I keep looking at her. My heart suddenly feels like it’s seizing up. The peace I’d felt just a moment ago is gone, and there is a panic deep inside me, growing rapidly like fungi, starting in my stomach and climbing up my throat. I’ve been taught to find the source of my anxieties, to follow the thread of fear to the core belief, and to try and alter my thinking. But the disquiet in me is so intense that I can’t begin searching. I can’t find the thought or reason behind it. All I know is I feel like if I close my eyes for too long, if I stop looking at her, she might disappear. What if she’s not here when I wake up? I decide to stay up all night. The digital clock on my nightstand says 4:47 a.m., and I know I can make it until 9 a.m., when the RCs will come to get us up.
I lie there for what I’m sure is hours, but when I break my own rule and my eyes cut over to the display of my clock again, its bright red digits read 5:03 a.m.
When I do wake at half-past noon, I’m groggy and my functions still feel at half-capacity. Chloe told the RCs I was feeling sick, and they let me sleep. I pick up the box of Sour Patch Kids, which has been placed on my desk, and inside I find that she’d left all of the yellow ones for me.
Sometimes we get to go on outings. The idea is to do something that triggers your anxiety, sit with the discomfort it causes, and next time, hopefully, it’ll be a little easier. On timee theydragged Chloe and me to a local high school. They instructed me to talk to random kids, while she had to touch the sinks in the bathroom. We’d both started off the day in bright spirits, but by the time we’d made it back, we looked like cats who’d been doused in cold water, anxious and miserable.
But sometimes the outings are purely for fun, like going to get ice cream or going to the movies. One day we go hiking in a gorgeous park not far from the facility, Chloe walking next to me. I chat idly with her while we walk.
“Small dogs get a bad rap, is all I’m saying,” I tell her. “Chihuahuas are actually really chill, you just have to give them space.”
“I gave my aunt’s chihuahua nothing but space,” she insists, “and the little monster still bit me.”
It’s nearly November, and leaves crunch underneath our steps. I’ve come to love the Wisconsin weather and its pleasant chill. I relish being able to see my breath in the air. Chloe’s face is pink from the cold, and her hair pulled into a ponytail, sticks up with static from when she had pulled on her sweater earlier. We come to a steep but short incline in the trail, littered treacherously with rocks and pebbles. I carefully step my way up it, and then reach my hand down for Chloe to take.
Her smile is bright, and I realize her eyes are not brown, but hazel. Once she’s up, I loosen my hand, expecting her to do the same. She doesn’t though, she just keeps moving forward, our fingers still interlinked. Her hand is small and warm in mine, and despite the cold, my palm begins to sweat.
“When we’re older and we live together,” she says, “we’re sticking to cats.”
We sometimes take outings to a small used bookstore in a rundown strip mall. It’s clearly on its last leg, the paint is peeling off the walls, and I never see any other customers. Chloe and I have a routine. I go to the fantasy section, while she peruses the poetry aisle, and we meet afterwards at the romance novels. We skim the dust-covered shelves, looking for the worst the section has to offer, usually a trashy vampire novel or a western “bodice-ripper.” Later, after lights out, we sit huddled close on one of our beds, reading the funny parts to each other out loud. We laugh at the over-dramatic dialog, the nonsensical plots, and the godawful sex scenes. She laughs extra hard when I deepen my voice to read the male dialogue, burying her face in her pillow so Barbara won’t come in and scold us. I do it frequently, chasing the feeling of making her laugh.
On one of these occasions, we sit reading a Twilight knockoff. So far, it’s been a bust, too competently written to be particularly funny, but not competently enough to be good. The book passes between each of our hands as we take turns skimming. My eyes search the page, and finally stop on a sultry adjective. I read aloud, and Chloe perks up, listening. I realize as I’m reading that the scene does not take place between the two main characters, as I had presumed, but between two side characters. Two women. The scene is not particularly explicit: it’s the type of thing you might find in a PG-13 movie. We’ve certainly read worse, but by the time I’ve finished reading, my mouth strangely dry, and Chloe has gone stiff next to me. We have not felt awkward around each other for weeks, but now discomfort is thick in the air around us. She removes herself from my side, disconnects each place we are touching. Her head moves from my shoulder, her outer thigh no longer pressed against mine.
“I’m tired,” she says, her voice wobbly.
She stands up and goes into the bathroom, turns on the faucet. The book is still open in my lap. I stare at the words without really seeing them. I know that I’ve made a mistake somehow, accidentally brushing up on the things we’ve left hanging in the air between us, the things we’ve purposefully left ignored and untouched. For the first time in months, the rotting feeling of social failure settles in my stomach. I put the book in my desk drawer and push it all the way to the very back, where it sits for the rest of my stay.
Later that week she tells me that she and Zak have started dating. She recounts the story of his confession breathlessly, the words spilling out of her. I tell her I am happy for them, elated even. I keep reminding myself of this over and over, “I am happy,” like a mantra. The joy is a hole in my chest and an acrid taste on my tongue. I picture myself, ten years older, attending their wedding, and afterwards I feel too sick to go to dinner.
In December, my therapist tells me she’s proud of the progress I’ve made, and that I should be ready to go home soon. She meets with my parents several times, and I am given a release date of December 17th. When I tell Chloe, she begins to cry, apologizing in between big, struggling gasps that she’s not more happy for me. I comfort her, and we watch Star Wars on the common room TV. She holds my hand while we watch, pressing herself up against the side of my body. Unwanted anger crowds in on me, fast and hot. It’s the first time she’s touched me since the book incident. I think about snatching my hand away, and making a nasty comment, but I refrain. We spend the next few days almost exclusively with each other, and when it’s time for me to go, she hugs me tightly.
I learned later, from my dad, that my release was not because of any actual improvement on my part, but because of an issue with our insurance. We could no longer pay, so I was forced out the door while being fed the lie that I had gotten better. I started going to school again, the crack inside me not quite healed, but bandaged over. Sometimes, when the panic crawls up my throat, or I feel hopelessness heavy on my shoulders, I sit on my bed, and open my “farewell book.” It’s sort of like a yearbook, but with no pictures; each page simply contains a note written by someone at the facility, patients, and RCs alike. Most are just standard well wishes, some are more personal. There is no note in the book from Chloe. Her farewell comes instead as a small card with intricate flowers printed on the front. What she wrote is long and indecipherable to anyone but me, filled with inside jokes and personal anecdotes, all printed in neat script. At the bottom sit the words “I Love You.”
I keep it under a pile of random papers on my bookshelf, a refutation of all my fears.
Savannah Flowers is a sophomore at Columbus State University in Columbus, GA, pursuing a degree in English Literature. This is her first publication. In her free time she enjoys reading, hiking, and sewing.
The Albion Review 