Chapter one

I was sitting on a bench by the lake in Sunshine Rehab Centre with my brother Derek beside me. He's the only sibling of mine that enjoys visiting me and he does his best to visit me at least three times a week, that's the best he could manage; he's pretty busy with college, apparently majoring in aerospace engineering is not very easy.

My parents visit me once a week, those visits are never pleasant, they do the whole pretending to be nice to me crap like they always did back home, I try my best to keep my calm through the visits, which to be honest is not a very easy task.

Lilliana, my sister, barely ever visits me, and I'm not even slightly disappointed about that, she visits me twice a month, we barely even speak to each other during these visits, and I think she only comes because my parents make her so that they can keep the whole loving family, façade going on.

"Riella, it's nearly 5 o'clock," my Derek noted from beside me as we stared at the lake and those odd swan things that people were riding on it; apparently crazy people found it relaxing to be on them, who knew? I sighed and turned towards him.

"Why do you have to be such a spoil sport?" I asked him, he turned towards me smiling. The slight breeze in the air ruffled his curly hair; black in colour like all of the Ceylontera's, like all Sri Lankans, we have black hair, brown eyes and skin that varies in different shades of brown in each person.

"You know I think that this therapy thing is crap too, but this place insists on it to keep track of your mental stability or whatever," he said in his deep voice, I rolled my eyes at him. "Let me put it this way kiddo, the more you go to these sessions without making trouble and skipping out on them, the sooner you'll get out of this place and go back home."

"Well, going back 'home' is not a very pleasant thought," I said. "Can I come live at your place when I get out of this hell hole?"

"Let's see about that. Though I don't think the parents will be very supportive of that plan," he said laughing and standing up.

"It's none of their business." I muttered getting up too, he grinned at me and spread his arms wide for a hug, I hesitated for a couple of seconds I still wasn't very comfortable with human contact but this was Derek; my brother, my best friend, the only person in the world I trusted. So I smiled and stepped into his arms, he squeezed me in a tight bear hug making it hard for me to breathe. "Can't breathe," I gasped, he released me and stepped back laughing.

"Well, see you later Zeriella," he said winking. Zeriella; that was my real name, I never liked that name, I mean what kind of name was Zeriella?

"See ya Guthrie," I said smirking using his horrible first name.

Both Guthrie Derek and I were the lucky Ceylontera's to get the weirdest names ever. At least I was lucky enough to have a first name from which I could make a good nickname from unlike Guthrie, who had to use his middle name. He laughed, reached out and messed up my already sloppy ponytail and walked away towards the exit.

I sighed and stood there retying my hair trying to stall, but tying hair doesn't really take a very long time. I sighed once again and made my way towards the building that housed all the shrinks' offices of the rehab centre that was called the psychiatric building.

As I neared the building I slowed down dragging my feet, I wasn't in any hurry to go in there and spend an awkward hour in a bright room with my shrink.

The building was long and was two storied; ground floor and first floor.

I entered into the reception area through the glass door that swung close behind me and was greeted by a cold blast of air from the air conditioning in the building. The smiley receptionist was sitting behind the counter reading a magazine. I walked up to her and cleared my throat; she looked up startled and set her magazine down.

"Hello Zeriella," she said smiling brightly at me. She was a bubbly blonde in her mid-twenties she was here four days a week; the remaining three days were taken by a less bubbly woman. Both these women had been here since I first moved to Sunshine, but I had no idea what their names were and had no intentions to find out.

I replied with a curt nod, no smile or anything on my face, but that didn't discourage her. "Well Doctor Heath is waiting for you," she said still smiling.

With that, I walked away past the counter and up the spiral staircase, my shrink; Annie Heath's office was on the first floor. I walked slowly towards her office door and stopped there, I glanced at my watch it was it read seven past five, damn, I had only missed seven minutes, even with all the stalling.

I took a deep breath, raised my hand and knocked, my sleeve fell back slightly, revealing the scars on my arm, I lowered my arm after knocking and shook my sleeve back over my arm to cover up the old scars.

"Come in," said a soft female voice from inside. I opened the door and stepped inside Annie Heath's air conditioned office, she was sitting on the white armchair she always occupied reading a book. She stood up and smiled at me, "you're late," she noted as I shut the door behind me.

My shrink's office was decorated in a 'homey' way to give her patients a sense of comfort. The floor was carpeted in a light green colour and the walls were painted in a slightly darker green. All the couches were soft and comfy, and the many windows made the room nice and bright. There were several potted plants placed around the room, the plants are supposed to make the room look comforting or something I think.

I'm pretty sure many of her other patients found this place homey and safe, but the brightness made me feel uncomfortable.

I took my time to answer that, "um yeah, sorry about that, I lost track of time, I was with my brother." I lied; Derek had made sure I had plenty of time to get here on time.

"Ah, that's alright Zeriella," she said still smiling.

My shrink always smiled. She was a woman in her late thirties, with brown curls that reached her shoulders and soft brown eyes always framed by her square spectacles; the typical shrink look I guess.

She was wearing a knee length skirt and a blouse like usual, today a red skirt and a white blouse. I on the other hand, was wearing loose black jeans and a plain grey sweater. My shrink always asked me to wear brighter colours; she said something about them making me happier, but ever since I moved so Sunshine I gave up on the bright colours thing, I stuck to wearing a lot of blacks and greys.

I didn't always dress like this; if you saw me about a year ago you wouldn't even recognize me, I looked so different then, from the mess I am now.

"Take a seat and let's get started," she said gesturing to the couch directly in front of her armchair. I walked quietly past the couch and my shrink, and sat on another armchair further away from her than the couch was.

This was how every session started, my shrink suggests I sit on the couch in front of her and I ignore her and sit on the armchair furthest from her.

"Okay then," she said nodding, "How are you Zeriella?" My shrink had an annoying habit of constantly calling me Zeriella, I guess that's because I never bothered telling her that I preferred to be called Riella. That would mean a lot of explaining why and stuff like that. It wasn't like she was a friend of mine to call me that anyways.

"I'm fine."

"Good to know," she said smiling widely at me again, "So what did you do today?"

"Just read and then hung out with my brother," I said in a bored voice. This was how I always answered her questions; short and simple in a flat tone, even the questions that she expected those long deep answers for. She always wanted me to share my feelings with her and tell her how I feel about each and every thing, but honestly I'm not the kind of person that talks about my feelings.

The only people I've ever talked about any of my feelings to were my brothers, and even they didn't know everything.

"Ah, how's your brother doing?" she said in an enthusiastic voice.

"He's fine," I answered in the same tone.

"He's still at college, am I right?" she asked.

"Yes."

"What's he majoring in?" she asked obviously trying to keep the conversation flowing, expecting slightly longer answers from me.

"Aerospace engineering." I said glancing at my watch, five twelve; it had only been five minutes since I entered the room, it seemed like so much longer. Time always seemed to slow down in this office.

"That must be pretty hard," she said still not giving up. I had to give it to her, this woman had a lot of patience.

"I don't know, ask him," I said turning my head to look out the window. I had a view of the lake from here.

I saw Hector, an elderly man with some mental disease; outside, sitting cross legged on the ground underneath a large willow tree talking to himself. His caretaker, a red head in her early twenties was leaning against the tree talking on her phone not even looking at Hector.

"So, what are you currently reading Zeriella?" the shrink asked me making me turn back to her, she was smiling again. I had to try very hard to stop myself from rolling my eyes.

"Harry Potter."

"How many times have you read the series?" she asked me curiously, probably because just last month I said I was reading the Harry Potter series.

"Um, about seventeen times," I said.

"Wow." She said looking genuinely impressed, "What about the series do you find so intriguing?"

"Everything about it," I said. She nodded and waited, expecting me to say a bit more, express more of my love for Harry Potter with her, but I simply stayed quiet and looked out the window again.

Hector was still sitting under the tree talking to himself, and his caretaker continued to talk into her phone. o you wouldn me a saw me a s and greys. a plain grey sweater, my shrink always asked me to wear brighter colours,

"Okay then," she said when she was sure I wasn't going to say anything, "Zeriella, have you ever considered writing a story of your own?" I turned my head towards her and looked at her like she was crazy, noticing my expression she continued, "I mean you read a lot, surely you will be able to write from what you've learned."

"No." I said simply. Writing was not really my thing; I never liked writing, even back at school I hated all the writing assessments. I chose to simply read what other people have written.

"But it'll be great-" she started saying but I cut her off.

"Don't try to persuade me to write 'cause it's not gonna work." She sighed and shut her mouth but then almost instantly started talking again.

"Zeriella, are you ready to talk about what happened the first night?" she asked me. "What drove you to do what you did?" She never actually said 'suicide', she always referred to it as 'what you did', as a matter of fact mostly everyone found it uncomfortable to state what I did.

I just stared at her in silence; I guess that was answer enough; no.

"Come on Zeriella, I'm your therapist. I won't lie to you and tell you that I'm your friend or anything. But I am your therapist, my job is to help you and I cannot help you if you give me nothing. I won't tell your parents, doctor-patient confidentiality Zeriella," she said with what I guessed was a reassuring smile; I continued to stare at her mutely with a blank expression. "You know I won't tell anyone. I just want to know why, if I know why it will help me understand, and you'll be able to go home earlier."

"I'm not stupid okay?" I had had enough, I couldn't keep quiet anymore. She did this at every session, could she not understand? I don't want to talk to her about it. I chose to stay quiet and simply ignore her during every other session, but I couldn't do it anymore.

"I'm not stupid; I know telling you the reason won't help me get out of here. Hell, it might even make my time in here longer. I'll just be stuck in here until you people are sure I'm not depressed. But how would sticking me in this shit hole make me love my life anyways? If anything, it makes me hate life even more. I'll tell you this, my life is shit, the only good thing in my life is my brother, he's the only person I felt guilty about leaving, the rest, well, I was just glad to be leaving them." I was glaring at her, breathing hard, my chest rising up and down rapidly.

I didn't want to talk about this; whenever I did it makes me think about the reasons, the pain, the feelings and the thoughts going through my mind at the moment. And I knew if I thought about them I would break down, again.

"Come on Zeriella don't be like that, you know your parents love you and they sent you here so that you'll get better. Your parents want you to get better. That's why you're here, I will help you get better, just talk to me."

"My parents love me? Whoa, who fed you that bullshit?" I said with a snort, she tried talking but I cut her off. "They think that all they have to do for their child is to send them to a snotty little private school and to get them whatever they want. Love was not part of the deal; they think that money makes up for it all. They think that money makes up for the fact that they treat me like shit and ignore me most of the time."

"Okay," she said nodding and scribbled something on the clipboard she kept with her. "But Zeriella, I am pretty sure your parents love you. When they talk to me they sound very concerned about you."

"Okay Annie, I'll humour you and let you believe that." I said glancing at the time again twenty past five; it hasn't even been half an hour yet.

"I know deep down that you actually believe that too Zeriella." Annie said pushing her glasses higher up her nose.

"Yeah? Well you don't really know me do you?" I said getting up.

"Where are you going Zeriella?" my shrink said looking up at me in surprise.

"Well, we're done here. I just shared more than I've ever shared with you in any of our sessions, so I think I deserve to leave early." I said, my shrink started to say something but I simply turned my back towards her and stalked out of the room leaving the door wide open behind me.

"Zeriella, wait!" I heard her call after me, but I ignored her and kept walking. The bubbly blonde behind the counter looked up from her magazine as I walked past her, she looked mildly surprised, she opened her mouth to say something to me, but I ignored her and left the building through the glass doors.

I took a deep breath of the fresh air outside. It helped clear my mind slightly, but the memories still filled my head.

This was why I never liked talking about what happened that horrible night, it always brought back memories of the night; the incredible pain and the feeling of utter helplessness. I had to get to my room before I broke down out here in public.

I walked quickly in the direction of the buildings housing the patients. I followed the grey brick pathway that led to the residential buildings that were placed in a massive circle.

Just at the entrance of the residential area of Sunshine, I ran into Julia. She was one of the more serious cases in Sunshine; she was one of the screamers. Hell, Julia didn't only scream at night, I remember once, she started screaming in the dining room, rolling around on the floor because she dropped her yoghurt cup.

I wondered how she managed to get away from her caretaker, I guessed her caretaker was just like Hector's caretaker, a lot of the young caretakers didn't really care about any of the patients, and they simply did it for the money.

I could see Julia's mouth moving rapidly as if she was talking very fast, but there was no one with her; she was talking to herself.

As I passed her she stopped in front of me blocking my path. Julia stared at me intently making me feel uncomfortable, her messy black hair covered most of her face, but I could see one of her grey eyes squinting at me.

"You're the depressed girl. The suicidal one," she finally said in her dreamy voice.

This was the thing about most crazy people; they are incredibly blunt, probably because they're crazy and don't understand the normal codes of social behaviour. It felt weird to have someone say this to my face though.

"You gave me yoghurt," she said. I couldn't believe that Julia, who has proven to the world her insanity, actually remembered something as petty as that.

That day when she had a grown woman tantrum because of the loss of her yoghurt, I gave her my yoghurt to calm her down because the staff member that went to get her yoghurt was taking so long.

"Um, yeah that's me," I said awkwardly, Julia didn't say anything after this; she simply continued to stare at me making me feel extremely uncomfortable. After about a minute of this, I came to the conclusion that it wasn't safe for Julia to be wandering around outside alone, so I decided to drop her off at her building before heading off to mine.

"Come on Julia," I said taking her arm and leading the way. Just because I'm depressed doesn't mean I'm a bitch, I'm actually nice to the people who deserve it.

"Where are we going?" she asked confused.

"We're gonna go inside," I said, "it's starting to get chilly out here, and you don't want to freeze do you?"

"Okay," Julia said still staring at me intently. I decided to ignore that and concentrate at the task at hand.

When we entered the area with the housing buildings we were greeted by the splashing sound of the water from the large fountain in the centre of the circle.

The fountain was situated exactly in the centre of the circle the buildings created. In the centre of the fountain was the Greek goddess Hygeia, she was the goddess of good health, so I guess that's why she was here in this fountain, to give good health to all the patients with bad mental health. She was facing the entrance, so she was staring right at me at the moment, holding her snake in her hands. Water sprouted out from either side of her, resulting in the splashing noise.

Julia's building; building number two, that housed a lot of the serious cases, was the second building on the right side of the fountain, so we went right on the brick path that went around the fountain.

All the buildings here were painted brown and had large wooden double doors, the heights of the buildings varied depending on the number of floors each one had. The building Julia resided in was the second biggest one; the biggest building was the one where the elderly residents lived in. Julia's building was six storied seven if you count the ground floor.

I walked with Julia into the building with a big wooden number two on the right side of the door; I pushed open the door and entered the large lobby on the ground floor.

Behind a large counter on the far end of the lobby were three middle-aged women, and a balding man was standing on the other side of the counter talking to the three women, I guess this building had more supervisors than my building. As soon as we entered all four of them looked up at us and a plump, kind-faced woman behind the counter hurried towards us looking relieved.

"Oh my, thank goodness you found her! Roy just finished his rounds and told us that Julia was missing," she said. "I was just about to head out to search for her, where was she?"

"I just saw her outside and thought I should bring her here," I said letting go of Julia's hand.

"Thank you dear," the woman said giving me a warm smile. "Come here Julia; let's get you ready for dinner. Thank you again my dear." She said to me again before taking Julia by the hand and heading towards the elevator.

"Yeah okay," I said awkwardly tugging on my ponytail, the other three by the counter were smiling at me too, and all of this smiling was making me feel uncomfortable. I felt nervous. "Well, I'll be leaving now," I said giving them an awkward smile and a small wave.

"Thank you for bringing her here," the man said and the two women nodded.

"Have a nice evening," the plump woman said to me as she stepped into the elevator with Julia who was now staring at the woman instead of me. I quickly turned and hurried out of the building to get away from this awkwardness.

As I stepped outside the building the memories were coming back again, now that Julia was gone and I wasn't distracted anymore they were coming back. I took a deep breath of the cool, fresh air to clear my head and walked off towards my building where I could find a distraction to keep away the memories.

My building was right across the fountain and faced Hygeia's back, I continued going right along the path.

There were a total of seven residential buildings in Sunshine.

The building I resided in, building number four, was the smallest building at three floors high. Building number four housed all of the less serious cases and there weren't many of them. I shared this building with: a girl about my age with an eating disorder, she was an extremely pretty, stick thin girl (probably due to the eating disorder) that looked like she belonged to the popular crowd if she was at school; her name was Kelsey or something like that.

There was another man in his early thirties who was suicidal; a woman who supervised our building once told me that he was suicidal because of the death of his whole family; parents, wife and two kids, they were all in the same car when they got into a big accident, and everyone died except for him. He was put in here by his friend who stopped him from jumping off a building.

Then, there were five recovering drug addicts, these were the ones that have been in rehab for a long time and were on the verge of recovery, so they weren't considered serious cases.

I turned into the path that led to building number four and walked towards the building at the end of the path. I was greeted with yet another blast of air conditioning when I entered the building through the double wooden doors, this building was air conditioned 24/7.

The front door led into a lobby like area just like the building Julia lived in, but it wasn't as big as the one in Julia's building. The counter with tonight's supervisors was on the right side of the room rather than opposite the door like in Julia's building.

This building only had two supervisors; as today was Friday, it was the middle-aged man and woman that always flirted with each other.

They were sitting extremely close to each other with their faces just inches apart, and when I walked in they instantly sprang apart looking guilty.

I shook my head in disgust as I made my way towards the elevator opposite the door. What they were doing was shameless; I knew that both of them were married.

I pressed the down button on the elevator and stood there tapping my foot waiting for the elevator to arrive, I could feel the tension in the room. What was it with me and creating an awkward environment wherever I went?

The elevator arrived and the doors slid open with a ping, I stepped in and pressed the black button with a number two on it.

My room was on the second floor with two of the drug addicts, a girl called Lisa with wispy straw coloured hair and sunken eyes that looked like she was in her late thirties, but was actually in her early twenties. The other one was a guy called Lance who looked just as dead and lifeless as Lisa and was only nineteen.

The elevator came to a halt and the doors slid open smoothly revealing a wood panelled corridor with light brown carpeting that curved off to the left at the end.

What was with this place and comforting browns?

Room number four was on the right, this was Lance's room, room number five was on the left, and this was Lisa's room. The rooms were so huge that each room took up one whole side of each corridor. My room was on the right side of the turn at the end of the corridor, there was no room opposite mine.

As I walked past the first two rooms I saw that Lisa's door was ajar and she was sitting on the floor by the door with her head on her knees and her arms wrapped around her knees rocking back and forth repeatedly. This was normal behaviour for Lisa; she only transferred to this building recently from the building for the more serious addicts.

They transferred her here after they decided that she was clean enough to be brought somewhere that was less strict. This was Lisa's way of keeping control of herself. I shook my head as I rounded the corner.

I pulled my key card out of my pocket as I neared the door and swiped it, unlocking the door. I opened the door and stepped inside my room.

The door opened up into the living room that was carpeted in white with white walls to match. There was a forty-inch plasma TV on the wall, with an L shaped black couch facing it and an oval shaped glass coffee table in between, with a black and white striped carpet underneath.

There was a round glass table in the corner of the room, with two very comfy armchairs on either side; my laptop was placed on top of it. A small hallway from the living room opened up into the pantry.

There were two doors leading out of the living room. One opened up into the bedroom, the other opened up into the bathroom.

Sunshine let me pick out the colours for my bedroom before I moved in, I chose red.

There were no sharp objects in my room as everyone thought I'll start hurting myself. I had no knives in my room, no scissors and I wasn't even allowed to have any glass cups. Instead I had packs of plastic knives and those reusable colourful plastic cups. My room was checked weekly for anything I might have smuggled in. A total invasion of my privacy.

I closed the door behind me and walked into the pantry to get myself something to drink.

I opened the fridge, took out a bottle of water and made my way back to the living room to distract myself with some television.

I picked the remote up from the coffee table, switched the television on and sat down on the couch. The screen turned on to the frozen image of the 90210 episode I was watching the night before, I pressed play and lost myself in the drama of the teenagers from Beverly Hills California; forgetting my own horrible memories at least for a while.

Author's note: Yeah, i re-wrote this again and made it shorter :D

(Also, I took out the intro haha)

Hope you liked it! Review xx