Finding Sloane Winters Crazy

Sloane Erin Mallory Winters
Youngest in the Winters House
Half way to being an orphan

The attic room of the Winters’ household.

Low roof, two ceilings slanting down, window bed, a faded quilt, shelf of books, stack of essays, one moccasin (the other mysteriously missing), a single photo frame resting on a wardrobe, a MacBook, Microsoft Office Word staring up at me.

Never had it looked so blank in my whole life.

Dr Rowan had told me to write about my experiences, past and present or maybe an experience I’d like to ‘experience’ in the future—that is, if I didn’t go all mental and die because I was suicidal.

Tells me to write it in a notebook first, handing me a nice leather bound one. Exactly like the one I’d see other therapists use in movies—but this was real life, and my dad can’t settle for anyone with a notebook. So he got me a shrink with a laptop.

“My hand always gets cramped if I write more than a paragraph,” I’d say, and it was true. I don’t lie, at least, not very much.

She’d give me a pointed look and her thin lips would curve upwards. “I knew private schools weren’t such a good thing after all. Always using computers and never paper.”

I pointed out that the world was getting more technology friendly nowadays and the Internet was basically every kid’s lifeline.

“Just write in the book, Sloane, I’m sure you can learn to live with your cramps.”

“What if I get Carpel Tunnel or some sort of hand cancer?”

But she had already ushered me out the door and left me out standing in the hallway.

So I go out, come back the next session, and guess what?

My right hand in a sling—neon pink, because I like to make a statement apparently. And now you’re thinking: oh, my God. She really is, like, totally suicidal!

Pain looks pretty cool, but not in real life, only on the movies. But this real life, remember? And in real life, I’m a clever sneak with a best friend who’s mum is a cool doctor. This cool doctor’s daughter (Bess Osztreicher) wasn’t so approving about it, but that didn’t stop me and Doc Osztreicher from taking it from a storage room and putting it on.

Now, Doc Rowan didn’t look surprised, like she knew me well enough after a year’s worth of silence and my complaints about homework to know that I’d do something like this.

Figures.

“I didn’t know you were so clumsy, Sloane.”

She saw right through my plan! I used to do ballet until everyone in my class was a foot shorter than me and I quit.

But here’s the good part, get this, she smiles like she’s having a sort of inside joke, and voila! Suddenly she’s got my laptop bag right behind her ottoman and pulling out the one I use for school (and reading online porn, nah).

I point my finger accusingly at her. “I got in deep shit when I didn’t email my essay to my Lit teacher, you know. I didn’t save it anywhere else, and he gave me a detention. You’ve got to write a note to him and say that you held my poor laptop as captive and that you demand him to give me an A for the first semester.”

“I’ve already made a blog for you,” Rowan ignores me, and puts the lid up. “I’ve saved it in your bookmarks bar, right there—yes, Sloane, don’t look at me like that—and it can be a diary. You can do whatever you want with it, the layout personally looks crap, you can fix it however you please.”

“Swinters dot blogspot dot com?” I had asked incredulously. “Why couldn’t you let me name it?”

“Just use it,” she said exasperatedly and kicked me out again.

So here I am, my bedroom and my mind’s as blank as the document. I could’ve gone hours discussing genitals in Health class or who cared whether Matthew Flinders or some old Spanish crocker named Australia—but I couldn’t even write about my day.

So I supposed I should type in at how the boy at the supermarket was smiling at me, dirt smudged on his face and in his soccer uniform with a posh looking middle aged woman beside him. Or maybe my new haircut, dyed it as blond as Draco Malfoy and all one length. Or how I really envy this girl two years below me at school who could sing and play piano at the same time. I couldn’t do both, much less simultaneously.

Diaries were for twelve year old girls who’d throw them after a month, ancient vampires named Stefan who were dead ugly, or for people with a lot to say and writing them down was how they do it.

I wasn’t one of them. I had nothing to say.

My mind was blank, just like that document.