This chapter is leading up to next chapter btw. Also, I forgot about Talon but he exists out there.

August 20th:

Mara finds, the longer you visit, the more used to the facility you become. As Mara moves into one of the standard rooms, the walls go from stale white to light blue, like the summer sky. You are permitted to decorate your room if you so chose. Mara has one picture. Tacked up on her corkboard, Elias's note stands pleased, beset by one picture of her and Ryn she hadn't even known she had, finding it padded deep in her coat pocket.

Mara, as well, thinks of the scheduled days as therapeutic. Knowing she will have three regular meals a day, two snacks, with someone to pass out her meds and make sure she takes them. Later in the day is group and individual therapy, which Mara doesn't mind too much. The younger woman who runs the group is exceptionally nice, with a calming voice meant to narrate children's books.

That's why Mara feels relaxed, leaning back in her plastic chair amid a circle. Some of the other kids looked as if they want to be anywhere else, with sincere scowls taking over their features.

Others, like Mara, don't seem to mind with their faces vacuous of any visible disturbance. They all just sit, some of their eyes bored, others intent on the window outside. Fall is approaching, some of the trees' leaves already advancing their color shift.

"Today we're going to be sharing a little bit about ourselves," the woman smiles, her russet locks pinned up on her head. She has rings covering every one of her narrow fingers, some smaller while others were more vibrant and clunky. She is a volunteer with a major in psychology.

"That sounds fantastic," one of the girls spits out, sarcasm laced within her tone. She has a ring piercing in her slashed eyebrow, which she fiddles with. Her face, though, seems exceedingly soft-hearted for her headstrong demeanor. She seemed much more juvenile than the group, with wild green eyes that need to be tamed.

"It does, Becka," the therapist snubs her attitude. "Do we have any volunteers to start?"

Mara has made one friend in the roughly three weeks she's been here. He is very extravagant with dark brown skin and big-hearted brown eyes and a large personality. He is Mara's hallway neighbor, whose music was what sent her to him in the first place. He always plays it raucously, the barring cords flowing through the thin walls. She'd asked him to turn it down, ending up in conversation with him about the best rapper of all time.

He said Nicki Minaj, she said Kanye West.

His long arm shoots up, his fingers dangling in the air, drawing everyone's attention to him. His prominent pearly smile, showing his teeth, taking over his face as he finds Mara's blue eyes, winking at her teasingly.

"Yes, Khalil," the woman with dreads grins, crossing her hands in her lap. She leans forward in her wooden chair so she can see him, twisting herself towards him, giving him her undivided attention.

"Hi everyone, I'm Khalil," he smirks, "to describe me, well, I'm very gay, which is my blessing and my curse." A few people chuckle at that. Even Mara breaks into a soft smile, appreciating more than the rest of the group.

That is why Khalil was actually admitted in the first place, his parents are obscenely austere Catholic. They ridiculed Khalil so hard about his sexuality, telling him he was such a shame that it drove him to a bridge where he almost ended it. A foot-traveler had actually found him, talking him down until he was safely on two feet.

If it weren't for his grandmother, who is much more concerned and got him help, he and Mara would have never met. The pedestrian, a woman with children of her own around Khalil's age, had called his Nana. She came immediately, overlooking her adoration for her bleeding grandson.

"Thank you, Khalil," the woman smiles, glancing at Mara. She stares at Mara a beat, her smile softening as they connect eyes.

"How about you, Mara. Why don't you tell us about yourself." Mara blinks languidly, sucking her bottom lip in her mouth. She shrugs, her shoulders falling with a huff as her voice starts off softer than usual, almost bashful.

"Um, I'm Mara, and I have bipolar disorder. Whenever I think I'm getting better, I go off my meds because I'm, um, happy, and then I spiral." Mara breathes, winding a lock of blonde hair around her finger tight enough her fingertip turns purple. Small needles, pricking her fingertips, she releases the strand of limp hair, only to pick at her chipped nails.

"How does that make you feel," the women's gray eyes find her. Mara notices how diverse the therapist looks. As if each of her features belong to someone else. She has rich brown skin, with opaque red hair and freckles dotting her nose. Her eyes, though, are so gray they are almost crystalline.

"Well, this time was worse because someone I really care about watched the whole thing. Like, um, he was with me through the mania, but I made him promise not to tell anyone and lied to him about getting better," Mara shakes her head, ashamed.

The room grows quiet, all of their eyes on Mara before the woman moves on to her next victim.

---

"You're telling me this poor boy writes you letters every day, and you still don't let him see you," Khalil chimes, rupturing through her door. Mara is sitting on her firm bed, each of Elias's letters sprawled around her in a semi-circle. A frown engravs on her features as she reads over each of his words, breathing them in.

"I-," Mara shakes her head, looking away from letters. She is trying not to feel anything by looking at them. That way she can push him away. She can try to make herself misremember them and every moment they share together. If even she feels for him what she thinks it is, or was it just the obsession?

She doesn't understand any of it, and it hurts her head to consider. She doesn't know what love feels like. Maybe, whatever they had was just the mania. She is terrified she will break Elias. Even more afraid that she will fragment into pieces.

Like the frayed mirror whose reflection she ridiculed herself, staring at all of her flaws. She feels like a speculum, cracked around the edges, bound to shiver into a million glass shards. To scar the innocent skin of those around her until they bleed out with her and her corruption.

Dear Mara,

I sat outside your room today, receiving more pitied stares. They must believe I have something better to do with my life, but we both know I don't.

Elias

Mara folds it up, pushing it to Khalil with unsteady hands. Guilt laces in her chest as she can only stare at the more letters, reading each separately. Breathing in the ink of the words, imagining it was his rough voice reading them to her. His face danced in her memory.

Dear Mara,

So I bought you flowers, my mom insists that's what a good man would do, and I consider myself morally straight. But you see, the problem is, they don't fit under your door. So I have your nurse bringing them in later, just know they are from me.

Elias

She glimpses over at the glass of flowers that sit on the radiator, directly in the stream of the sunlight. Every sunset, the shadow of Elias's roses will cast on her walls, she will just watch it move over the surface. Brushing her fingers through the soft petals as if she can feel him through the cream-like texture.

The sparks danced on her skin when she was with him.

That was real, right?

Everything Mara thought to be real is tainted with mania, though everything is crystal clear. She cherishes everything that happened, now that the smog has been lifted with her meds. It is all of what she felt that she's worries about, if it was real or just more illusions of her rampant imagination.

Dear Mara,

Did you know some fish cough? My mind has been blown.

Elias.

This one had made her laugh on a bad day when everything felt morose. The day was stormy, Mara didn't even dare to walk to the door when she could feel his presence on the opposite side. She just sat on her bed, wrapped up in the thin blankets.

Khalil had delivered the letter to her, glancing over her shoulder as she read it. A strangled sob had left her as she chuckled, wiping the soft falling tears from her eyes. She still has emotional days, another reason she feels she needed to push him away.

For his sake and hers, they needed the distance. It would hurt more if Mara put Elias through the agony of it all again. She realized, even now, she was still paining him.

Dear Mara,

I got into Berkeley today on an academic scholarship. Yay, more social situations! I hope you can read sarcasm, I am being sarcastic. But anyway, it all seems more real, you know. I still feel like that ten-year-old boy who broke his arm trying to ride a bike over a makeshift ramp.

Elias

She had been so proud of him, reading this letter. She desired to wrap him in a hug, to tell him that she was exultant. But that depraved piece inside of her had held her back from actually seeing him. From touching him and breathing him in.

Inside these confined walls, she was safe from every delusion she made. Every relationship she's damaged.

Dear Mara,

I must look like a fool if you're not reading these letters.

Elias.

The most current letter had been sent to her by mail a few days ago. He hadn't sat outside her door, just passed it to the main office, and that made her emotional. Mara is both sorrowful that he hasn't shown up and annoyed at herself for thinking she is the only thing important in his life.

She realizes that he is growing tired, not even knowing if she is receiving the letters. He doesn't know that she has a little trinket box on her bedside table where she keeps the notes. Each of them, folded into particular quadrants. That when sleep doesn't come to her, she reads them and imagines being in his arms. The nights they spent wrapped up together in their own world of happiness. But then her illusion comes crashing down. Remembering it is all corrupted with her crazy, and it hurts her more to read.

So she shoves them away and him. In hopes to save them both.

"Are you stupid," Khalil's voice breaks her stupor, his dark brown eyes finding hers with so much concern.

"What?" She chuckles lightly.

"Are you that dense that you can't see the poor boy loves you," Khalil pushes her, sitting on the edge of her bed. It dips down with his added weight, Mara pinches her eyes shut at the thought of Elias possibly loving her.

She figures she loved him, but Mara doesn't even really understand love. Her childhood was tainted with the fake image of caring but no real passion. Her parents were never affectionate unless shoved in front of a camera. All along, her mom had been in love with two men.

"I- I hurt him though," Mara sighs, her words cracked.

"And yet he writes you letters every day, with no response as to if you're getting them or not. So I'm telling you now if you don't talk to the poor boy, I'm going to take him for myself."

---

Authors Note:

What do you think Mara is gonna do?

Like, comment, and follow.

- Nia

Edited 4/6/22