Straightjacket by Meredith Towbin Page A

there, the paucity of their leaves providing little shade from the sun that beat down on her. It was clear, though, that everything had been manufactured perfectly.
    She liked being outside, far away from the stifling, stale air of the hospital, but soon cigarette smoke started to mingle with the smell of fresh mulch. Almost all of the other patients were puffing on cigarettes, and a faintly visible yet pungent fog started to settle over the courtyard. Anna’s eyes passed from one smoker to the next, watching the tips of their cigarettes burn brighter as they sucked the smoke into their lungs. They blew the smooth white clouds out from between puckered lips, and it floated toward her. Every once in a while one of them coughed violently. She felt like she was the one choking.
    Chrissy was sitting on the bench directly across from her. She was smoking like the rest as she gossiped with the girls in her clique. She would throw her head back every few minutes, laughing loudly with her mouth gaping open and her teeth bared. She’d arch her shoulders back and stick her chest out, her long hair falling even longer down her back. It looked to Anna like part of a mating ritual, and sure enough, some of the men couldn’t help but look over and salivate.
    Anna ignored all the guys staring at Chrissy, though. Since yesterday, every waking second she’d been thinking about only one—Caleb. Her heart seemed to flutter whenever she relived what had happened in his room. Even now, her cheeks flushed when she remembered what his arms had felt like wrapped around her waist.
    There was something about being so close to him like that, listening to him call her pretty, watching the way he looked at her, like she was the most important person in the world, that made a familiar feeling stir inside of her. She’d never been in love, but she’d dreamed about it. She’d wake up from those dreams and make herself lie there so she could soak up what was left of the feeling. After a few minutes, it would disappear, and she’d feel like she lost something special. But now, thinking about him, she felt that same longing swirling around inside. It was the first time she’d felt it when she was awake. She couldn’t wait to see him again, to see if it would get stronger.
    She leaned back so that her head rested on the bench. There were no clouds, just the sun in the center of an endless stretch of blue. It was so bright she couldn’t stare at the sky for long, so she closed her eyes and lost herself in a mix of black and pink; her eyelids only blunted the intensity of the sun. There were no distractions from thinking about Caleb now. She threw herself one more time into the memory of his arms wrapped around her.
    When she got to the part when he had asked her to leave, though, she stopped. She didn’t want to remember it. She’d made herself go, embarrassed and confused and hurt. She couldn’t figure out why he had pulled away from her like that. Was it something she did? She tried to put it out of her mind, go back to the feeling of his warm breath near her mouth, but the irritation kept creeping in. She shut her eyes even tighter, trying to block out the pink and lose herself and her frustration in the blackness.
    “Hi, Anna.”
    Of course she knew who it was before she opened her eyes. When she did, Caleb was grinning in front of her with both hands tucked into the pockets of his khaki cargo pants. She hadn’t seen him outside of the hospital before, and now, free from the sickly glow of the fluorescent lights, he really did look angelic. Her irritation vanished.
    “Hey, Anna?”
    “Oh…yeah, hi.” She hadn’t realized that she’d just been staring blankly at his face and hadn’t even said hello.
    “Can I sit down with you?”
    She sat up straighter and moved closer to one end of the bench. “Yeah, sure.” Chrissy, who had just let out one of her shrill laughs, caught a glimpse of them and flipped her hair over her shoulder. Caleb