Free Wide Awake by Shelly Crane Page A

skin flush just thinking about it. But, in a way, it had helped tremendously. We focused on therapy instead of anything else, and it had paid off. This was my last week here. I could walk on my own, though not for very long and I was still pretty shaky, and I was brushing my own teeth. And the bathroom no longer required an audience. You just have no idea the amount of dignity and confidence I'd acquired since Mason had decided to back off. It was the strangest thing how things seemed to just work out sometimes.
    But with only days left until I was set free, I was being put through the wringer with tests and final evaluations. With Epsom salt baths every night, and massage, and even some acupuncture they tried on me, I felt better and better every day. I was so tired, but it was a good tired. I felt accomplished. Adeline was still Adeline, prissy, snide, and just doing her job. I told her what I thought she wanted to hear basically, and I knew that could hinder my 'progress', but I'd never felt this alive since I woke up. I would do anything to get out of there.
    One of my therapies was to write. Letters, whatever I wanted, but making my hands work the way they should again was important. It was one more thing that I felt like a child about. My handwriting was atrocious to say the least. A kindergartener would laugh and tell me to try again. So that's what I did. I used Mason as my motivation, weirdly. I wrote the same line over and over again until it was legible, and then it was almost normal looking. It was something funny in the book he'd gotten for me and I figured it might be something worth knowing. I felt compelled to give it to him, for him to see that I was making leaps and bounds and strides to get the heck outta Dodge.
    The fact that I kissed the line I'd written with my pink cherry lipgloss wasn't important.
    The next thing I started writing was a list. It was an I want to be normal again list and the very line read, Walk . So I crossed that out. The next thing on the list would be to get out of the facility.
    So today, as Mrs. Betty walked me to therapy, because Mason was running late, I was giddy on a new level. I had stopped using the wheelchair, even though they thought I should. I just felt any extra exercise, though it made things harder for me, was better. Since I'd sent Andy away, my mom had started to tutor me. Well…she brought my schoolwork every day and I pretty much caught up by myself. Because, just like the therapy, I wasn't backing down. This was my life we were talking about. Was I going to go through an extra year of high school just because things were hard? Just because doing so much work for a few weeks wasn't fun? Just because it put Isabella in my room more often?
    Absolutely not. I was determined to walk, check. Get caught up in school, check. Get out of here and go home, check. And now, decide which girl I wanted to be. I hadn't done that yet, but I was on my way. Once I got back in school and into all those things I'd done before, I could make an objective decision, right? For now, I was just excited to see Mason.
    We tiptoed around each other in awkwardness most of the time, but I still enjoyed his company more than I should have.
    "What am I going to do without my favorite patient, huh?" Mrs. Betty asked. She gave me a cheeky look. "You're just going to run off and leave me here all alone?"
"Absolutely."
    She laughed. "Well, all right then."
    "I will miss you terribly though." She smiled at that and I pulled her to a stop and hugged her. She was a bigger lady, but as short as me, and she felt so much like a mother. "I really will miss you."
    "A pretty thing like you will have tons of friends waiting for her back at school," she assured.
    "But I don't know those people, and they are going to want me to be Emmie."
    "You be Emma," she said harder and pulled back to look at me. "You be you, honey. They will either like it or they won't, but at least you'll know that you were