Luke looked at me and then at the ground, back to me, and then at the ground. He shuffled his feet, rolling a small pebble around on the concrete sidewalk. He pulled at a random string hanging off his t-shirt.

"Oh for the love of the God, Julia!" I shouted. "Seriously?"

Julia squinted in the afternoon sun. She scrunched up her face and cocked her purple-haired head to the side. "You know you would have told him eventually."

Dead silence resonated amongst us. I wasn't sure what was stronger, my fear and embarrassment over Luke knowing my secrets, or my searing rage at Julia for divulging those secrets.

Eventually we started walking towards the Zoo entrance. The smell of the zoo was over powering, filled with childhood nostalgia. I remembered walking hand in hand with my dad, eating snow cones and watching the Lions bask in the hot sun. Molly was usually trudging reluctantly behind us, arms crossed and silent. I didn't mind playing the dutiful daughter part. In fact, I kind of enjoyed is sometimes. Molly couldn't stand to leave our room. She went to school because she had to, but it was hard to get her to agree to go anywhere else without her sulking the whole time.

Now Luke reminded me of her. He walked slowly several feet behind us, looking like he didn't want to be there. He had hardly said hello to me, no hug, nothing. Fine I decided, if he wanted to be that way, who needed him? Not everyone could be a believer like Julia. Julia, who now looked like she was going to burst into tears at any moment. She kept mouthing, "I'm sorry," at me ever few minutes. I just shook my head, either in acceptance or indifference, I wasn't really sure which. We saw elephants, zebras and giraffes first in the Savanna exhibit.

"Vivian? Where is your most favoritest place to visit in the whole wide Zoo?" Julia suddenly asked me putting on her best brave little toaster smile.

"Favoritest is not a word," I muttered.

"It's not? Well it is today! Come on Viv, your most favoritest place, out with it!" Julia looped her arm around mine and pulled me along faster. I could tell the awkward silence was killing her, I had never heard her be this quiet for so long.

"I like the bears the best I suppose."

"Bears it is cutie-face!" Julia looked over her shoulder at Luke. "Step it up Luke, we're going on a bear hunt! You still have that map?"

Luke rolled his eyes and retrieved the map from his back pocket. In navigating us to the bear pit he finally started talking and acting a little more like himself. He started to babble on about the history of how Zoo's came about. Julia seemed bored but I liked the mini-lesson and at least Luke was talking to me again. At the bear pit we stopped and leaned against the railing. Julia skipped off towards a cart selling soda in goofy animal shaped souvenir cups, leave Luke and I alone for the first time that day.

The bear pit was surrounded by nothing more than a low iron gate, space, and a deep mote with very little water in it surrounding each little bear area. Apparently the bears wouldn't or couldn't climb into the mote but I always thought it was a small barrier between us and a huge hungry bear. A brown grizzly bear was sitting on his fake stone mountain ledge. When he saw that he was building an audience he got up and waddled his humongous body back and forth, pacing and giving everyone a big browned eyed stare.

I felt a sudden cold chill and shivered. Luke, noticing my discomfort, put his warm hand over mine. "Your hands are like ice," he said. They were. I could feel tears welling up behind my eyes. Something, or rather, someone was coming. There was nothing I could do to stop it.

"I have no idea what I might say or do today Luke. I didn't want you to find out like this but now you know and I just feel like I should warn you. . ."

"I'm here Viv. I don't know what's going on, but I'm here," he said, pulling me finally into his arms. I leaned into him, breathing in his scent and feeling his arms around my waist. It was a nice moment. Too bad it didn't last long.

Briefly I was wrapped up in the security of my boyfriend's warm embrace and the next thing I could remember was the feeling of cold steal shackles being slammed against my wrists. The ground where I lay was cold and hard and my head ached terribly. Why was I on the ground?

Someone was shouting obscenities and begging for my release. With considerable effort I lifted my face from the ground and saw the large crowd of strangers forming around me. Julia was the one who was shouting, angry and pink-faced. Luke was standing by her side with his hands clenched up at his temples, looking like he was trying not to pass out.

"Where are you taking her? Let her go right goddamn now! Vivian! Vivian! I'm going to get your dad ok!" She was yelling and crying. My head was so foggy; I still couldn't tell what was going on.

Someone pulled me up by my arms from behind. I tried to stand but I stumbled and was held steady. Ushered into the back of a car, my head still swimming in darkness, realization finally set in.

A loud thump against the window pulled me back to reality fast. Luke had run at the police car and slammed his hands against the window, hard. "Why are you doing this? Can't you see that she's sick? She needs help!"

Sick? Luke thought I was sick? So he definitely didn't believe that I was haunted by ghosts. What a surprise.

"Calm down! Now!" the cop yelled at him. He was a big guy too, not someone you would normally think about charging. "We're taking her to a hospital, not the police station. The handcuffs are for her own protection."

Tears were streaming down Luke's face. His shoulders slumped over in a look of total defeat.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember what had happened but I saw only dark swirling madness; it made me feel like throwing up. Instead, I fainted into blissful unconsciousness.

When I woke up I kept my eyes shut tight. Terrified of what ever was coming next, I wanted to listen and feel but not see. I took an inventory. Cool crisp sheets. The smell of disinfectant and plastic. A painful burn in my arm where I was sure an IV was stuck. Certainly I was in a hospital. It felt familiar even though I couldn't remember the last time I was actually in a hospital. Maybe back when I had my tonsils removed in 5th grade?

There were other people in the room. My head was still hurting badly and everything sounded like it was underwater. My limbs were heavy and motionless. I tried to listen to the voices in the room hoping to figure out who was there without opening my eyes. I wasn't ready to let anyone know I was awake yet.

"I am not going through this again. I refuse!" A woman's voice hung in the air. It was my mother, I was sure of that. My dad answered her.

"Refuse? It's happening Laura. You can't refuse."

"It never ends," she said in an exasperated tone. "It never gets better."

"She needs our help, we can't just abandon her when she needs us the most . . ."

He was interrupted by my unintentional sharp intake of breath. I opened my eyes, blinking rapidly at the shock of bright light.

"Hello sweetheart," he said to me, rushing to my side. "You're in the hospital honey. There was a, well, an incident. You're OK now we just need to get you some rest here."

"Oh for the love of God Matthew, she is not OK, she is not OK at all!" my mother shouted, loud enough for a nurse to come rushing in. The nurse was young and blond and pretty. Picking up on the tension in the room she quietly announced that visiting hours were over and they should leave so I could rest and see the doctor now that I was awake. They didn't argue. My mother abruptly walked out of the room, having never spoken a single word to me.

"She's just upset Vivian, you know how she is, she isn't quite over . . ." he trailed off.

"The other incident," I interrupted in my groggy half asleep voice. "When are you going to stop calling it that? We never talk about Molly. We never talk about it!" My dad looked at me like I had just slapped him in the face. His mouth opened but he just shook his head without speaking.

I was shouting now but just before I was able to get good and mad, I felt a cold push of liquid enter my veins through the IV. A biting metallic taste filled my mouth even though there was nothing there. My conscious thoughts drifted away, back to the blackness.

The next time I woke up I was happy to see that instead of my parents, Julia was sitting in the chair across from my bed. She was sitting sideways with her legs thrown over the arm of the chair, sketching something furiously in her portfolio with a black piece of charcoal. Amazingly I sat up with out feeling too bad. Outside the sun was shining clear and bright, it looked like morning.

"Finally! Sleeping Beauty has arisen!" Julia quipped; but her voice didn't have its normal gleeful happiness to it. Her banter sounded forced.

"What the hell happened?" I asked.

"You seriously don't remember?" Julia looked at me with wide quizzical eyes.

"Seriously, I do not remember. I was standing with Luke at the bear pit, he was hugging me; I remember that. Then I remember being slammed to the ground by a blue giant who restrained me and threw me in the back of a squad car."

Julia leaned towards me and launched into her dramatic story, doing what she did best, assaulting me with words so fast I could hardly understand them.

"I came back with drinks and Luke was yelling frantically! He was waving his arms around all crazy and all out screaming at you to come back. At first I couldn't see you; then I realized why Luke was so upset. You had climbed the fence separating the crowd from the bears. You know that big mote keeping the bears from getting out? You walked right up to it and slid down the side of it into the water and waded back out on the other side and climbed up to the bear platform." Her words were coming out faster and faster so that they all blended into one big sentence.

"Slow down, I can't keep up Jules. I think you lost me somewhere around the word bear."

Julia took a long breath. "I thought my heart was going to stop beating. You looked weird too, determined actually, like you couldn't see anything else except that bear. You just kept walking towards it like a zombie!"

"I don't remember," I said in barely a whisper.

"How can you not remember trying to kill yourself by way of bear? Seriously Vivian, I know shit is really messed up for you right now but come on, suicide? You really want to make your parents relive losing another child?" Julia's words were cold and cruel but completely true from her perspective.

I wasn't trying to kill myself but someone certainly wanted me dead. The trip down the stairs had been a warning but today Katrina had really meant to kill me, I was sure of it. Apparently a zoo keeper was getting ready to feed the bears and was already on his way in when he heard and saw all the commotion. He tackled me to the ground which is why I felt like I had been hit by a truck.

"What, no leather restraints? I asked trying to lighten the mood, pulling my clearly free hands from under the covers. "Aren't they worried I might try again?"

Julia half-smiled and pointed to a security camera mounted on the ceiling. "Smile, you're on TV. It's the 24 hour Vivian suicide-watch show. Very high ratings I hear."

I returned her slight smile and leaned back into the pillows again. At least she didn't hate me, and she was visiting, that meant something.