I scolded her. Mena silently smiled at me while she teased me with the pendant. “Don’t smile at me,” I said to her. “I am so sick of you.” I leaned in close to her, not scared if she tried to hit me. Mena took me by the hand and yanked me down. I flopped down on the bed next to her. She leaned over to me and pushed my hair out of my face. She kept her grip on my hand. She wasn’t hurting me, but she was confusing me. Then she lifted my sleeve on the arm of the hand that she was holding. “Did you know,” she said, “that more than forty percent of people who attempt suicide become a statistic when they are released from a psychiatric hospital?” “No,” I told her as I tried to shove her away. She kept a tight grip. “They become a statistic of people who succeed in killing themselves when they get out. They attempt suicide again, and then they actually die.”
