Between the hours of breakfast and lunch, Bunny wanders the halls, thinking, where do I go from here? When she is done with that, with thinking, when her thoughts are sorted out, she can get back to it, uninterrupted at least for a while. Josh is at his biweekly meeting with Dr. Grossman. Teacher is at Origami making paper hats for Andrea’s party. Howie is at Group Therapy; which disorder is up for grabs. Chaz went to Calisthenics, and, having decided to go wild in celebration of her birthday, Andrea is at Beauty where she is deliberating between green nail polish on one hand and blue on the other, or perhaps pink and orange, which Jeanette prefers. With any luck, Bunny will have the living room to herself. With any luck, she will have time alone.
Except there is no luck. Instead, there’s Nina, curled up, partially hidden, in an armchair turned to the far wall. Bunny cannot see Nina’s face, but she can see her wrap a section of her hair around her index finger, which she twirls, as if her finger were a curling iron. Hair as thin as Nina’s hair can’t hold a curl. When released, the coil will droop.
Bunny deliberates whether or not to sit with her. Nina looks lost and lonely in the chair that is too big for her, but Bunny senses that she wants to be left alone. On the grounds that it takes one to know one, the psychos intuit things like this about each other, although they don’t always respect it. Their own needs tend to take precedence. Satisfied that Nina, too, wishes to be alone, Bunny turns around and walks away, which is why she isn’t there to see Nina’s finger twirl her hair tighter and tighter until her finger is resting flush to her head. Then, the way a Band-Aid is pulled off, hard and fast, Nina yanks the hank of hair from her scalp.