Dr. Scott got real transfixed by those swirly metal things on top of the roof next door. When we were out of time, he could barely conceal his excitement to move on to a more interesting, open patient. Even the guy paid to care about me doesn’t really care.

“Is there anything else you wanted to talk about today?” Dr. Scott asked at the end of our session.

I wanted to talk about why he’s never been able to give me a better answer to why my brain works so differently from the people around me. I think that this is a cause for alarm. Dr. Scott, however, yawns in our appointments. As casual as if everything is under control.

On any given night I don’t know whether I’ll hurt someone else or myself, and I dream of ways to do it, to inflict pain and test the body’s limits. I don’t know why it fascinates me. I should be in a ward, but the doctor won’t stop patronizing me enough to admit I’m beyond repair. He stares out of the window in my silence, but I never look away from him. I pictured his head in a bread bag today for no reason.

Everything was quiet on the ride home. I was deciding how much I’d share with Dr. Scott when the right time came. Bill thought medication interrupted the natural flow of the body, so I never got help when I really needed it.

Every week growing up, Bill slapped me around with his hand or an empty beer bottle and told me to “gimme your best shot.” I first hit him back when I was fifteen, and he punched me so hard a tooth fell out.

“Oh, Lord!” Momma ran over with a wet paper towel and pressed it to my lip.

“That’s what makes a man!” Bill roared.

Both my parents were laughing.

That was the same year Bill went on a business trip for some cable-selling convention and Momma said he wouldn’t be home for a long time. I didn’t know then that meant never, but considering how much I’d begun to hate him, it’s probably a good thing he never came back.

Jake

Monday morning, I sit next to Fiona in English, drop the bag at my feet, and take out The Great Gatsby. Ms. Kingston arrives and wishes us an exhausted good morning as she slogs to the class computer.

“Attendance . . . ,” she groans.

She goes down the list of names. I haven’t done the reading again, so I open the book to sneak in a skim, maybe catch some key words that will help me survive the discussion. But . . . in running my fingers absently through the pages, I notice they feel weird.

“Anna,” Ms. Kingston says, followed by a responding Here! “Paul.”

“Here.”