Rowan opened her eyes slowly to another gloomy day. As she lied in bed, on her back, she stared at the plain white ceiling, listening to the rain hit her window. She started to count the droplets one by one.

“One...two...three..,” Rowan whispered to herself.

Rowan counted up to twenty raindrops before deciding to sit up and remove herself from bed. She trudged to her window and slowly pushed the curtains out of the way, revealing what it was like outside her room. The sky was a dark grey with large clouds floating swiftly through it. Rowan leaned against the window with her arms crossed, soon lost in her thoughts as she watched the trees sway back and forth due to the wind. Then, there was a knock at her door.

Rowan huffed, “Come in.” She clearly knew who it was and did not have to ask.

“Good morning Rowan, how are you feeling today?” asked her nurse Mya.  

“How am I feeling?” repeated Rowan with attitude. “I am doing great considering that I am trapped in this mental hospital where I do not belong.”

“Honey, if you did not belong here then you would not be here right now,” Mya calmly stated. “Now, it is time for breakfast and you need to eat.”

Rowan snapped, “I am not hungry and I do not need to do anything.”

Mya left Rowan’s breakfast on the nightstand and stepped out of the room.

Rowan turned her back to the window and glanced at the food, still refusing to eat it. A few hours later and there was another knock on the door. Mya heard nothing.

“Rowan,” she muffled as she slowly opened the door and peeked her head in, “can I come in and talk to you?”

Rowan was slumped on the bed with a notebook and pencil by her side. “About what? Are you going to tell me all the reasons why I belong here?”

“No, I would like to talk to you and know more about you.”

Rowan looked at her with tears in her eyes and cried, “I don’t belong here; I am not crazy. I am not lying. I am not hallucinating. I just want someone to believe me.”

Mya looked at her with sympathy and curiosity. She didn’t know what she was talking about. “Believe you about what?” questioned Mya.

“It doesn’t matter,” sighed Rowan. “You won’t believe me, either.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because no one ever does, not even my dad.”

“What about your mom?”

“My mom, unfortunately, passed away when I was fourteen,” said Rowan with a pain in her chest. She added, “She would of believed me.”  

Eager to know, Mya assured her. “Believed you about what? You can tell me. I won’t judge you.”

“You won’t judge me but you also won’t believe me.”

“You will never know unless you tell me; I might just be the first person to believe in you.”

Rowan doubtfully took a chance for someone to finally believe her with a lot of hesitation but also with a lot of hope.

“There is this person who has been stalking me,” began Rowan. “I’ve never seen the person’s face and I don’t think I ever will. I dream about it and have nightmares about this person every single night but they always end right before the face is about to be shown.”

“How do you know you have a stalker?”

“It started out with notes in my mailbox, on my front door, and on the window of my car. It soon escalated to presents, both expensive and creepy.”

“Wow, why didn’t you go to the police?”

“I tried but they couldn’t do anything because no harm was being done; the most they could do is keep an eye out around my neighborhood,” wailed Rowan.

“They did nothing,” mumbled Mya.

“Correct, I tried to tell my dad and he told me that I was crazy and needed to receive help. I tried to tell my friends and they laughed.”

Mya asked, “How did you end up here?”

“My dad,” hissed Rowan, “he convinced everyone else in my family that I was hallucinating, so he checked me in.”

“I’m speechless!” exclaimed Mya.

“It’s been close to a year since I’ve been here, in this mental hospital, and I feel stuck. This person is out there roaming the streets, haunting my dreams, and completely destroying me,” urged Rowan.
    Mya sat in silence with nothing to say, no response, which was a shocker, and no emotions. Mya kept looking at Rowan’s notebook that still laid by her side. Rowan noticed something was off about her. She grabbed her notebook and pulled it closer to herself. Mya stared right in Rowan’s eyes with a blank face. Rowan stared back, wondering what was going through her nurse’s head. Rowan thought back to what she told her nurse thus far.

“I wonder why she did not ask about the letters and what they said or the type of presents that were left for me,” she thought to herself.

The room grew darker; Rowan looked out the window and saw that it was nighttime, which meant Mya had to let Rowan sleep.

“We will talk tomorrow, Rowan, sweet dreams.”

“Please believe me,” insisted Rowan as she covered herself with the blanket.

Mya smirked and quietly closed the door. Rowan shut her eyes and within five minutes was deep into a dream, a nightmare to be more accurate, about her supposed stalker. It was different this time around. This time, she saw the face of the stalker. With great disturbance and despair, she saw the face of her nurse. The stalker in her nightmare was Mya, the one she trusted, the one she hoped would believe her, but now she was known as the one who caused this.

“This is only the beginning,” threatened the stalker, now known as Mya, before she fluttered her eyes open.

Rowan woke up, tears rolling down her face, and reached for her notebook. She slid a letter out of the notebook. They were the letters she had received from the stalker a year ago. She rolled out of bed and slowly crept up to a whiteboard where Mya had written on it. She lifted up the letter and placed it on the whiteboard to compare the handwritings. It was a match. Rowan was now determined to prove those wrong who doubted her, laughed at her, and didn’t believe her.