Cry Until You Bleed

4- Baby Blue

“My room isn’t like that,” I assure her with a small laugh. “It’s nice, I guess. As far as mental hospitals go, the rooms seem to be pretty big.”

“How many have you been to?” Mia wonders.

I shrug. “Not that many. Two before this.”

“What for?” Renée prods.

“Jeez, Renée, you can’t just ask somebody that kind of question. Especially not when you just met them,” Johnny tells the girl beside me with a roll of his eyes.

“Why not?” She shoots at him. “We all say why we’re in here. Fine though, we’ll start off slow. Where were you before this?”

“Um, well I had a short stint in Westerville over in California, which is where I’m from, but I tried to hang myself with the sheets on my bed so they moved me to this place up in Alaska and I was there for about a year and a half until I got out last summer. But then, I relapsed the other day and so I’m back.”

“You were out for a whole year?” Renée wonders in awe. “Wow. Why’d you relapse after all of that time?”

“Renée,” Johnny snaps at the girl and gives her a remember-your-manners kind of look.

“Okay. Sorry, I guess I’m just a blunt person,” She shrugs. “Anyway, you don’t have to tell us anything if you don’t want. How was Alaska? I’ve always wanted to go because I love whales but instead, I just jumped off of a building. Obviously, it wasn’t nearly tall enough to get the job done though.”

“Alaska is cold and bare,” I tell her, not wanting to indulge in our personal experiences like jumping off of buildings and such. “Very, extraordinarily boring. I never got to see the ocean though, I just stayed in the mental hospital the whole time so I didn’t get around much.”

“Well, I want to go see the whales,” She says. “So you’re from California? What part?”

“Uh. Oxnard- it’s really close to Los Angeles,” I tell them.

“Wow, LA, that’s really cool,” Johnny comments. “Did you know any famous people?”

I sigh, knowing that somebody would ask me that question- somebody always asks me that question when I tell them that I’m from LA. “No, I’ve never even seen one. I mean, my brother’s girlfriend’s friend goes to Julliard and she’s probably going to make it to Broadway so I guess that’s cool but it’s not really movie star kind of excitement like you’d probably expect.”

“Very disappointing,” Mia nods. “Anyway, we have a game night tonight, so you should come hang out with us. Almost the whole place comes, it’s probably the most exciting thing that happens to us all week. Sometimes, they let us play Monopoly.”

“Yeah, that sounds awesome,” I nod with a small smile as I finish up my small slice of lasagna. “I actually have to go make a phone call first but I’ll see you guys in the common area later. It was really nice meeting you all.”

I stand up with my trash so that I can throw it away in one of the large trash cans, eager to make my phone call home so that I can talk to either my dad or Penn. I’ll actually be calling Penn considering I only have his number memorized and I don’t want to have to go all the way up to my room to get my mini little phone book with my dad’s number in it.

“Okay- see you later, Ana,” Johnny grins at me with a small wave as I walk away, throwing my trash out as I leave the cafeteria.

I turn the corner down the wide hallway to where the phone bank is- just a wall of what look like pay phones, only they don’t cost any money to use. A few of them are occupied so I take the one on the end that isn’t being used at the moment and dial Penn’s cell phone number, putting the black plastic phone to my ear and I start to pray that he answers the phone. With the incredibly long day that I’ve had, I just want to talk to somebody that I know- something familiar.