Splintered

Since Alice was, in fact, my great-great-great-grandmother, my classmates teased me during recess about dormice and tea parties. I thought things couldn’t get much worse until I felt something on my jeans and realized, mortified, that I got my period for the first time and was totally unprepared. On the verge of tears, I lifted a sweater from the lost-and-found pile just inside the main entrance and wrapped it around my waist for the short walk to the office. I kept my head down, unable to meet anyone’s gaze.

I pretended to be sick and called my dad to pick me up. While I waited for him in the nurse’s office, I imagined a heated argument between the vase of flowers on her desk and the bumblebee buzzing around them. It was one powerful delusion, because I really heard it, as sure as I could hear the passing of students from one class to the next on the other side of the closed door.

Alison had warned me of the day I would “become a woman.” Of the voices that would follow. I’d just assumed it was her mental instability making her say that …

The whispers were impossible to ignore, just like the sobs building in my throat. I did the only thing I could: I denied what was happening inside me. Rolling a poster of the four basic food groups into a cylinder, I tapped the bee hard enough to stun it. Then I whisked the flowers out of the water and pressed them between the pages of a spiral notebook, to silence their chattering petals.

When we got home, poor, oblivious Dad offered to make some chicken soup. I shrugged him off and went to my room.

“Do you think you’ll feel well enough to visit Mom later tonight?” he asked from the hallway, always reluctant to upset Alison’s delicate sense of routine.

I shut my door without answering. My hands shook and my blood felt jittery in my veins. There had to be an explanation for what had happened in the nurse’s office. I was stressed about the Wonderland jokes, and when my hormones kicked in, I’d had a panic attack. Yeah. That made sense.

But I knew deep down I was lying to myself, and the last place I wanted to visit was an asylum. A few minutes later, I went back to the living room.

Dad sat in his favorite recliner—a worn-out corduroy lump covered with daisy appliqués. In one of her “spells,” Alison had sewn the cloth flowers all over it. Now he would never part with the chair.

“You feeling better, Butterfly?” he asked, looking up from his fishing magazine.

Musty dampness blasted into my face from the air conditioner as I leaned against the closest wood-paneled wall. Our two-bedroom duplex had never offered much in the way of privacy, and on that day it felt smaller than ever before. The waves of his dark hair moved in the rattling gusts.

I shuffled my feet. This was the part of being an only child I hated—having no one but Dad to confide in. “I need some more stuff. They only gave us one sample.”

His eyes were blank, like those of a deer staring down traffic during morning rush hour.

“The special talk they give at school,” I said, my stomach in knots. “The one where boys aren’t invited?” I flashed the purple pamphlet they’d handed out to all the girls in third grade. It was creased because I’d shoved it and the sample sanitary pad into a drawer beneath my socks.

After an uncomfortable pause, Dad’s face flushed red. “Oh. So that’s why …” He suddenly became preoccupied with a colorful array of saltwater lures. He was embarrassed or worried or both, because there wasn’t any salt water within a five-hundred-mile radius of Pleasance, Texas.

“You know what this means, right?” I pressed. “Alison is going to give me the puberty speech again.”

The blush spread from his face to his ears. He flipped a couple of pages, staring blankly at the pictures. “Well, who better to tell you about the birds and the bees than your mom. Right?”

An unspoken answer echoed inside my head: Who better but the bees themselves?

I cleared my throat. “Not that speech, Dad. The nutso one. The ‘It can’t be stopped. You can’t escape the voices any more than I could. Great-great-gran never should’ve gone down the rabbit hole’ speech.”

It didn’t matter that Alison might be right about the voices after all. I wasn’t ready to admit that to Dad or myself.

He sat rigid, as if the air conditioner had iced his spine.

I studied the crisscross scars on my palms. He and I both knew it was less what Alison was going to say than what she might do. If she had another meltdown, they’d slap her into the straitjacket.

I learned early on why it’s spelled strait. That particular spelling means tight. Tight enough that blood pools in the elbows and the hands become numb. Tight enough that there’s no escape, no matter how loud the patient screams. Tight enough that it suffocates the hearts of the wearer’s loved ones.

My eyes felt swollen, like they might burst another leak. “Look, Dad, I’ve already had a really sucky day. Can we please just not go tonight? Just this once?”

Dad sighed. “I’ll call Soul’s Asylum and let them know we’ll visit Mom tomorrow instead. But you’ll need to tell her eventually. It’s important to her, you know? To stay involved in your life.”

I nodded. I might have to tell her about becoming a woman, but I didn’t have to tell her about becoming her.

Hooking a finger in the fuchsia scarf tied around my jean shorts, I glanced at my feet. Shiny pink toenails reflected the afternoon light where it streamed from the window. Pink had always been Alison’s favorite color. That’s why I wore it.

“Dad,” I mumbled loud enough for him to hear. “What if Alison’s right? I’ve noticed some things today. Things that just aren’t … normal. I’m not normal.”

“Normal.” His lips turned up in an Elvis curl. He once told me his smirk won Alison over. I think it was his gentleness and sense of humor, because those two things kept me from crying every night after she was first committed.

Rolling his magazine, he shoved it into the recliner between the seat cushion and the arm. He stood, his six-foot-one height towering over me as he tapped the dimple in my chin—the one part that matched him instead of Alison. “Now, you listen, Alyssa Victoria Gardner. Normal is subjective. Don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re not normal. Because you are to me. And my opinion is all that matters. Got it?”

“Got it,” I whispered.

“Good.” He squeezed my shoulder, his fingers warm and strong. Too bad the twitch in his left eyelid gave him away. He was worried, and he didn’t even know the half of it.

I tossed and turned in bed that night. Once I finally fell asleep, I had the Alice nightmare for the first time, and it’s haunted my dreams ever since.

In it, I stumble across a chessboard in Wonderland, tripping over jagged squares of black and white. Only I’m not me. I’m Alice in a blue dress and lacy pinafore, trying to escape the ticktock of the White Rabbit’s pocket watch. He looks like he’s been ski

The Queen of Hearts has commanded that my head be chopped off and stuck into a jar of formaldehyde. I’ve stolen the royal sword and am on the run, desperate to find the Caterpillar and the Cheshire Cat. They’re the only allies I have left.

Ducking into a forest, I slice the sword at vines hanging in my path. A thicket of thorns sprouts from the ground. They snag my apron and gouge my skin like angry talons. Dandelion trees tower in every direction. I’m the size of a cricket, along with everyone else.

Must’ve been something we ate …

Close behind, the White Rabbit’s pocket watch ticks louder, audible even over the marching steps of a thousand playing-card soldiers. Choking on a cloud of dust, I plunge into the Caterpillar’s lair, where mushrooms loom with caps the size of truck tires. It’s a dead end.