Fated

signs she’s debating whether or not to believe me, which is all I need to return to window gazing. Taking in a stucco slab of a mini-mall featuring a dry cleaner, a nail salon, a tattoo parlor, and a liquor store running a weekend special on beer.
    “Well, you must’ve told them something,” she huffs, her voice competing with Janis’s until the song fades into “White Rabbit” and she lowers the volume. “Because now they want to institutionalize you.” She glares, pronouncing the word as though it’s fresh, breaking news—as though I wasn’t sitting right there alongside her when the doctor first mentioned it.
    I swallow hard. Gnaw the inside of my cheek. Aware of the way her breath hitches, how she swipes the back of her hand under each eye in an effort to steady herself.
    “Do you get the significance of this?” Her voice rises to the point of hysteria. “ None of the meds are working! And I don’t know what to do for you. I don’t know how to help you—how to reach you—and I’m no longer sure that I can. But if you continue to insist that—” She pauses, sighs. “If you continue to insist that these delusions are real, then I’ll have no choice but to—”
    “They’re not delusions!” I swivel in my seat until I’m fully facing her, staring hard into a pair of green eyes that look remarkably like mine, except hers are lined with glittery purple eyeliner, while mine are shadowed with drug-induced dark blue half-moons that spread to my cheeks. “The glowing people are real . The crows are real too. It’s not my fault I’m the only one who can see them!”
    Jennika’s face crumples. Scrunches in a way that tells me I’ve failed to make my case. “Well, that’s the thing—according to the doctors, that’s what everyone in your condition claims.”
    “Everyone in my condition ?” I roll my eyes, shake my head, swivel back in my seat ’til I’m facing the window again. Counting an import furniture store, a vegan café, and a psychic with a blinking neon eye in the window among the local offerings.
    “You know what I mean,” she says.
    And something about her tone—a tone that perfectly mimics every smug doctor who’s ever had the pleasure of reviewing my case—causes me to lose it. To let out every pent-up thought I’ve held back until now. “No, Jennika, I don’t know what you mean. I really, truly don’t . And while I get how hard this must be for you—trust me, it’s not like it’s some kind of picnic for me! When your doctor friends aren’t drugging me into a stupor, I’m being terrorized by images that are all too real despite the fact that no one else sees them. And even though you refuse to believe, I’m here to tell you that time really does stop ! There are moments when everything just comes to one big crashing halt. And, for the record, I am not suffering from some sudden bout of adolescence-induced crazies, this has been happening for a while now. Ever since I mentioned it that time we were on location in New Zealand when you refused to believe me, just like you refuse to believe me now. But just because I stopped mentioning it doesn’t mean it stopped happening. I mean, have you ever stopped to consider that maybe, just maybe, you’re wrong? That there just might be more to this world than you and the oh-so-smart-white-coat-crew want to believe? You’re all so eager to draw scientifically based, logical conclusions—to reduce me to some convenient, textbook diagnosis—but you can’t . It’s just not that easy. And I wish—” I pause, curl my hands into fists that lay useless in my lap as I fight to catch my breath. “I wish that just this once you would listen to me instead of them! I wish that just this once you would trust what I tell you!”
    My voice ends on a high, frantic note that seems strangely out of place in this quiet Venice Beach neighborhood. And when Jennika noses the car into the drive, she’s barely come to a stop before I’ve already opened the door and made a mad dash for the house.
    “I’m exhausted,” I tell her, using the key Harlan gave me to let myself in. “The meds are starting to kick in and…”
    I’ve barely made it past the threshold before my knees fold and buckle beneath me, as Jennika rushes up from behind, anchors her fingers under my arms, and half-drags, half-carries me to the sofa bed where she eases me down onto the soft yellow sheets, props a pillow under my head, and carefully tucks the