The Happy Treatment

About a week has passed since Eva came home. Or maybe 2? I don’t know. The days blend together now. Whenever I visit Eva the days all look the same, but I still force myself to visit her because I always told her I’d take care of her. She had always said the same to me, but she’s not capable of doing that anymore. I can’t be certain that she still isn’t hurting inside. Every move she makes seems scripted and forced, as if her mind is now poorly programmed. She looks in pain, but she’s happy. Perhaps her mind has been twisted to be happy to be in pain. I’ll never know for sure. It’s near impossible to get in someone’s head once they’ve had the Happy treatment.

Today is another day I will go to Eva’s house. I try not to admit it to myself, but these are the days I dread sometimes. I’ve hung out with Zophie more since the first time I saw Eva’s new self, since she’s able to have more of a conversation than Eva now. I use Zophie as something I can look forward to during these painful visits. We use each other for good conversation and comfort, since we can’t use Eva for those things anymore.

“Cindy! Hi!” Eva opens the front door of her house. Her chirpy voice jolts me into reality and out of my head. I must’ve zoned out the entire drive here and the walk up to her door. I blink and rub my eyes. “Hey,” I say tiredly.

“Come on in! How are you?” She steps aside, letting me enter.

“Where’s Zophie and Lavvy?” I ask, ignoring her empty question.

“In Zophie’s room. I’ll bet you she’s taking care of her plants. She loves those plants!”

“Yep,” I say emotionlessly. I’ve stopped ranting to Eva about herself. I haven’t cried in front of her recently, and I haven’t yelled at her for not talking to me. I’ve more or less played along with her empty and meaningless small talk. I feel myself getting used to this new Eva, and I hate it. As I predicted, it only pushes the Eva I used to know farther away in my memories.

Since I’ve taken the letter she wrote me home, I’ve found myself reading through it after every visit I’ve had with this new Eva, so I can try my hardest not to let my Eva in the past go. I can’t get it through my head that my Eva doesn’t exist anymore. She’s in the past, and I keep trying to pull her forward with me, but things that are in the past don’t budge, so it’s me who gets pulled back rather than the old Eva pulled forward. Things in the past don’t move, I know that, yet I’m too stubborn to live that fact out. I’m too hurt to accept this new, cold Eva.

We walk upstairs to Eva’s room and she pulls out her phone as usual. I do the same, since this is all we do now.

“Wow!” Eva starts, “Did you hear about that new law that was passed? Everyone’s so mad about it, it’s so crazy!”

“Yep, crazy,” I say with empty words.

“So crazy,” Eva echos. I set my phone down, and I feel awkward not looking at it, yet I can’t stare at it for any longer. The feeling of being depressed is stronger than the feeling of being awkward.

“My psychiatrist gave me a refill on my meds finally,” I say, staring at the wall.

“Oh, wonderful!” Eva says without looking up from her phone.

“It was expensive,” I say. I stare at Eva, something I catch myself doing quite often now, trying to find if any ounce of the Eva I used to know is left. I want to talk to her, really talk to her, but she’s not there anymore. Get it through your head, Cindy, I think to myself, She’s not there anymore.

“Eva?” I say. She looks up at me with those eyes I don’t recognize and waits for a response.

I look away, “Nevermind.”

I want to rant to her again, tell her what I’m thinking and how much I miss her, but I know I’d be talking to a wall. That’s what it’s been like since she’s changed.

We sat in silence for a while. She scrolls on her phone and I stare at her wall, overthinking taking over my mind. No sound fills the room except the quiet hum of the AC. It’s the sort of silence that’s deafening with how loud my thoughts are.

I look over at her desk, where my car keys sit. Mom has been extra generous with letting me use her car lately, since I don’t use it as much as I used to, with how little I visit Eva now compared to how much I visited her before. I look at my keys, considering if maybe I should just go ahead and leave. These visits feel useless now. Why do I still care for her when it just doesn’t matter anymore?

Next to my keys sits her cup of pencils and pens, and I’m reminded of the letter she wrote me. Everything reminds me of the old Eva. I get up and walk over to the desk, Eva oblivious to my movement. I open her drawer and pull out a piece of paper and grab a pencil from her pencil cup. I sit in her desk chair and place the pencil on the paper, not exactly sure what I’m doing. Maybe this might do something. If I write what I’m thinking instead of going off on her. I sigh, knowing that logic probably doesn’t make sense. This is more for me than it is for Eva, feeling like I just need to get these thoughts out.

Eva, I start with. I pause, hesitating on how to start or what to really say.

I turn and look at Eva again, the silence in the room acting as a strong, unbreakable barrier between us, forever separating us even when we’re right next to each other. She scrolls on her phone, oblivious to my pain and mourning.

I can’t bring myself to write with this Eva I don’t know in the same room as me. It doesn’t feel right, writing something to the old Eva when the new Eva is in my presence. It only reminds me more that the old Eva will never get to read what I write, that the old Eva is gone and replaced with this stranger I’ve gotten to know now. This stranger I’ve unfortunately gotten used to. This stranger that has already started pushing back the old Eva farther away in my memories the more I come over here.

I just want her back.

I want her to look at me. I want her to look at me the way she used to. I want to see those eyes full of depth and genuine care.

“Eva?” I say trying again, my voice more shaky than I thought.

She looks up from her phone again, no sense of recognition on her face.

“Do you…” I paused, thinking of what exactly I can work up the strength to say, “Do you still like when I come over?”

“Of course! I love when -”

I cut her off, “No,” I say, “Stop. Stop saying empty words without thinking. Please. Just think about it and tell me.”

She sat there with a confused expression. “I do like when you come over,” she says less chirpy like.

“So why don’t you ever ask me to come over? If you don’t miss me or even think of me when I’m not around, do you really like when I come over? Do you really care that I still care about you? Even though, now you don’t need anyone to care for you?”

I caught myself again. I was asking too many questions that probably hurt her brain with confusion. I was talking to a wall. Why do I keep trying this? I thought, Why do I keep trying so hard to talk when I’ve had the same outcome each time?

“I don’t know,” Eva says, as expected. I turned back around and faced my paper. “Okay,” I said.

“I do like when you come,” I hear Eva say from behind. I don’t say anything, and by the time I turn around I see she’s back on her phone, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.

“Why do you like it when I come?” I finally say, hoping maybe if I ask one question at a time her brain may process it.

“Because you’re amazing!” She says. I sigh, but I keep trying.

“Eva,” I say, “why am I amazing?”

“Because you are!”

I take a deep breath. “Try really hard to think, Eva. Can you give me a specific reason why you like it when I come?” That may be too many words for her.

She’s quiet for a moment, then responds with “You care!”

To test this response, I say “Does your dad care?”

“He’s amazing!” She says.

“But he cares right? As much as me?”

She laughs, “No, he doesn’t care at all, so I like when you come instead, but he’s amazing!”

This conversation is painful, but I want to accept it so bad that maybe she really does care if I come over. I want to accept that maybe she still knows who I am, and that maybe there’s still a piece left of her.

I hear a knock on Eva’s open door. I look over and Zophie is standing in the doorway with a cup of water, along with Lavvy wagging her tail by Zophie’s side.

“Just going to water the plant since Eva can’t do shit anymore,” she says. Since the Happy treatment, Zophie has been more aggressive than she used to be towards Eva.

“So sweet, Zophie!” Eva says.

“Shut up,” Zophie responds, walking over to Eva’s window sill, Lavvy following close behind after first greeting me with a joyful sniff. She turns in my direction as she pours the cup of water into the pot. “You still trying to get anything out of her, Cindy?” She says.

I nod with disappointment. “I don’t know why I still try.”

“Nah, I still try too,” Zophie says reassuringly. After pouring the water in the plant, Zophie takes a seat on the floor, leaving some space between her and Eva. Even with how Eva is now and this whole painful situation, I forget sometimes that Zophie is still the younger sister, and despite everything, she still invites herself to hang out with Eva and I sometimes, like most younger sisters do with older sisters who have their friends over. I didn’t mind at all. It was nice to have another person who could really think in the room with me. It helped me feel less insane talking to Eva.

“What’d you try asking her this time?” Zophie asks.

“Just if she actually cares if I come over or not. You know, if she actually still enjoys seeing me,” I respond. It’s as if Eva isn’t in the room anymore, acting as if she’s completely deaf to the conversation being held in front of her. She continues to scroll through social media on her phone.

“I think she does,” Zophie says hopefully, “I think you just have to pay attention to the small things with her, how she may act slightly differently with different people. I’ve tried to study what things she does differently, but I can’t really tell for sure yet what the big differences are.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I don’t know… Like her door - I guess I could say for example. It could just be me seeing something that’s not there, but I feel like it’s open more often when she knows you’re coming over, versus when Dad is about to come home. Stuff like that.”

I nodded, not really having enough false hope to believe her. Like Zophie said herself, I think it’s just her seeing something she wants to see more than what is actually there.

“I don’t think enough time has really passed by enough for you to officially go with that though,” I say, “It’s probably just a coincidence that we’re both hoping is more than that.”

“I know, that’s why I didn’t really want to say anything yet and get your hopes up like mine just by seeing whether her door is open or not.” Her tone sounds a bit annoyed. We sit quietly for a moment, something quite common now.

“I just want something to make me hope,” Zophie says, breaking the silence again. She looks at Eva longingly as she stares at her phone, like a child oblivious to the world playing on a tablet. “I want to hope that there’s a piece of her still in there,” Zophie says.

After a bit, I decided to leave early, because, to tell the truth, I’m bored. I can only be by Eva while she sits and does nothing for so long. Zophie feeds Lavvy while I walk down the stairs from Eva’s room alone, which is the usual now.

As I stand at the front door, I turn around and see Eva’s room upstairs. A small part of me still hopes that maybe one day she’ll be standing behind me like she used to do. The front door opens and I turn around to see Mr. Straus is home earlier than usual.

I jump, “Oh,” I say, startled, “Hi, Mr. Straus. I was just leaving.”

“Hi, Cindy,” he says, not too interested as he immediately heads towards the kitchen. I hear a faint noise and turn back towards the stairs. Eva closed her door.

:) :) :)

At home, I have the house to myself again. Mom isn’t back from work yet since I left early from Eva’s today. I do nothing here, like I did at Eva’s, but here it’s a different nothing. It’s a relaxed nothing. I can’t feel relaxed or comfortable at Eva’s house anymore. Everything looks too different, though the appearance of the house hasn’t actually changed. I go to my room and plop down on my bed to stare at the ceiling, something I do much more than what is considered healthy now, but I often feel too depressed to do anything else.

The more I do nothing, the more depressed I seem to get, yet the more depressed I seem to get, the more I do nothing. It’s a vicious cycle I feel too weak to escape from right now.

I grab the messily stacked up letter Eva wrote to me that sits on my nightstand next to my bed. I flip through it as I lay, rereading the parts that stick out to me the most. Reading where she says “I love you” and where she talks about how a kind and caring girl such as herself is selfish. As I’ve mentioned before, I read these words after every visit with Eva, needing to be reminded of what she used to be.

I’m reminded of the note I tried to write at her house earlier, thinking if the old Eva wrote to me, then maybe it could help if I wrote back to her. I sit up, looking around my room. I spotted a pen and some paper. I get up and grab them while also grabbing a book for a hard surface to write over and I sit back down on my bed, leaning against the headboard.

Eva, I started again. I feel myself overthinking again on how to start this, nervous of what Eva would think of me if she ever did read this, but I find myself remembering how excited and happy she used to get whenever I’d open up to her, and the overthinking slowly melts away as I hold that precious memory in my head.

I write, letting the emotions fall out through the ink in the pen and onto the paper. I find it’s much easier to write without Eva in the room with me, as she was earlier.

I write everything that confuses Eva when I try to talk to her now. I write the deep thoughts I’ve tried to express to her that can never be fully expressed when spoken to her empty mind. I write what little I can into words, yet it’s enough.

Eva,

I think back to the moments we used to have that feel so long ago, so distant. The people I see in my memories seem like completely different people, they seem as if they’re strangers I used to know, but don’t anymore. The times we were happy, the times things weren’t complicated and we didn’t even know they weren’t complicated. They were simple. I loved you and you loved me, and though we had our problems, I felt okay when I was with you. I felt like I could trust you though I’m not good at trusting. I opened up to you. I told you things I used to not even tell myself. I loved you.

When I remember how long ago those memories were, it really hasn’t been too long, so why does it feel that way? Why can I not recognize the two happy people in my memories? They’re me and you, yet I haven’t seen those people in so long. When I look at you now, you don’t look at me back. Your blue eyes don’t possess that brightening little gleam they used to have. Instead your eyes have been replaced with deep, gray pools of despair. You don’t look at me anymore, all I see are those dark pools, and I don’t know who you are. You’re not my Eva. You’re distant, and you feel more distant with each passing day. You feel far away when you’re right next to me. You feel cold, as if you’ve passed on and now your body is left here to continue walking and speaking with a hollow, empty voice that doesn’t belong to the person in my memories. It doesn’t belong to you, the person I loved. Now, when you’re next to me I miss you.

I miss you so much.

I think back to what Eva wrote in her letter, when I wasn’t able to catch her when she stopped telling the truth in her last real days. Please don’t blame yourself for not catching only a few lies out of a million truths.

I do blame myself though.

I grew too comfortable, too comfortable with trusting, and now I’m forced to deal with the consequences of where my trusting got me.

“I trusted you, Eva,” I say to the empty air in my room quietly as I rest my face in my hands.

Everything that’s happened, everything I’ve written here, everything I feel now. It’s because I trusted.

:) :) :)

The last few days since visiting Eva have been… boring, all the same, blurry. Normal. I’ve hated it. I’ve gone to school, made average grades, neither trying my best nor completely giving up. I’ve sat next to Eva in English class, telling her hi and bye as I usually do, with nothing much in between. Darrian, I’ve noticed, hasn’t been to school in a while, at least not English class, and everyone seems to be waiting for the announcement we’re all too used to where Darrian tragically has passed on. No one knows for sure if that’s the case yet, however. I’ve seen Ryker a few times in the halls, and even once briefly greeted him as we crossed paths, receiving a cheerful “hello” in response.

I’ve stopped looking up like I used to. In the hallways and in classes, I don’t see the scars that line everyone’s arms or legs or anywhere else on their bodies like I used to see. I can’t see anyone’s empty and broken eyes anymore. How can I when all I do now is look straight ahead, or straight at the ground like everyone else does?

Once I made it home for the day, taking Mom’s car since she’s had it for the past few days, I plopped my backpack in the doorway, not caring that it doesn’t belong there. It’s been a few extra days than usual since I’ve last visited Eva, and to be honest, I have a feeling that was the last I was going to visit her.

Now that the grief has mostly ebbed away, I feel bored. I felt depressingly bored last time I was with Eva, now that I’ve started to accept she may be fully gone in her head.

Scrolling through our texts over the last few weeks, they all look the same.

“On my way.”

“Wonderful!”

A few days later: “Coming over now.”

“Great! Excited!”

Later: “On my way.”

“Yay!”

It continues on, the conversations we used to have getting pushed farther and farther down the texting chain, as well as down in my memories.

It’s a strange feeling, feeling this numb. The last visit I had with Eva was probably the worst when I think about it, though I don’t feel myself thinking much anymore. Only in bursts of overflowing emotions, then back to numb and bored.

The worst day wasn’t when she burned her arm making cookies. It wasn’t the days when I had exhausted every part of me to talk to her through my tears, hoping that some part of her may still be there to understand my pain. It wasn’t the days when I felt broken, to the point of where I’d randomly start crying in front of her, knowing it doesn’t make a difference to her whether I cry in front of her or not.

The worst day was the day I felt bored. Numb. The day when there were no tears, no strong emotions being shown, nothing. The day I showed up at Eva’s house and everything seemed and happened exactly as I expected it. The day where - I guess one could say - I had gotten used to it.

I hated it.

The feeling of being used to everything that dragged you through grief, mourning, pain, and endless, excruciating overthinking, not even a month ago.

But at times, it felt like I couldn’t cry anymore, even if I tried to. I could overthink my usual thoughts, desperately wish the old Eva were still here, but I thought these thoughts too much, and I had grown numb to them. I had grown used to them.

My phone buzzes. I no longer carry the false hope that maybe, just maybe, it might be Eva texting. I pull out my phone as I walk and sit down at the kitchen table. It’s Mom. Her work is giving her a company at home computer to use and she’s asking if I will be home to sign for it whenever the delivery comes. I respond with a simple “no problem,” and stare out the window, my new focus being watching for the delivery truck.

The longer I sit here waiting, the deeper I hold on to the conclusion that I may never see Eva again. I can’t bring myself to see the point anymore. Zophie still holds on to hope that just isn’t there, but as I have more time away from Eva and we don’t live in the same house, I’m left with more processing time. I’m left with more time to step back and analyze that there just isn’t anything there. There wasn’t anything when I visited Ryker like I had convinced myself there was, and there isn’t anything with Eva.

They’re all just gone.

The only pieces of Eva I see now are merely just in my head. I’ve seen that for myself, and now that I’ve seen and realized that, there’s no point in going back. There’s no point in visiting a ghost of someone you used to know.

I can now conclude I am officially alone again.

Of course I have Mom, and I love her dearly. I have Zophie and I have the occasional acquaintances I may see outside of school sometimes, but no one is the same as how Eva and I used to be.

I guess I’m not alone, but with not having the one person I want with me most, I feel alone.

I feel like nothing can ever fix this numbness, this feeling of being used to what gives me pain. Eva could fix it, but she’s not here anymore.

I’m stuck here. I’ll never meet another person like Eva, not in this world. I’ll continue to live day after day with a blur, with nothing but the numb, empty feeling that fills where Eva used to be in my heart.

She’s gone. I give up searching for any sign of life left in her eyes, any sign of my best friend being trapped inside. I’m not going over there again. I’m done.

The doorbell rings and I jump. The delivery truck sits outside running next to the mailbox. I must have zoned out again and never noticed the deliverer coming up to the doorstep.

I get up and open the door.

“Hey!” A delivery man stands in front of me.

“Hey. It’s for Reeves?” I say.

“Yep! Just sign here,” he hands me the package and a clipboard with a paper and pen. I lock eye contact with him for a moment as he hands me everything, and I can tell he’s had the Happy treatment (I’m getting good at this, I thought).

Only a few weeks ago I would’ve asked him a lot of questions and tried to find out a small sliver of why he received his treatment, but I’m too tired now, and I don’t care anymore.

I click the pen and sign my name.

“You get some cool merch from here?” He asks cheerfully as he points to the company logo on the box.

“Nah, a computer,” I say plainly with what little energy I have. I handed the clipboard back to him.

“Ever better! My son once got a computer from this company and he got some super cool company stickers with it as a bonus!”

Looking past his empty eyes, I notice a hint of familiarity now that he mentions a son. He has similar but small resemblances of the co-worker Mom car-pulls with.

“Oh, wait,” I say, curiously. It may make Mom interested to hear I met her possible co-worker’s father today delivering her computer. “Which branch is he from? Does he still work there?”

“Nope, he’s dead now,” He says, the smile on his face barely flinching.

“Oh…” I say, caught off guard. I wasn’t trying to find out anything about this man’s tragic past, yet of course, the information is forced on to me anyway. I shouldn’t be surprised with how my life has been playing out recently.

“Anyway, enjoy that computer!” The delivery man says as he walks back to his truck and drives off to other houses.

I close the front door and toss the box on the kitchen table. I plop down in the kitchen chair and rest my head in my hand. I feel like I should cry now, but I can’t get the tears to come. I’m still too numb.

I can’t live another day like this.

I just can’t.

I stand up, feeling dizzy, and walk swiftly to my room. I grab my knife from my nightstand and walk down the hall until I’m out the door with the car keys and in the car. I find myself driving away, my house getting smaller in the rearview mirror as I drive farther.

I decide to be done. With reasoning, with fighting, with thinking. With everything.