Shhh...Mack's Side (6 page)

Gia and Jake walked around
some of the bigger boulders to
their
spot, she called it. I was with Mitchell Simmons that day. I guess I just wasn’t ready. I immaturely squealed when I touched his erection. Gia doesn’t know this, of course. I never told her I didn’t go through with it. Of course, Mitch wasn’t going to disclose the information, either. He liked the fact that the whole school thought he took McKenzie Perry’s virginity. Any boy at school would have paid for that title.

Rolling to my side, I willed myself to sleep. Closing my eye
s and starting my relaxation technique, I prayed for sleep to take me. At least for an hour. 

I did sleep an hour. Exactly one hour. How much longer could I do this before I just collapsed?

I made it a point to head out a little early the following morning. I was going to try the downers Lila had prescribed for me. Anything was worth a shot. Not that I had much hope. I just wanted to sleep. Of course, I was correct, knowing from years of experience, the meds weren’t going to help. I took one like it said the first night and two the next. All it did was make me groggy, and I still couldn’t sleep.

Enough was enough
. I had to talk to Colton. I was on the verge of not only losing my mind, but my job as well. I had no choice.

“You okay? You don’t look so well. Please tell me you’re not sick. I need you to not be sick. I’m begging,” Jane pleaded as I entered the office.

“I’m fine. I need coffee,” I barked, walking through the office like I was Jane. I could get anything I wanted this week. Jane needed me, but could I pull it off again? Damn. Why couldn’t this parole thing be over with? Maybe if I write the letter, I can put it behind me, at least enough to get through this crazy month with Jane.

“You ready for this?” Colton asked, coming into my office.

“Ready?” I questioned, trying to look busy, needing to avoid eye contact.

“Well, from what I’m hearing from the boss, I am to do any and everything you tell me to do,” he smiled.

My eyes peered at him over the brim of my glasses. “Yeah, okay. How are you at layout?” I taunted. He sucked at it. His specialty was picking what to use not how to use it.

“Depends on what you want laid out.”

I ignored the sexually incriminating comment and headed to the conference room, determined to get this done without doing what I was terrified of doing.

Colton, Jane, and I worked nonstop throughout the day. The conference room was tur
ned into one ginormous magazine. It was the only way I could do it. I was a visual person. I always had a hard time writing about something I had to research, but if it was there, right in front of me, I could read about it for days, learning all I could. Not only did I have to be able to see it, I had to touch it. Splitting what was real from what wasn’t in my mind was easier that way.

By six in the evening, we were all spent. Photos of the youn
g models plagued the first wall about half way down. It wasn’t right. There was something missing. Something. I just couldn’t put my finger on.

“
Maybe we shouldn’t start it youngest to oldest. Makeup. Yes. Maybe we should do the makeup first,” I suggested, thinking out loud. No. No. That’s dumb.

“Perfect. You’re a genius. I love it,” Jane clapped, already grabbing her purse.

“I agree. Let’s wrap this up tomorrow,” Colton followed.

“Let’s not. I don’t like it. I’m thinking maybe we should do the dual pages, maybe have the male and female designs match one another. Yo
u know. Pair them off like they’re couples.”

“Sure. Can we do that tomorrow?”
Jane asked, paying no attention to the ideas flowing from my mouth.

“Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I’m right behind you,” I said
, studying the photo-shoot wall.

I worked
for another couple hours, rearranging, moving photos and articles around like chess pieces, searching for that something. That pizazz that I knew was inside me. I needed it to come out.

“I thought I saw you still here. What the hell are you doing?”

“Colton, I need to go off my meds.” There. I did it. I blurted it out.

“Why?”

“I have things going on, causing me not to sleep. I just need forty-eight hours.”

“Is that safe?”

“No. That’s why I’m telling you. I need you to stay with me while I work through this.”

“Work through what?
” Colton asked with frowned eyes. He didn’t understand and I didn’t know how to explain it.

“Look, something happens when I go off my meds abruptly. It’s like I’m on psychedelics or something.”

“Like ecstasy?”

“Sort of, I guess. I don’t sleep, but I don’t need it. I can get through all of this if I stop for a couple days and look at it through the eyes of someone else.”

“What does that even mean? You’re going to be someone else?”

“You already know I turn into someone else. I just need you to watch me, make sure I don’t do something stupid. We’ll lock ourselves in here and I promise you, I can get this done.”

“I don’t know if I like this.”

“You’ll like it later. I promise.”

“Have you been off your meds every time I’ve been with you?”

That was only
twice, but whatever. I looked down to the floor. “I don’t want to hurt you, Colton. I’m not like girls you’re used to.”

Colton laughed nervous
ly. “You’re definitely not like the girls I’m used to. What happened?”

“When?”

“Whenever, always, I don’t know. Something made you this way. Was it the rape?”

“Maybe. It doesn’t matter. What matters is this,” I said, waving my arm around the magnificent conference
room and the mess that didn’t look any more promising than it had the day we started.

“What do I do?”

“Don’t let me leave this office and keep everyone else out.”

“Should I be scared?”

“Probably,” I said, cocking my head with half a smile.

“You’re not going to think you can fly or something, are you?”

“Oh, I can unquestionably fly when I’m high. You can’t let me. I’ll be squished on the sidewalk.”

“That’s not funny. I don’t think we should do this.”

“Colton, please. I don’t know another way. Please,” I begged, tilting my head.

“Fine. When do you want to start?”

“I won’t take it tonight. That way it should be starting to work by the time I get here in the morning.”

“How long does it take?”

“I took them this morning, so by the time I go all day and skip tonight’s dose, I’d say six hours.”

“But you won’t be here in six hours.”

“I can be. I won’t sleep for at least two days, then I’ll crash for hours. I need to crash for hours, Colton. I need you to make sure I get home and crash for hours. Don’t let me go anywhere else.”

“Where would you go?”

“Looking,” I spoke the truth. Damn. I was full of truths for some reason.

“Looking for what?”

“What you’re going to be here to give me.”

“Sex?”

“Is that what you call it?” I smiled, feeling exhausted.

“No. Not with you. You’re a—
”

“Wild woman?” I helped out with raised eyebrows and crossed arms.

“Free-spirit,” he countered his own definition. I liked his better.

“Yeah, that’s me. A free spirit,” I dryly agreed, wishing that was the case.

“Explain to me what that was all about,” Lila ordered in her aged rough tone.

“Sorry about that. I had deadlines. It all worked out,” I
apologized, forgetting that I had called her during my episode.

“You went off your medication. Why did you do that?”

“I only did it for two days. It’s okay. I had someone with me and the job got done.”

“Do you remember what we were going to talk about today?”

“Um, not really,” I lied, sitting behind her desk. I don’t know why I chose to sit in her chair like I was the doctor and she was the patient. I just did.

“We were going to discuss what you’re doing here. What you expect to get out of this.”

“We were? Do we have to talk about that?”

“No. No we don’t. Tell me about the last two days.”

“Three days. I slept for sixteen hours after I was finished with my job.”

“Okay, tell me about it.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I want you to describe this feeling you get when you go off your medication.”

“I don’t know how to do that. It’s something I can’t explain. You would have to experience it to know. It’s not a lot of fun if that’s what you think.”

“
I think I know what manic is. Let me tell you. You have so many thoughts going through your mind, so many ideas. You see things that aren’t really there. You see color, really see color.  People have cured diseases doing what you do.”

“They have?” I asked
inquisitively. There was someone else like me?

“Yes
, they have. Beautiful paintings have been created, novels have been written, and babies have been made. Do you get that effect when you’re off your meds, too, McKenzie?”

I shifted my eyes, feeling embarrassed. What did she know?

“McKenzie?”

“Yes. That happens
, too.”

“Who?”

“Who what?”

“Who did you sleep with?”

“His name’s Colton. I asked him to stay with me.”

“You asked someone to stay with you while you went off your medication to be more creative?”

“Yes.”

“What, you just have the guy on speed dial? Hey, I’m going off my meds for a few days, wanna watch me work? I’ll make it worth your while? How do you ask someone something like that?”

“Why are you being so sarcastic about it? I’m fine, the job’s done and it all worked out.”

I jumped when her hands came down hard on her desk in front of me. I hadn’t even seen her stand up.

“Because you’re flirting with all kinds of bad things, McKenzie. You could have jumped off the top of a building, believing you could fly.”

“I did do that. Colton stopped me. I had it under control.”

Lila shook her head, exasperated with me. I got what she was saying, but she was worried about something that never happened. Why be mad about it after the fact?

“You have to promise me not to do that again. You can never just stop taking your medicine cold turkey like that
again. Promise me you won’t.”

“Okay,” I said, making the
empty promise. I couldn’t promise that.

“Tell me about the hours you were high.”

“How do you know what it feels like?” I asked the silly question. She was a shrink. It was her job to know that.

“Is that what it is? You feel high?”

“Yes, like nothing you’ve ever experienced. Well, maybe you have,” I joked. “You were probably into all sorts of things back in the sixties, huh?”

“I’ve done my share of experimenting.”

“I needed to do it. I needed to feel the high in order to come down.”

“What does that mean, McKenzie? What did you need to come down from?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to get you to understand.”

“Tell me about Colton.”

“What about him.”

“Do you like him?”

I shrugged both shoulders and snarled my lips. “I don’t know. I don’t want a relationship with him if that’s what you mean. I don’t need to be in a relationship to define who I am,” I assured her smartly, spinning an ink pin around and around on her shiny desktop.

“I never said you did. You’re very defensive today.”

“No I’m not. I’m not paying you to talk about Colton. There’s nothing to talk about. There’s nothing going on with Colton and me.”

“Oh that’s right, McKenzie. I forgot. You’re here to talk about your childhood again. How many
times have you told this story?” Lila asked, standing with a bit of a struggle. What the hell?

I didn’t respond. That’s not what I did, was it? Lila
wasn’t expecting a response. She continued with her synopsis on the last twelve years of my life. “Why don’t we start where you left off last week? Tell me why you went to counseling the first time. You were twelve, right?

I swallowed, contemplating what she was doing.

“Right?”

“Yes. I was twelve.”

“Go on. Why? Why would you be in counseling at twelve?”

“I wanted to go.”

“You wanted to go? Why?”

“I thought something was wron
g with me. I couldn’t sleep. I would go days on very few hours of sleep. I still had to keep up my good-girl routine for Kyle.”

“Kyle? We graduated from Gia’s dad to Kyle?”

I ignored her with a dirty look. “I had to keep my grades up and study. Gia made me run with her every single day. Five miles, seven days a week. When I wasn’t working on some dance routine with Gia, I was working hard to keep my grades up.”

“So you just went to your parents and asked them to take you to counseling?”

“Yes, but they didn’t let me at first.”

I rested my chin on my fist and continued to spin the pen in circles, feeling the rejection as if it was right in front of me.

“I had just gotten home from practice. I had an English exam the following morning. Gia wanted to go over the new routine one more time. I didn’t want to do the routine again. I wanted to sleep. I just wanted to sleep.”

“Mom,” I quietly said, seeing her in the kitchen. She was uploading pictures of a new house she’d just listed.

“Hmm?”
she sort of responded.

I dropped my backpack to the floor and sank to the chair in front of her. She never stopped working to look at me. She couldn’t even look at me for five seconds.
“I think I’m sick.”

“Why do you think that? Go take some Tylenol.”

“I don’t need Tylenol. It’s not that kind of sick.” At least I got a look that time.

“
I don’t have time to play your games, McKenzie. I’m busy. What do you want?”

My heart hurt. It felt like it was being shattered. I was crying for help and she was too busy trying to stay one step ahead of Melanie to hear me. I walked away unnoticed
, listening to her say no, over and over, because whatever she was doing was giving her fits.

“Hey, Dad,” I said, plopping to the sofa in the den. He waved me away, showing me he was on the phone.
I left him with a heavy heart, too. Nobody cared. Nobody cared about what was going on inside me. I just wanted someone to care, someone to understand.

Hearing laughter, I walked back to the kitchen
, feeling like a zombie. Gia was telling my mother about the new routine, demonstrating the new wave where her hips swayed in different directions, and then she explained the jump. My mom was too busy to hear my pleas, but she wanted to hear Gia giddily talk about a stupid dance routine.

“Hey, you ready?” Gia asked, seeing me.

“Yeah,” I replied, following her to my basement to rehearse the routine we weren’t going to perform for another month. Oh well. At least it occupied my mind.

It was that weekend that I had no choice but to make my mother listen. I was scared and alone, but I couldn’t explain what was going on. All I knew was I couldn’t sleep, I was
exhausted one minute and bouncing off the walls with energy the next. My mind was having a hard time keeping up and separating what was real from what wasn’t. Gia was throwing one hell of a tantrum because I was ditching her. We were supposed to be going to Samantha’s birthday party together. I was sick. I didn’t want to go.

“
McKenzie. You told her you’d go. You can’t back out at the last minute,” my mom scolded, taking her side. I didn’t feel hurt or shattered that time. I felt disgusted, seeing her move Gia’s hair from the front of her shoulders to her back, twirling it between her fingers. “Where are you sick? You don’t look sick.” I couldn’t explain how I was sick. I didn’t know. I just was.

“
Why don’t you go with her, Mom?” I screamed. I was so sick of it all. Gia, and the way my mother flaunted her shit around, acting like they were best friends. I was over it. I disappeared upstairs, trying to talk myself calm. Something was wrong with me. Something wasn’t right. I felt it. Lying across my bed, I waited for my mother to storm in with her wrath. She never came, not to yell at me for being rude to Gia or to see if I was okay. She didn’t care. I never came out of my room. I fell asleep. Exhaustion finally won and I slept, shoes and all.

“Mack. Mack. Can you hear me, Mack? Where are you?”

I could feel everything about this revelation, the sand, the blue-green water, the falling darkness, the wind chimes, a picnic table. I was standing on the bench of a picnic table, in a building. No. It was a pavilion of some sort. Why was I crying?

“Maaaaaaaack,”
Gia called, dragging out the “a” in my name.

I
could see her, but I wouldn’t answer. I could see the wind chimes and struggled to hear her. Gia was fading, and the only things I could hear were the two distinct sounds, blowing in the same wind.

I could feel his warm hands. He wrapped my legs around him and rubbed my back, but I couldn’t see
his face. I didn’t know who was there. I was afraid of him. Did he hurt me? That’s when I woke screaming at the top of my lungs.

With tears streaming down
my face, I fought hard, trying to keep a balance of what was real and what wasn’t. This room was real. It was my room. I could see the pictures of Gia and me all over my mirror. The sounds of my screams were real. The feel of the cold, hardwood floor was real. No. Wait. That wasn’t real. Why was I on the floor? The wind chimes. That was real. I could hear them.

“What the hell are you doing?”
my dad yelled from the door. My mom stood behind him, looking concerned.

“
I’ve got it. Go to bed, Mark,” she requested. My dad left, shaking his head and she closed the door.

“McKenzie? What’s wrong?”
she asked, running her hand over my hair.

“I’m scared,
” I cried. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I wanted it to stop. I wanted someone to help me.

“Oh, baby, come here.”
My mom sat on the floor with me and held me. That was the first and only memory I had of my mom being a mom. It took me having a nervous breakdown to get her attention, but for now, she was here and I needed her.

The first doctor put me on an antidepressant and something to help me sleep. It worked and I transform
ed into a happy, healthy, teenage girl. Gia and I were competing somewhere every weekend, traveling all over with our mothers. It was fun. Those years were worthy. Vacations were good. Holidays were awesome, and Gia and I went through a lot of firsts. Bra shopping, monthly periods, virginities and competitions. We were becoming pretty well known around Shayla Harbor. Our names and pictures were constantly in the local paper, holding ginormous trophies, looking too sexy for teen girls in our skimpy tiny outfits.

It took a few years, but I was finally on
an antipsychotic drug that seemed to work. I still had days where I would feel totally strung out, but for the most part, I could handle it.

Things were good. I was happy and balanced. I didn’t feel the neglect I’d felt for my entire life anymore. Nothing
like that bothered me with my new meds. I just had to keep them hidden from Gia. It was easy. My mom never told Melanie I was on medication either. She would never want her to know something like that.