Come Back to Me (2 page)

There was
one simple wish floating around my mind on my last day at Gosley:

Please,
no puppets.

Because as our
group therapist, Vivenne, breezed into the room, I wasn’t feeling lucky.

“Hola,” she
said in her singsong voice.  She wasn’t Spanish or anything.  That was just
Vivienne.  Everything had to be emphasized in spectacularly different fashion,
like her clothes for example.  Flowery dresses over old jeans?  A bulky leather
biker jacket over a lime green and orange muumuu?

Unusual. 
Not that there was anything wrong with that, but after three weeks of living
way out of my comfort zone, I longed for normal.  Well, normal-ish because even
normal wasn’t normal anymore.  And if I was being totally, teen-treatment-center-honest,
my “comfort zone” had been my room at home and a suede boot in the corner of my
closet filled with mini bottles of vodka.

“Aloha,”
Amber said in answer to Vivienne’s international greeting.  Amber was the only
one who ever answered Vivienne in any other way than a suspicious nod.  Amber
seemed to need every bit of air space around her filled with words, her words. 
Casey, Shauna, Jordanna, and I brought up the silent rear, because we were wary
of what group play Vivienne had in store for us each time.

“Keck,”
Jordanna said.  We all ignored it—per her request.  She was officially a member
of the silent rear, but more in spirit, seeing as her random word swinging
Tourette’s brain often betrayed her.

With the
exception of Vivienne and Amber, we all just wanted to slip in and out of
group, unnoticed.

I know I
did.

But today
was my last day at Gosley, “the premiere treatment center for struggling teens”. 
My time was up. I was leaving in the morning.  Hopefully, I could slip out without
any fanfare or good-byes.

I was just
done.  Yay me.  Consider me treated after three weeks of therapy, trust falls,
crafting, group, and mystery meat meals (oh and color me officially a
vegetarian).

I was
finished with alcohol hours before my parents checked me in, but they needed
something more concrete.  They weren’t going to take my word for it, not after
what I let happen to my car on graduation night.  And it wasn’t like I could’ve
convinced them I didn’t want to drink because I didn’t want to risk having
another fantastically freaky delusion about my dead ex-best friend.

Vivienne
dropped her paisley, cloth backpack on a table with a thunk.  Was that a larger
than life puppet head with an evil, soul-sucking grin rattling around in there?

I thought of
beady eyes and wooden limbs, and shivered.  I hated puppets after Katie made me
watch that stupid horror movie about one that just wouldn’t die. Ugh.

“Today,
we’re going to get our drama on,” Vivienne said, her tone hinting at secrets as
she made eye contact with all seven of us.

Drama.  Well,
that could’ve still meant puppets.  Why couldn’t my last day be music?  Sometimes
Vivienne brought her guitar. That was perfect for me, because she asked us to
contribute random words, which she performed in a song, like Chia Pets, Texas
or basketball.  Stuff that blissfully reminded me of nothing.

“Are we
going to do a play today?” Amanda asked, her voice sounding extra perky. “Because
I once did a musical my freshman year.  Beauty and the Beast?  I was the
candle, Lumiere.  So I can speak in a French accent, okay?  I mean
oui
.”

Lumiere?  I
could see it.  Pumped up with that much nervous energy, she was bound to glow
at some point.  Puppets wouldn’t have been so terrible if only Amber had one. 
I could’ve sat back and zoned out to her one-woman show.

“Thank you
for sharing your experience, Amanda.” Vivienne sounded as though she actually
meant it, like always.  “We’re going to try a little improv.”

My heart
plummeted.  I hated public speaking.  I may have been on Steeple Academy’s quiz
bowl team, but that was simply a matter of accessing my memory stores and buzzing
in with an answer.  The idea of performing in front of the group without a
script made me want to disappear.  Or play with puppets. 
Please I take it
all back.  I can love puppets.  Watch me stick my hand up whatever nether
regions those creepy, demon toys possessed.
  But Vivienne’s skills didn’t
include ESP, so she continued with her torture, handing out blank index cards
for us to write down a scene or situation and three separate things.

Hell.  Pitchfork. 
Fire.

I glanced at
my blank cards, then back up at the circle.  Everyone else was writing.  Except
Jordanna—she stared at the door.  If anyone had a reason to hate a little
impromptu improv, it had to be her.  In the last week, I learned Jordanna was a
binge drinker, like me, but her most obvious problem was Tourette’s, a condition
she tried valiantly to conceal.  Her lower lip trembled.  I didn’t know if she
took medication, but her focus often seemed faraway.  Maybe she was meditating
the crap out of her issue, or as no-holds-barred Shauna once described it (out
of earshot of Jordanna thankfully), looking like she was trying to hold in a
fart.

I handed her
a pack of gum, but she shook her head, chewing faster to show me that she was
already making an effort to control her tics.  Didn’t Vivienne know that making
her do improv was practically cruel?

But the
staff at Gosley loved stretching our comfort zones.  Or pushing us off the roof
of it.  Naked.

Like when my
counselor, Emily, tried to get me to rock climb after I mentioned the quarry
near my house.  All I did was tell her about the quarry, because I remembered
wanting to go there when I went out into Jake Adler’s backyard on graduation
night.  It was just part of the story, but the next thing I knew, Emily had me
trussed up in a rock climbing gym.

I freaked
out.  I wasn’t a fan of heights.  I’d seen a movie about a guy who had to cut
off his arm after a rock wedged him inside a slot canyon.  It was disgusting,
but I could recite the procedure.  It was burned into my brain.  I didn’t like
stuff like that since I never knew what my mind would hold on to, but Katie had
an almost sick obsession with death after her mom died, so we watched a lot of
scary shit.  And even though I knew I was relatively safe in a rock climbing
gym, my hands sweat so much, I spent the entire time dangling from the cable. 
It was a useless exercise.  After that, I realized the key to Gosley was making
them think activities such as reading and ceramics were the adventure I needed
to conquer.

I looked at
my cards again, scribbled four less caustic, vanilla words in hopes of keeping
Vivienne’s improv exercise as painless as possible, and handed them in.

Vivienne stacked
the cards, then chose one.  “Okay, the scene is a high school cafeteria.  Let’s
start with Amber, Whitney, and Casey.”

High school
cafeteria?  Who picked that?  I might as well have written Hell, considering
how I avoided my school cafeteria after Katie froze me out.  Didn’t everyone
get that this game would be far easier if we all wrote down bland subjects?

The three of
us moved to stand in front of the circle of chairs, and Vivienne handed us each
a card.  “Amber, you’re a lawyer.  Casey, you’re a cat—or have one, your choice. 
Whitney, you’re holding a toaster.”

Great.  I
was a victim of my own stupid card.  What was I going to do with a toaster?

“You’ll take
turns. The main thing to keep in mind is remaining open to all possibilities.  The
first rule in improv is
yes
and the second is
yes
and
.  This
means you need to listen to each other’s response, then add your own. We don’t
know where this is going, but you do have control over your reaction.  Got it?”

We nodded. 
I could do
yes
.  After all, compliance made life easier.

“Keck,” Jordanna
said from the circle, unwillingly.

We ignored
it again.

“Casey, you
start, then Whitney, then Amber, and so on.  Oh and remember, just relax. Have
a little fun with it.”

I barely had
time to think, let alone take a cleansing breath before Casey said, “Meow.”

Startled, I
looked at her.  She was totally biting back a smile.  A cop-out-cat-who-ate-the-canary
smile.

Crap. 
That’s it?  Now I’m supposed to just agree and somehow do something with a
toaster after that?

“Uh, so,” I
held out my arm toward Casey.  “You are a--”

“Pussy,”
Shauna said from behind me, fake coughing into her hand.

I laughed, my
nerves relaxing for a moment.  I turned to Amber.  Her card was lawyer. Maybe I
didn’t know what to do with a cat, but lawyers I knew.  “So Miss um . . . Cheatum,
can you explain what a cat is doing in my cafeteria?” I asked holding up my
imaginary toaster that obviously was my cafeteria manager badge.

I felt
ridiculous.

“Absolutely,”
Amber said, projecting her voice as if she were on a stage instead of a twelve
by sixteen carpeted room.  I resisted the urge to put my hands over my ears.

Amanda waved
an arm in the air. “This cat is not actually a cat, but a prince who is under
the strains of a terrible curse cast on him by an evil witch. . . .”

It was the plot
of Beauty and the Beast.

There was
another “keck” from Jordanna and a double meow from Casey, when Amber finally
finished her monologue.  Then it was my turn again.  I had to go with the whole
Beauty and the Beast theme, because I was supposed to say
yes
and add
something of my own.  I could feel everyone’s stares, as I paused to recall the
movie.  I could see Lumiere, the talking candlestick, then the teapot, and all animated
inanimate objects.  Once again, I held up my imaginary toaster.  “This one’s
not talking.  What does that mean?”

“Good one,”
Shauna said behind me in her typical monotone.  I grinned and glanced at her over
my shoulder, but Shauna was busy coloring in her nails with a lime green
Sharpie marker.  I turned back to our impromptu bastardization of Beauty and the
Beast circle, confident I’d been able to painlessly lobby back to Amber once
again.

A few
more rounds of this, and we’d be done
.  My shoulders relaxed.  As I waited, I read one of the many
framed motivational posters that lined the walls of Gosley.

Happiness
is:

Something
to do.

Someone
to love
(or as
Shauna joked on her first day—
someone to do
).

Something
to look forward to.

I definitely
had that last one, seeing as I was leaving Gosley in the morning.  I just
wanted to go back and get ready to go away to school.  Only 57 days until I
left for Colson University.  I wanted a clean slate, a new normal.

I glanced at
the poster with its ray of sun breaking through a forest clearing.  I even had
the something to do.  There was the internship at my dad’s law firm, which was
happening because I still had three dozen community service hours to finish to
officially get my Steeple Academy diploma, but it was something to fill the
time.

My gaze
drifted to the word
love
.  Just because you had someone to love didn’t
mean you were happy.  My parents were an example of that.  So was Katie and
Kyle’s relationship.  They’d been together for more than two years before Katie
froze us out, but they hadn’t been the poster couple for happiness and love
either.  So, I could scratch love and romance off the happy list.  They
certainly weren’t factors for me or anyone I knew.

Casey meowed
again, and I tuned back into our circle of futility just as Amber stepped
toward me.  There was a concerned look on her face.  I glanced at Vivienne and
the rest of the girls.  Had I missed something?

Then Amber
reached a hand out almost as if she were petting the imaginary toaster, her
lids flooding with tears.

Um, can
we say drama queen?

Was she
about to launch into a soliloquy over the plain versus toasted bagel debate?

I laughed a
little at my own inside joke, looking around, but everyone else seemed curious
to see where Amber was going.

Me, too, but
only because my arms were fatigued holding onto the silent but imaginary
toaster.

“I’m so
sorry.  I thought you knew.”

“Knew what?”
I asked out of turn.  My hand flew to my mouth as if I could push the words
back.  “Sorry.”

“Meow,”
Casey said, as I realized I now only had one hand holding the toaster.  I
readjusted my arms, pulling them closer as if I were holding Bug, my mom’s Shih
Tzu mix.  It was far more comfortable that way.

Amber stared
at me.  Whose turn was it?  Casey had meowed again, but it hadn’t been my turn,
so—

“He’s dead,”
Amber said in a low tone.

What?  She killed
off my toaster?  What happened to teapots and silly French accents?

I looked at
Casey, but she stayed silent.  And way too serious.  It was my turn.