on,” I said, trying to lighten them up with a laugh. “It’s not like I’d be stranded in a desert if something went wrong.”
Delia gave Dr. Chen a pleading look. “Can you reason with her?”
Dr. Chen shifted, looked uncomfortable. “The bottom line, Thea, is that it’s far too early to gauge any long-term side-effects. I’d prefer to keep you under observation.”
“Fine,” I spit the word. “But how long?”
“A month, minimum. Maybe two.”
A month? Holy fuckballs, no way.
“I did two years,” I said, biting out each word, so they wouldn’t put me on watch. “I guess a few more weeks won’t matter.”
But it did matter. Those years were a long, endless reel of sameness. Wake up, eat, watch The Office, take a walk, draw pyramids, scream for help, eat, go to sleep, wash, rinse, repeat. In five-minute increments. Until Jimmy heard my cries and added music and color to my monotone, monochrome existence.
Now I had a real life in all its beautiful, painful, amazing glory, and they wanted to keep me in prison. Seconds ticked away. I could practically count them with the beat of my heart.
Dr. Chen finished her exam and Delia stood up.
“I need to run an errand in Roanoke. I’ll be back later.” She gave me a stiff hug. “Be good.”
“No promises.”
I sat in the quiet of my room. It wasn’t as vast and empty as the horrible silence of the amnesia, but it wasn’t living.
I took my cracked cell phone out of the top drawer of the new dresser they’d given me—taking a peak under a stack of new, lacy underwear that my wallet was still there—and scrolled through iTunes. I put on “Tidal Wave” by a new band who’d come up in the last two years while I dressed in a pair of those new lacy panties, jean shorts, and a pink T-shirt.
I took my phone with me as I headed downstairs. It was technically breakfast time but screw my routine. I needed to paint.
The rec room was deserted, only the empty canvas waiting for me. I squeezed paint dollops onto my palette and reached for a brush. No, a brush wasn’t going to be loud enough.
I put the canvas on the tarp on the floor, and using my hands, scooped a handful of purple acrylic paint. I let a stream of drops fall, like tears, then kneeled and swept my hand over the canvas.
For the next twenty minutes, I attacked the canvas with different colors, using drips, or swipes, or handprints. Letting the paint speak for me. A Jackson Pollock-like mess of pure emotion. I cranked my music up higher, let the paint flow as it would, an extension of me.
Purple that wept for my parents.
A snake of black that might suffocate me back into amnesia.
Yellow for the hope that it wouldn’t ever again.
And swirls of paint, a riot of color for all that I felt inside me. For Delia and Rita. And for Jimmy. For freedom on the other side of these walls and a life I might have with him if we were brave enough to explore all that lay between us.
He is so much more than he knows.
I sat back on my heels, paint smearing my clothes and my palms covered in yellow. I wiped a sweaty lock of hair off my forehead with the back of my hand and studied what I’d done.
It was a pretty, messy, chaotic painting, reflecting all that was inside me… and going nowhere.
I should have painted another pyramid.
A tomb.
Chapter 24
Jim
My shift started with a spill of maple syrup in the dining room. Minor catastrophes continued through lunch and I was kept busy for hours. My thoughts were on Thea every other minute.
“She’s in the rec room,” Rita said as she rushed by me in the hallway, as if reading my mind. “Can you check on her?”
Thank you, Rita.
“Sure.”
In the rec room, Thea crouched over a canvas, drizzling yellow paint on it with her hands. She worked feverishly, as if someone were timing her. It was a beautiful mess of big bold splashes of color, spilling over the sides of the canvas and onto the floor.
Her gaze flicked to me as I approached, then back to the paint. Sweat glistened on her chest and made her little necklace with the pale green stone stick to her skin.
“No more painter’s block,” she said.
“I can see that.”
“This is what I feel, Jimmy,” she said, swiping her hands, covered with yellow paint, across the top. “And this little canvas is