After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away (14 page)

Who gave me the drug? they asked. I said I didn’t know his name, some guy at the mall. An “older” guy. I’d never seen him before and would never, never see him again.

Aunt Caroline and Uncle Dwight were so shocked! So sad, disappointed with me, I guess. Why I would do such a thing, why risk such harm to myself, why on Christmas Eve, why when they love me, oh Jenna
why?

I’m ashamed, I don’t know
why
.

It was a stupid mistake, not a “suicide attempt,” truly! I wish my aunt and my uncle believed me. It’s like Mom not believing me.

I am not “suicidal.” I am not “depressed.”

I am not “using” drugs, that was one time only.

This session with Dr. Freer, maybe it will be the last.

If I impress Dr. Freer that I am NORMAL. Like her.

“…kind of embarrassed, actually.”

“Embarrassed, Jenna? Why?”

“Because at school people know about it. Some of them. I guess my teachers know. I’m embarrassed that people think I tried…tried to hurt myself…but it was an accident, and accidents are stupid.”

“‘Accidents are stupid,’ Jenna? Can you talk to me a little about that?”

No! No, I can’t.

“…the opposite of, like, a conscious decision. A conscious act. Something that’s an accident can come to seem like it’s you in some way, in other people’s minds, but actually it isn’t, it isn’t you. It’s just…”

“An accidental overdose of a potentially lethal drug, Jenna, on Christmas Eve, in circumstances like yours, you suggest isn’t in some legitimate way representative of you? Is that what you are suggesting, dear?”

Dear.
It’s to work the fishhook into my mouth, so Dr. Freer can haul me ashore. My face shuts tight, my gaze turns stony, so Dr. Freer gets the signal.

After my stomach was pumped, they asked me about drugs at the high school, how available are drugs in Yarrow Lake, what kinds of drugs are teenagers taking. Even a woman detective, pretending to be sympathetic.

As if I would rat on my friends! My closest friend, Trina.

“Talk to me, Jenna. What are your associations with
accident, accidental
?”

Dr. Freer has a way of leaning forward, clasping her long leathery fingers together, fixing me with her eyes that are a startling pale blue. A way of prying that scares me, I feel close to giving in.

No! I can’t.

Can’t talk about it with you. Not with anyone.

This is one thing I like about the psychologist’s office: She has hanging plants in the windows, spiky leaves and tiny white flowers, and on the walls poster-size photographs of a lake with sailboats (Yarrow Lake?) and mountains that are much larger than the White Mountains, with steep snowy slopes, dazzling white peaks. The sky is so blue in these photos. Like windows I can look into, to escape
in the blue
, not trapped in this office, being dissected like some pathetic beetle.

Trina says never tell them what you feel, only what they want you to feel. That’s what NORMAL is: what adults want you to feel.

Dr. Freer is asking if I have “close friends” at my new school, which is a question she has asked before. To be NORMAL, you have to have “close friends.” I’m vague in answering: Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know what Aunt Caroline has told Dr. Freer about Trina.

Trina is my friend. My friend I can’t trust.

I love Trina.

Dr. Freer asks if I have remained in touch with my friends in Tarrytown. Vaguely I murmur yes, but actually I never answer their e-mails or calls, mostly they’ve stopped trying to contact me. It’s too much effort.

I hate people feeling sorry for me. I don’t feel sorry for myself!

Dr. Freer keeps poking, prodding. Asking now about my teachers, classes, grades. So boring!

“Jenna? I can’t hear you—will you speak more clearly? And will you look at me, dear? Thank you!”

Like this is kindergarten. Like I am so totally screwed up.

I tell Dr. Freer what she wants to hear, that I like my teachers okay, my classes are okay, my fall term grades were better than I expected. (At least I didn’t flunk a single course. I know, the McCartys are disappointed in me. Aunt Caroline is thinking how disappointed Mom would be if she knew.) I hear myself tell Dr. Freer that this semester I might join the school newspaper staff, I might try out for girls’ chorus, if my running time improves I might try out for the girls’ track team.

Dr. Freer beams at all this good news. Nothing impresses an adult like hearing of your “activities” at school.

“You were on the track team at your previous school, weren’t you?”

You tell me, Doctor. You have my records.

Dr. Freer asks about my physical health. Have my injuries healed? Do I suffer from headaches? Often people who’ve had concussions are susceptible to headaches, which can lead to an attempt to “self-medicate” by taking unauthorized drugs….

In the blue
you can fall, and fall. I’m staring at the blue sky like enamel in one of the poster-size photos of maybe the Rocky Mountains. Thousands of miles away.

Dr. Freer is always circling around drugs. It occurs to me, maybe she’s making a tape of these sessions. Maybe there’s a surveillance camera in the ceiling. A psychologist who works with adolescents in Yarrow Lake might inform to the Yarrow Lake cops.

Next, Dr. Freer asks about boys.

Clearing her throat in a way to suggest the subject isn’t “boys” but “sex.”

None of your business! I don’t share secrets with nosy strangers.

Dr. Freer flashes the fishhook smile, but her eyes are uneasy.

On a bookshelf is what looks like a spherical glass paperweight with a miniature mountain inside that’s made of some glittery mineral and a blue sky over the mountain that’s magnified by the glass so that it seems to shimmer. It’s so beautiful,
in the blue
inside a glass ball.

Psychologists have to ask about sex, for sure. Like sex is all there is, no matter what people pretend.

Damn if I will tell Dr. Freer that I don’t see any guys, except when I’m with Trina and her friends. That I am in love with a boy named Gabriel Saint-Croix, who doesn’t know I exist except as somebody to feel sorry for.

Crippled people and losers. Crow has such a thing for.

Mom used to ask me about boys too. I told her lots of things but kept back a lot more. Mom wasn’t prying, I guess, just wanting me to be popular and have friends but not too popular and not the wrong kind of friends.

I wonder what Mom would think of Crow! She’d be stunned.

Near the end of the session, Dr. Freer asks about “dreams,” “memories.” For sure, she wants to ask about Mom. What happened on the Tappan Zee Bridge. She knows, just wants me to tell her. Whatever answer I give, I’m not looking at her; my voice is a low resentful murmur.

I miss my mom, okay? Like every minute, every hour, and every day, but it’s no big deal, I can cope.

Asks about my father. I tell her my relationship with my father is “zero.”

“Jenna, of course you and your father have a relationship. You must know your father is helping to pay for your sessions with me? That has been explained to you, I think?”

No. Hasn’t been explained to me.

“…talk to me about why you are so hostile to your father? Even to the idea of his helping to pay for your therapy? Don’t you think that it’s natural for a father to wish to help in such a way?”

I’m on my feet, asking to use Dr. Freer’s bathroom, please.

I’ve used it before. Don’t have to be told where it is.

In the bathroom I examine the soft white flesh on the inside of my left elbow that’s stippled red from my fingernails digging in. Some of the tiny wounds are older and healing, the new ones are bleeding thinly. I’m surprised, my arm throbs and hurts. In Dr. Freer’s office my arm felt numb like the rest of me.

Tell me what you feel, Jenna.

Smiling at my face in the mirror. There’s a rosy light in here, the psychologist’s patients see the least ugly of their faces. I like it, my arm throbbing! The tiny bleeding wounds are some kind of weird relief.

Nobody can see. Nobody knows. It’s no big deal. I keep my sleeves pulled down past my wrists like a junkie.

Then, this happens. Weird!

When I return from the bathroom, Dr. Freer is searching for a book on one of the shelves, her back to me. I’m quick and quiet, and my fingers close over the glass paperweight that’s just the right size to fit in my hand, a little heavier than I expected, but already it’s been transferred to my backpack, on the floor beside the chair I’ve been sitting in.

I can see Trina smiling, impressed. Baby, you are so
cool
.

I am, I think. I’m learning.

I wish Dr. Freer caught on that I don’t like her. Really I don’t like her. I’m not even listening to her. That phony smile, showing her gums. Hoop earrings, ridiculous. She’s too old. That smudgy brown-pink lipstick, which isn’t exactly glamorous. Mom wore it sometimes, it looked okay on her.

Dr. Freer has a book to lend me. “If you like it, Jenna, of course you should keep it.”

The Member of the Wedding
by Carson McCullers. I’ve read this novel, it was a favorite of Mom’s. I’m blushing and stammering, telling Dr. Freer I’ve already read it, it’s a beautiful novel, I guess, but so sad, and Dr. Freer lays her hand on my arm, saying she first read
The Member of the Wedding
when she was twelve, and has many times since. “It’s a novel about loss, growing up with loss, and growing beyond loss.”

On her feet, Dr. Freer isn’t as tall as I am. Like Mom, the last year or so. It makes me uneasy, being taller than grown women. Makes me resent them, I don’t know why.

Each time our session ends, Dr. Freer walks with me to the door. Shakes my hand, smiles. Her gums show, she’s smiling so. Up close her skin doesn’t look so leathery—I guess it’s just tan from being outdoors. Her eyes are such an amazing blue. The way Dr. Freer is talking to me, laying her hand on my arm like that, it comes over me like a wave of icy water:
She wants me to like her!
I’m afraid of this thought. Like hearing Aunt Caroline’s muffled sobs in her bedroom one afternoon and knowing it’s my fault, she’s crying because of me.

I don’t mean to hurt you. It’s just, I’m a scorpion. What do you expect?

3

Why I took Dr. Freer’s paperweight I don’t know.

It’s so beautiful, maybe that’s why. It’s to punish Dr. Freer, maybe that’s why. To punish myself maybe.

I have to keep the paperweight a secret from Aunt Caroline. I will have to hide it in my room.

If Mom knew, she’d be dismayed. The person I am now, Mom would not wish to know.

Jenna, this isn’t like you. Jenna, what is happening?

Won’t even show Trina. Can’t trust Trina, she’d tease me sometime in front of other people. She’d want to see the paperweight, hold it in her hand.

In my room at night when I can’t sleep, I can stare at the glass sphere with the mountain inside. I’ve positioned it on my desk with a light behind it to make it glow. The miniature mountain is made of some bluish-gray mineral. The sky is deep-blue curved glass. When you shake the paperweight, flakes of “snow” drift over everything as in a dream.

I wonder if it’s expensive. If Dr. Freer will notice it’s missing and know that I am the thief.

I’m so ashamed! This is the first thing I’ve stolen from anybody known to me. The first of any value. Uncle Dwight’s Oxys don’t count—he didn’t even know he still had them. I don’t know why I took it, and I don’t know what I will do with it now.

4

Typed in
SUICIDE
on the Internet, and man!—there’s like a million hits. Clicked onto some Christian Youth Forum. A message came up:

In America in these troubled times a young person aged 14–26 commits suicide every 13 minutes.

There’s a discussion group. You can type in your response. I type:

In the Country of the Blue
there is no you
THAT’S WHY

5

In March, this happens.

Like nothing I could imagine. Not ever.

I’m due to meet up with my aunt in about an hour at her favorite coffee shop in downtown Yarrow Lake. I’m in a neighborhood of small storefront shops on South Main Street. Staring into the crowded display window of Saint-Croix Carpenter & Cabinetmaker. Most of what I see is furniture. Except for a dim light at the rear, the store doesn’t look open.

It’s a Friday after school. I am supposed to be in Dr. Freer’s office. Last week, I canceled. This week, I just didn’t go in.

Waited in the vestibule of the office building for Aunt Caroline to drive away. Then I ran out.

Can’t. Won’t. Nobody can make me.

This cold, fresh air! Deep in my lungs, clearing my head. It’s a pure kind of high. I’m feeling excited and out of breath; I ran like a half mile. It’s a bright, sunny winter afternoon, a few days after a heavy snowfall, so streets and sidewalks are mostly cleared, but there are banks and heaps of snow blinding in the sunshine. Like the world is meant to be white, glaring-white. I’m shading my eyes, peering inside this shop that’s between a shoe repair and a hardware store with a big red banner
GOING OUT OF BUSINESS EVERYTHING HALF PRICE
.

In the front window is a beautiful carved old table with curved legs. Also a glass breakfront of some beautiful stained wood. If I had the nerve, I’d try the door, go inside. Pretend to be a customer. I could say that my aunt had some special old antique that needed to be repaired or restored.

I could say,
I am a friend of Crow’s!

In fact I have not spoken with Crow since the second day of school. I have tried not to look for him. Once in the school library during study period I turned a corner, saw Crow seated at a computer like any other guy, frowning at the screen. His black hair was stiff-spiky, and he was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and a leather vest studded with inverted Vs and stained jeans and biker boots. A girl was with him, chewing gum. A red-haired girl whose name is something like Flax, one of Trina’s rivals she totally hates, she’s nudging her thigh against Crow’s arm, slipping her hand inside his shirt, and Crow pushes her hand away and continues with the computer like almost she isn’t there.