Where It Began (23 page)

“Not going to happen. Don’t worry about it.”

“Won’t you please, please, please, please let me call my uncle for you? He’s a really good lawyer. Listen to me Gabby, don’t take this the wrong way, but you really need to have your own lawyer and not Billy’s lawyer. My uncle says. You really need to look out for yourself here.”

“Lisa, I’ve
got
my own lawyer. I was just filling out a bunch of forms for him.”

“Yeah, but my uncle could really help you. Gabby, this is serious. Don’t you want a lawyer who could help
you
? You have to take this seriously.”

“Why would you think I’m not taking this seriously? I could go to some kind of jail in Arizona. I could have killed somebody.”

“Are you kidding me?” Lisa squeals. An actual squeal, like a piglet having a coronary. “Don’t say that!”

It is so clear that I shouldn’t say
anything
. Even my best friend can’t stand to hear the truth about me. I have to shut it down or I’m going to be too freaked out to get out of bed, eat toast, or implement The Plan. Which is not exactly optional unless I want to embrace a new life as Rehab Wilderness Girl. Billy is so so absolutely and completely right.

You can tell Lisa is getting wound up again, and before she can start, I say, “I’m
not
going to talk about it. Save your breath.”

And Lisa says, “I know, I know. And I’m trying to respect that. I am. But this is really hard to watch.”

MEANWHILE, MR. HEALY KEEPS CALLING ME ON THE
phone. No introduction, he just launches right in.

“Isabelle Frost says you’d be more comfortable with intensive therapy than AA?”

“Yup,” I say, “Because—”

But he doesn’t even want to hear about it.

I don’t know. Maybe all us girls who threaten to gorge ourselves on the entire refreshment table at Brentwood Unitarian AA, stab ourselves with plastic butter knives that aren’t even serrated, and thrust our hands and forearms into Brentwood Unitarian’s boiling hot forty-eight-cup industrial-size coffeemakers are a lot more comfortable with therapy than AA.

“All righty,” he says. “I think I should talk to your mom for a quick sec. I think we need a change of plan here to a heavier-duty therapist, all right?”

“I guess.”

“Someone objective-looking with big, bad credentials . . .
hmmmm . . .
”

After this, the frequency of Mr. Healy’s phone calls increases exponentially.

He keeps reminding me that I’m not supposed to be driving a car or hanging out with undesirables, by which I assume he means Billy (thank you, Agnes Nash), and to see if anything has
changed
. . . . Pregnant pause.

The only upside to the whole situation is that whenever I need to talk to Billy, apparently it’s all right to message him constantly in his new role as legal consultant. He actually seems interested. Even when I don’t message him, he keeps chatting me with questions eerily similar to Mr. Healy’s.

It is starting to feel as if I exist again, at least a little, in a tiny corner of the outskirts of Billy World. Sort of.

So this is my life:

Lisa is texting me to see if it would be okay to go to Fling in her mother’s arguably vintage acrylic cardigan that has sequined sombreros shading little napping men (No, not even close to okay. Tell her that you can’t wear racist outerwear to Winston School social events. Tell her
anything
) and me chatting online with Billy to get pointers on how I can stay out of jail.

gabs123:
how did u get out of residential? big lawyer says residential is the worst case scenario if therapy doesn’t work out. i will DIE in residential.

pologuy:
went to this outward bound thing in the rockies summer of 9th after pot in locker room at loyola match. did ropes course. listened to crap about personal responsibility. took other people’s ritalin

gabs123:
no way.

pologuy:
way. no booze no weed. what’s boy to do?

gabs123:
i will not do a ropes course. just not happening.

pologuy:
no worries. u need to knock over lots more trees before ropes course. that’s after 4th offense. not now. lawyer’s just scaring u so you’ll go all o mr. lawyer man, my hero when nothing bad happens to u

gabs123:
4th offense!?!?!?!? u are a very busy boy.

pologuy:
what r u wearing right now?

gabs123:
i’m going to be wearing a day glo jumpsuit if u don’t get me out of this.

And I say to myself,
Gabriella, you have a whole team of highly skilled, high-priced professionals getting you out of this. If you don’t stop bugging Billy Nash, he’s going to pretend he’s offline. You have to stop whining like a big freaking baby and step away from the computer.

But I don’t.

Meanwhile, Vivian keeps slamming in and out of my room without knocking. When she sees that I’m chatting online with Billy, she is somewhat happier.

But Vivian, it turns out, is extremely annoyed about my failure to embrace kiddie Twelve Step.

“Everything was going fine!” she says, tight-lipped. “But could you get with the program? No you could not.”

“Mr. Healy says it’s fine if I get heavy-duty therapy instead. Billy even said so. What’s wrong with that? It’s not as if I have a drinking problem.”

“Of course you don’t!” Vivian snaps. “That’s not the point. But I’m not going to stand here and watch you shoot yourself in the foot.”

“Yeah, well I’ll be sure to take off your ugly Coach clown shoes before I do the deed, so you don’t have anything to worry about.”

“I am worried. I want this to work out for you, but you have to get with the program. What were you thinking? And now it looks as if you have to go back to that child psychiatrist you don’t like, and if that makes you want to cut yourself and tear out your hair and eat it, I just don’t want to hear about it.”

“What child psychiatrist?”

“That woman at Valley Mercy with the odd hair. The one you said was so annoying.”

“Wendy!”

“Not Wendy. Wendy is a playologist. Dr. Berman. With those dowdy Ferragamos.”

“Ponytail? Ponytail Doc is a neurologist.” But she does have bad shoes. Really expensive bad shoes with bows on them.

“Nuh-uh, she’s a child psychiatrist and she went to Harvard, and Mr. Healy has read every word she wrote about you in the chart and it’s all good, if you can believe it.”

“Why can’t you believe it?”

Vivian just glares at me. “That’s not what I said. Can’t you see that I’m trying to help you? What I said is she’s some kind of hotshot who can get you out of this if you’ll just cooperate. Can you do that, Gabby? Can you just cooperate?”

As if she somehow doubts that I want to get out of this, short of going to AA all the time. As if she doesn’t even know who I am, even though my lying like a rug about my fictional cutting and puking to get out of AA is apparently no secret.

Which is beside the point. The point being that I have to go see Ponytail Doc who is apparently a hotshot shrink in the Valley, which kind of makes you wonder. Like Vivian is going to hop into the car and drive me through the Sepulveda Pass to some strip mall in Tarzana with a Popeyes chicken and a Dunkin’ Donuts and a tacky medical building. Fortunately for Vivian, Ponytail, not being completely devoid of taste and discernment, also has an office on the Westside by UCLA, presumably hoping that someone in the B’s will notice what a hotshot she is and rescue her from strip mall hell.

gabs123:
whatcha doing?

pologuy:
nothing. SAT words. heavily armed warden with flash cards. what’s up?

gabs123:
i have to see the therapist later.

pologuy:
no worries. jackman is harmless. tries to teach u deep breathing. very relaxing

gabs123:
not ur therapist. big honcho girl therapist. the one from the hospital. supposedly she likes me, which is going to make it so so easy to just spill my guts.

pologuy:
as long as u don’t plan to spill ur guts

gabs123:
i think i have to. nobody came out and said it but i think if i pass, no residential. if therapy works out is what the lawyer said. how can u tell if therapy is working out?

pologuy:
didn’t ur lawyer tell u what to say on this one either?

It occurs to me once again that people who write large checks to the mayor, or whatever it is that Agnes actually does every time Billy screws up, get a lot more help from their lawyers.

gabs123:
i’m screwed right?

pologuy:
ur lawyer is lame. he needs to tell u these things. court ordered therapist tells EVERYBODY what u say. judge, DA, police. very sneaky. uses everything against you. DO NOT TRUST THERAPIST!

gabs123:
what do i say? i have to pass or i’m going to rehab jail in the high desert!!!! what do i say???

pologuy:
cry a lot

gabs123:
a person can’t just cry forever. physically impossible. and she already knows me. i can’t just pretend to b somebody else.

pologuy:
stick to the plan ok? complete denial. followed by maybe u do have the problem. then u pretend to work on it once a week until your record gets expunged ok?

gabs123:
how do u pretend to work on it? what words come out of your mouth when u do that?

pologuy:
ok like this. oh no dr jackman i have a restless urge to drink, smoke, and have meaningless sex. yet i know all this fun stuff my wicked peers are pressuring
me to do is self destructive. oh no dr. jackman what should i do? hey i know, what if u put on the cd with the jungle bugs and bird calls and i relax in this nice zero gravity chair?

gabs123:
no way.

pologuy:
way. and be sure to tell her how much u hate yourself

gabs123:
what if she doesn’t buy any of this? she’s not completely stupid. is there a backup plan?

pologuy:
dude u don’t need a backup plan. just tell her how u sit in ur bedroom and hate yourself while drinking up ur dad’s glenlivet

gabs123:
y is everybody making such a big deal about that? it was just that one time.

pologuy:
don’t tell her that

BACK IN THE HOSPITAL, PONYTAIL WAS JUST AN
irritating interruption of
Gabriella Gardiner Presents Scenes from Teen Life in the Three B’s
. She was a lot less annoying than when she is sitting in her office in Westwood.

An office in a glass and steel building with a bad metal sculpture in the lobby (convex mother with concave child, only it is hard to tell if the mother is nursing the kid or dropping it).