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bouncing off me and hurtling back at her, daggers out and ready to strike.
    The mental health nurse gave me a concer ned look, but I just flashed a smile at her and kept going. The hospital was so depressing that it was no wonder that my Mom had tried to commit suicide a couple of times. This place would make anyone hurt themselves. I didn’t take a deep breath until I escaped from the smell of disinfectant and ugly green linoleum.
    There was a bus stop right outside, and other miserable people waited there. They had probably just been visiting their own hopeless relatives because a lot of them seemed to be sucking in the air just as I had. Or maybe some of them were patients. I questioned the wisdom of having a bus stop right outside a mental health facility. It was perfect for anyone who wanted to escape. My mom did once, right after she was committed and I was placed with my first foster home. She turned up at school, and at first my heart soared to see her. I had a black eye and split lip from Connie and her friend’s welcome wagon party, and all I wanted to do was go home and cry in her arms.
    But then she started talking about how we were going to the moon and needed cheese to get on board the rocket. I wanted her to ask about my eye. I wanted her to speak normally. But she kept going on about the stupid rocket and the stupid cheese. That’s when I first realized that I really hated her. And later, when I punched and kicked Connie as she lay on the ground screaming, I imagined it was my mother. I would never have been able to take Connie otherwise.
    On the bus, I blinked back tears and took short, ragged breaths to calm myself. My hatred was turning to guilt the further away from the hospital that I got. I was a horrible daughter and a horrible person. She was rotting there, and I was doing nothing to help her. She would probably rot down into the linoleum, and no one would notice, and I would go back and there would be nothing but a pile of rags on the floor along with that scraggly, scary hair. I ended up pushing the heel of my palm into my mouth and biting down on it so the pain would distract me. A woman on the bus shot me a worried look, probably thinking that I was an escaped crazy. I narrowed my eyes at her and continued to bite my palm. She flinched and looked away, and then I stopped biting because I was beginning to get scared that I really was going nuts. I made do with feeling the bite marks that I had made and revelling in the pain.
    I got the urge to cry under control by the time I got off the bus. It was squashed down tight underneath all my other worries, and I vowed not to let that urge loose again anytime soon. I hugged my bag to my body, kept my head down, and started the trudge back to the Malones’ house. The weather was getting colder, but that was okay. I liked feeling the chill in my bones. It made me feel old and wizened. Like I knew stuff. Important stuff.
    Fuck. I was going crazy just like her.
    The sound of a car pulling up beside me made me straighten my back and raise my head. There would be no more acting like a victim for me.
    “Hey, Vicious Violet.” I turned my head to see Damon, his car idling beside me. “Get in.” I paused. I didn’t want to play games right now. I just wanted to clear my head, or forget everything. And somewhere in the back of my mind I kept remembering that he was like one of the assholes that had strung my mother along until she began to break, agonizingly piece by piece until she stepped right off the cliff, or flew to the moon. Whichever it was that came first.
    But when he waved a hip flask at me tantalizingly, I could forget all of that. The silver of the flask glinted in the dying sunlight like it was a sign. To get wasted would be my oblivion. It would be my own version of stepping off a cliff, or flying to the moon. I wasted no time in getting into the car. If he noticed that I looked upset, he didn’t say anything to me. He just passed the flask