Safe to Open

September 4th

I hate him. I really do, and I'm not saying it big to make it sound worse than it is.

It wasn't even that much. Mrs. Calloway lost it, then the front office lost it, and now Dad gets his turn. Everybody lining up around the block.

I'm not crazy. I don't know what happened in fourth period. That's just the truth, and it's also somehow the wrong thing to say, because when I told them I didn't remember you could watch it land badly on their faces. Like the not-remembering was the part that scared them.

He's grounded me with no date on the end of it. He stands in my doorway now. He was there last night after I turned the light off — I didn't see him, the air just changed. He didn't say anything.

He took my phone "for now." I asked how long for now was and he looked at me until I quit asking.

I'm fine. I just need people to stop watching me like I'm about to do the thing again.

— Nora

September 6th

Marcus had an appointment at eleven. Mom told me the night before, from the hallway, the way she tells me everything now — quick, already half-turned away, like if she says it fast enough it doesn't count as a conversation.

I thought I'd have the house to myself. I was looking forward to it, which is a sad thing to be looking forward to.

Dad didn't go. Mom took Marcus and Dad stayed.

I heard his chair in the kitchen, then nothing, and I figured he'd gone to sit down somewhere. Then I looked up and he was in the doorway, eyes on the wall a little over my head.

I said Dad. Nothing. I said it again and he came back from wherever he was, slow, blinking like it cost him something, and said: I know.

That's all of it. I know. I've been turning it over since. I know what. I didn't even ask him anything.

They've been gone a long time. I keep checking the clock without deciding to.

— Nora

September 7th

By noon I had the hollow, fist-in-the-stomach kind of hungry, and I held out as long as I could.

He was in the doorway. I told him I was hungry. Nothing. I said it again and he said, quietly, Mom will bring something up.

Mom was at work. I told him that. He said it back exactly the same, same words, same flatness. Mom will bring something up.

So I decided to just go. I don't know what I thought — that an actual body needing actual food would outrank whatever this is.

I said excuse me and put my hand on his arm to get past him, and he shoved me. Both hands, flat, against my shoulders. Not hard enough to put me on the floor, but I sat down anyway, on the edge of the bed, and looked at him.

His face didn't do anything at all. That's the part I keep coming back to. Not angry, not sorry. Like I'd leaned on a wall and the wall leaned back, because that's just what walls do when you put weight on them.

There was a plate outside the door later. Cold the whole way through, so it had been sitting a while. I never heard him put it there.

I ate all of it. I hate that I ate all of it.

— Nora

September 11th

Woke up around two needing the bathroom. Lay there pretending I didn't for a while, because some part of me already knew.

He was in the doorway. No light in the hall, just the shape of him filling the whole frame, not moving. I don't think he'd been lying down at all.

I said I need the bathroom, Dad, please move. He didn't.

And something in me just came apart. I started screaming — not words, only sound, the kind that comes up out of you on its own when there's a shape standing in your door in the dark and your body decides things a long time before your head catches up.

Mom came out fast, actual sleep still on her, her hair flat on the one side. She said his name once, soft, put both hands flat on his back, and moved him. One step over. He went exactly as far as her hands pushed him and stopped there and didn't come back.

I went. When I came out he was in the doorway again. Mom was already gone.

I lay facing the wall and watched his shadow until my eyes closed, and when they opened it was still there. I watched for him to blink. I never caught it once, and I was really watching.

— Nora

September 12th

The door is gone.

Not open. Not taken off and leaned somewhere I could see it. Gone. The hinges are still screwed into the frame, three little brass tongues, and that's all that's left.

I don't know when it happened. I never heard a screwdriver. You'd hear a screwdriver.

He stands in the frame now, and there's nothing next to him anymore to make him look a normal size. I never used to think of him as a big man.

I've been letting my head go wherever it wants. It's easier than steering it. Today it went to the summer Marcus dared me to eat a whole spoon of cinnamon dry and I cried and Mom laughed so hard she had to sit down on the kitchen floor. I don't know why that one. It isn't about anything.

Then it started toward somewhere I didn't want it to go, and I made it stop.

He hasn't moved since this morning. Or since yesterday. I've stopped being able to tell which side of sleep I'm on.

— Nora

September 19th

Mom cried today, through the wall. The Marcus side of the wall, except Marcus's room has been quiet for a while now. I don't ask about that. Asking is how you get grounded.

I've been better, I think. Steadier. I don't flinch awake anymore when I see him there, and that has to count for something.

No plate yesterday. None today either. I'm not going to bring it up to him. I don't want him thinking I'm starting again.

I asked him if he was angry. About fourth period, about all the rest of it after. I told him I didn't mean to do whatever it was I did, that I don't even have it in my head to be sorry for properly, that I just want it to go back to before. He didn't answer. I didn't need him to. I only needed to set it down somewhere that wasn't inside me.

I got up and put my face against his chest the way I used to be allowed to. He was cold. Smooth, except for a long row of ridges running down one side, under my cheek. He smelled like paint. New paint, the kind that's still a little wet at the very edges.

I stepped back and knocked. Marcus's knock — two fast, one slow — the one we used on each other's doors so the other one would know it was safe to open.

I waited.

I told him goodnight. I told him I loved him.

Dr. Mehta says the schizophrenia is the thing that does it. That my head takes whatever happens to be in the room and builds a person out of it when it needs one badly enough. She said it gently. She says everything gently, and somewhere in the middle of it I always stop being able to hear her.

But she wasn't in the room. She doesn't know.

He's still here. He's always still here. He hasn't left me once.

He's right there.

— Nora