Oppertunity Missed

I could have said something, but I didn’t. I am sinking into the white, flower print couch, looking around the room at the tear stained faces surrounding me. I’m not going to tell them – I cannot tell them – that I knew. They would never forgive me. Jessica’s hands are clenched tightly around a soggy tissue.

“Why didn’t she tell use?” she sobs out. “I would have done anything to help. But now I can’t, because right not she is miles away and we don’t even know if she’ll be ok. How could she do this to us? Why didn’t she tell us?”

Jessica’s questions burned in my ears. Alex did tell. She told me. I was just a fleeting comment, but I should have known, I should have told. My eyes are glued to my lap. I don’t say anything. The new jeans my parents had sent and my long sleeve t-shirt had looked pretty this morning, before we all found out, but now they are just another way to hide myself. I could have told. If they knew they would hate me. Alex isn’t in her place on the cushioned footstool. I could have kept that from happening.

“Sarah, I can’t stay here anymore. It just isn’t worth it,” Alex had said, in a tinny whisper. The Staff were always listening. They were always finding reasons to punish us. One wrong move and you wouldn’t be allowed to talk for a month. Or they would make you stand with them and not do anything. Not even study the school books in the morning. A day of that was fine, but week after week they would tell you your faults and flaws, and you would continue to stand, away from the forced alliance and comfort of the group. I knew what she meant. You can’t leave this place. It is a sentence that can last for years. There was only one escape, and we had all considered it.

But we only considered it. We talked about it in hushed whispers. It was never more than a reminder that if things got so bad we couldn’t go on, there was a way out: the new bottle of Tylenol in a grocery bag before they locked it up, the bleach under the sink, storing up the tranquilizers they handed out so we couldn’t wake up until morning shift got there. It was hell, and we all knew there was only one way out, but we only kept it as hope. Hope that we were still, in some small way, in control. But Alex broke. She couldn’t take it anymore.
The lettering on my shirt read "Little River Farm, Helping Teens With Life". Miles from civilization there was no way to run. Cut off from communication with our families there was no way to call for help. Surrounded by Staff who were paid to sedate us there was no way to bargain for a release. The only way out...

The tears flooded my eyes, and for the first time since we heard, I cried. I cried because of the friend I had lost, who would not be allowed to come back if she was ok, who we wouldn’t know if she had lived. But I also cried because I was not with her, on the outside. I was still trapped. I cried because I could have prevented our pain now, but at what cost. In this place there is only one way out, and it is a path no one has mapped. We do not know where it leads, and what lies past what we see. I envy Alex, because she is free, and I do not know if I will be able to achieve what she has gained.