The man—a janitor, I guessed—shrugged and cocked his thumb toward the opposite end of the hall. There was a desk with no one behind it. A few people—teenagers, mostly—were milling in the hall, wearing pajama bottoms and slippers and sweatshirts, making quiet conversation. I stood there until they saw me. “Excuse me,” I said. “Is there anyone who works here who can help me?”
“They come in at eight o’clock,” said one of the shufflers in slippers. I went back to my room, where, for lack of anything better to do, I unzipped the duffel bag and inspected its contents. Dave hadn’t even let me go home from the hospital long enough to pack. He was probably worried that I’d use the opportunity to run, when all I wanted to do was say goodbye to Ellie and my mom. A look in the mirror in my hospital room had convinced me to wait. If Ellie had seen me looking so sick, she’d probably have been even more worried. I hoped Dave would tell her I’d gone away on a last-minute trip to New York.
I made the bed, smoothing the thin, pilled brown comforter before I started going through the bag. There were six pairs of tennis socks, two pairs of lace panties that I had bought before Eloise’s birth and not tried to squeeze myself into since, a single sports bra, a pair of jeans, two long-sleeved T-shirts, and a pair of black velvet leggings that I recognized as the bottom half of a long-ago Catwoman Halloween costume. I stopped rummaging after that. It was just too depressing. Why had Dave packed, and not Janet or even my mom? Was there anything like a toothbrush and deodorant in here? How had he managed to pack everything I’d needed that weekend when Ellie was a newborn, but get it so wrong this time?
Maybe he was scared, I thought. Five years ago, he’d been packing for a romantic retreat, a family honeymoon by the beach. This time, he’d been shipping a drug addict to rehab. Big difference.
Someone was knocking on the other side of my bathroom door. “Come in,” I called. My voice was weak and croaky. A girl who didn’t look much older than fourteen stuck her head into my room and looked around.
“We share the bathroom and you gotta keep it clean and everything off the floor,” she said. “Or else we’ll both get demerits.”
Demerits? “Okay,” I said, and forced myself to stand on legs that felt as though something large and angry had been chewing on them all night long.
“I’m going to brush my teeth. Do you need to use the bathroom?”
I shook my head, although I wasn’t sure what I needed, other than my pills. I cast a sideways glance at my purse. Maybe there was a stash I’d missed, or even some dust in the Altoids tin that could help.
“I’m Allison,” I said.
“Hi,” said the girl as she followed my gaze. “Forget it,” she said. “They search everything that comes in.” She had shimmering blonde hair hanging to the small of her back, a small, foxy face, pale eyes, and vivid purple bruises running up and down her bare arms.
“I’m Aubrey,” she said, and tugged at the strap of her tank top. She was dressed like she was ready to go clubbing, or at least the way I imagined girls on their way to clubs would dress. Her jeans were tight enough to preclude circulation, her black boots had high heels, her top was made of some thin silvery fabric, which she had matched with silver eye shadow and, if I wasn’t mistaken, false eyelashes that were also dusted with glitter.
“Listen,” I said, trying not to sound as desperate as I felt. “Who do I talk to about getting out of here?”
Aubrey snickered.
“No, seriously. I think this is a mistake.”
“Sure,” said Aubrey, in the same indulgent tone I used to jolly Eloise out of her bad moods.
“Please. There must be, like, a counselor, or a supervisor. Someone I can talk to.”
“Yeah, you’d think so,” Aubrey said. “For what this place costs, there should be. But there’s nobody, like, official, until lunchtime. Hey, it could be worse,” she said, after seeing the look on my face. “My last place, there were, like, six girls to a room, in bunk beds. At least here you’ve got your own space. So why are you here?” she asked.
“Because my husband’s an ass**le,” I said.
She smiled, then quickly pressed her lips together, covering her discolored teeth. “You better not let the RCs hear you say that,” she said. “They’ll say you’re in denial. That until you’re ready to admit you have a problem, you won’t ever get better.”
“What if I don’t have a problem?”
She lifted her narrow shoulders in a shrug. “I dunno. Honestly, I’ve never seen anyone in rehab who didn’t have a problem. And I’ve been in rehab a lot.”