“Quinn is on the hunt today,” Mia whispers to me as we’re sitting on the couch watching a movie from the great movie collection with Desiree on the other side of her.

“What do you mean?” I ask her quizzically but I barely take my eyes off of the movie because it’s a really good movie.

She motions behind us to where I see the black-haired girl with that perky pearly white grin of hers as she’s talking to a group of guys on the other side of the room. “One of her party patrol people got released a few days ago so she’s on the prowl, looking for more people to join her.”

“Who’s Quinn?” Desiree wonders, turning to look at the overly perky girl as well.

“She’s a disaster,” Mia sighs. “I mean, that’s really mean to say. She’s not that bad. She’s just insanely chirpy but then, when you get to know her, she’s incredibly bossy. Like, a militant dictator. It’s terrifying. If she comes over here, avoid eye contact and let me do all of the talking.”

“She looks nice,” Desiree comments.

“Yeah, she is nice and she means well but if you give her power over you, it’s like you’re selling your soul to her,” Mia warns her and then that’s the end of the conversation and we all turn back around to finish watching the movie.

Only about ten minutes after that though, Quinn herself shows up right beside the couch and greets us with a “Hi!”

“Hey, Quinn,” Mia smiles at the girl.

“I don’t think that I’ve introduced myself yet,” She chirps, grinning at Desiree, just like she did to me when she introduced herself to me on in the first week that I was here. “I’m Quinn.”

“Hi,” Desiree says, offering Quinn a polite smile. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Have you heard about the October dance? It’s to celebrate Halloween,” Quinn explains to the new girl. “And we’re looking for people to join the committee to help plan it so it can be the best ever.”

“That sounds like fun,” Desiree says and she’s looking in the opposite direction of Mia so she can’t see the incredulous look that she’s receiving right now from her friend but I can see it and it makes me laugh a little bit but I subtly cover it up with a cough so that I don’t seem rude. “When do you guys meet up?”

“Every Sunday at two, right after lunch,” Quinn says before looking behind Desiree to both me and Mia. “You two are welcome to join as well. Everybody is welcome.”

“I’ll do it if Des does it,” Mia sighs, saying it slow and under her breath as if she hates the words that are coming out of her mouth.

“Really?” I wonder with raised eyebrows. “I didn’t think that you were the partying type.”

“I can’t let her go in alone,” She whispers to me before turning back to Quinn. “So sign me up too.”

“That’s so awesome,” Quinn smiles at us. “What about you, Ana?”

“Yeah, Ana will do it too,” Mia says quickly before I have time to politely turn her down.

“What? No, I-“ I was about to give her some really awesome excuse (I’m not sure what it was, but it was really awesome) but before I can even say four words, Mia is already interrupting me.

“She’s been dying to sign up ever since she got here so I’m sure it’ll be a blast for us all,” She chirps, sending me a look that seems both pleading and threatening as if she’s saying ‘Please do this with me with a cherry on top or else I’ll break your lips and eat your ice cream’.

Of course, I want to keep my hypothetical ice cream and the cherry on top, so I just sigh and then give in to the mess that Mia’s new friend just threw in our faces. I mean, I don’t think it’ll be too bad but the way that Mia and Renée have described Quinn is kind of terrifying so I’m nervous. “Yeah, sure. It can be fun.”

“Of course it’ll be fun,” Quinn agrees excitedly. “Everyone will be so excited to hear that we have three newcomers to the planning squad. This will be great. Thank you so much for taking this offer into consideration and I will see you guys on Sunday in meeting room B on Sunday. And it was so nice meeting you, Desiree.”

“You too, Quinn,” Desiree chirps, waving goodbye to Quinn as she’s walking away from us at a brisk pace. Not that she’s just dying to get away from us but that’s just how she walks. So fast that her long hair bounces around her back, trying to keep up.

“What was that?” Mia hisses at her friend, completely giving up on watching the movie now. “I told you that I could handle it.”

“Well yeah but she seems so nice,” Desiree shrugs. “And I love party planning and stuff. I was on the prom committee in high school, you know. It’s a lot of fun and it could be a good way to take my mind off of things. If you didn’t want to, you didn’t have to join me though.”

“Yes, I did,” She sighs dramatically. “Somebody has to be there to protect you from Quinn’s wrath.”

“Her wrath?” Desiree laughs a little bit, obviously not taking Mia too seriously. I flashback to right before the Fourth of July and Quinn was barking orders at a few people in the courtyard as they painted that terribly ugly patriotic sign that had been hanging up in the common area for weeks before somebody finally took it down. “She looks like she cuddles bunnies in her free time.”

“Yeah, that’s how she traps you. It’s too late now though, we’re all goners,” Mia mutters.

“I think that you’re too hard on her,” I speak up. “She really looks like she’s doing her best to get her mind off of where she is. That’s not so bad.”

“This is a mutiny,” Mia jokes. “You’ll both see on Sunday and I’ll say that I told you so.”

“Even if she is bossy, it beats sitting around here doing nothing all of the time,” I pipe, trying to look at the bright side of this arrangement that we just got ourselves into. I mean, it really could be fun, I guess, I just have to be optimistic about it. Dr. Lombardi will be proud to hear that I’m joining the party committee I guess, so there’s that. I know it’s too hopeful to think that she’d be so proud that she wouldn’t make me go to Friday’s honesty circle but I can still hope for it.

“Don’t you have a phone date?” Mia wonders with a huff. She’s clearly not actually upset about me and Desiree not understanding her distaste for Quinn, she’s just being jokingly dramatic.

I roll my eyes at her. “I don’t have ‘phone dates’. That sounds kind of creepy. I do have to go call Niles though, so I’ll be back later and we can talk about something other than Quinn.”

“That sounds like a phone date to me,” Mia sings as I walk away from the couch to find my favorite phone at the phone bank, the one all the way in the corner.

When I dial Niles’ phone number, it only takes a few rings before he answers.

“Hello?”

“Hey there,” I greet him.

“Hey, Ana,” He says. “What’s up?”

“Nothing right now,” I sigh. “I just forgot to call you yesterday and I wanted to thank you for what you told Dr. Lombardi.”

“What did I tell her?” He wonders with a small laugh.

“She told me that you suggested that they let me out of the cage to go places more often,” I remind him. “And that’s really nice of you. I just wanted to tell you that.”

“Oh, that. Well, it wasn’t completely selfless,” He admits. “I do like hanging out with you.”

I start nervously nibbling on my lip but it’s not a bad kind of nervous, like the one that I’m used to. I’m used to the kind of nervous that makes me feel like there’s somebody right behind me, about to jump out and get me. But this kind of nervous is like I’m just afraid of what to say next. I’m afraid that what I say could be the wrong thing and that doesn’t make any sense to me because that’s nothing to be afraid of. “Right. Well thanks anyway,” I finally say.

“You’re welcome anyway,” Niles chuckles. “I thought that I could get you out once a week but your doctor wouldn’t go for it so I talked her into once every two weeks but that’s still pretty cool, right?”

“Yeah, it really is so cool,” I agree with him. “I can’t believe that you actually did that.”

“I’m kind of magical,” He gloats jokingly.

“Like a unicorn,” I tease him with a small laugh.

“Right, of course,” He sarcastically agrees with me. “Anyway, so we’re on for next week then? How about Wednesday… I think it’s the 21st?”

“Wednesday… yeah, that works for me. I’m sure I can clear out my calendar for a few hours,” I say sarcastically because we both know that I have absolutely nothing planned on Wednesday. Or any day, for that matter. Except for Sundays now, I guess, considering Mia just signed my Sunday afternoons away to the apparent she-devil. “What will we be doing on Wednesday? Or is it a surprise again?”

“I’m not sure yet,” He tells me. “But when I figure it out, I’ll let you know. Unless you have something that you want to do.”

“I’ve got no idea,” I admit. “I haven’t been outside of here in so long I forget how to be free. I’ll leave the decision making to you.”

“Alright, I’m sure I’ll figure something out,” Niles assures me. “How do you feel about bungee jumping?”

“Bungee jumping,” I repeat with a small laugh at the incredulity of the idea. “That has to break like, every single babysitting rule there is.”

“Yeah, probably. Maybe someday though. Have you ever been?”

“No,” I say, still amused at the idea because of how ridiculous it is. I’ve never been allowed to do something so reckless and dangerous due to the fact that I’ve been known to try and off myself so I don’t need any dangerous exterior factors to help speed up my impending death. My family worries too much about me if I sleep too long, I can’t imagine how much they’d worry about me if I went off and did something as crazy as bungee jumping. “My dad would never let that happen.”

“But you’re eighteen, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have to listen to my parents,” I defend. “And they’d worry too much. Basically, I’m only alive to make sure that they don’t worry. All of my decisions are really just based on how my family would feel about it.”

“To me, that sounds like you really need to go bungee jumping,” Niles tells me. “Come on, Ana, live a little.”

“I am living,” I say. “On Sunday, I’m helping plan the Halloween party so I’ll be decorating things and such with this really scary girl probably yelling at me. I’ve never felt so alive.”

“That’s my point,” He laughs. “Someday, you have to let me take you bungee jumping or sky diving or zip lining or something like that.”

“You’ve been sky diving?” I wonder, trying not to bring attention to the fact that ‘someday’ is a very vague indicator of time. Doesn’t he know that when I get out of here, I’m not staying in South Carolina? I’m going to go back home to California and I highly doubt that we’ll still be friends when I’m way over there. That’s not something to worry about right now considering I’ll probably be here for way more months but my point is that sky diving with Niles isn’t something that’s very realistic.

“No, but we will go together and it’ll be fun,” He tells me. “Unless you’re afraid, of course.”

“Afraid of falling to my death? Of course that’s not terrifying, that sounds like the most magnificent way to die, really.”

“You wouldn’t die,” Niles says, his voice not as light and joking as it had been and I’m pretty sure that I just unintentionally ruined his mood a little bit.

Then what’s the point? I want to ask him but I know that sarcastically joking about my desire to be dead tends to upset the people around me, so I don’t say that. “Right. Well, maybe someday.”

“Isn’t there anything incredibly exciting that you’ve always wanted to do?” He asks me. “Because I’ll put it on the list right next to bungee jumping and sky diving.”

I think for a moment, just to humor him, and then I say “Well, when I was younger, I used to want to go white water rafting. I was never allowed to go though.”

“White water rafting… got it. See? You do have an adventurous side, Ana,” He assures me with a small laugh.

“No I don’t. I used to but that part of me was kind of stomped out,” I tell him. It’s like, every time I’ve slashed my wrists, I haven’t completely come back. Every time, I’ve killed a part of me. My adventurous self was one of the first ones to go. I’m only the ghost of who I used to be, but I don’t tell Niles that because it would upset him and I don’t want to do that. I never want to do that. It’s my job to not say anything upsetting to anybody.

“We’ll find it again,” He says. “Anyway, I have to go do some stuff so I’ll talk to you later, yeah?”

“Yeah, I’ll see you on Wednesday,” I chirp. “Bye, Niles.”

“Bye, Ana,” Niles says before hanging up the phone and then I put the black phone on the receiver again but only for a moment because I have to make another call. I haven’t used this number for a really long time because I don’t usually need to get ahold of this person but somehow, I still have it memorized, which is fortunate because now, I really need her help.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Sienna,” I greet my brother’s girlfriend. “Are you busy?”

“Ana! Hey, no I’m not busy. Why, what’s up?” She wonders. “Is Penn not answering?”

“No, I didn’t call him. I actually need to talk to you and I don’t want Penn to know,” I tell her. “So can you… you know, not tell him that I’m calling?”

“Sweetie, what’s wrong?” She asks me, not really answering my question, which is worrisome but I don’t really have a choice right now. Sienna is my only hope.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I assure her. “It’s just that I need some help with this thing that I don’t want Penn to know about. He’d just worry and you know how he gets when he’s worrying about little ol’ me. It’d just be better if he doesn’t know. Anyway, I have this friend and he’s normal. As in, he isn’t a patient here.”

“Oh yeah, Penn told me about that,” She says. “Now, I can see why you don’t want him to know.”

“Right, well my doctor has agreed to let me leave the center for like, two hours at a time every two weeks to hang out with him. She thinks that it’s really good for me but I know that Penn would disagree majorly. Anyway, I don’t really have any clothes so I was hoping that maybe you could send me something from my closet?”

“Oh wow, that’s… nice. I didn’t even know that they could do that.”

“Yeah, it’s rare for them to let anybody out but like I said, they really think that it’s like, helping me ‘recover’ or whatever. Do you think that you could do it? Without telling Penn anything.”

“Well, I don’t think I could get into your room without a logical explanation and I agree with you that Penn doesn’t need to know about that sort of thing. If it’s helping you out, then that’s what’s really important. How about I just go find you something in a store and I’ll send that to you. Does that work?”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” I say. “I’ll pay you back when I get home, I swear.”

“Don’t worry about it, Ana, it’s totally fine,” She assures me. “What kind of things do you want?”

“Black and casual,” I tell her. “Anything like that is fine. I already have jeans, I just need a shirt and maybe some sneakers.”

The sweater that Sophie gave me is really cute but it’s also really warm which was appropriate for the ice rink but out in the world, it’s summer and it’s hot so I need another shirt that isn’t a tank top. I have some scars on my shoulders and chest that are kind of visible in a tank top, so I don’t wear them ever without something over top of it. As for the boots, they were Sophie’s so she took them back and I don’t think I’d want to wear them anyway. They just aren’t my style. “Sure, that’s easy enough. I’ll go shopping tonight or tomorrow or something.”

“Thanks so much, Sienna,” I tell her gratefully. “And thanks for keeping it a secret. I really don’t want Penn to worry over something so ridiculous.”

“Of course. He’ll be pretty pissed when he finds out though, at both of us. And you know that he’s going to find out eventually,” She warns me.

“Yeah, I know, I’m just going to try and make this last as long as possible without him going all big brother on me. Don’t worry, Sienna, I’ve got this all under control.”

And I really believe that. If Penn doesn’t find out, then this will work out fabulously. I mean, what could possibly go wrong, right?

-------------------------------------------

Song: Build Me Up From Bones by Sarah Jorosz
Picture: Adelaide Kane, who plays Quinn