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I don’t know how many times I throw myself against the door. Try to jam my fingers into the gap. Yelling for Mom to come back and open the fucking door, let me out, I’ll agree to anything if you let me out. My throat goes raw.

I sit on the stairs and scream into my hands.

I go to the tiny window at the top of the wall on the far side of the room, looking out at the backyard, and shove the recliner against the wall and climb up, only to remember that there are bars over the glass to reduce the risk of break-ins.

I stand at the bottom and gasp for air.

I’m hyperventilating.

Maybe I deserve this. Maybe I am a monster, and I’ll never get better, and I have to sit here and wait until Mom comes back from wherever she’s gone and brings the cops with her. It would be easier than trying to fix this one more time. I’m tired. I don’t want to do this anymore.

I tear all of Dad’s belongings out of their carefully packed boxes because he’s never coming back to get them. I rip all his suits out of their garment bags because he’s never going to wear them again. I reach behind the big TV mounted on the wall and yank out all the cords, pull on the mounting until the drywall cracks, and when I can’t get it to come free, I take a cup resting on top of the liquor cabinet and fling it at the screen. TVs aren’t made of glass anymore. It doesn’t crack. It just leaves a sad gray dent where the cup made contact.

My head is about to explode. I press my hands against my temples and hit them twice before the pain snaps to life, burning. It hurts where Mom threw me against the cabinets.

So instead I hunch over and knock my head against the stairs.

My mind repeats the clack click-clack.

The sound of Dad locking and unlocking the door: Clack click-clack.

Clack click-clack.

Clack click-clack.

Get up.

Breathe.

Come on.

Up off the floor. Get UP.

I’ve pulled out enough of my hair that it’s tangled between my fingers in a gnarl of red. My nail beds are bloody and torn. I’ve cried so much that my face has gone numb, my eyes swollen. I’m so tired. I want to lie down and fucking die.

GET UP.

I drag myself up the stairs. One at a time.

Press my hand to the new knob, the mechanism, the handle.

I wipe tears from my eyes to get a better view. Okay. New knob, new lock. Clearly locks from the outside, a reversed privacy lock, the kind you’d find in a bedroom or bathroom. Probably grabbed from a hardware store, even though it’s an older, unpopular model.

Oh. They’re unpopular because there’s a keyhole.

How did I—how did I not see that? I was panicking. Losing my shit. But there’s a keyhole. Does Mom not know I can pick locks?

You’ll figure it out eventually, right?

This fucking bitch.

I go to the side table close to the liquor cabinet and yank open the drawer.

There. I pull out the mutilated paper clips, the cut on my hand stinging horribly as I adjust the angles of the metal wire. My makeshift lockpicks. They’re perfect.

Back up the stairs. Thump to my knees in front of the lock, jam them into the keyhole. I can do this.

It was Dr. Lý’s idea to learn to pick locks. She even bought me a cheap lock at the hardware store before I quit therapy for good, said maybe learning would help ease the panic response. Give me a sense of control over a situation. I rolled my eyes at her, but I still took it home. And I learned. I stole paper clips and I bent them and I learned.