Chapter 29
PRESENT DAY
“Y ou haven’t changed at all, have you?”
Jade has her arms folded across her chest, and her lipstick is slightly smeared, which makes her look like she’s wearing a perpetual sneer. Although to be fair, she actually is sneering at me.
“What?” I toss the copy of Cider House Rules on the sofa. “What did I do wrong?”
“Don’t act so innocent. I saw the way you ratted out Will.”
I look at her in surprise. “Did you know he wasn’t taking his medications?”
Jade hesitates for a split second. “No, I didn’t. But that’s his right if he doesn’t want to take them.”
“Jade…”
“No, don’t you dare lecture me.” She holds up her hand—her fingernails are bitten down to the quick, covered in chipped dark purple nail polish.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be on an antipsychotic.
You have no idea the way it feels to be drugged up on Haldol.
And the side effects… First, you feel like a zombie half the time. And the weight gain…”
“Jade…”
“And some of the side effects never go away,” she says. “The last time I was at the hospital, I met this woman and because of the meds she was on, she can’t stop smacking her lips. Every two seconds, smacking her freaking lips. And it’s permanent . She’ll be like that forever .”
She still has her arms folded, and she’s glaring at me, like it’s my fault that poor woman can’t stop smacking her lips.
“I did it to help him,” I say.
“Because you think you always know better than everyone else, right?”
I flinch. “That is not true at all .”
Jade taps her foot against the ground. She’s wearing gray socks with no shoes, and there’s a hole in the big toe on the right. “What do you think Dr. Beck would say if he found out that you had your own little problem with hallucinations ?”
I swallow. “I don’t. That would be a lie.”
“Oh, please, Amy. It’s me .” She taps faster now, almost like a tic. “We both know how screwed up you are. You just don’t want to be drugged up like what they did to me. And Will.”
“I’m not like you,” I croak. “I would never do something like what you did. Never . I’m not—”
I stop myself before I say the last word in that sentence, but it’s too late. Jade already knows what I was going to say.
“You’re not crazy ?” She spits at me. “Is that what you were going to say? It was, wasn’t it? That’s what you think of me, isn’t it? I’m just your crazy old friend from high school who messed up her whole life because she’s just so crazy.”
“Jade, come on…”
“No excuses!” She stomps her foot against the ground.
“When we were kids, you were my best friend in the whole world. We promised each other we would be friends for the rest of our lives, and our kids would be friends. And their kids would be friends. And the second shit got real, you acted like you didn’t even know me.
Do you know how lonely it was when I first got hospitalized? How scary it was for me?”
She’s being unfair. It’s not like I didn’t try to be there for her, despite what she did. But she made it so difficult for me. And what she did…
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have tried harder. I… I was wrong.”
She stands there in the middle of the room, considering my apology. “How about after I get out of here, we can have dinner sometime?”
“Oh,” I say.
“You can meet my boyfriend,” she says. “We can double with you and Cameron.”
The smile I manage to paste on my lips feels very fake. “Cameron and I aren’t going out anymore, remember?”
“Oh, well, then it can just be the two of us.” She raises her eyebrows. “What do you say, Amy?”
I hesitate just a bit too long, and Jade’s expression darkens. “Oh, I get it,” she says. “Never mind.”
“No, I want to do it,” I insist, even though I’m absolutely lying. The last thing I want is to get sucked into Jade’s web again. “I’m just really busy right now. I mean, medical school is a lot of work…”
“Of course. How could I forget?”
“Maybe in a few months, when my schedule calms down. Family medicine is supposed to be pretty light. Maybe then we could…”
“Forget it,” Jade snaps. “You don’t want to have dinner with me. You don’t want to be my friend anymore. I can take a hint, believe me.”
With those words, she storms off. Part of me wants to follow her but it’s better to just leave it be.
The thing is, she isn’t wrong. When I think back to the early days when Jade and I were kids, I have so many good memories of our friendship.
But then she changed. And there was no bringing her back.
I don’t want to have dinner with Jade. I don’t want to meet her boyfriend. I don’t want to be her friend at all, honestly. I want to steer clear of her as much as humanly possible.
Worse, I don’t entirely trust her. If there’s one thing I know about Jade, she’ll do anything to get what she wants. I have to protect myself.
For my own safety, I have to know exactly what Jade is capable of.
And the only way to do that is to look at her chart.