“Hey,” I say, looking around the room to see if Misty let her in and was in the apartment somewhere. She looks so grey and adrift. “Haley,” I try again, but saying her name hurts. There’s an atmosphere in the room, almost like an entity extracting the life from her. “I’m tormented daily by visions and dreams of that day,” she says, her low voice breaking the silence. “I know,” I tell her, because I do. It’s like going around a roundabout she can’t get away from. “I can’t look in a mirror without seeing what they took from me.” She nods her head, as if agreeing with herself. “All my thoughts are a confusing muddled mess in my head from the drugs I take to make it through a day.” She taps her head, then her chest. “There’s this person inside me screaming under the surface. She’s the face of the woman I was supposed to be.” Nails claw at her flesh and the pain radiates up my own arm knowing what she’s doing to herself. “I don’t trust anyone.
