Chapter Fourteen
I’m back at school before the end of fifth period. I come in the building through the front door, carrying a note from Marshall’s cardiologist, Jessa Gray was at a doctor’s appointment, not technically a lie. Doesn’t matter anyway; the secretary in the front office doesn’t even read it. Slides it into a file, writes me a pass back to class while I try to not stare at the burn on her cheek. If I hurry, I can get to fifth period before the bell. But I don’t hurry. I move down the main hall like the floor is made of molasses, fear like lead in my boots. Tomorrow looms like a tornado in the distance, a shark in a coming wave. I want to get it over with, but at the same time I don’t want it to come at all. If tomorrow doesn’t come then neither does Marshall’s heart procedure, and he stays how he is now, safe. But if the procedure never happens then Marshall never gets better, and I stay here, in this panic pit. We never get to that day on the other side of all of this where we go on a date and I let him call it a date and his heart doesn’t have a hole in it and maybe mine doesn’t either anymore. Between that day and this one is tomorrow, a wall I can’t see through.
I stop in the bathroom, in and out of the stall quickly, don’t let myself consider hiding out, force myself to look in the mirror as I’m washing my hands. The thought i wish he could’ve seen how i looked before my accident pops in my head, but of course there’s no way he ever could’ve. If the accident hadn’t happened I wouldn’t be here. If things hadn’t gone exactly how they went, I wouldn’t have needed to move to Colorado, and Marshall and I would never have met. That thought takes the juice right out of my regret.
The fear, though, is unassailable. The dark balls of dread pinball through my brain. This is what anxiety does to a brain, I know that. A barrage of intrusive, unwanted, and distressing thoughts that the person thinking them can’t turn off no matter how hard they try, which is exactly what I’m doing right now, trying not to think about all the things that could go wrong during the procedure tomorrow, all the ways that Marshall could die. Failing, because when it comes to obsessive thinking, avoidance never works.
The bell rings. My cue to leave, before the bathroom floods with girls. Hannah usually goes to her locker between fifth and sixth so she doesn’t have to go again after school, so I go there, to find the one person who I can talk to about the storm inside my head, the one person who will actually get it, who might be feeling the same things, too.
She’s bent over, angrily shoving books into her backpack when I walk up, the longer side of her hair hanging in her face. “Hey,” I call out, so relieved to see her it makes my throat catch.
But then she straightens up and I audibly gasp. The half moon under her eye has become a dozen bruises all over her face.
“What?” she demands.
“Are you okay?” I ask her, glancing around to see if anyone is staring at her, because even without the bruises I would be staring, i am staring, seeing her like this. She looks like she hasn’t slept, or showered, or eaten, in days. did she look this bad this morning? I have no mental image, no way to be sure, just the absence of a memory of ever looking at her and feeling the way I do right now, concerned and unsettled and a tiny bit afraid.
it’s not real i’m imagining it i’m making it up
“I’m fine,” she says, going back to her backpack, yanking so hard on the zipper I fully expect it to break. “What’s up?”
“I just heard about Marshall,” I say, forcing myself not to look away, to act normal, maybe she looks fine, maybe it’s not just the bruises i’m imagining, maybe all of this is in my head.
“Right. The clot.”
“Well, not just the clot,” I say, worried suddenly that she doesn’t know the rest of it.
“You mean the fact that they’re closing the hole? You should be psyched about that. Marshall can stop thinking about it. And so can the rest of us.” She slings her backpack on her back. “I just wish it wasn’t happening this week. I really don’t need another distraction.”
I stare at her. “Hannah.”
“Sorry.” But she doesn’t sound sorry. “I just meant it’s not the ideal week for family medical procedures, that’s all. Obviously, I’m glad they caught the clot.”
“So you’re not worried about it.”
“No. Marshall has literally the best luck of anyone on the planet. Other than the fact that he was born with a heart defect, every single other thing in his life has worked out. So, no, I’m not worried that something will go wrong for him because nothing ever does. I am, however, worried that I’ll blow my Interlochen audition, because that’s the way things go for me.” She slams her locker shut.
She’s waiting for me to respond but no words come.
“I’m sorry this is all happening at once,” I say finally.
“Yep,” she says flatly. Then she turns and walks off.
what has gotten into her?
I’m still standing at her locker when the warning bell rings, replaying our conversation in my head, wishing I could see it, to get the details right. There was something so odd about the way she was acting. Separate from the scowl, the dismissive tone, the preoccupation with herself. There was something else. A not-Hannahness underneath all of that.
she wasn’t herself
As soon as I have the thought I second-guess it. Maybe she was being herself, maybe I don’t really know her, maybe this is who she really is. Maybe this is why she doesn’t have any other friends. These thoughts make sense, but I don’t buy them. Something is up.
Out of nowhere I remember that prescription bottle I saw in her bag this morning. what is she taking medicine for? It could be anything, nothing. But it wasn’t nothing when I did it, hid a bottle of pills in my backpack, terrified someone would see them, at the same time hoping someone would so I wouldn’t have to carry the secret around anymore, i’m on anti-anxiety meds. Looking back I don’t know why I was so ashamed of it. By tenth grade I’d realized that half the kids I knew were on Zoloft, but by then I wasn’t taking them any more. The headaches and constant dry mouth got to be too much, plus the pills never actually made me feel better. Just sort of numb.
The late bell jolts me into motion, one foot in front of the other until I get to the right door. Psychology of the Artist, my favorite class. The teacher glances at my pass then waves me to my seat where I promptly check out of reality and check into the world where everything that possibly could go wrong with Marshall and Hannah definitely will. My mind making lists and more lists of all the ways that I could lose them, my only two friends, the realest relationships I’ve ever had.
“One feels as if one were lying bound hand and foot at the bottom of a deep dark well, utterly helpless,” I hear my teacher say, and my eyes snap up.
YES THAT IS EXACTLY HOW ONE FEELS
“Vincent Van Gogh wrote these words in a letter to his brother, Theo,” my teacher continues, catching my eye for a sec before sliding up the row. “One of many in which the artist discusses at length the depth and darkness of his mental illness. And yet, these same letters suggest that the paralyzing anxiety that afflicted Van Gogh was a crucial component of his creativity. His unique psychological disposition enabled him to see the world in a way that no one else could.”
Lucky for him. Anxiety, helplessness, a deep dark well, check check check. But my mental illness hasn’t made me creative in any sense of the word. I don’t see the world differently. Mostly it feels like I don’t see the world at all, even now, with my dark mind’s eye and my amped-up sight. And what I do see, what draws my eye, isn’t even real. The kaleidoscope of bruises on Hannah’s face, my dad’s persistent scars, all the things that could go wrong but probably never will. If I were an artist, or an author, maybe I could do something with all of this fiction. Instead I’m just stuck with it, in it. My mind caught in quicksand, the more it struggles to get out, the deeper it sinks into the pit.
I WANT OUT OF THE PIT
It’s the feeling I had this morning in the bathroom, a sort of mental claustrophobia, i don’t want do this anymore. Except this time the thing I want to escape is inside me, it is me. Maybe it always was.
I jerk to my feet. My teacher looks at me, eyebrows raised.
“I, uh, have to go to the bathroom,” I say.
She nods. “Take the pass.”
I take it, an old wooden spoon, even though I know I’m not going to the bathroom and probably won’t come back to class.
Once in the hallway, I don’t give myself a chance to second guess it, to remind myself of all the reasons I hate therapy, to talk myself out of what I’m about to do. I just walk straight to Dr. I’s office and through the door. His secretary looks up from her screen, then frowns.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asks, scanning the calendar on her desk. “Because Dr. I’s not here.”
but he has to be here
it took everything i had to get here
“No,” I say. “When will he be back?”
“Not sure,” the secretary says. “He has an appointment right after school, so I know he’s still on campus. You can wait, if you want.” She gestures to a pair of chairs against the side wall.
I look at the chairs then back at the woman behind the desk. Her hawkish eyes, the click click click of her fake nails on computer keys, the powdery smell of her perfume.
“I’ll just come back,” I say.
She looks back at the calendar, flips the page. “He has an opening at ten fifteen tomorrow. I can write you a pass to give to your second period teacher to leave class.”
I nod. “Okay.”
“What’s your name?” she asks, reaching for a pencil.
“Jessa Gray.”
“Grade?”
“Eleventh.”
“And where will you be second period tomorrow?”
“Chemistry,” I say. “Dr. Geiger.”
“Great,” she says, handing me the little pink slip. “So we’ll see you tomorrow morning then.” She goes back to her screen and I think I mumble thank you and then I’m back in the empty hall.
I start back toward my classroom. As I turn onto D hall, I see him coming towards me, hands in the pockets of his white coat. My stomach dips. Five minutes ago I was ready to talk to him. In his office, on my terms. Now I feel blindsided. Caught.
“Hello,” he says, and smiles.
“I was looking for you,” I blurt out.
“Well. Here I am. Everything okay?”
I open my mouth to my answer but my throat clamps shut. So I just shake my head.
“C’mon,” he says. “Let’s go outside.” I follow him out the door at the end of the hall, to the same bench I saw him on last week. “You have your hideout and I have mine,” he says, and sits. “I come out here to eat lunch and read.” He pulls a worn paperback from the pocket of his coat. Principles of Philosophy by Rene Descartes. “You into philosophy?” he asks.
“Not really,” I say. not at all
“It’s a hard sell for high school kids, I know,” he says. “But you’re all missing out. Descartes in particular is fascinating. He was a mathematician, not a doctor, but some consider him the founder of modern psychology, because he was one of the first big thinkers to suggest that the mind was independent from the brain.”
“What’s the difference?” I ask. “Aren’t they two words for the same thing?”
“Ha. Ask a dozen doctors and philosophers and you’ll get twelve different answers. But for Descartes, it was a resounding no. He believed the mind operated within the physical structure of the brain but wasn’t confined by it, because the mind was immaterial, like the soul. That one idea — that the soul and the body are distinct entities that interact somehow in the brain — was the seed that grew into modern psychology.” He smiles a little. “But you didn’t come out here to talk about Descartes.”
I shake my head.
He slips the book back into his pocket and gestures for me to sit.
“Want to tell me what’s going on?” he asks when I do.
I stare at my hands.
“Sorry. Loaded question,” he says. “How about we start with why you were looking for me.”
I scrape at my cuticles. “Because I have to get better,” I say finally.
“Okay. Better from what?”
“I have an anxiety disorder,” I say finally. “For the last couple years it’s been mostly under control, but since the accident — I was in a car accident two months ago, but you probably know that already, you probably know about the anxiety, too — the panic is all there is.” The words are a shaky gush but I don’t slow down. “And now my friend is in the hospital and all I can think about are the thousand ways he could die. And maybe if it was just that, the morbid thoughts, the racing heart, the stuff I know how to deal with, maybe I could get past it again, but now, because of the accident . . .” A knot forms in my throat. I swallow it down. “There’s other stuff, too.”
“What kind of other stuff?” Dr. I asks, his voice super gentle now, and more familiar somehow.
“My mind’s eye is messed up,” I say, because it’s the easier thing to say. “I can’t see anything in my head.”
“And that’s making your anxiety worse?”
“Not just that,” I say. The skin beneath my thumbnail tears, stings, bleeds.
Dr. I waits for me to go on. For a couple seconds I consider making something up, something more victim less freak. Finally, I tell him the truth.
“I’m hallucinating,” I say hoarsely. “Wounds. On people’s faces. Not everyone. Just some people. My dad. Hannah. Other kids at school.” now marshall too.
“What kind of wounds?”
“Mostly bruises and scars. Sometimes burns or scrapes or scratches. Always on the face. It’s been happening ever since my accident — because of my accident, obviously. A way to dissociate from my own wounds or whatever. But, honestly, I’m not even thinking about my scars that much anymore. Seeing them is still hard for me, but I’m not, like, obsessing over them every second the way I was in the beginning. So why haven’t the hallucinations stopped?” My voice is rising, panicked, too high-pitched. “I should be getting better, not worse.”
“Have you noticed a pattern to the wounds?” Dr. I asks calmly. “You said you don’t see them on everyone. So have you paid attention to who you do see them on? Why some people and not others?”
“I don’t know,” I say, irritated. i need answers not more questions. “Shouldn’t you be telling me?”
“It doesn’t work that way, Jessa,” he says gently. “My job would be a lot easier if it did.”
“Awesome,” I say flatly. “You can’t help me, either.”
“I am helping you,” he says, and there it is again, that familiar calm in his voice. “I’m telling you that what’s happening in your mind isn’t random. But you already know that. You said yourself that what you’re seeing is specifically connected to your own experience. You were hurt. You’re now perceiving other people as being hurt. If I were you, I’d start there.”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” I say, frustrating rising. “Start where, do what?”
“Think like a philosopher,” he says. “Figure this out.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” I say, sarcastic, too sarcastic, why am i being such a bitch? My eyes drop back to my lap. “Sorry,” I mumble. “It’s just— I’ve tried all the things. Meds, therapy, supplements, a hundred different diets that are supposed to reduce stress. Nothing has ever worked.”
He’s quiet for a few seconds.
“What do you have going on before school tomorrow?” he asks then.
I shrug. “Why?”
“About a year ago, some students started a support group, open to anyone who felt they needed to come. It meets Tuesday and Thursday mornings at seven-twenty at the recreation center down the street.” He looks over at me. “I was thinking you might like to try it out.”
thanks no thanks
I start to shake my head.
“The group is completely confidential,” he goes on. “The students take that very seriously. Which is probably why the group is so popular. Anywhere from twelve to twenty kids come every week. I’d guess the majority suffer from anxiety, like you, or depression. But others are dealing with bipolar disorder, OCD, eating issues, addiction, self-harm.”
I try to let these terms bounce off me, but they lodge beneath my skin. “And they all go to Crossroads?”
He nods. “When the group first started, the administrators assumed it would be mostly alternative school students. But it’s turned out to be a fifty-fifty split between the two programs, and spread out fairly equally among the four grades.”
There’s an odd sort of comfort in this.
“Why doesn’t it just meet here?” I ask.
“The students thought about holding it in a classroom,” Dr. I replies. “But for many of the kids who come, school doesn’t feel like a safe place to open up.”
is any place safe?
“I think it could be really good for you,” Dr. I says quietly. “Very low pressure. There’s no faculty member there, only students. And no one will expect you to talk on your first visit. Unless you want to, of course.”
“I won’t,” I say quickly.
“So you’ll go then?”
There is pretty much nothing I want to do less.
“Yeah,” I say finally. “I’ll go. Do I just show up?”
Dr. I nods. “It meets in the big room beside the gym. Just make sure you get there on time, because at seven-thirty they shut the door.”
“Okay,” I say, but I feel my mind changing, the excuses trickling in, the reasons I might not show up.
“How about I meet you there at seven twenty-five?”
“I thought you said it was students only?”
“It is. But getting through the front door can be hard the first time. Sometimes getting to the parking lot is even harder.”
so much for those excuses
Eventually, I nod. “Yeah, okay. I’ll meet you.”
Dr. I points at the wooden spoon peeking out of my bag. My hall pass. It seems like an eternity since I left sixth period. “Do you need to take that back? You’ve only got five minutes before the bell.”
“Probably.”
He gets to his feet. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning then,” he says. Then he gives me a little wave and walks off.