Counting Backwards (18 page)

I take the socks off my hands, find a spot far away from A.J., and start digging up the grass. A few minutes later, he’s standing over me. I’d forgotten how tall he is. Maybe he’s grown since the last time I saw him.

“You’re too far away,” he says.

“Does it really matter?” I say in a huff.

He walks back to the shed, picks up the entire length of hose, throws it over one shoulder, then comes back to me, unraveling it along the way. The hose stops about ten feet away from where I stand.

“Going to be pretty hard to water.”

I drop my shovel and stalk over to the pieces of sod, mad
that he’s right about this, too. I pick up the clumps of grass one by one and drop them back into place as he stands by, watching me with an amused expression, which only irritates me more.

“Why don’t you just tell me where you want the rows?” I say. “Since
you
have to be the one in charge.”

He raises his eyebrows at this. “Is that right?”

“That’s been my experience.”

He crosses his arms. “Maybe,” he says slowly, “if you’d told me what you were planning to do
before
you did it, I could have saved you a lot of trouble.”

I respond bitterly, because I know we’re no longer talking about the garden, but about what happened between us. “I guess I forgot how
helpful
and
considerate
you are.”

He shakes his head and walks over to where his shovel lies on the ground, plucks it up, and heads for the shed. He comes out a minute later empty-handed and wraps up the hose.

“Don’t forget to put your tools away when you leave,” he says as he passes by. I glare at his back as he walks up the hill. He’s probably on his way to get me kicked out of the program. Tattle on me again. Or maybe he’ll quit and they’ll find someone else to take his place, which would be super. Anyone else I could fake being nice to.

But not him.

A.J.’s out there again the next garden day. I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy to get rid of him. I find my shovel where I left it in the shed and resume work on the row I began the last time, which is as far away as I can possibly get from him and still be within the hose’s reach.

“I thought you quit,” I say in place of hello.

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

Disappointed indeed, especially when I see that he’s finished up two rows to my one. I take off one of my jackets and set to digging, but it’s hard work. And these sod patches are heavy.

“Why don’t you take a break?” he says to me. “I’ll finish this one for you.”

“I got it,” I say, even though my hands are starting to blister. I don’t need his help.

“You don’t have to be so damn stubborn.”

I glare up at him. “You don’t have to be so damn bossy.”

“Are we ever going to get past this?”

“Get past what?”

“You being mad at me.”

“Who says I’m mad? To be mad, I’d have to care. And I don’t.”

He shakes his head and walks away. Just when I think he might be leaving again, he turns and laps the beds, coming to a stop in the same exact place in front of me.

“All right,” he says. “Let’s just get it out now. Whatever you have to say to me, do it and let’s be done.”

I throw down my shovel and plant my hands on my hips. It’s been a long time coming. “Did you know the whole time you were going to rat me out?”

His bravado falters a little.

“No.”

“When was it, then?”

He rakes one hand through his hair, his nervous twitch. “That day on the lawn when you fainted and I carried you up to the infirmary. You were so helpless and weak. I mean, you couldn’t even
breathe,
Taylor.”

He carried me? I never knew that. I just assumed a safety had taken me. I never knew my episode had affected him at all. Even so, he didn’t have to do what he did.

“And then I saw your father with you and I started thinking.” He rubs his forehead, leaving a dirt smudge on his sweaty skin. “You have someone who really cares about you and wants you to get better. I should have never given you that key. But by then it was too late.” He lifts his eyes to meet
mine. “You tell me. In the basement, when you said you’d stay until December. Did you mean it?”

I swallow hard. There’s no sense in lying. “No.”

He nods his head. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

We stand there a moment longer, staring at each other in silence. Then he picks up his shovel and goes back to digging. I do the same, squeezing the handle with all my anger and frustration, but worse than that is the guilt. The pain in my hands feels good, like a punishment I deserve. I don’t quit until I’ve got three rows completed. They’re not nearly as straight or as tidy as his, but neither am I.

When I finally lay down my shovel, the throbbing in my hands is so bad its creeping up my arms. He grabs both my hands and turns them over. My palms and fingers are red, and some of the blisters have already grown white, puffy heads.

“Stubborn,” he says, and drops my hands, then picks up my shovel to put it away for me. I walk up the hill without him. At the top I look back to see our six unmatched rows. His are straight and even. Mine look like the claw mark of a wild animal.

“How’s garden therapy
going?” Dr. Deb asks me the following week, our first session since the garden began.

“Great,” I say with a happy, happy chirp to my voice.

“How are you and A.J. getting along?”

“Super-duper.”

“That’s wonderful. In a few weeks, I’ll be asking you both to fill out evaluations, so that we can go over them in your respective team meetings.”

I stop and replay her words in my head. “Are you saying A.J. is part of my team?”

She smiles. “Consider it more like a peer review.”

That means A.J. can say whatever he wants about me—it doesn’t even have to be true—and my rehabilitative team will have to consider it. That’s
so
not fair.

“Have you been practicing your breathing?” she asks. She glances at my fist, which is knuckling my chest—I do it without thinking. I shove my hands in my pockets so they won’t betray me.

“Every night,” I tell her, but really it’s been so long that I’ve forgotten the words.

“Good, then I think we’re ready to talk about what happens when you can’t breathe.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your father described them as your episodes.”

The feeling is what she wants to know about. I glance at the walls that confine us; the heat keeps coming on and making it stuffy and difficult to breathe. I wish we could go outside for a minute. Just to get some fresh air.

“Can we do this outside?” I ask her.

“Therapy?”

“I mean, I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“No, I think that’s an excellent idea. Let’s do it.”

We bundle up and head outdoors. At the crest of the hill I look down and see A.J. in the garden, using a wheelbarrow and pitchfork to make piles of something.

“What’s he doing down there?” I say suspiciously.

“You don’t know?”

“No, I just thought he was going to wait for me. You know, everything together, right?”

Dr. Deb raises one eyebrow, and I glance back at the garden. He better not be trying to fix my rows. I spot a picnic bench off to the side, far enough away that he can’t hear us, but close enough that I can keep an eye on him. “Why don’t we go sit over there?” I say to Dr. Deb.

“Sounds good to me.”

We settle down at the bench. A.J. glances our way, and I nod to let him know I’m watching.

“We were discussing your episodes,” Dr. Deb says. “How long have you been having them?”

“A while,” I say as if it’s no big deal.

“Do you remember when they first began?”

“No,” I say, which is a lie. I remember exactly when they began, the night the police found me alone in my mom’s car
and then took her away. It’s the feeling of the policeman’s arms, confining me, holding me back, only it has somehow morphed over the years, so that it’s no longer just on the outside, but on the inside, too. Just thinking about it makes me feel shaky and weak.

“Can you describe it for me?” she says.

“Describe what?”

“How it feels.”

The feeling will go away eventually. I’ll outgrow it, like an allergy. I don’t want to explain it. Talking about it only makes it worse.

“I’d rather not,” I say.

“If you try, then maybe I can help you understand it. We can figure this out together.”

I have to let her think she’s helping. Otherwise, she won’t feel as though she’s done her job. One thing I’ve learned about Dr. Deb—she’s no quitter.

“I’m only explaining it once,” I say.

She nods. “Okay.”

“It starts here.” I point to my chest. “It gets really tight, like a fist crushing me, then it feels like hands around my throat. Sometimes I get nauseous, too, and these weird hot flashes, dizzy spells. My heart beats so fast and it’s hard to . . . catch my breath.”

I stop talking, because I feel tremors of the feeling starting
up. I rub my chest, and she waits for me to continue. When I don’t, she only nods. “It sounds to me like what you’re describing is what’s known as a panic attack.”

Panic attack. I’ve heard that name before, but somehow it never applied to me. Still, that describes it precisely. Panic. Attack.

“Isn’t there some pill I can take for it?” If there were, I would take it. Then we could skip therapy altogether.

“There are medications that can be prescribed for anxiety, but they don’t always target the problem as specifically as we’d like. The interesting thing about panic attacks is that they’re brought on by an initial fear or trigger, which intensifies during the attack, forming a positive feedback loop.”

“A what?”

“A positive feedback loop is where
A
produces more of
B
, which in turn produces more of
A
. In other words, a kind of downward spiral.”

“But what causes it?” I ask her.

“You do. Your phobias. Your fears.”

I’m the one causing it? I mean, I know it comes from inside me, but I thought it was some sort of chemical imbalance, like depression or ADHD. It’s not like I’m imagining it . . . am I?

“Are you telling me it’s all in my head?”

“Yes, but that’s not to say it’s not very real. Panic attacks
are some of the most intensely frightening, upsetting, and uncomfortable experiences of a person’s life. Many people who’ve had them describe it as feeling like they’re going crazy or leaving their body. Have you ever felt that way?”

“No,” I say, a lie. Why can’t I just be honest with her? Maybe because it means admitting something I’m not ready for. That I might be the kind of crazy that can’t be fixed.

Dr. Deb sits back. I avoid her eyes and stare at A.J. instead. I wish I were over there instead of here. Anything would be better than this right now.

“Why don’t you tell me about the first time you had a panic attack?” Dr. Deb says.

“I told you, I can’t remember.”

“Try, Taylor.”

“You’re not listening to me.”

“I
am
listening to you. I’m listening to everything you say as well as everything you
don’t
say.”

I look up at her. A helpless feeling washes over me.

“How old were you?”

“Nine.”

“Where were you?”

“In front of a bar.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I was watching my mom get arrested.” I feel the cop’s arms wrap around me, squeezing me while I screamed at them to
let her go, to let me go with her. I really was splitting in two. Because they were taking my mother away from me.

The feeling starts up like I’m nine years old all over again. Dr. Deb tells me to breathe, but I can’t because the policeman is squeezing me so tight and my mother, when she looks at me, I see the fear in her eyes and it only makes me more afraid. They’re taking her away, and I might never see her again. And it’s all my fault, because I told on her.
I told
.

I stand and circle a small patch of lawn like a wounded bird, round and round without stopping, until I’m so dizzy I think I might fall over. I kneel on the ground and watch my shallow breath cloud in the air above me.

“Deep breath in,” Dr. Deb says. I take a deep breath and hold it. “Now exhale slowly, counting as you do. I am powerful. I am strong. I am in control.”

I count backwards in my head
—ten, nine, eight . . .
I tell myself this feeling will pass . . .
three, two, one.
I take another deep breath, and this one breaks through and rushes into my chest, expanding it, loosening it up. I breathe in, exhale out, and count. I say the words in my head. After a few more cycles, the feeling passes.

“Practice your breathing every night,” she says.

“I do,” I say irritably.

She looks at me doggedly. “Then practice it twice.”

I sit up in the grass, ready to go.

“Are we done here?”

“Not yet,” she says. “Your team met yesterday. We’d like to offer you the opportunity to be a peer mentor to a new resident.”

“Me?” I ask, and point at myself dumbly. First the garden and now this. They keep adding things to the list.

“We think it’ll be a good exercise for you. If you do a good job, you’ll be that much closer to accomplishing your rehabilitative goals.”

Rehabilitative goals . . . the carrot they dangle in front of my nose to keep me doing the things I don’t want to do.

“What if I don’t want to?” I ask her.

“You can always say no,” she says without finishing. She doesn’t need to. If my team says to do it, I do it. Otherwise, I can sit in here and rot.

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll do it.”

I am strong. I am powerful. I am in control.

Yeah, right.

I leave our therapy session and promptly forget about the peer mentorship thing, that is, until that weekend in the dorms when I hear the screaming.

In the hallway I catch sight of a new girl, who can only be my new mentee, since Dr. Deb said she’d be arriving this weekend and staying on the second floor. Her hair’s been dyed pink, but her brown roots are showing. She’s skinny—all knees and elbows—and looks like a giraffe as she jumps awkwardly, screaming at Rhonda to “Give it back!” Rhonda holds what I can only guess is her cell phone above their heads and it’s ringing, which seems to be driving the girl absolutely insane.