“Go to your room. Rest. Things always look better in the morning.”
Frankie turned slowly. “Do they?”
* * *
That night in her childhood bedroom, Frankie came awake reluctantly, fighting consciousness every step of the way. She didn’t want to open her eyes and be in a world where she was this version of herself. Broken. A fallen woman. A liar. It was all so bad, an avalanche of bad.
She reached over to the nightstand, feeling blindly for her pills. She took two more. When had she taken them last? She couldn’t remember, didn’t care. She closed her eyes, drifted.
You almost ended me.
Do you want to die, Frankie?
It’s a boy!
Frankie heard a creaking sound and tried to sit up. It was impossible. She drifted in and out, heard footsteps in the hallway. Or maybe it was her heartbeat slowing down to nothing.
One of her parents, checking up on her, probably. She closed her eyes again and heard someone whisper her name. And then a muffled laugh.
Finley.
She heard his voice out there, beyond the door. In the darkness, she could hear him breathing, could smell the Brylcreem he put in his hair and the spearmint gum he loved.
Come on, Frankie. Be with me.
They were kids again. Summer. She heard the ice-cream truck outside, bell jangling, kids laughing. She threw back the covers and stepped down onto the cold wooden floor, wondering what had happened to her rug.
Finley’s laughter echoed in front of her. She followed it out of the house. She grabbed her old surfboard from the garage and stumbled into the pitch-black night.
No stars out.
No cars rolling on Ocean Boulevard. No house lights visible.
She crossed the empty street and stepped onto the cold sand. “Finley! Wait up!”
She tried to catch up with him, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate. She felt weighed down, exhausted.
The water was so cold it shocked her, made her gasp; still, she splashed toward the incoming surf, jumped on her board, and paddled out.
She paddled weakly over the swells, made it out to the calm water, lay on her board, panting from exertion. She was shivering with cold, and confused. “Fin?”
He didn’t answer. There was just the lapping sound of the incoming swell set, the smack of her board when it hit back down.
She wanted to sit up and look for Finley, but she was too weak. How many pills had she taken?
Cold embraced her, numbed her.
Was that why she had come out here?
A chance to feel nothing …
She closed her eyes.
She shouldn’t be here. She should go back.
But she was tired. Bone-tired. And the cold began to feel good. She could just roll over, sink into the cold sea, and disappear.
* * *
Red lights, blinking on and off.
Incoming.
A siren, blaring.
Frankie blinked awake. She was in an ambulance, with her father sitting beside her. Water dripped from his hair and clothes.
It came back to her in a sickening rush, what she’d done. Shame compressed her into the smallest version of herself. All she’d wanted was to disappear, not … something else.
“I wasn’t trying to … I didn’t mean…” She couldn’t say the words. “It was a dream. I thought Finley was here. I followed him.”
“It’s those pills,” he said in a voice she barely recognized. “Your mother never should have given them to you. You took too many.”
“I’ll stop taking them.”
“It’s too late for that, Frankie. We’re afraid…”
Of what you’ll do.
“You tried to kill yourself.”
“No. I just…”
What?
Had she tried to kill herself?
“We could have lost you.”
She wanted to disagree, to tell him that he would never lose her, that she was fine, but for once, she couldn’t say the words, couldn’t soldier on.
“Why am I in an ambulance? I’m fine now. I’ll be good. I promise.”
Dad looked uncomfortable, embarrassed. Worse, he looked afraid.
“Dad?”
The ambulance came to a stop. The attendant jumped out, opened the back door. Frankie saw the words PSYCHIATRIC WARD.
She shook her head, tried to sit up, found that she was bound to the bed at her wrists and feet. “No, please…”
“Thirty-six hours,” Dad said. “A mandatory hold after a suicide attempt. They promised it would help you.”
Frankie felt herself and the gurney being lifted. Outside of the ambulance, the wheels snapped into place.
Her father was crying. Seeing that scared her more than anything ever had. “Daddy. No. Please…”