"I should never have come back," her mother said. "I should have stayed away. Away from you."

Little Meta shook in the floor. She still had hospital tags on her wrist. Her mom towered over her like the refrigerator. She thought her mom would start humming like the refrigerator did when it was out of ice. It always scared her. If her mom started humming she might run away, even though she didn't know where. She couldn't run to her daddy.

Maybe she could run to the North Pole. She'd heard that's where Santa lived, and even though she didn't believe in Santa anymore, she thought maybe someone nice lived there. It seemed as good a place as any.

But then she thought there were probably a lot of pillows at the North Pole, with it being so cold and all. Then it didn't sound so good.

Her mom shook her head and bundled her curly hair in her hands. "Maybe I should go back. Maybe I wasn't ready. You're just too much. Too much. Why would you do something like this. Why would you even think to do something like this. Hell, I should be the one overdosing. I should be the one dumping sleeping pills down my throat. I'm the one up all night with nightmares and night terrors and creatures jumping out at me in the night, and why the hell would you do this! Now I have one more thing to think about, one more thing to worry about, one more thing to scream about when the white coats come take me away!"

Meta cowered. The pillows were laughing at her. But the more her mother yelled and the more her thick brows knotted and her curly hair shredded between her fingers, the nicer the pillows seemed. She began to think they were her only friends.

Her mother's face turned red, and she raised her hand as though to slap Meta. As the little girl sprawled backward, her mother stopped, froze, and dropped to the floor, twitching like a dying cricket. Meta crawled away, down the hallway, to her room, on her bed, hugged her polkadot pillow tight.