At First, Schizophrenia Just Watches
At first, Schizophrenia just watches the girl.
...
She is three, and if something terrible were to happen to her—Schizophrenia must see the worst—the papers would have called her angelic. She is often hiding behind a long curtain of pale golden hair, although she's more interested in fidgeting with it than brushing it. Her eyes are a green that flash gold, silver, blue in the light, looking at anything other than the person talking to her. She is fair and already willowy, or too tall too fast, tripping over her own feet despite looking down at them.
But she's obviously odd. Neurotic. She's a picky eater; she cries whenever there are loud noises. Th and ch and other sounds don't seem to make it out of her mouth right. (This will get noticed and fixed early.) No one is saying Autism yet, but Schizophrenia sees Autism doing more than watch.
...
Schizophrenia feels most drawn to her at night. Not in the dead of night—but as she is falling asleep, and as she is waking. When she is not dreaming—but doing something close. It is one of her favorite times. She daydreams, maybe—though she does it most when it's not day—and it is especially magnetic. Her mind wanders so far Schizophrenia could almost touch it, and maybe they do.
She sinks, but, for now, she does not drown. Everything around her goes away, replaced entirely by a world of her creation. But it is hers—it is not Schizophrenia's, not yet.
But the words spoken in these half dreams form on her lips. But her eyes, if open, and often they are—flick around, taking in things that aren't there. When there is cause for anxiety, they might dart around looking for an exit; she might flinch from a monster that isn't there. When there is cause for sadness, sometimes a tear—two, three, some nights, more—finds its way down her cheek.
The Sugar Plum Fairy doesn't exactly make an appearance, and Schizophrenia almost likes her for it. Often, the scenes are dark, and the girl doesn't know how to tell anyone that they are, still, a place of relief.
And, increasingly, Schizophrenia finds her sinking into them during the day.
...
Years pass. The girl still holds those daydreams near. When she plays pretend with her friends, she is not always so sure it is pretend.
She is nine. There's a ghost, she and her friend say, under the house with her family, who is training them to be witches, so that they may help her defeat an evil sorceress. But they're merely pretending, as children do. Or, one of them is.
The girl isn't so sure.
At night, she closes her eyes, and she visits the ghost library that is under the house, pulls books off the shelves, and reads them and learns of magic and more. But she's a little confused, too, how she can seem to learn something new, if it's limited by her imagination.
And sometimes, when they play, and she sees the ghost in front of her—when they are done playing, the ghost isn't quite gone. Schizophrenia, invisible, stands just beside her.
But they are done playing now. And surely her friend thinks playing pretend isn't very fun if you then acknowledge it was pretend, and now it isn't.
...
The girl is nearly, or freshly, fifteen. Schizophrenia will make her forget this little detail.
She's in a biology class. Honors, of course; nice magnet school, of course. For now. It's an airy, brightly sun lit lab, warm even in the winter. She's no longer naturally blonde, but her hair all but glows in the light from all the windows. Schizophrenia, of course, feels drawn to the darkest parts of the lab, likes it best on dissection days.
But there are no dissections today, just a test.
The girl isn't nervous about the test, really, though people will ask her if she was, over, and over, and over. She has an A in this class—in all of them, of course, for now—and the test is no big deal. Schizophrenia reads over her shoulder. She's going to ace this thing, too.
Or, she was.
But Schizophrenia is done watching.
They begin with the classics. Demons, though they're kind of just red blobs. Three of them. They are translucent over the girl's view of the room, but clear in her mind's eye. They chant, singsong, voices clear, but at first in a language she does not know, and dance around. Then the drownings begin—the voices turn to taunting in English—and in a pit of blood that looks more like fog, they hold down everyone she holds dear, down to the cat who hisses at Schizophrenia at night like he can see them.
She dreams of death by water almost every night, of course—though she's yet to figure out if that or if gasping for breath in her sleep came first.
The girl abandons the test. But part of her mind remains stubbornly clear. Everyone else is still hunched over the test. There are no demons. That damn cat is safe at home.
She knows Schizophrenia is there.
But they are one now, and she is angry at the demons, a fury she is not prone to; grief for those she knows have not died hits her anyway. She is aware she has—what most might call—lost her mind, and there is something like shame in the mix. She is afraid, of course.
But Schizophrenia digs around and isn't so sure they find *surprise. *
The class ends. The bell rings. Everyone else files out, suddenly chatting. But the girl has her head buried in her arms, folded on the smooth black lab table; yet she sees the drownings in limitless space anyway. Eyes open, eyes closed—no matter. Her biology test, so unimportant seeming now, is under her somewhere.
The teacher thinks she's fallen asleep and tries to rouse her. Of course, this is a nightmare she can't wake from.
The girl is not completely coherent, but for the very first time—with only a limited understanding of how many times are ahead of her, though Schizophrenia sees them all—she gives explaining a go.
(She will do it again, and again, and again.)