I've been locked up for 264 days.

I have nothing but a small notebook and a broken pen and the numbers in my

head to keep me company. 1 window. 4 walls. 144 square feet of space. 26

letters in an alphabet I haven’t spoken in 264 days of isolation.

6,336 hours since I’ve touched another human being.

“You’re getting a cellmate roommate,” they said to me.

“We hope you rot to death in this place For good behavior,” they said to me.

“Another psycho just like you No more isolation,” they said to me.

They are the minions of The Reestablishment. The initiative that was

supposed to help our dying society. The same people who pulled me out of my

parents’ home and locked me in an asylum for something outside of my control.

No one cares that I didn’t know what I was capable of. That I didn’t know what I

was doing.

I have no idea where I am.

I only know that I was transported by someone in a white van who drove 6

hours and 37 minutes to get me here. I know I was handcuffed to my seat. I

know I was strapped to my chair. I know my parents never bothered to say goodbye. I know I didn’t cry as I was taken away.

I know the sky falls down every day.

The sun drops into the ocean and splashes browns and reds and yellows and

oranges into the world outside my window. A million leaves from a hundred

different branches dip in the wind, fluttering with the false promise of flight. The

gust catches their withered wings only to force them downward, forgotten, left to

be trampled by the soldiers stationed just below.

There aren’t as many trees as there were before, is what the scientists say.

They say our world used to be green. Our clouds used to be white. Our sun was

always the right kind of light. But I have very faint memories of that world. I

don’t remember much from before. The only existence I know now is the one I

was given. An echo of what used to be.

I press my palm to the small pane of glass and feel the cold clasp my hand in

a familiar embrace. We are both alone, both existing as the absence of somethingelse.

I grab my nearly useless pen with the very little ink I’ve learned to ration

each day and stare at it. Change my mind. Abandon the effort it takes to write

things down. Having a cellmate might be okay. Talking to a real human being

might make things easier. I practice using my voice, shaping my lips around the

familiar words unfamiliar to my mouth. I practice all day.

I’m surprised I remember how to speak.

I roll my little notebook into a ball I shove into the wall. I sit up on the clothcovered springs I’m forced to sleep on. I wait. I rock back and forth and wait.

I wait too long and fall asleep.

My eyes open to 2 eyes 2 lips 2 ears 2 eyebrows.

I stifle my scream my urgency to run the crippling horror gripping my limbs.

“You’re a b-b-b-b—”

“And you’re a boy too.” He cocks an eyebrow. He leans away from my face. He

grins but he’s not smiling and I want to cry, my eyes desperate, terrified, darting

toward the door I’d tried to open so many times I’d lost count. They locked me

up with a boy. A boy.

Dear God.

They’re trying to kill me.

They’ve done it on purpose.

To torture me, to torment me, to keep me from sleeping through the night

ever again. His arms are tatted up, half sleeves to his elbows. His eyebrow is

missing a ring they must’ve confiscated. Dark blue eyes dark brown hair sharp

jawline strong lean frame. Gorgeous Dangerous. Terrifying. Horrible.

He laughs and I fall off my bed and scuttle into the corner.

He sizes up the meager pillow on the spare bed they shoved into the empty

space this morning, the skimpy mattress and threadbare blanket hardly big

enough to support his upper half. He glances at my bed. Glances at his bed.

Shoves them both together with one hand. Uses his foot to push the two

metal frames to his side of the room. Stretches out across the two mattresses,

grabbing my pillow to fluff up under his neck. I’ve begun to shake.

I bite my lip and try to bury myself in the dark corner.

He’s stolen my bed my blanket my pillow.

I have nothing but the floor.

I will have nothing but the floor.

I will never fight back because I’m too petrified too paralyzed too paranoid.

"So you’re—what? Insane? Is that why you’re here?”

I’m not insane.

He props himself up enough to see my face. He laughs again. “I’m not going

to hurt you.”

I want to believe him I don’t believe him.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

None of your business. What’s your name?

I hear his irritated exhalation of breath. I hear him turn over on the bed that

used to be half mine. I stay awake all night. My knees curled up to my chin, my

arms wrapped tight around my small frame, my long brown hair the only curtain

between us.

I will not sleep.

I cannot sleep.

I cannot hear those screams again.

It smells like rain in the morning.

The room is heavy with the scent of wet stone, upturned soil; the air is dank

and earthy. I take a deep breath and tiptoe to the window only to press my nose

against the cool surface. Feel my breath fog up the glass. Close my eyes to the

sound of a soft pitter-patter rushing through the wind. Raindrops are my only

reminder that clouds have a heartbeat. That I have one, too.

I always wonder about raindrops.

I wonder about how they’re always falling down, tripping over their own

feet, breaking their legs and forgetting their parachutes as they tumble right out

of the sky toward an uncertain end. It’s like someone is emptying their pockets

over the earth and doesn’t seem to care where the contents fall, doesn’t seem to

care that the raindrops burst when they hit the ground, that they shatter when

they fall to the floor, that people curse the days the drops dare to tap on their

doors.

I am a raindrop.

My parents emptied their pockets of me and left me to evaporate on a

concrete slab.

The window tells me we’re not far from the mountains and definitely near

the water, but everything is near the water these days. I just don’t know which

side we’re on. Which direction we’re facing. I squint up at the early morning

light. Someone picked up the sun and pinned it to the sky again, but every day it

hangs a little lower than the day before. It’s like a negligent parent who only

knows one half of who you are. It never sees how its absence changes people.

How different we are in the dark.

A sudden rustle means my cellmate is awake.

I spin around like I’ve been caught stealing food again. That only happened

once and my parents didn’t believe me when I said it wasn’t for me. I said I was

just trying to save the stray cats living around the corner but they didn’t think I

was human enough to care about a cat. Not me. Not something someone like me.

But then, they never believed anything I said. That’s exactly why I’m here.

Cellmate is studying me He fell asleep fully clothed. He’s wearing a navy blue T-shirt and khaki

cargo pants tucked into shin-high black boots.

I’m wearing dead cotton on my limbs and a blush of roses on my face.

His eyes scan the silhouette of my structure and the slow motion makes my

heart race. I catch the rose petals as they fall from my cheeks, as they float

around the frame of my body, as they cover me in something that feels like the

absence of courage.

Stop looking at me, is what I want to say.

Stop touching me with your eyes and keep your hands to your sides and

please and please and please— “What’s your name?” The tilt of his head cracks

gravity in half.

I’m suspended in the moment. I blink and bottle my breaths.

He shifts and my eyes shatter into thousands of pieces that ricochet around

the room, capturing a million snapshots, a million moments in time. Flickering

images faded with age, frozen thoughts hovering precariously in dead space, a

whirlwind of memories that slice through my soul. He reminds me of someone I

used to know.

One sharp breath and I’m shocked back to reality.

No more daydreams.

“Why are you here?” I ask the cracks in the concrete wall. 14 cracks in 4

walls a thousand shades of gray. The floor, the ceiling: all the same slab of stone.

The pathetically constructed bed frames: built from old water pipes. The small

square of a window: too thick to shatter. My hope is exhausted. My eyes are

unfocused and aching. My finger is tracing a lazy path across the cold floor.

I’m sitting on the ground where it smells like ice and metal and dirt.

Cellmate sits across from me, his legs folded underneath him, his boots just a

little too shiny for this place.

“You’re afraid of me.” His voice has no shape.

My fingers find their way to a fist. “I’m afraid you’re wrong.”

I might be lying, but that’s none of his business.

He snorts and the sound echoes in the dead air between us. I don’t lift my

head. I don’t meet the eyes he’s drilling in my direction. I taste the stale, wasted

oxygen and sigh. My throat is tight with something familiar to me, something

I’ve learned to swallow.

2 knocks at the door startle my emotions back into place.

He’s upright in an instant.

“No one is there,” I tell him. “It’s just our breakfast.” 264 breakfasts and Istill don’t know what it’s made of. It smells like too many chemicals; an

amorphous lump always delivered in extremes. Sometimes too sweet, sometimes

too salty, always disgusting. Most of the time I’m too starved to notice the

difference.

I hear him hesitate for only an instant before edging toward the door. He

slides open a small slot and peers through to a world that no longer exists.

“Shit!” He practically flings the tray through the opening, pausing only to

slap his palm against his shirt. “Shit, shit.” He curls his fingers into a tight fist

and clenches his jaw. He’s burned his hand. I would’ve warned him if he

would’ve listened.

“You should wait at least three minutes before touching the tray,” I tell the

wall. I don’t look at the faint scars gracing my small hands, at the burn marks no

one could’ve taught me to avoid. “I think they do it on purpose,” I add quietly.

“Oh, so you’re talking to me today?” He’s angry. His eyes flash before he

looks away and I realize he’s more embarrassed than anything else. He’s a tough

guy. Too tough to make stupid mistakes in front of a soft boy. Too tough to show

pain.

I press my lips together and stare out the small square of glass they call a

window. There aren’t many animals left, but I’ve heard stories of birds that fly.

Maybe one day I’ll get to see one. The stories are so wildly woven these days

there’s very little to believe, but I’ve heard more than one person say they’ve

actually seen a flying bird within the past few years. So I watch the window.

There will be a bird today. It will be white with streaks of gold like a crown

atop its head. It will fly. There will be a bird today. It will be white with streaks

of gold like a crown atop its head. It will fly. There will be a— His hand.

On me.

2 tips

of 2 fingers graze my cloth-covered shoulder for less than a second and

every muscle every tendon in my body is fraught with tension and tied into knots

that clench my spine. I stay very still. I don’t move. I don’t breathe. Maybe if I

don’t move, this feeling will last forever.

No one has touched me in 264 days.

Sometimes I think the loneliness inside of me is going to explode through

my skin and sometimes I’m not sure if crying or screaming or laughing through the hysteria will solve anything at all. Sometimes I’m so desperate to touch to be

touched to feel that I’m almost certain I’m going to fall off a cliff in an alternate

universe where no one will ever be able to find me.

It doesn’t seem impossible.

I’ve been screaming for years and no one has ever heard me.

“Aren’t you hungry?” His voice is lower now, a little worried now.

I’ve been starving for 264 days. “No.” The word is little more than a broken

breath as it escapes my lips and I turn and I shouldn’t but I do and he’s staring at

me. Studying me. His lips are only barely parted, his limbs limp at his side, his

lashes blinking back confusion.

Something punches me in the stomach.

His eyes. Something about his eyes.

It’s not him not him not him not him not him.

I close the world away. Lock it up. Turn the key so tight.

Blackness buries me in its folds.

“Hey—”

My eyes break open. 2 shattered windows filling my mouth with glass.

“What is it?” His voice is a failed attempt at flatness, an anxious attempt at

apathy.

Nothing.

I focus on the transparent square wedged between me and my freedom. I

want to smash this concrete world into oblivion. I want to be bigger, better,

stronger.

I want to be angry angry angry.

I want to be the bird that flies away.

“What are you writing?” Cellmate speaks again.

These words are vomit.

This shaky pen is my esophagus.

This sheet of paper is my porcelain bowl.

“Why won’t you answer me?” He’s too close too close too close.

No one is ever close enough.

I suck in my breath and wait for him to walk away like everyone else in my

life. My eyes are focused on the window and the promise of what could be. The

promise of something grander, something greater, some reason for the madness

building in my bones, some explanation for my inability to do anything without

ruining everything. There will be a bird. It will be white with streaks of gold like

a crown atop its head. It will fly. There will be a bird. It will be— “Hey—”

"You can’t touch me,” I whisper. I’m lying, is what I don’t tell him. He can

touch me, is what I’ll never tell him. Please touch me, is what I want to tell him.

But things happen when people touch me. Strange things. Bad things.

Dead things.

I can’t remember the warmth of any kind of embrace. My arms ache from

the inescapable ice of isolation. My own mother couldn’t hold me in her arms.

My father couldn’t warm my frozen hands. I live in a world of nothing.

Hello.

World.

You will forget me.

Knock knock.

Cellmate jumps to his feet.

It’s time to shower.

The door opens to an abyss.

There’s no color, no light, no promise of anything but horror on the other

side. No words. No direction. Just an open door that means the same thing every

time.

Cellmate has questions.

“What the hell?” He looks from me to the illusion of escape. “They’re letting

us out?”

They’ll never let us out. “It’s time to shower.”

“Shower?” His voice loses inflection but it’s still threaded with curiosity.

“We don’t have much time,” I tell him. “We have to hurry.”

“Wait, what?” He reaches for my arm but I pull away. “But there’s no light

—we can’t even see where we’re going—”

“Quickly.” I focus my eyes on the floor. “Take the hem of my shirt.”

“What are you talking about—”

An alarm sounds in the distance. A buzzing hums closer by the second. Soon

the entire cell is vibrating with the warning and the door is slipping back into

place. I grab his shirt and pull him into the blackness beside me. “Don’t. Say.

Anything.”

“Bu—”

“Nothing,” I hiss. I tug on his shirt and command him to follow me as I feel

my way through the maze of the mental institution. It’s a home, a center for

troubled youth, for neglected children from broken families, a safe house for the

psychologically disturbed. It’s a prison. They feed us nothing and our eyes never

see each other except in the rare bursts of light that steal their way through

cracks of glass they pretend are windows. Nights are punctured by screams and

heaving sobs, wails and tortured cries, the sounds of flesh and bone breaking by

force or choice I’ll never know. I spent the first 3 months in the company of my

own stench. No one ever told me where the bathrooms and showers were

located. No one ever told me how the system worked. No one speaks to you

unless they’re delivering bad news. No one touches you ever at all. Boys and

girls never find each other.

Never but yesterday.

It can’t be coincidence.

My eyes begin to readjust in the artificial cloak of night. My fingers feel

their way through the rough corridors, and Cellmate doesn’t say a word. I’m

almost proud of him. He’s nearly a foot taller than me, his body hard and solid

with the muscle and strength of someone close to my age. The world has not yet

broken him. Such freedom in ignorance.

“Wha—”

I tug on his shirt a little harder to keep him from speaking. We’ve not yet

cleared the corridors. I feel oddly protective of him, this person who could

probably break me with 2 fingers. He doesn’t realize how his ignorance makes

him vulnerable. He doesn’t realize that they might kill him for no reason at all.

I’ve decided not to be afraid of him. I’ve decided his actions are more

immature than genuinely threatening. He looks so familiar so familiar so familiar

to me. I once knew a boy with the same blue eyes and my memories won’t let

me hate him.

Perhaps I’d like a friend.

6 more feet until the wall goes from rough to smooth and then we make a

right. 2 feet of empty space before we reach a wooden door with a broken handle

and a handful of splinters. 3 heartbeats to make certain we’re alone. 1 foot

forward to edge the door inward. 1 soft creak and the crack widens to reveal

nothing but what I imagine this space to look like. “This way,” I whisper.

I tug him toward the row of showers and scavenge the floor for any bits of

soap lodged in the drain. I find 2 pieces, one twice as big as the other. “Open

your hand,” I tell the darkness. “It’s slimy. But don’t drop it. There isn’t much

soap and we got lucky today.”

He says nothing for a few seconds and I begin to worry.

“Are you still there?” I wonder if this was the trap. If this was the plan. If

perhaps he was sent to kill me under the cover of darkness in this small space. I

never really knew what they were going to do to me in the asylum, I never knew

if they thought locking me up would be good enough but I always thought they

might kill me. It always seemed like a viable option.

I can’t say I wouldn’t deserve it.

But I’m in here for something I never meant to do and no one seems to care

that it was an accident.

My parents never tried to help me.

I hear no showers running and my heart stops in place. This particular room

is rarely full, but there are usually others, if only 1 or 2. I’ve come to realize that

the asylum’s residents are either legitimately insane and can’t find their way to

the showers, or they simply don’t care.

I swallow hard.

“What’s your name?” His voice splits the air and my stream of

consciousness in one movement. I can feel him breathing much closer than he

was before. My heart is racing and I don’t know why but I can’t control it. “Why

won’t you tell me your name?”

“Is your hand open?” I ask, my mouth dry, my voice hoarse.

He inches forward and I’m almost scared to breathe. His fingers graze the

starchy fabric of the only outfit I’ll ever own and I manage to exhale. As long as

he’s not touching my skin. As long as he’s not touching my skin. As long as he’s

not touching my skin. This seems to be the secret.

My thin T-shirt has been washed in the harsh water of this building so many

times it feels like a burlap sack against my skin. I drop the bigger piece of soap

into his hand and tiptoe backward. “I’m going to turn the shower on for you,” I

explain, anxious not to raise my voice lest others should hear me.

“What do I do with my clothes?” His body is still too close to mine.

I blink 1,000 times in the blackness. “You have to take them off.”

He laughs something that sounds like an amused breath. “No, I know. I

meant what do I do with them while I shower?”

“Try not to get them wet.”

He takes a deep breath. “How much time do we have?”

“Two minutes.”

“Jesus, why didn’t you say somethi—”

I turn on his shower at the same time I turn on my own and his complaints

drown under the broken bullets of the barely functioning spigots.

My movements are mechanical. I’ve done this so many times I’ve already

memorized the most efficient methods of scrubbing, rinsing, and rationing soap

for my body as well as my hair. There are no towels, so the trick is trying not to

soak any part of your body with too much water. If you do you’ll never dry

properly and you’ll spend the next week nearly dying of pneumonia. I would

know.

In exactly 90 seconds I’ve wrung my hair and I’m slipping back into my

tattered outfit. My tennis shoes are the only things I own that are still in fairly good condition. We don’t do much walking around here.

Cellmate follows suit almost immediately. I’m pleased that he learns quickly.

“Take the hem of my shirt,” I instruct him. “We have to hurry.”

His fingers skim the small of my back for a slow moment and I have to bite

my lip to stifle the intensity. I nearly stop in place. No one ever puts their hands

anywhere near my body.

I have to hurry forward so his fingers will fall back. He stumbles to catch up.

When we’re finally trapped in the familiar 4 walls of claustrophobia,

Cellmate won’t stop staring at me.

I curl into myself in the corner. He still has my bed, my blanket, my pillow. I

forgive him his ignorance, but perhaps it’s too soon to be friends. Perhaps I was

too hasty in helping him. Perhaps he really is only here to make me miserable.

But if I don’t stay warm I will get sick. My hair is too wet and the blanket I

usually wrap it in is still on his side of the room. Maybe I’m still afraid of him.

I breathe in too sharply, look up too quickly in the dull light of the day.

Cellmate has draped 2 blankets over my shoulders.

1 mine.

1 his.

“I’m sorry I’m such an asshole,” he whispers to the wall. He doesn’t touch

me and I’m disappointed happy he doesn’t. I wish he would. He shouldn’t. No

one should ever touch me.

“I’m jimin,” he says slowly. He backs away from me until he’s cleared the

room. He uses one hand to push my bed frame back to my side of the space.

jimin.

Such a nice name. Cellmate has a nice name.

It’s a name I’ve always liked but I can’t remember why.

I waste no time climbing onto the barely concealed springs of my mattress

and I’m so exhausted I can hardly feel the metal coils threatening to puncture my

skin. I haven’t slept in more than 24 hours. jimin is a nice name is the only thing

I can think of before exhaustion cripples my body.