"Jane! You're never going to believe this!" I barge into her dorm. She's brushing her waist-length hair.
"Shouldn't you be at school?" She holds her hair in pigtails with her fists to decide if she likes the look.
"That's not the point." I sigh. I take a quick glance outside the door, checking to make sure no one is listening. "This place isn't real!"
She sighs and looks at me. "Whisper, have you been taking your medication?"
"That's not the fricking point!" I fling my arms around. "Jane, none of this is real! I saw it! I saw the real world... it was..." I pace around the room. No amount of exaggerated hand gestures or sound effects could describe what I had seen. "People line the walls. Half-dead. Goggles strapped to their heads like the ones we used to have with our VR set. There were people there, like us, alive. They were telling me about it. Jane, you have to believe me!"
She stares at me, concerned. "Whisper..." she speaks slowly, "I'm not saying I don't believe you..." she sighs, "but.. I hope you can understand why it's hard to think that it was real..."
I feel like I've been stabbed. By my best friend no less. "I'm being serious." I object. "I really am, Jane. This wasn't a schizophrenic episode."
Jane turns around to fix her glittery lip gloss in the backlit mirror above her dresser. "You're a great kid, Whisp, schizophrenia or no. Maybe you should schedule another appointment with your therapist? Up your dose?" She suggests. "You're starting to worry me."
"What?" I scoff.
"Whisper, this place is perfect, there's no way what you saw could be real. Nothing like that exists here." Jane assures me.
"It's not! Miss Harvey locked me and her daughter, Aliza in the car the day after she adopted me. Yeah, Aliza's her daughter." I chuckle at the thought. "She was going to kill us. She was talking to someone on the phone. Her mafia boss or something."
"Whisper..." Jane straightens up, "what are you talking about? Miss Harvey hasn't been in contact with you in months..."
"No, she adopted me two days ago, don't you remember? You helped me pack..." my voice kind of gets quieter and trails off when I see Jane's face.
"You're starting to worry me, Whisper." She gives me space as she walks around me. "Why don't you stay here... I'll get the Center's psychologist."
"No, wait!" I grab her arm. "Jane, you can't tell anyone."
Jane seems to fight for her very life to get out of my grasp. "Let go, Whisper!" Her hand catches me across the face. My grasp immediately loosens as I flinch back from her. I stare. She gasps, her hand coming to her mouth when she realizes. "I-I'm sorry. Don't grab me like that." My eyes hit the ground. I thought it was all behind me. The flashbacks. The hitting. The abuse.
"Sorry." I say quietly.
"No, no. That was my fault." She reaches out to give me a gentle touch in replacement of the slap. I flinch away from her, my unforgiving survival instincts telling me to run from her. She retracts her hand. "You wait here, okay? I'm gonna go get the psychiatrist." She leaves the room. I wait until the door shuts to open the window. Two stories between me and freedom.
"I'm so sorry, Jane..." I look hesitantly back at the door. Propping myself in the window, I look down at the glassy water of the pond beneath. Nothing like a little parkour after finding out the world isn't real, right? I take a deep breath and plunge. The minnows and sunnies disperse upon my arrival into their wet domain. I stay under the brown water until I feel the surface go still. I swim across to the safety of the park's trees.
I surface with a gasp. I walk ashore and turn back around. Jane is standing in the window with the head of security. What a traitor. I'm not crazy. I'll prove it somehow. I follow the little creek that leaks into the pond. It leads deeper into the forest.
