Crazed Minds | ✔️

one

"I was all on my own."
-Loving Is Easy, Rex Orange County
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"Redwood Academy for Troubled Youths can give you the support you need to recover a more stable mindset."

The therapist's words ring around my head as the car rolls along the gravel road, passing crowds of deep green trees and rolling hills.

The Rural Dream for some. A Living Nightmare for others.

"It's only for a little while. At least until you are well enough to come home. We'll come visit at Christmas."

Mother's reassuring words worm their way into the front of my mind. And although her voice has remained calm throughout this long, tiring process, I know she is afraid for me.

Afraid of you, don't you mean? one of the voices says. Only to me. Only in my head.

I guess so.

I glance at her in the passenger seat, nervously clasping her hands together on her lap while Father's knuckles are going white from gripping the steering wheel too hard. He has barely spoken to me since the incident. But those cold, grey eyes never failed to follow me as I poured my cereal into my bowl in the morning or headed through the door to the therapist's office every Thursday evening.

I stare down at my own hands, which are gripping each other a lot like Mother's. Except I'm not afraid of my transfer to Redwood Academy. I'm more afraid of myself.

I'm like a ticking time bomb; at any moment I could just explode and do something even worse than the last time. And the voices that I can hear in my head while no one else can are what triggers it. Ever since the accident a year ago. Ever since the night Mother's car swerved and crashed into a tree, forcing my head against the dash in front of the passenger seat.

I shudder at the memory of what happened last time the voices took control and fiddle with the white wire of my earphones.

"You're going to be all right, Olivia," Mother assures for the tenth time today, but I guessed earlier on that she's doing it more to reassure herself. Fair enough, she needs all the reassurance she can get- her once proud family has spiralled into this catastrophic end.

But it's giving her a false sense of hope, this reassurance. I'm being transferred to a boarding school which was built for basket cases like me. For boys with blood on their hands and girls with knives up their sleeves. So if she thinks this is going to be a breeze, then maybe this false hope isn't such a good thing.

"If you say it one more time it might actually begin to seem true," I mutter, staring out the window absently.

Stop being so rude to your mother, the voice grunts like a wisp of air flowing into the car through the slit in Father's window.

She deserves it, she treats me like I'm mental.

You are.

Shut up.

Mother sighs the 'I don't know what to do with you' sigh that has been sounding literally non-stop these past few weeks.

"Well, remember we'll be missing you, and although they won't let you call, we'll be thinking about you, right John?" she says, eyeing Father's stoic expression.

He grunts an unintelligible reply.

I scoff and turn away, turning the sound up on my earphones and shaking my head in disbelief.

"And if you get homesick, just tell one of the staff, I'm sure they'll be willing to help," Mother says, shifting in her seat to smile at me.

I run a hand through my deep brown hair and sigh, pressing my lips together. "To be homesick, I need to miss home. And I don't miss home. I don't think I will."