Backlash (9 page)

But when the limo pulled up at the dance, it wasn’t at his high school; it was at my middle school. And all these people outside dressed in tuxes and beautiful dresses were holding big signs that said
Lardo
and
Lardosaurus
. I was scared Christian would see them and change his mind, so I tried to kiss him to distract him from the signs. But instead of leaning in to kiss me with his perfect, warm lips, he pulled away from me in horror.

“Why would I want to kiss
you
?” he asked, his handsome face distorted almost beyond recognition by disgust and loathing. “
Lardo
. You repulse me. I would never want to be seen with you in public
anywhere
, let alone a
dance
.”

“But …
why
?” I pleaded, reaching for him, still feeling the warmth of his fingers on my skin. “A few minutes ago, you said …”

“The world would be a better place without you in it,
Lardo
,” he said, and he was no longer handsome. His eyes made me shiver, but with fear, not anticipation; his mouth was a thin line of cruelty. But worse still were the words that came out of it. “You should just do us all a favor and kill yourself.”

I woke up, my heart racing, with tears streaming down my cheeks. In the stillness, in that lonely quiet of three in the morning when no one else was awake, I cried into my pillow so my sister wouldn’t hear through the wall, and I wished once again that the pills had done their job.

And the question that I asked myself, over and over, as I tried to get back to sleep, staring at the shadows on the ceiling was:
What did I do wrong?

Until I understand that, making these stupid gratitude lists is just a homework assignment in fakery, because I’m mad that I still have to wake up every day to a world where nothing makes any sense.

No way am I going to be able to come up with number three today. Linda, the therapist I see now that I’m out of the hospital, is just going to have to deal. Just like she expects me to. Just like everyone else thinks I should.

Mom knocks on the door: her attempt at pretending I have privacy. I’m not allowed to shut it anymore in case I harm myself. They’re protecting me from me.

Even when I shower I have to leave the bathroom door ajar, which is totally awkward when Dad’s home. My parents promised that when I take a shower he’s not allowed to come upstairs.

But still … the faint draft coming in from the open door reminds me that I’m not to be trusted.

Now I know how zoo animals feel, always watched, always observed, never able to escape except in their heads. Except now everyone’s trying to watch me in there, too.

“Lara, honey?”

“Yeah?”

She inches into my room and takes a seat on the edge of my bed. I shove the stupid gratitude journal under the covers. No way I want Mom prying into that.

Elmo is telling kids about how great it is to share. Oh, Elmo, you poor, deluded little red fur ball. You don’t have a clue, do ya, li’l buddy? Kids are
way
meaner than Muppets.

“Can you turn down the TV a little?” Mom asks.

I push Mute. Elmo’s relentless optimism is starting to grate on my nerves anyway. He doesn’t get it. Wait till you hit puberty, Elmo. Just you wait.

“The police called,” Mom says. “They’re coming over in half an hour to talk to us — well, specifically to talk to
you
. I thought you might want to take a shower and get dressed.”

Not particularly. I’m happy to stay in my pj’s, with unwashed hair and no makeup and unbrushed teeth. Because I really don’t care. I know I’m supposed to, but I don’t. But here’s the thing with Mom: When she says, “I thought you might want to …,” what she
really
means is
I want you to …
If I say what
I
really feel, namely that I want to remain slobby and unwashed, she’ll ask me twenty questions about why (answer: because I don’t care about how I look) and don’t I worry about the impression I’m giving the world (answer: no) and doesn’t it make me feel better to be clean (answer: nothing makes me feel better).

I wish she would come straight out and say,
Go take a shower and get dressed
, instead of pretending I have any say in the matter.

“What do they want to talk about?” I ask, instead of telling her that.

“They want to ask you some questions about Facebook.”

Ugh
. Just what I’m trying to forget about. Just what I’d rather not think about ever again.

My father is
obsessed
with the subject. The other night he printed out his stupid spreadsheet for what feels like the millionth time and wanted me to look at it so I could tell him something about every single person on the list. I tore it up again without even glancing at it. He yelled at me, saying that I owed him my cooperation “after everything you’ve put this family through.” Then Mom yelled at him for yelling at me when I’m “still so fragile and unstable.” Syd yelled at both of them because she’s “sick of living in such a messed-up family where everyone yells at each other all the time while I’m trying to do my freaking homework.”

I curled up, wishing that I were a turtle with a hard shell that I could retreat into and hide when things got difficult or scary. And I stuck my fingers in my ears, asking myself again why I had to be such a failure, why I couldn’t even get a simple thing like taking too many pills right.

What Dad doesn’t understand is that I just want to forget. Every time he tries to ask me questions, I pretend to have a relapse, except the reality is I’m half pretending. My parents think that trying to commit suicide was the hardest part. They still don’t get that
failing
is what’s hard. How from the moment my brain starts to work again in the morning, I have to start trying to make sense of why I’m still here and to figure out how to survive another day.

Mom is alert, as always, trying to read every tiny change of expression on my face.

“Are you up for this? I spoke to Linda and she said she thought it would be okay. You have an appointment with her this afternoon anyway to process whatever might come up.”

Process.
Murray Monster, can we
ixnay
the word
process
for the rest of my life? There are word processors and food processors and processed meat, but apparently all my thoughts and feelings also have to be processed, like spray cheese or SPAM.

“Whatever. I’ll go take a shower.”

I might have to keep the door cracked, but at least Mom won’t follow me in there.

In the shower, I twist the hot tap up until the water turns my skin pink. If only hot water could sterilize me; if only it could boil the thoughts out of my brain. At least it fills the bathroom with swirling mists of condensation. I close my eyes and try to visualize my brain as the fog: grayish white, fluffy, with no form, no thoughts, no pain.

It works for about four seconds before Christian’s face emerges from the mist.
The world would be a better place without you in it.

I might as well do what Mom says and wash my hair, since I’m an epic failure at my own life.

“You look refreshed, dear,” Mom says when I walk into the kitchen.

Refreshed. Rebooted. Reprogrammed. Re
processed
.

Ignoring her, I open the fridge and scan the contents for something that might make the Gratitude List. But there’s no cookie dough, no gooey chocolate cake, no unhealthy snacks. Mom thinks I still care about not being Lardo, that I still think all those trips to the nutritionist and all that extra exercise and the weighing food and mindful eating and stuff were worth it. Nope. If there were a big chocolate cake in the fridge, I would eat the whole thing and wash it down with a quart of milk. Because what does it matter? What does anything matter when the world would be a better place without me in it?

“Don’t leave the fridge door open. Can I make you something?”

If she could make me understand about Christian, that would be something useful. But she can’t. I mumble, “No thanks,” and grab a yogurt that I don’t really want, just to stop her from nagging me.

“They should be here in a few minutes,” Mom says. She’s watching my every movement, even as I go to get a spoon for the yogurt, hypersensitive to the weapons for self-harm lurking all around me. Kitchen knives. Matches. Glass. You name it. It’s all here in our kitchen.

I don’t respond. I just sit and eat the stupid yogurt. It’s banana, which makes it even less appealing. This is definitely not going to be one for the Gratitude List, unless I can write that I’m glad that eating it is over. Luckily for me, the doorbell rings.

Mom looks from me to the direction of the front door, her brow furrowed. She’s obviously worried about leaving me alone in the presence of So. Much. Danger.

“I’ll just get the door,” she says. “Back in a sec.”

As soon as she leaves the room, I ditch the rest of the yogurt in the garbage can, making sure to hide it under something so Mom doesn’t see. If there’s one thing being in the Shrink Hospital of Horrors taught me, it’s that I have to play the game.

When Mom comes back, she’s followed by a police lady and a guy wearing a worn jacket and khakis instead of a police uniform, but you can still see the gun holstered under his arm and the badge at his waist.

“Lara, honey, this is Detective Souther and Officer Hall. Officer Hall was here the night you were … taken to the hospital. Officer, Detective, can I get you anything? Coffee? Water?”

“No thanks,” Detective Souther says. “Are you most comfortable chatting here, Lara?”

I’d be most comfortable not chatting at all, but nobody is giving me that option.

I shrug. “Whatever.”

We all sit down at the kitchen table. Detective Souther takes out a little black notebook. Something tells me he doesn’t have to make useless Gratitude Lists in it.

“We’ve been looking into the activity on your Facebook profile the night of your …” He hesitates for the briefest second. “Hospitalization. We’re here to ask you about a young man named Christian DeWitt.”

If there is one thing in the world I don’t want to talk about to the police, especially in front of my mom, it’s a young man named Christian DeWitt.

Math equation: Christian + talking = pain.

But if I show that I’m freaked out by the idea, Mom will get even more freaked out, creating a vicious vortex of freaked-outness.

“Oh? Like what?” I ask with pretend nonchalance.

“How long have you been friends with Mr. DeWitt?” Detective Souther asks.

Before he turned on me? Two months, four days, eleven hours …

“About two months.”

“Have you ever met him in person?”

I avoid looking at Mom.

“No. But he was friends with a bunch of kids from my school, so I figured he had to be okay.”

Mom exhales her disapproval.

Yes, Mom, I know. I broke the rules.
Don’t you think I’ve learned my lesson?

“Did he friend you or did you friend him?”

This guy clearly must have forgotten what it’s like to be in high school. Like I
ever
would have had the courage to friend someone as good-looking as Christian.

I couldn’t believe when I got the friend request from him. He’s so gorgeous, like, seriously, he could be an Abercrombie model. I looked at his profile picture for ten minutes, unable to believe that he actually wanted to friend me.

“He friended me.”

“And how did you develop a relationship?”

What relationship? There is no relationship, Detective. Somehow — I don’t know how or why — I screwed it up.

“We started chatting. You know, by IM.”

“Did you ever video chat?”

“No. I wanted to, but the camera on his laptop was broken.”

“Did you ever speak to Mr. DeWitt on the telephone?”

“No.”

“And on the night of your hospitalization, he sent you this message?”

Detective Souther nods to Officer Hall and she takes a piece of paper out of a folder. It’s a printout of the Facebook direct message Christian sent me. The one that said the world would be a better place without me in it. The one that said, “GOOD-BYE, LOSER!!!”

I realize, horrified, that they’d been reading my chats and my emails. They know everything. How stupid I’d been. How I believed someone like Christian could actually like someone like me.

But they’re still asking me questions instead of giving me answers. Like everything else that’s supposed to be helping me, this is just another royal waste of time.

I’m beyond sick of it. I’m furious.

“Why are you even bothering to ask me questions when you’ve already pried into my personal life and read everything?! When you already
know
!” I snap. “Huh? Why don’t you answer
my questions
for a change?” I stand up and grab the paper, crumple it up into a ball, and throw it on the table in front of the spying detective.

“Lara!” Mom exclaims. “Calm down!”

She grabs my wrist and tries to pull me back into my chair.