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the window, at a squirrel sitting on the end of a branch.
    “Callie,” you say softly. “I want you to think about whether you want to continue coming to see me.”
    The squirrel nibbles on his acorn, looks around suspiciously, then goes back to his lunch.
    “This—the two of us sitting here every day, with me watching you count the stripes on the wallpaper—isn’t helping you.”
    The squirrel freezes; the branch quivers as another squirrel scrambles toward him.
    “And Callie …I believe you want help.”
    The squirrels are gone, but the branch is still quivering. I steal a glimpse at you; you’re pretty, I realize, and youngish. You wrap your hands around your knees, like we’re two girlfriends, just hanging out, talking. I go back to counting the stripes on the wallpaper.
    After a while, I hear your dead-cow chair groan. You sigh. “OK,” you say. “That’s all for today.”
    The clock says we still have fifty minutes left. But you’ve already capped your pen and closed your notebook.
    I keep my hand on your doorknob a minute, standing in the waiting area outside your office, wondering what I’m supposed to do now. There’s no one to escort me and there’s no place to escort me to.
    I picture you on the other side of the door, closing the manila file with my name on it, all the empty sheets of notebook paper, from all the days I came and sat in your office counting the stripes on the wallpaper, spilling into the trash. And it occurs to me that I’m alone—really alone—for the first time since I got here.
    I let go of the knob and move away from your door, slowly then faster, down the hall, not really knowing where I’m going, just going. I pass a supply closet, then a door with a large red bar and a metal flag on it marked “For Emergency Use Only,” and I wonder if an alarm really would ring if I opened it, if it would be like a prison escape movie, if Rochelle would throw down her magazine and come running, if Doreen would drop her linens and man the searchlight, if the other girls would stumble out of their rooms and ask what was going on. But my feet carry me past the Emergency Use Only door, back the way I came with Ruth a few minutes ago, back to Study Hall.
    The door is closed, though. There’s no sign or anything. Of course it’s closed; Study Hall is over. Everyone is at Individual or Anger Management or Art Therapy. Everyone except me.
    Down the hall I hear keys jingle. Marie, the daytime bathroom attendant, is taking up her post on the orange chair. I walk in her direction, trying to act normal.
    She barely notices as I go past; she doesn’t ask me what I’m doing here without an escort or why I’m here when I’m supposed to be somewhere else.
    I pick a stall down at the end and stand inside facing the toilet. I put my hand on the handle and imagine myself imitating the man on the radio, the man who says, “Testing. Testing. One. Two. Three.” The handle is cold and wet with condensation; I wipe my hand on my jeans and pray that the sound of the toilet flushing will be loud enough. “This is a test,” the man says. “This is only a test.”
    I clear my throat and jiggle the handle.
    “Everything OK in there?” Marie calls out.
    I grip the handle.
    “I said, is everything OK in there?”
    I can hear the scrape of Marie’s chair on the tile floor as she stands up.
    I push on the handle. A great roar comes up from the toilet bowl. I lean over like I’m going to be sick, but nothing comes out.
    Forty-five minutes is a long time. You can divide it into nine five-minute segments, five nine-minute segments, three fifteen-minute segments, fifteen three-minute segments, or two twenty-two-and-a-half-minute segments. That’s if you have a watch. If you have to spend it hiding in the laundry room listening for the sounds of footsteps overhead telling you that people are finished with Art Therapy or Anger Management or Individual, you have to time it just right so you come upstairs