Excerpt: Locked & Cranked

I've been trying to decide how to tell it.

After all of my rambling about it – my bitching and whining – I realize that Ivy's story not only has to be told, but it has to be told in a way that will telegraph just how insipid the girl really is. Or was. Whatever. But that leaves me with so many options, and god knows I've never been one who's good at making decisions. Or should that say, “I've never been one to make good decisions”...?

Again, I say, whatever.

I could tell you what gets said, meeting after meeting, using that syrupy I'm-so-innocent-and-I-was-corrupted voice that the group has now identified as Truly Ivy. I could do that. It wouldn't be hard. But I think we would all get more out if it if I were to adopt something of a narrative. I can step outside this whole thing, and I can tell you what I've heard, and you can read each and every snide comment that goes through my head. It would be beneficial to all involved, really. Hell, we could consider this – this storytelling of mine – a part of my therapy. Maybe it'll get me out of this place earlier. Maybe it'll secure my place in my cinderblock bedroom that much longer.

Personally, I\m hoping for the latter. There's not nearly as much out there for me as there is in here.

I've dithered enough, I think. You're going to hear Ivy's story through my filters. Third person, totally removed. Well, not totally. I won't be able to avoid editorializing; surely you can tell that about me already. Oh, sure, it won't be “accurate” - not in the classic sense, anyway – but you'll get a much fuller picture of this life of girl who believes she was so corrupted by the bad, bad people in her life, and that it's everyone's fault but hers that she's here. And I can guarantee that'll be a much, much more interesting story than even the one that glues the group members to their chairs every Wednesday. Call me full of myself; I don't care. I believe I can expound and improve upon perfection, if that's what you'd call the Ivy story. My fellow group members surely would, and probably have, passing notes like teenagers in high school when they go back to their own dismal bedrooms at night, whispering in the dark about what they're going to hear next week, about who might have wronged Ivy even more than the last guy they heard about. It's a psychiatric soap opera, and everyone is eating it up. Ivy is back to being the belle of the ball, albeit a very different one from the life she left behind.

One has to wonder what took her so bloody long to figure out how to get these adlle-brained losers as transfixed as all the others were in her previous incarnation. Maybe she's not as much smarter than them as she'd like to believe.

You'll be able to decide for yourself, once you know the whole story. I know I certainly have.