Straightjacket Read Free Page A

screaming that he had no head.
    “Pretty hot, huh?”
    Anna flinched. Chrissy had snuck up on her. She was leaning over a nearby table with her elbows resting on the surface, her arms set close together, squeezing her massive cleavage for the benefit of the redheaded agitator and his group of flunkies.
    “Uh, what?” Anna said, trying to focus her eyes up toward her face.
    “Over there. You were staring at him.” Chrissy nudged her head at Caleb, who’d become reanimated. His body was rounded over a big sketchbook as his hand scribbled furiously.
    “What are you talking about?” she snapped. “I wasn’t staring at anyone.”
    “Right. You’re such a liar.”
    Anna rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Think what you want.” She went back to her book and pretended to read.
    “Don’t be embarrassed,” Chrissy said as she flipped her long brown hair back behind her shoulder. “He’s delicious . What I wouldn’t do to get him alone in a room for five minutes. Mmm. The things I would do to that boy.” She let a moan escape. “Anyway,” she carried on, regaining some composure, “God knows it would do you good to be interested in something else besides that book you plant your nose in.”
    Chrissy was trying to be nice to her in the only way she knew how—showing Anna the ropes, since she had been in and out of places like this since she was fifteen. Chrissy’s parents had put her in whenever they couldn’t deal with her. But Anna couldn’t stand listening to her talk about how many guys she had slept with. She made it sound like hundreds, and she was only twenty-three.
    “What am I supposed to be doing? Talking to myself, drooling in a corner like the rest of them?” Anna was being mean and knew it, but she couldn’t help herself. All of it was just too much.
    Chrissy took a snottier tone. “Calm down. Not everyone is like that.” She relaxed slightly and started examining her nails. She was always complaining how they wouldn’t let her give herself a proper manicure. The doctors were afraid that if she got ahold of a pair of cuticle nippers she might get suicidally creative. “If you’re good, I’ll let you come and hang out with me and the girls.”
    The girls were all in their twenties. Like Chrissy, one of them was a bipolar recovering addict. The other had tried to kill herself a couple of times. And they all dressed as slutty as possible. Anna didn’t want anything to do with them. She had seen firsthand how they treated the girls who weren’t cool enough by their standards—the snotty remarks, the eye rolls, the way they could make someone feel like a zero. Even in this place, there were cliques that decided for you if you were in or out.
    “I’ll pass.”
    “Come on.” Her tone softened now, to Anna’s surprise. “I know how hard it can be. The first time I was in I wouldn’t even go into the common area. I just sat in my room by myself, and it made everything worse.”
    Regardless of Chrissy’s attempt at being genuine, it only intensified Anna’s anger. “Yeah, well, maybe in a few days when I’m so drugged up I can’t focus my eyes enough to read I’ll stop on over.”
    “Fine. Suit yourself. You don’t have to be a bitch about it, though.” Chrissy pushed the chair back and the legs scraped against the floor. She walked away, swinging her hips in an exaggerated motion that made the redhead and his gang zero in on her backside, which was barely covered by a denim microskirt. Anna took a quick look around to see if anyone had noticed that she had raised her voice, but of course no eyes were on her.
    As she scanned the room, she found Caleb again. He was so intense, sitting there drawing. She wondered if he knew what had happened before. Her eyes lingered on him. She couldn’t help herself. She had to admit that Chrissy was at least right about him being good-looking. In the real world, he wouldn’t give her a second glance. Of course here, among the certifiably insane, she