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“It's the wrong trousers Gromit, and they've gone wrong!”

Sputtery snorts answered the droning, pounding television screen, the faint glow supplementing the scant light illuminating a very large, hopelessly filthy bedroom.

“LORNA?” The annoying, familiar alto dripped with concern and frustration, nearly drowned out by the speakers tucked in the bookshelf. Bobblehead dolls of various celebrities teetered and rocked atop each one with the vibrations, seeming to dance in jerky rhythm to the sounds of vintage nineties “progressive” music that her father compared to cats screeching in heat. Antique dolls with cracks in their porcelain faces and missing fingers smiled out vacantly from a rack of shelves nailed haphazardly to the wall above the full-sized bed, sharing space with a motley assortment of maquettes and figurines guaranteeing lingering paranoia, standing sentry over their unusual charge. She peered up at her favorite one of Pinhead from the first movie, scowled, and leaned up to straighten him; he was facing in the wrong direction. Satisfied, she grunted and allowed her fingers to lazily scrabble through the heap of spilled cosmetics on the bedside table. She unscrewed the cap from her bottle of nail polish, a mottled, greenish black aptly named “Oh Deadly Night” and began refreshing the chipped coat clinging to her nails, hissing in disgust when she noticed that her thumbnail was torn. She bit it off impatiently and spat it out, ignoring her mother’s footfalls on the stairs.

“Lorna,” she barked, her voice drifting closer. Blue eyes rimmed in a smudged layer of thick kohl rolled toward the closed door, momentarily distracted by the poster of the Osbornes grinning back at her.

Clipped knocks signaled the beginning of a lecture that she knew would last at least a half an hour.

“Unngggghh…WHAT, Mother?”

“Don’t give me that. I’ll ‘what, Mother?’ someone out of their cell phone privileges for a month if you don’t open this door right now, young lady,” the voice intoned.

“Pfft.” Lorna flipped double bird fingers with her still wet nails. Her mother sensed the gesture anyway.

“I’m sick of this, Lorna. Test me. I dare you.”

“What’s the capital of New Mexico?”

“Funny. I’m canceling your Verizon account as soon as I walk away from this door.” Her tone was bland, and Lorna’s heart quickened just a bit as she heard retreating footsteps.

“Shit,” she hissed, jamming the polish brush back into its bottle haphazardly and flinging it aside. She launched herself with a bounce off the disheveled bedspread and lunged for the knob. She nearly yanked the door off the hinges, the back breeze knocking loose sheets of paper from her desk. “I didn’t mean it.”

“Sure you didn’t.” Tired brown eyes studied her as Lorna watched her mother’s arms drift up and cross themselves over her chest in a familiar gesture of resignation. “Lorna, we’ve given you one chance after another. You bring home these bizarre friends, when we can get you to leave the house at all. Your grades are in the toilet. You won’t talk to me or your father with the exception of telling us every day that we suck. We’re ruining your life. We supposedly ‘don’t own you and can’t tell you what to do.’ The gravy train stops here, kiddo.” She held out the envelope that she’d carried upstairs with her and pushed it at her daughter. Lorna stared down at it with questions in her eyes.

“What’s that?”

“Read it. It’s your future.” She shook it at her; Lorna shrank back from it reflexively until her mother reached for her hand, grabbing her wrist. She pressed the envelope into her palm. “Your father and I love you, honey, but we’ve had enough. You won’t let us harbor any delusions that you’re our ‘baby’ anymore, which would be fine, but in the meantime, you refuse to grow up. You show us no respect. You don’t treat us the way you should treat the ones who love, feed and clothe you.” Tears sparked at the back of Lorna’s eyes, and she mimicked her mother’s earlier posture of crossing her arms over her meager breasts, her eyes darting to the floor to avoid her gaze.

“Whatever.”

“That’s what you always say. ‘Whatever.’ Do I deserve that?”

“I dunno…” Maybe she didn’t.

“No. You know I don’t. Stop saying you don’t know, Lorna. It’s passive-aggressive. Doctor Samson said you need to communicate without hostility if you want us to understand how you feel. Make me understand your anger instead of throwing it at me.”

“Yeah. Like nothing’s ever your fault, Mother,” she snarled, glaring down at her, rocking her weight onto one hip sullenly.

“Stop acting like EVERYTHING’S my fault, then. Or your father’s. We’re not mind-readers. We can’t get into your head. You need to talk to us if you want us to get along like a family.”

“Maybe…” Lorna’s voice drifted off.

“What, honey?” Her mother’s voice only softened slightly, but didn’t back down.

“Maybe…I don’t want you in my head. No! Maybe we’re just not a family! Are you kidding me? What a joke,” she babbled on, not caring that she was digging herself in deeper. “This is my future,” she mocked, waving the letter in the air. “What is it, a subpoena?”

“No. An acceptance letter and welcome packet. Your father just mailed out the tuition check to your new school. We discussed this with you.” She really meant We warned you.

“You’re sending me away.” Her fingers began to sweat, making grubby streaks on the paperstock.

“Yes, Lorna. We’re sending you away. We need some time to regroup and figure out where to go next. All of us. We can’t live like this. You’re unhappy.”

“How would YOU know???” The tears leaked from her eyes, diluting the kohl makeup and smudging it in macabre rivers down her pale cheeks. “You don’t know me,” she insisted. “You don’t even know…how I…feel,” she rasped. Her mother reached for her, but she flinched back as soon as she grasped her shoulders. Hands were slapped away.

“You don’t let us in. We give you everything you ask for, and it’s not enough. You just keep shutting us out. We’re enrolling you into a program that’s based on modifying your behavior and taking accountability for your actions…”

“Like rehab?”

“No. More like probation. It’s still an academic program. You’ll be evaluated by your teachers and also by your peers.”

“So, you’re kicking me out?”

“No. Just letting you try something new. Different school, a chance to start over…”

“Start what over? You’re ruining my life,” she moaned. She bowed her face into her fingertips, rubbing at her eyes as her mother let the words pour out that she wouldn’t hear.

“You call this living? Being angry every day? Getting suspended? Intimidating people? You won’t go with us to church. You quit all of your activities. You don’t even play your guitar anymore. You were so good at it, honey,” her mother implored her.

“I’m not into it anymore,” she insisted, even though her fingers itched with the urge now to dig it out of its case, buried underneath a mountain of dirty clothes in her closet. Journals of poetry and fledgling song lyrics were stuffed in her bookshelves, hidden from view. She’d never share them with her parents. They’d just haul her back to Doc Samson and put her back on antidepressants.

“You won’t give it a chance. You might feel differently once we get you out of that school.”

“Sure. School will fix everything. That’s the fucking magic cure, right?”

“Lorna, watch your language!”

“Why? It’s too late, right? You’re sending me away! I don’t have to watch my goddamned mouth anymore! I hate you! I HATE you! You don’t love me any goddamned way!”

“That’s not true; calm down!”

“NO! I WON’T CALM DOWN! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!” Her words were still competing with the blaring music escaping her room. The cartoon DVD made a surreal counterpoint to her swirling storm of anger balling itself up in her chest, choking her. “DO YOU HEAR ME? YOU…CAN’T MAKE ME DO ANYTHING!”

The air surrounding them charged itself with a fog of energy that thrummed through them both. Lorna’s mother felt the fine layer of hair on her arms stand on her end.

“Honey, calm down,” she advised, her voice plaintive now.

“Calm,” she laughed mirthlessly. “Fuck you and your ‘calm down.’” She chucked the envelope aside, letting it slide across the floor and thunk off the baseboard. “Like you and Dad are so damned happy, you can tell me how to be,” she continued.

The aluminum shelves and bookends began to rattle. Lorna’s mother heard the metal hardware mounting them into the wall studs squeak and groan in protest. The television set’s image began to skip as the DVD player emitted an odd squeal.

“Lorna, this won’t solve anything…”

“Quit trying to solve me! I’m fine! You don’t get it!” The music rose and swelled in volume. Lorna’s mother squinted inside her room, and thought she was imagining things when she saw the knob on the overpriced stereo system roll toward the indicator for maximum volume. Her eardrums throbbed in time with her heart, and she felt her breathing quicken as chills ran down her neck. The macabre menagerie of dolls and bobbleheads grinned maniacally back at her before they began falling from their shelves. Lorna’s nail polish leaked a trail of putrid color across the expensive hardwood floor where it landed earlier.

“LORNA?” The floor beneath their feet began to rumble, and various objects and beloved heirlooms hanging on the hallway walls began to pitch themselves to the floor. A brass-framed photograph crashed, scattering shards of glass the glittered in the light from the nearby sconce. It wasn’t left undisturbed either, as the matching brass neck of the light warped and twisted, groaning as it was wrenched from the wall. A shower of sparks sizzled as the wiring was jerked loose from the plaster, wrenching a ragged scream of alarm from Lorna’s mother. “You don’t want to do this,” she insisted. Lorna heard the front door swinging open downstairs and shrugged. Great. The other warden just got home.

“No.” More glass shattered as the television launched itself face-first from the dresser, denting the hardwood irreparably. The hinges of Lorna’s wooden jewelry box popped open, the latch bending back, allowing the myriad, mismatched earrings and tangled necklaces to dangle and dance through the air. “I do want to do this.” Her tears dried on her face, muddy and stark. A silver hairbrush that her mother had purchased at an estate sale that was knotted up with strands of green and black hair and puffs of dust and lint flew out the door, narrowly missing Lorna’s mother’s temple, only because she ducked.

“Barbara? Where are you?” Her father’s voice was hesitant and worried, rising as he headed toward the stairs. “What the hell’s going on? A water main just burst down the street, and I nearly got hit when the Johnson’s Rolls flipped at the intersection! It’s nuts out there…” His words evaporated on his lips.

His only child’s hair was wild and practically standing on end, resembling an eerie halo of static. He felt energy currents ripple over his flesh, and a strange pressure seemingly pushing him back. The hallway lights flickered, drawing his attention to the smoking sconce fixture and broken glass.

“Holy…”

“Mark, get back,” his wife begged.

“What the hell’s going on here?”

“Mom just showed me my future,” Lorna intoned, resigned. “Here’s yours,” she offered. One slender hand flew up in front of her in a sweeping arc, as though she were scattering grass seed on the front lawn like she’d done last spring, under extreme duress, when they forced her to help with yard work under threat of grounding.

His wrist watch, belt, snaps on his pants, even the grommets of his shoes tingled and burned against him. Unseen hands seemed to shove him backward.

He toppled like a rag doll over the banister. Lorna’s mother’s scream was guttural and shrill.

“Oh my GOD! MARK!” Lorna watched the scene unfold in slow motion as her mother ran for the railing, eyes wide as saucers. Her fingertips grazed his, and the railing groaned beneath the impact of her leaning over it to catch him…

His face was twisted in confusion and shock as he fell backwards, the flaps of his jacket fluttering with his descent. Lorna tore herself from the sudden trance and extended her hand again, this time gathering her knuckles into a ball, clutching the air.

Mark hovered mere inches from the floor for seven scant, agonizing seconds. Cold beads of sweat gathered in every nook of his body, and his breathing was harsh and clipped. His face mirrored his wife’s as her head hung over the railing in disbelief, murmuring defiantly.

“That didn’t just happen…you didn’t just do that…Lorna, why?” She turned away from her husband for one conflicted second to face her daughter. Lorna’s clenched fist was white-knuckled, and she appeared to be straining over some unseen effort that her mother could not fathom. “How?” she pleaded.

“I don’t…know,” she sobbed, her voice finally cracking. She only tore her eyes away from her daughter when she heard the faint thud against the living room floor. Her mother dashed down the stairs and threw herself into her husband’s lap, clutching him to her chest and rocking him after a frantic check to make sure he was in one piece. He breathed in deep gusts into her shoulder, peering up at Lorna where she leaned over the railing with wet eyes. Her face twisted before she ran back into her room.

Most of her possessions littered the floor now. Patches of plaster were torn loose from the walls. What was nearly a pigsty before was now a shambles. Lorna grabbed her black snakeskin purse and a ratty, razor-slashed denim jacket with Eminem screened onto the back of it and climbed out the bedroom window, edging her way along the roof until he reached her usual branch of the huge oak planted in the side yard. She scooched along, climbing her way down in stained, faded Converse high top sneakers until her foot slipped. She fell this time, not bothering to catch herself, no longer as desperate to save herself the pain. She bit her tongue when she landed and felt her teeth clack together.

She literally hit the ground running, heedless of the destruction that marked her quiet neighborhood. Mr. Cleveland’s cast iron lawn flamingoes were hopelessly mangled, their legs twisted into pretzels.

Barbara Dane released her husband reluctantly as she crept back up the stairs. She searched Lorna’s room, looking for any sign of where she could have gone. It was the same hopelessly black room. She wouldn’t bend when she tried to persuade her to outfit the room with a more cheerful color scheme; the bed was dressed in a black acetate spread and blood-red satin sheets. Black tab-top panels covered the windows and were now blowing in the breeze. Horror movie posters leered at her from the back of Lorna’s door as she searched the closet, looking for drug paraphernalia, empty beer bottles. Anything that could explain her behavior and push her to that fever pitch…

She’d always known Lorna was different and just accepted it. She’d feared the day that her adoptive daughter would one day announce that she was leaving to find birth parents, or some clue to her origins before she became a part of their family.

She’d never truly feared losing her before now, with such chilling finality. She only felt numb when Mark bellowed up to her that he was calling the police.





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