“A boyfriend?” Penn wonders over the phone.
“No,” I sigh in exasperation with a roll of my eyes because this is the third time that he’s used that word. “He’s just this guy who likes to start conversations with me for some reason. I don’t know, it’s weird.”
“It sounds like he has a thing for you,” He states. “I don’t like it.”
“He doesn’t have a thing for me,” I tell my stupid brother. “He just likes to randomly talk to me when he’s around even though I’m not exactly the most welcoming company. He’s nice though, I think.”
“I still don’t like it,” He says stubbornly.
“Trust me, I’m not the biggest fan of it either but talking to Niles is better than just sitting around like a sack of potatoes all of the time,” I explain to Penn on Friday right before honesty circle, which is by far the worst part of my week. And considering how long this week has been already, I just don’t need something like honesty circle to make it even worse. However, if I skip my honesty circle session, it’ll be put in my file and so when they’re considering my release, it’ll be there and they might decide to keep me here longer if my honesty circle attendance isn’t top notch. That’s enough motivation to keep me going even though I despise it.
“Don’t you have other friends there?” He wonders curiously.
“Yeah, well, Johnny got out and he went home on Saturday. On Wednesday, Renée had tried to cut her wrists with a broken plastic fork, so she’s in the hospital still, and Mia is in therapy almost all day every day now. What happened to Renée really messed her up and she has this thing where she doesn’t want to eat. Basically what I’m saying is that I do have friends but they are currently unavailable,” I explain to him, basically summing up my horrible week. Dr. Lombardi had told me what happened to Renée while I was in her office on Wednesday but she also assured me that Renée is going to be okay, thankfully. They’re still considering whether they are going to move her to another facility or keep her here but if she stays here then she’ll be put in solitary. And because Mia hasn’t been eating enough on her own, it looks like that’s where Mia is headed too, into solitary where she isn’t allowed to have any contact with the other patients, including myself. The whole thing just makes me sick to my stomach and I try my best to just not think about any of it as much as possible.
“I’m really sorry to hear that, Ana,” He tells me sincerely. “That doesn’t mean that you have to be friends with the mysterious guy who randomly talks to you and nobody else though. Make female friends, that’d make things a lot easier for me.”
“Oh, shut up,” I mumble. “You know that you’ll never have to worry about playing the overprotective brother role with me when it comes to guys. I don’t associate with them enough to warrant you to become overprotective at all. I mean, I guess I was friends with Johnny but he doesn’t count because he’s gone now and I won’t be talking to him for a while. Even if he was still here, he was a pretty awesome dude. And as far as this Niles guy goes, you don’t have to worry about him either. I’m keeping my distance.”
“Good,” He sighs. “But I’ll always be overprotective of you. That’s just how it is.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, rolling my eyes even though he obviously can’t see me. “Well, you’re kind of hypocritical of you, don’t you think? Being skeptical of mysterious, brooding guys? Where would you be right now if somebody had told Sienna that when you two just met?”
“I’m not mysterious and I don’t brood,” He argues with a small laugh.
“No, but you come off as kind of brood-ish,” I shrug. “Anyway, my point is that you can’t be so judgmental. That’s what Dr. Lombardi told me, anyway, when I told her that I thought that Niles might be a dragon.”
“Why did you suspect that he was a dragon, Ana?” My brother asks me as I glance to the side and I see somebody standing near the edge of the phone bank watching me as if she’s waiting for her turn on the phone but that doesn’t really make any sense because there are plenty of open phones. I turn so that my back is facing her and I ignore the creepy girl.
“Because he was wearing a leather jacket and, I don’t know, I just feel like if a dragon turned into a human then it would probably wear a leather jacket,” I explain although I’m sure that it doesn’t make any sense to him. Or to anybody else, really, but it makes sense to me. “But Dr. Lombardi told me that while I should be comfortably cautious about new relationships, I should also not push them away or be too judgmental from the get-go.”
“Okay, well if that’s what your doctor said then you should listen to her and not to me. But if he gives you any problems just let me know. You know that I’ll fly out there in the blink of an eye and kill the guy- dragon or not.”
“I know you would,” I chuckle. “But don’t worry about it. I don’t think that he’s going to be trouble. I guess we’ll see though.”
“Just be careful,” He warns me as if he really has to.
“I’m always careful,” I assure him. “Anyway, I have to go. I have this thing. Are you still coming up next weekend?”
“Yeah, you have visitation now, right? It’d suck if we fly all the way out there and they don’t let us in,” He says.
“Yeah, they’ll let you in. I got the go ahead yesterday so you’re fine. I’m really excited to see you guys,” I say, a smile curving my lips just at the thought of seeing my family in just one week. Hopefully, it won’t be like the week that I just had though, because I don’t think I can take another week like the last. Then again, I don’t see how it could happen again- I don’t have any more friends to lose.
“We’re all excited to see you too, Ana,” He assures me. “But yeah, you go do whatever it is that you have to do.”
We say our quick goodbyes and then I hang up the phone. When I turn around, that girl isn’t there anymore, which is relieving, so I just walk away from the phone bank towards the room where honesty circle is held. The circle is rapidly filling up when I get there so I just quickly sit in one of the plastic red seats that has an empty seat on both sides of it. I know that there are an exact number of chairs to fit everyone who needs to be here so it’s not like I’ll be able to sit by myself but I don’t want to awkwardly sit beside somebody I don’t know.
Honesty circle is when I feel like I miss Johnny the most because it’s one of the only things that we did just me and him without Renée and Mia. I mean, they’re both awesome people too but Johnny made honesty circle almost sufferable because if there was something that I disagreed with or thought was ridiculous during the conversation, I’d turn to him and roll my eyes and he’d just laugh and then roll his eyes back at me and then we’d go on, pretending like nothing had happened.
This is the first circle without him though, and I don’t know how I’m going to get through it without somebody to roll my eyes at.
“Happy Friday, everyone,” Jake chirps once it’s time to start our circle of honesty and crap. “Before we start, does anybody have anything that they’d like to talk about or share about their week?”
Shayla raises her hand while simultaneously turning her nose up at everybody.
“Shayla, go ahead,” Jake motions toward her.
“I think that we should talk about what happened on Wednesday to that girl who tried to kill herself,” She pipes. I really don’t like this girl. Maybe she doesn’t mean it to be offensive, but it offends me the way that she just says it like that, as if she even cares about Renée when she doesn’t even know her name.
“Her name is Renée,” I announce in annoyance, causing everybody to look over at me but I just stare down at my lap until they all return their attention to Shayla.
“Right. Well, I don’t know, I just think that it’s something to talk about,” Shayla shrugs.
“She’s not a side show,” I say, wishing that I could just stop talking but Shayla just makes me so mad and it makes me so mad that she wants to talk about Renée when none of it is any of her business. It’s nobody’s business. It’s not really even my business but at least I know Renée, I don’t think that she’s just ‘something to talk about’. “She’s a person.”
“Were you close to this girl, Ana?” Jake asks me with raised eyebrows, leaning back in his seat as he waits for my response.
“Were?” I repeat incredulously. “She’s still alive. And we are friends. There isn’t anything to talk about though, so let’s just move on with another conversation. She isn’t just something to talk about, she’s my friend and if nobody else here really knows her then there isn’t anything to talk about.”
“Okay, let’s take a few breaths,” Jake suggests, obviously detecting my agitation. “We can change the subject. Is there anything else that anybody would like to talk about?”
There’s a few moments of silence as people awkwardly look around the circle, waiting for somebody to speak up. When nobody does, Jake decides to continue the conversation.
“Well, I have an interesting question for you guys to start a conversation today. Now, I’d like everybody to answer this question so once I ask it, we’ll go around the circle so that everybody has a turn to answer, alright? Here it is and I really want to give your response some thought. Who are you? What defines who you are? Really think about it.”
Again, a silence falls over the group but there aren’t many wandering eyes this time, people are really thinking about what they are going to say. I’m only a few chairs to the left of Jake so really the only thing that I’m thinking is that I hope that he starts by going to his right instead of his left so that I can figure out what I’m going to say.
“We’ll start to my left and just go around,” Jake says as if he can read my mind and he just wants to make this as hard as possible for me.
The first person to go, her name is Paris and she says, “I am a nineteen year old girl named Paris. I’d like to think I’m defined by who I am. I mean, like, my personality. I’m kind of funny and I’m nice, I’d like to think, and I can sing so I don’t know, maybe that defines me too.”
And then the second person, the person to my right, says, “I’m Lilah and I feel like I’m defined by my parents- they define me, really. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it does to me, I think.”
When I don’t speak right away even though all eyes are on me, Jake prods me on. “Ana?”
“Right,” I sigh, looking up at the ceiling as if the answer is written up there on the ceiling. “Who am I? Well, I’m Ana Shaw. What defines me? The scars on my wrists.”
“What does that mean?” Jake wonders curiously and I’m surprised that he’s asking me that question since I just expected him to move onto the next person. I was counting on it, actually. “You think that whenever somebody thinks of Ana Shaw, all they think about are your injuries?”
I nod. “Yes, I do. I know that they do, actually. That’s all there is to me.”
“I don’t think that’s true and I think that you know that too,” He says.
“It is true, though. Most people are going to define themselves using their personality traits, their parents, or their hobbies. Well, most of my personality is fake because I’m always pretending for the sake of everybody around me. I spend more time with therapists and doctors than I do with my parents, and as far as hobbies go? When I’m not at school or in a doctor’s office, I’m working on my act. In the words of John Green, I am a professional sick person.”
After a long silence, the circle moves on but I let my own words sink in because I realize how true they are. I really don’t have a definition- I am just the embodiment of depression. There is nothing else to me at all. I used to be much more than that- I used to be awesome. But now, this is all that I am. And I worry that it is all that I ever will be.
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Song: Under The Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers
Picture: Fan cover made by Vivifirerune
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT
Title: The Rejected Werewolf Mate
Author: djluckydjlucky
Genre: Werewolf
Summary: Each individual werewolf is destined by the Moon Goddess to be with their mate. Some werewolves are fortunate enough to meet their mates during their lifetime, while others are not.
Christine Ross is an average werewolf teenage girl. She wasn't an omega, the lowest rank in a pack, nor was she alpha, the highest ranking in the pack. In fact, she was the alpha's sister, except she never felt that superior power like her brother could. In fact, she was a girl minding her own business. But on her 18th birthday, she found out that her mate, the one she was destined to be with, was the newest alpha of the neighboring pack (Red Warrior), Alpha Zachary Anderson. Nix, Christine's wolf, is broken apart into pieces when Zach rejects her.
Christine decides to run away to live the rouge life. She was just wondering around the forest and unknowingly steps into another packs territory. Noting the fact that there aren't many rouge females wondering around the forest, the pack decides to include her in and make her forget about her horrendous past.
The pack that Christine ran into was a fighting ally pack. Thus meaning that her new pack goes and allies with other packs to help them fight off rouges or other enemies together. Coincidentally, the pack that was next in need of help just happens to be Christine's old pack whom had called the Red Warrior pack to help them as well. What exactly do you think happens when Christine has to see her old pack again? Not to mention her precious Alpha mate is the alpha in the Red Warrior pack...