Physical therapy is rough. I never thought that I’d spend an hour of my life sweating and struggling just to make my hand do more than twitch. Here I was, glaring at it with all the hatred in my heart as it lay still on the table before me. Across from me, my physical therapist, Francine, watched with intense concentration.

“You can do this.” She urged. She’d wanted me to pick up my hand and wave, but the step seemed impossible. One finger was all I was after. If I could just move one finger freely, more than a pathetic tremble…

I huffed in frustration, and she placed her hand on mine.

“Don’t worry, Asya. Let’s take a break.” She stood to pull my wheelchair away from the table.

I wished that I could voice my frustrations, but the desire to complain only exacerbated another piece of me that had fallen into disrepair.

Francine continued, “Don’t be discouraged. Only a small percentage of patients respond to therapy so quickly. You have plenty of time to try again.”

She wheeled me into Digitalis’ red living room. Until the studio selected my nurse, Digitalis agreed to care for me. Similarly, until they chose my nurse, Francine visited for a few hours each day to help me regain the physical abilities I’d lost. She seemed hopeful that I would recover, but I wasn’t so sure. Francine flitted to the kitchen to make me a cup of hot cocoa, a reward we’d decided on to end each session. Secretly, I wished they’d let me spike it. I closed my eyes, imagining the disapproved looks my friends would give me if I bothered to make such a request.

The microwave disrupted my thoughts with its beeping, and Digitalis arrived from work. She kicked her heels into the floor, dancing across the room with a lightness about her that she couldn’t shake off. Since I moved in, she’s been happier than ever. I’m sure the medication her psychiatrist prescribed has something to do with her levity. Yet, so much of her life has improved that I’m sure she’d be happy even without it.

With my working hand, I lift one of her Digital Poison magazines off of the coffee table. Digitalis’ grin crosses the cover. Something inside of me yearns to be happy for her, but a coldness overtakes it. My career is over. I’ll never know the joy of being featured by one of these magazines ever again. I’ll never stand behind Gael and her on any cover. Never again will I get to engage in friendly banter with an interviewer. I’ll never strum my bass with a second hand to press the strings into place for a note. I’ll never write another song that I’ll get to play. I’ll never stand on a stage to look out at my adoring fans. Now, when I turn on the TV, the only pieces of myself that I see left are tributes, warnings, and pity. I’ve fallen from grace and there’s no way I’ll ever climb back up.

I set the magazine down when Francine delivered my cocoa, listening to Digitalis as she hums in the kitchen. Francine goes to chat with her, and they laugh and joke together. I stare at my orange cup, reminded of the orange walls of that hotel room, a fragment of the dark memory I can’t grasp.

“Asya.” Francine’s voice cuts into the fog of the memory. I raise my eyes to her, and I push the cup into the back of my mind. “Remember to make me that list, alright?”

I nod. The list sounded like a stupid idea to me, but I promised Gael that I’d try my best to heal. That included doing things that sound pointless, so long as a doctor proposes them.

Francine had asked me to come up with thirty things that I used to love to do. We would work together to give me the ability to do them all again. I believed that the exercise would just make me become more depressed. I stared at the notebook on the coffee table, blank and waiting for me to fill it with goals and regrets.

Francine waved goodbye to Digitalis and me, closing the door behind her. Digitalis sat on the couch near me. She opened her mouth to speak, but her face froze when she caught a glance at my cup.

“That’s not one of mine.” She picked it up, studying it. “Was this from Francine?”

Digitalis walked to the kitchen, dumping the cocoa in one of her red mugs. My answering nod went unseen. She placed the mug on the counter, resting her palms on either side of it. She glared down at it, as if a demon would hop out of it or something.

“I have to ask her about that...” She set it into the sink. Her phone buzzed, and she suddenly breezed out of the room with her cell phone, her fingers flying over the screen.

I looked at the sink where the mug had disappeared. The color brought back images of orange hotel walls in my mind, but I wondered why Digitalis reacted to it. I shook the thought from my head, focusing instead on Francine’s list.

I lifted the pencil with my left hand, knowing that it would never write as clearly as my right used to. Shaking, I brought it to the paper, pressing too hard as I etched a line to mark the first item of the list.

1. My music

The letters were barely legible, and the words were too vague. Francine would ask me what I hope to achieve in order to satisfy my desire for “My music.”

1. My music- To sing and play my bass.

The dark lines that my clumsy hand made were hard to erase, so an unsightly smear of graphite trailed from “music” where I’d erased the period. Francine would enjoy the clarity, but the hope I’d had to achieve my goal was already dying.

I ached to play my bass again, which anyone would expect. Strangely, though, I also wanted to sing. It was something I’d taken for granted in the past. I had a decent voice, never as good as Gael or Digitalis, but good enough to go solo if I’d wanted as a low profile musician. I only ever used my voice when I wrote songs with Gael, to give him an audible sense of the ideas I wrote onto paper. I never wanted to share the stage with him as a vocalist. I never wanted to be anywhere but at his side with my bass. Now, I longed for those hours singing offstage as well. The grudging but rewarding work of creation was always a way for me to stay close to Gael. I never appreciated it enough.

2.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I paused. Glancing at the magazines on the table, I recalled the wish that I may go to another interview. I wanted to write that down, but Francine would nitpick that I’d written desires that boiled down to my voice too many times. Each item was supposed to be a unique skill on its own. Again, I stained the paper in eraser marks.

1. To play my bass

2. To sing and talk

I sighed at the rough writing. It should be easy to make a list like this. There were so many things I wanted to do again. I just didn’t know which was the most important.

3. To write beautifully again

I bit my lip. Would Francine think that it was too sarcastic? I rolled my eyes up towards the ceiling. That space was a welcome rest for my eyes. The whiteness of it was the only thing in the room that didn’t blast red at me like gunfire. I focused on the paper again and jotted down some obvious ones.

4. To use the bathroom alone.

5. To walk

6. To bathe alone

7. To wave goodbye

I glared at my right hand again, recalling Francine’s exercise. If I can never complete it by waving, how would I do anything more complex?

8. To tap my bad foot to music

9. To dance

I frowned. A sensation washed over me, like something was weighing my insides down, pulling them into a nauseous ball in my stomach. Was the wish to dance too close to admitting that I missed my party animal lifestyle? All the way back to my early years in the band, I used to dance every night. There was such freedom to it, letting my inhibitions fall away. Before I became a proper alcoholic, the buzz of liquor was only a catalyst for that loose sensation of living in the moment. I sighed, filling my head with a dusty old bittersweet memory.

***

My mother slammed my bedroom door as she left me inside. The mechanical clicking of the lock was the only sound left in the room after the echoes of her shouting faded. Sixteen and full of rebellious desire, I only smirked.

How naïve I thought she was, not knowing that a locked door would never be enough to imprison me. I waited in the darkness, watching the electric blue numbers on my alarm clock climb to eleven o’clock. There wasn’t a single night that she would stay up later than that, and tonight would be no exception.

I slid out of my bed, opening my closet to change into the more provocative clothing that I liked. Tight jeans and a vest became a trademark of mine in the early years of the band, and not just because I wore them for the public to see. I slid my fingerless gloves on, marvelling at them. Cyrus Blake wore gloves like this, and even if my crush on him had faded, he remained an inspiring figure in my eyes.

The window whispered open, and I looked down at the ground. It always put a bit of sickness in my stomach to see how far I might fall, a full story between me and my mom’s peonies. I climbed through the window, sitting on the windowsill with a deep breath held in my lungs. The roof curved around the house a little to my left, and I’d successfully glided onto it a handful of times. Petals from my mom’s cherry tree covered the roof, a lovely but slippery surface to land on. Carefully, I edged myself closer, using a nearby tree branch as an unsteady bridge to make it onto the roof.

My fingers slid across the petals, but the rubber soles of my shoes and my deft hands helped me along the roof. I dangled from the edge and used the wooden pillar to pull myself onto the railing. Then, I got onto the porch, climbed down the stairs past the peony bushes, and ran into the night.

Across the neighborhood, music poured into the streets and lights shined as brightly as the sun from within. Other teenagers laughed and fooled around on the lawn, and I kicked plastic cups aside as I approached the front door. Jovial greetings and the potent scent of cheap beer met me. The stereo was so loud that it shook itself through my body. I filled a cup and made my way into the crowd that danced in the living room. I was free. Here, I could be whoever I wanted, move however I wanted, without the restraint of my mother’s judgemental gaze or the restrictions of the record company. I closed my eyes, took a deep drink of the bitter beer, and just danced.

I woke the next morning on someone else’s couch with a mild headache. The floor was littered with sleeping people, and orange light spilled onto the floor from the rising sun outside. I ran home, sneaking in through the back door when I arrived, panting and sweating. The sterile whiteness of the carpet and walls were a cage. Perfectly arranged photos of my family dotted the walls, and I avoided them with my eyes. I hated the staged poses and smiles they depicted, illusions of a pristine family that would never exist. My fingers raked through my hair, and I raised a bundle to my nose. The scent of the party lingered on me: stale beer, sweat, and vomit.

I sighed, tiptoeing towards my room to take a shower. I got a glimpse of the clock on the wall, groaning when I saw that it was past seven o’clock. I’d lie to Mom and pretend that I slept in when she’d scold me for being late to breakfast. Dad ought to have left for work by now, and we always ate together. Hopefully she unlocked my bedroom door without opening it to check on me today. I turned the corner, sliding my hand along the wall as I approached the stairs.

Mom cleared her throat.

My eyes snapped up to where she waited at the top of the staircase, arms crossed, lips pursed. I froze as she walked down the stairs; her shadow falling over me like a net of heavy chains, holding me down. She placed a firm hand on my shoulder, her fingernails pressing down. I couldn’t take my eyes away from hers as she looked into me like she had read my mind.

“You smell like beer again.” Her tongue was sharp as it spit the words out at me.

“Mom, I just-”

She tightened her hand on my shoulder, her manicured, pointed fingernails pressing into my skin hard.

“Don’t give me excuses. Go to your room. Take a shower. Come down for breakfast. We’re going to have a long talk about this unacceptable behavior, Asya. You’ll either straighten yourself out, or I’ll be forced to take drastic measures.”

She pushed me away from her as she released me, shaking me as she whisked past me to go into the kitchen. I closed my eyes and bit my lip. Drastic measures… I could only wonder what that meant with her. My hand gripped the railing of the stairs before I ascended to my bedroom.

In a moment of passion, I swiped a vase full of Mom’s peonies off of an accent table. I gritted my teeth when I didn’t hear it shatter. The thick, plush carpet had saved her precious vase.

I closed my bedroom door behind me. I undressed and fled into my bathroom. As I showered, I listened to a rough studio recording of a song Gael wrote. My fingernails dug into my shoulder where hers had pierced me as the water poured down into my hair. I sang with Gael’s voice and tried to dance the way I had the night before. The freedom wasn’t here, and I moved like a short-circuiting robot. Frustrated, I gripped my arm harder. I wished that I could stay in the bathroom forever; To avoid the confrontation that waited for me at the breakfast bar downstairs. Hot tears rivaled the scorching water as it all flowed down my face. I looked at my arm, five red crescents where my fingernails dug too deep.

I sang louder, my voice cracking and breaking beneath my emotion. It didn’t matter. No one was listening. I rubbed soap onto my skin, closing my eyes to pretend that I was at a party again. A twitchy, desperate smile forced itself onto my face and I swayed back and forth on my feet.

I had only this one moment of freedom before I would face reality again. Mom could threaten and control me all she wanted, but she would never take away my music. Nothing would.

***