The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Oakes Stephanie

The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Oakes Stephanie

Author:Oakes, Stephanie [Oakes, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2015-05-26T07:00:00+00:00


Chapter 32

“Minnow, you have to try harder to control these outbursts,” Mrs. New says.

I’m in her office again, in the wooden chair opposite her desk. I feel groggy and itchy, but I can’t figure out where. Like it’s my soul that itches.

“Are you gonna suspend me from reading class?” I ask.

“Your teacher has made the case that you be given leniency,” she says. “And I think I agree with her. This isn’t the first time you’ve left a counseling session in distress. I’m going to recommend you begin seeing another counselor.”

“No!” I bark.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s my choice. You said it was my choice. Well, I choose him.”

“Look what happened, Minnow,” she says in a measured tone. “Look what you’ve done to yourself.”

I look down at my arms. They’re twined with white bandages. Beneath, the purple of new bruises are visible up to my elbows. The skin around my stumps pulled apart, so in the infirmary, they had to use staples.

“You put staples in me?” I remember asking the nurse after I woke up from sedation.

“It’s routine,” she said.

“Staples?” I asked. “Let me see them. No, I don’t want to. God, this place is nuts.” They put something on my tongue that melted away like powder and I went very relaxed. I didn’t care as much about the staples anymore.

“I did this to myself,” I say to Mrs. New. “Not Dr. Wilson. He was just trying to help.” The words still taste bitter in my mouth, but I swallow them because I need to see him again, to get him off the trail of my mother and Constance and Waylon and Jude.

“You could’ve seriously injured yourself.” She shakes her head. “As it is, Dr. Wilson will be taking an indeterminate break from your case while another caseworker evaluates his progress.”

“For how long?” I ask, trying to push through the fog the pill covered me in.

“However long it takes.”

I don’t move. My muscles are locked in loose submission. My bottom lip nestles under my top, and I cry.

• • •

For the rest of the day, I stare at the Post-it on my affirmation wall. Anger is a kind of murder you commit in your heart. I’ve read it so many times, I think I believe it. Today, there was something else in my heartbeat. There was a skirmish. There was a fight.

“Angel, what do you miss the most?”

Angel hangs her head over her bunk. “I miss Pop-Tarts,” she says. “And Mountain Dew, and real pizza, and oh, fried chicken. I miss that the most.”

“No people?” I ask.

She shakes her head, the tails of her cornrows flicking side to side. “Not a soul,” she says. “People like me, we don’t look back. Only forward.”

“Are you ever gonna tell me how long you’re serving?”

“Do you think I’ll tell you anything about that with you lying on your bed all mopey and sad-looking? You’d burst into tears.”

“Fine,” I say. “Be that way.”

She disappears back to her bunk. After a moment, I hear her ask, “Are you trying to get me to ask you who you miss?”

“Maybe.



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