I slept.
No Mother.
I woke.
No Mother.
The same pattern continued over and over again. The second time I emptied my bladder was easier than the first. I gave no conscious thought to it when it happened. Without any food and water, I knew I had likely reached the point where I would have nothing left to give.
11
MIA
MY HAND wouldn’t stop bleeding. Not that it was gushing. I watched with morbid fascination as steady droplets of blood bubbled to the surface of my hand before rolling down my palm, past my wrist and over my forearm. The blood left a crimson trail along the hairs of my arm before dripping off and collecting on the thick cream-colored carpet in my room. It was a brilliant red that would have made for a perfect shade of nail polish. I’d worn my fair share of red polishes, but none had captured the brilliance of blood with the way it glistened.
I knew I should get a tissue and Band-Aids, but I remained sitting on the floor with my journal propped up on my knees. The journal was complete. Every single line was filled. Blood stained the pages where my hand rested. The broken plastic pieces of my pen littered the floor around me. It had finally buckled under the pressure of my squeezing grip. For a time while I was writing I lost my head, treating the pen like an appendage. I wanted my own blood flowing from the pen to form the words on the pages.
The emotions I felt upon finishing the journal were as tangible as I expected. There was no relief that my open letter to Leah was finally finished. Even though she had been taken from us so long ago, I couldn’t help feeling like she had only now truly left me. The memory of my sister was slowly slipping away, and yet the ache in my heart made me feel as though there was something more. Maybe I really was losing my mind.
A quick rap on my door distracted me from my bloodfascination trance. Before I could answer, Jacob pushed my bedroom door open and stepped into the room.
He took in the blood on my carpet and on my arm and without a word went into my bathroom. I could hear the water running, but didn’t move. A moment later he returned with a wet rag. I watched with indifference as he gently lifted my hand and began to clean the blood away. He carefully washed the cut that was the source of all the blood, but I didn’t even flinch. It was as if the cut belonged to someone else.
After he finished, Jacob wrapped the rag around my hand to capture any remaining traces of blood. “What’s going on, Mia?” he asked, scooting back against my bed.
I shrugged. It was such a broad question. Even if I decided to confide in him, I had no idea where to begin. How did I tell my brother I was losing it? That some monster of darkness was dogging my every step, following me everywhere I looked. How did I find the words to tell him that I was still missing the sister we’d both lost so long ago? It felt wrong to pick at that scab, to reopen the wound that he’d worked so hard to heal. It was selfish on so many levels. I could not tell him any of it.
“Mia?” he probed.
I fixated on the small pool of blood on the carpet that was already drying in a deep rust color that no longer resembled the beautiful red color that had fascinated me earlier. Now it was an ugly color that no girl would want as a polish. “I’m fine,” I finally answered when Jacob poked me in the side.
“Liar,” he answered immediately, studying me critically.
I shifted on the floor so that I faced him. “Seriously. I accidentally cut my hand with my pen while I was writing, that’s all. I was about ready to take care of it when you showed up.”
He continued to eye me with the same doubtful expression he always wore when he knew I was hiding something.
I clamped my mouth closed before my tongue could betray my secret. Jacob had a way of getting me to talk. He always had, especially after Leah’s disappearance. He was a natural-born listener. Even when my problems were juvenile and adolescent, he never judged me, and he was never condescending.
Jacob’s powers of attrition once again overwhelmed my ability to hold firm. I barfed up all the secrets from my vault like an overflowing sewage tank that had to be emptied. I had to hand it to Jacob. He sat patiently listening as I spewed and spewed. He waited to comment until I had finished. I expected to hear him tell me I had lost it, and that I needed to lay off drugs. What else would explain the crazy shit I had admitted other than my brain had to be damaged.
“And you see this ‘dark monster’ everywhere?” Jacob asked, peering around my room. He would never say it aloud, but I was sure Jacob was skeptical since he couldn’t see what I had described for himself.
I nodded, picking at the rust-stained carpet. “Crazy, right?” I didn’t need to scan the room with him. I knew where my monster was every second and minute of the day. Without turning my head I knew it was lurking inside my small closet, spilling into my room, but I refused to look at it. “Are you trying to figure out how you can throw me into your car and drive me to some hospital?” I hated the insecurity in my voice, but the thought had to be going through Jacob’s head.
He squeezed my good hand. “Well, that’s definitely one option. But I was thinking maybe the better option would be to tell Mom and Dad. You could be really sick.”
I snorted. “Gee, thanks for that one. I already know my head is broken.”
“Well, duh, we all know that,” he teased. “I’m not talking about that kind of sick, but something has to be wrong with your brain if you’re seeing something no one else can.”
“I can’t tell Mom and Dad. They’ve already lost one daughter.” I ignored the way he flinched at my words. “They’ve already lost one daughter,” I repeated to make my point. “They don’t need the stress of knowing something is wrong with their other daughter.”
Jacob shook his head. “You don’t always have to be the perfect daughter. It wasn’t your job to replace Leah.”
“Yes, it was,” I said sternly. “I had to make up for the wrong daughter being taken.”
Jacob looked shocked. His eyes darkened by a disturbed sadness. “Why would you say that? If you would have been taken, I would have lost my best friend.”