Cry Until You Bleed

17- Family Visits

On Saturday morning, I’m a jumping bean of excitement. I haven’t seen my family in over a month and today, I finally get to reunite with them. Granted, it’s only going to be for a few hours, it’s more than I’ve gotten in the past month. I don’t think my mom is coming, but Penn and Sienna will be here along with my dad. They’re going to fly all the way across the country just to spend a few hours with me, which is kind of really amazing of them and I’m so glad that they are because when I was in Alaska, they weren’t allowed to come visit me at all. It wasn’t because they just didn’t want to go to Alaska, it was the fact that the Alaska facility didn’t allow visitors under any circumstances at all.

Anyway, they’re going to be here at two, which is right after lunch so I have a long time to wait since right now, it’s just after breakfast and this day is just going to drag along as slowly as possible.

“I can’t believe they still haven’t told us anything about Renée,” Mia mumbles irritatedly as we sit down on the couch in front of the TV and start watching a movie, which is something new for us because usually, people are watching some type of sport on the TV, mainly football, so we rarely ever use it. However, it was empty today so we grabbed it and put in a movie before anybody else could steal this moment away from us.

“I know,” I agree with Mia. “I’m worried about her.”

“That’s an understatement,” She scoffs. “If I wasn’t afraid of them throwing me back into solitary, I’d be freaking out right now.”

“Yeah, you’re not allowed to leave me alone again,” I tell her but I smile at her so that she knows that I’m joking.

“Right,” She agrees. “You know, I’m kind of surprised that you haven’t asked me why I’m in here yet.”

“It’s none of my business,” I assure Mia as the movie starts on the box TV in front of us. This TV is so old that the sides of it are covered in that fake wood stuff and on top it, there are antennas sticking up into the air and there are black notches on the side of the TV that control the channel and volume and everything. I barely could understand how to even make it work, it’s basically the dinosaur version of a TV.

“Which is code for the fact that you don’t want to tell me what your story is so you don’t want to ask about mine because then I’ll expect you to tell me yours,” Mia smiles at me knowingly.

“Basically,” I agree with a small nod.

She chuckles and nudges my shoulder with her bonier one. “It’s okay. I get that you don’t want to talk about it. When I got here, I didn’t want to talk about it either. Everybody else’s friendliness kind of grows on you and you get used to talking about it.”

I don’t agree with her this time because I don’t think that I’ll ever just get used to telling people about what had happened to me forever ago. I don’t tell her that though because I don’t feel like pointlessly disagreeing with her. I am slightly curious as to how she got here although I have a hint because I’ve noticed how she doesn’t eat that much and she had said that they were afraid that she’d stop eating. There are a lot of people around here with an anorexic diagnosis and I’ve already assumed that Mia is one of those people.

“Or maybe not,” Mia continues. “Johnny was the one who eased me into the sharing process. He’s really good with people, I think. But since he’s not here then I don’t know, maybe it’ll be different for you.”

“Yeah. Maybe,” I sigh. “I think I might have a way to find out about Renée.”

“Really. How?” She wonders, looking over at me with raised eyebrows.