Stolen Voices ✓

August 20th

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.