Straightjacket by Meredith Towbin Page B

either didn’t see or ignored her. Anna smiled smugly.
    “So.” Her heart pounded as the wooden planks of the bench shifted when he sat down.
    “So.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, letting his hands meet and his fingers interlock. He snuck a peek at her over his shoulder and smiled. She found that she had to start concentrating on breathing. Her stomach felt dizzy. She wanted to be as close to him right now as she had been yesterday, but her body stayed glued to where it was. She called herself crazy—crazy for thinking he could want her after practically pushing her out the door; crazy for feeling the way she did toward a stranger who might be completely insane. She tried to stop harassing herself, but the doubts continued to chew a tiny hole.
    “How are you?” Even his voice could hypnotize her.
    “I’m good.” There, that sounded pretty standard. Then there was silence again.
    “How about you?” she forced out. His perfectly square jaw, the way his lips curved, even the blue flecks in his eyes—all of it was too distracting.
    “So is this the non-smoking section?” he asked, still grinning.
    “Yeah. I can’t stand all that smoke.” But maybe he was a smoker. And about to light up right next to her. If that were the case, she’d sit there and breathe in his smoke without a word if he’d just stay by her. She tried to backtrack. “I mean, it’s fine for them, I just don’t like it.”
    “Me neither.”
    She let out an audible sigh of relief and then turned away horrified. He didn’t seem to notice, though, and turned to look at all the smokers. “It’s so freaking hot out; sucking on a stick of fire just doesn’t seem very appealing to me.”
    “Yeah, I know.” Ugh, could she be any more boring? She couldn’t think of one thing to say. All she could do was sit and look around at the other patients. Her cheeks grew hotter, and it wasn’t because of the sun. Hopefully he wouldn’t notice her humiliation.
    Suddenly, he broke the awkward silence. “I’m sorry about yesterday, about making you leave like that.”
    “It’s all right,” she blurted out. “Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing.”
    “I just wanted—I don’t know what I wanted.” He squinted up at the sky. “Can we talk now?”
    “Yeah, sure.” She waited for him to start the talking, and when he didn’t do anything except stare back at her with an amused smile, she reached down and twisted her ring around her finger. It gave her something to do besides feel embarrassed.
    “So you don’t have a book with you. What happened?”
    “Nothing. I just wanted to look at everything out here for a while. I never realized how much I could miss some stupid trees and flowers, but I guess that happens when you’re locked up every day.”
    “I know what you mean.” His eyes swept across the courtyard. “It feels good out here, more normal.”
    “Yeah.” She’d exhausted that conversation. She scoured her mind for anything to say that could be interesting but came up with nothing. To her relief, he broke the silence first.
    “So do you just read a lot, or do you write too?”
    “I’d like to write. I mean, I want to be a writer. I can write papers and stuff for school, but when I try to write what I want—well, I’ve tried a lot of times but I just can’t do it.” She didn’t know where all this was coming from, why it was pouring out of her. But the way he asked her about herself made her want to tell him. It just seemed so easy. “One time I went out and bought one of those nice hardbound journals, but when I sat down to write in it, I just froze. I just couldn’t think of anything to say. That blank page…it’s just…terrifying. Eventually I got something down, but I could never write anything that was any good. So I just kind of stopped.”
    “So you’re a writer who doesn’t write?”
    “Um…I guess I never thought about it like that.”
    “They say you’re supposed to write