The St. Ambrose School for Girls(111)

A vision of me appears before me.

She is sitting against the closed door in the exact same position I’m in, her legs splayed out, her torso at a right angle, her black clothes like she is wrapped in the shadows she came out of. She has no aspirin in her palm and no orange soda with her, and that is how I know she is other than me. This is not a mirror image.

This is my illness.

She meets my eyes steadily, but why wouldn’t she. She is in control.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” I tell her. “I know why you did, but it was wrong.”

She shakes her head at me.

“You know I have to end this, right.” As I hold up the aspirin, I’m aware that this is a new low for me, a new high for my disease. I’ve never actually talked to what ails me before. “You crossed a line.”

She shakes her head again. And I interpret it to mean that she’s going to stop me from committing suicide.

This gives me desperate strength.

“I’ll do it right now,” I say. “Goddamn it, right fucking now.”

I mean to put the whole handful of aspirin in my mouth, but I fumble with the pills, dropping most of them onto the front of my shirt. Cursing, I pour more out into my hand as the bitter taste slices into my tongue.

When I look back up, she’s gone from the dim interior, and I’m suddenly terrified. Dropping the bottle, I scramble to my feet and look all around the boiler room. I can’t see well enough. On shaky legs, I fumble over to where my illness was sitting and slap a hand around the wall by the door, searching for the light switch. When I find it, I turn on the ceiling fixture and rear back from the source of illumination like a vampire, shielding my eyes with the crook of my elbow.

As things adjust, I drop my arm. There’s nothing in the utility space but a floor mop in a dry orange bucket, a pop-up caution flag, a stack of metal chairs, and the old boiler.

I walk around the room, aspirin dropping off my shirt and bouncing on the floor, happy little pills, skipping over the grungy concrete like it’s someone’s birthday party.

Boy, did they not get the memo.

I pace for a while in the small, nothing-revealed space. Then I stop in the center of it and look at the bottle of aspirin that is back where I started, lying knocked over on the floor by the soda that rolled off my lap. There are still plenty in there to do the job. But there are also the ones I’ve dropped, and if I’m imminently going to die, why do I care if I put dirt in my mouth?

I think of Strots and tell myself she will understand. When it all comes out, she’ll get why I killed myself and be okay with it. I picture her, clear as day, saying that she isn’t afraid of anyone and she’ll make sure I am safe.

We did not know at the time that I am perfectly safe because I am the threat.

It’s everyone else who needs to worry. My monster has found a way out of its cage, and all I have to do is think of how I stared down at Greta’s body in satisfaction and how I had to keep the knife as a trophy, to know that I have to take care of this.

My illness has a new game, and it makes Greta’s version of dominoes look like child’s play.

I go back over to the aspirin bottle and pick it up. I find it funny that I chose the generic, not the Bayer, to save money. As if being frugal matters after you’re dead?

I lick my lips and grimace at the taste that’s already in my mouth. It’s going to get worse. Thank God for the Orange Crush.

Tilting the aspirin bottle over my palm, I…

Change my mind.

“No!” I shout as I fling the stuff away.

As the CVS-branded container ricochets off the wall, pills spool out like it’s the evacuation of a burning building. The bottle lands inside the mop’s bucket, the hollow ringing sound almost as loud as my voice, the hole in one the kind of score I couldn’t have made if I’d aimed for the thing.

I jab a finger across at the door, at where she was sitting. “I’m not going to fucking kill myself just to get rid of you. That’s not how this ends!”

I do not want to go out a coward. I do not want the last thing I do on this earth to be dictated by my disease.

That is not going to be my final act.

I kick the plastic Orange Crush bottle like a soccer ball and the force sends it careening into the corner, after which the laws of physics take it on a tour of the boiler room, introducing it to the stack of chairs, the spindly legs of a stool, the snake of some metal pipes that run along the floor. The soda comes to rest under the boiler, like it is taking cover in case my foot gets another bright idea with its name on it.

I’m going to turn myself in to the police.

I am going upstairs to my room. I am getting the knife. I am walking down into town, to the police station, and turning myself in.

I’m going to confess and take responsibility for actions that were not my choice, but are my doing. And then I will be put away for life, after which my disease will be treated into a remission that will be permanent, because everything will be permanently managed by professionals.

I will still be alive, and I will exist to taunt my disease. Trapped behind prescription bars, my bipolar madness will be reduced to a restless tiger that paces with fanged impotence. If I have to be in a mental institution or a jail for the rest of my days to finally win? Standing up to my disease makes the sacrifice worth it.

My hand is not shaking as I open the door, and when I step out, I take a deep breath. Things shut behind me with a click, and the finality of the sound spurs me on. I am grim and focused as I march my way to the nearest set of stairs, the ones by the laundry room.