Today is Day 1 of my captivity.
I add “Day 1” right at the top of the page. I stop. I don’t know what else to write. My thoughts wander, and my pen makes a kind of out-of-control swirl right below the words until it runs off the page.
Dr. Roberts gave me this notebook. I’m supposed to write my thoughts in it. I told her: “Fine. In exchange I will get my phone back.”
Dr. Roberts just shrugged. She knows my phone is in a million pieces in what remains of Old Charlotte (may she rest in peace).
I knew that too, but I didn’t want to give away something for nothing. That’s not what a spy would do. But that’s how this started; otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this down at all.
I try to focus. I stare hard at the paper. Thoughts are nothing. Writing it down makes it real.
I just want to get out of here. This is all a stupid mistake.
I haven’t even filled one sheet of paper yet. There are pages and pages between me and freedom.
If today is Day 1, then yesterday was Day Zero: kind of like the zero point, which is the point of detonation of a nuclear bomb. The zero point can be in the air, underwater, in outer space, wherever. When something blows up, the zero point is where it happens. From there, you can measure out in concentric circles and look at the impact. The farther away you go, the less impact there is.
But time isn’t like space, exactly. And the thing about “trauma” (which is what everyone keeps calling my accident) is that it’s not a bomb that blows up once. Just thinking about it brings it back again and again. You can be years from Day Zero and find yourself right back at the point of origin. Unlike a bomb in space, a bomb in time has a gravitational pull. It bends time, taking you with it. I was in a car crash yesterday, and I was in a car crash five years ago. These things have nothing to do with each other, and I’ve explained that, but I can understand how it might look like they do. I don’t even remember the other crash. Not really. But people want to find patterns. Reasons why.
I look down. My pen is resting on the page.
I’m supposed to be writing. What have I been doing?
Thinking. When I’m thinking I’m completely lost.
Well, this is an awful start to a journal. I suck at diaries because I have nothing to put in them. I’ve thrown away every journal I’ve ever written in because they were worthless. I’m always so embarrassed to have thought that my life was worth writing about that I rip out the pages, burn them with a lighter, and then bury the hollow shell in a trash can in Blackburn Park so maybe it can have some peace while it decomposes far away from me. And I think maybe if someone found the empty shell of a journal sitting with all those brown bagged bottles in a park trash can, they might pick it up and wonder what it held: first my Hogwarts crest one, then my purple one with the little heart lock, then the one I had in ninth grade that said SADIE in gold on the front. People have been giving me journals my whole life, and I’ve failed to live up to every single one.
Right now I’m writing in this floppy green one-subject Mead notebook Dr. Roberts pulled out of her briefcase full of the lives of other people. It’s different paper but the same old story. See, if you found one of my gutted journals and wondered what important secrets had been ripped out of it, you’d just be furthering the illusion that someone important wrote in it. Even throwing away my journals is just one more way that I’m a big melodramatic liar, trying to make something sound important that isn’t.
I know the truth: nothing was ever in that journal at all, because nothing was ever in that life at all.
I pick up my pen.
Here are the three most interesting things about me, Sadie Black:
1) I was homeschooled until middle school because my parents traveled a lot for car shows, because
2) Said parents were formerly local radio celebrities (emphasis on local) with a show about antique cars and antique music, which is ironic because
3) Five years ago they were driving one of said antique cars and listening to said antique music when we got in the car accident that made the local news.
See? In the grand scheme of the universe, I’m pretty boring. I’m not even a National Honor Society member. I’m writing in this worthless little journal because my worthless little self crashed a worthless little truck for no reason into nothing. (Actually into a tree. The tree was real.)
How’s that for melodrama?
Melodramas were a popular type of film in the golden age of Hollywood. They are usually defined as exaggerated films that play on the emotions of the audience, often with stereotyped characters: an evil doctor, oblivious parents, a knight in shining armor, young lovers destined for doomed love. They made loads of money because women absolutely adored them. They were sometimes even called women’s weepies. Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, and my favorite, Now, Voyager, are all melodramas.
I love melodrama because you don’t mean it, and then you do. It’s ridiculous, and then it’s not. You think you’re laughing at it, and then you’re crying. Being sixteen is a melodrama (she thinks, melodramatically).
Do I mean it, or don’t I? I don’t even know. I don’t know if I’m the person in my head or the mask I wear to get by in the real world.
I try one last time:
I feel like nothing and all of this is about nothing and no one will ever read it.
I feel all the anger, the bad things, rising out of the past and down into my fingertips. I press hard into the page.
Except you, Dr. Roberts. I know you’re reading this. You specifically said that you wouldn’t, but I bet anything you are. I know how these things work. Stay out of my notebook.
If I weren’t so angry, I would rescind my previous statement about Dr. Roberts. Maybe I’d rip out the page, or just cross it out. I mean, maybe Roberts wouldn’t read my journal. As far as psychiatrists go, she’s not the most heinous quasi quack I’ve ever met. And I’ve met quite a few: my parents were “concerned” after the first accident, and last year my school was “concerned” when I started failing my classes. But whenever someone is “concerned” I just go into self-preservation mode, get my act together, put on my normal-person mask, and fake my way back to acceptable human behavior.
I’ve had journals before. I’m not stupid: nothing anyone writes is really, truly a secret. The second you uncap a pen, you’ve already lost. Secrets are con artists: they trick you into letting them out. I know better than to write the truth in a journal. Your mind is the only vault you can trust.
But can you even trust that?
I can’t even keep track of the time.
How can I keep track of my secrets?
Dr. Roberts comes in to talk with me.
“When you were brought in, Sadie, do you remember what you were saying?”
And I think, How could I have been so careless? How could I have been so stupid?
“You kept talking about a friend of yours. George?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, the thing is, this George…was he injured? Was he in the car with you?”
“No,” I tell her. Nonononononono, I scream in my head. Because how could this be happening? And I’m still so messed up from the crash and everything, I can almost see George standing next to Dr. Roberts, like he’s coming to save me. But I know he couldn’t possibly be there, so I don’t say anything to him.
“Can you tell me, who is George?” she asks.
Panic sucks me into darkness.
“He’s nobody,” I say.
“Well, if you think of anything, be sure to write it down. In fact, just write down whatever you’re thinking about. We often underestimate what trauma can shatter. You never know what’s going to be important. Sometimes memories come back in pieces after an accident,” she reminds me.
Write it down. She wants me to write it down. What will that do? It won’t change anything. But like an idiot, I try again once she leaves.
I remember…
But I don’t remember. Not really. I don’t remember what really happened. I just remember how it felt to me. And that’s too dangerous to put in writing.
But I guess it’s my chance to contest the picture Dr. Roberts is painting in the notes she takes. My chance to fight back before my parents get home from Germany tomorrow. Sort out the lies I’m going to tell. My story in her notes scares me. I don’t know what she’s saying. She’s got a big legal pad she writes on, and when we were done talking yesterday she put the pages away in her briefcase with about a million other files. Schizophrenics and kleptomaniacs and suicidal people…and me.
Her briefcase is actually nice. It’s the box kind, almost like George’s. George carries an Ettinger attaché case with red lining. I cut out a picture of exactly the right one from a newspaper in the library. I should definitely not have mutilated library property, but how could I not? It was perfect.
George loves that case. Whatever adventure we’re on, it’s stocked. I’ve seen him pull a gun out of it, a book of spells, roses, the keys to an Aston Martin DB5….I imagine him now, fiddling with the lock he broke ages ago, looking at me with adventure written in his eyes.
Click goes the attaché case. I wonder what he has in store for me today.
I imagine it, but I can’t write that down.
But then, what difference does it make? This kind of thing does not simply go away without an explanation. Not when there’s property damage and insurance claims involved.
I am stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea, as Dad would say. Write it down and they’ll think I’m crazy. Don’t write it down and I’ll look like I have something to hide.
Well, if I’ve learned anything from explorers and detectives, it’s that the very best journals aren’t full of confessions, they’re full of observations. When you go on adventures, you don’t have to fill your journal pages with mopey thoughts about boys and gossip and self-indulgent, self-pitying feelings. When you’re amazing, you just write down the things you saw and did and that’s enough.
Maybe I’m not exactly on a quest, but I won’t bore myself with feelings and confessions, even though that’s what Dr. Roberts obviously wants. Instead, here is what I observe:
I am in St. Louis Children’s Hospital, which I know because of the bright, friendly decorating and the giant signs that say that basically everywhere.
Not exactly Sherlock Holmes–level deduction, that one.
My loaner pajamas have small bears on them. My room has no phone, limited television stations, and blue curtains. No roommates. There’s some kind of a desk where the nurses sit down the hall, presumably with a line of sight past my door. This would be more relevant to any fantasy of escape if I could walk. My leg is in a cast, and I know, somewhere in my brain under an ocean of morphine, it hurts like hell. I have been isolated, but I never seem to be alone. There’s always someone with me or checking on me, every second, every hour, even into the night.
All those things are real. All those things are true. I observed them and wrote them down. I know the difference between real and pretend, and that is how I know that I am not insane. No matter what they tell me, I’m not crazy.
Because, you see, Dr. Roberts is a psychiatrist—that I remember—and it’s no accident that she’s been interrogating me. And that is not good. That is not good at all.
I will admit to one feeling: I’m scared I’m really in trouble this time.
Oh God, I miss George.
It used to be if I couldn’t fall asleep, I would spend those hours with him. Going out on weird little missions, or sitting around talking about nothing. We would walk around in the afterthought of humidity that clings to these St. Louis days. In the suburbs, the streets are safe and cool, and there’s never anyone outside after midnight. My bedroom in the basement is great for that. You can creep out the cellar door without a sound. My room doesn’t have any windows, so I take a lot of naps during the day. I sleep a lot, and then I can’t sleep when I’m supposed to, but the plus side is that I never have to be awake with everyone else either.
I can’t even think of George here, let alone go anywhere with him. Sometimes my mind starts to wander and I can feel myself slipping and him pulling at me, but then I notice and snap out of it. Because what if someone saw me? What if someone saw the empty shell that keeps me tethered to this world, its lips moving and smiling while the real me is somewhere else?
I’m here alone in the dark and I don’t know what to do.
I feel like crying, but tears won’t bring him back. That’s what Ole Golly said in Harriet the Spy. I read that book a million times when I was younger, and it was like Ole Golly herself was there with me, guiding me. But you know, Ole Golly leaves Harriet in that book, for no good reason. And Harriet just has to accept that, and I never liked that part of the story. So I would pretend she actually was coming back right after the book ended, even though that’s not the point.
“Your parents will be here first thing tomorrow,” Dr. Roberts tells me. I wake up. I’ve been lost in thought. How did she get here? How long have we been talking? “They’re on their way from Germany now.” I know I talked to them when they called, but I can’t remember. Everything is hazy and weird.
“Are they taking me home?”
“Not quite yet. Tomorrow we’re going to move you out of this room and into another ward, where we can give you more of the attention you need.”
“Because of my leg?”
“No, because of your mind.”
That is such an amazing villain line. It sounds so evil, even though she probably thinks she’s being gentle. That makes it even more villainous, that knife twist of kindness.
“Sadie, do you remember what we’ve been talking about?” she asks. I nod, even though I don’t.
“You’ll see. It’ll be good to have a few days’ rest.”
“My parents will take me home.”
“It’s already been discussed, Sadie. You’re spending a few days here with us, in a controlled environment, just until we’re sure everything’s okay.”
“What do you mean ‘everything’?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” she replies. “We have a lot to talk about with your parents. But when you and I talk, everything we say is completely confidential. Absolutely private. And I know you don’t want to talk about this, but I need you to tell me about George. Did he hurt you? Are you afraid? No one can get to you here, Sadie. You can tell me about George.”
And there it is. The one thing I can’t tell her. The one thing I must never write down.
It’s all coming down around me. I need to get out of here, and I need to keep my secret. George is both my devil and my deep blue sea. He’s the one key to my freedom. They want to know who he is and where he went and why I was screaming his name after the crash.
And the reason I can’t answer any of that, of course, is because George isn’t real.