Connecticut
Winter, Sophomore Year
The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I knew it was happening again. I slammed my locker shut and turned around. Sure enough, two people a few lockers down immediately stopped their hushed chatter and averted their eyes.
Things like that had been happening a lot since the night I went to the hospital. If people weren’t staring and whispering, they were asking how I felt, but in a very loaded way, like they thought I might crumple at their feet if I had to think too hard.
Honestly, I’d been feeling much better. I didn’t have leukemia. Or aplastic anemia, or anything serious. My family and I had cried our eyes out with relief when the results finally came back.
After all the crap, all the drama, it turned out to be the sulfa antibiotics I’d taken for my sinus infection that started the whole thing. They’d caused my platelet count to drop, exacerbating a vitamin B12 and iron deficiency I hadn’t even known I had. That’s why I didn’t get better after I stopped taking the antibiotics—I’d had more than one factor working against me. But my doctor seemed confident that supplements and some changes to my diet would prevent similar incidents in the future, and I was beyond glad that I didn’t have to face what I’d feared the most.
Unfortunately, when it came to not having anyone find out about me spending the night in my bathroom with a pair of scissors, that was where my luck ran out. No one had said anything about it, but I was sure Isabel had told. Why else would everyone be acting so whacked? People didn’t stare and whisper because a person had a blood transfusion.
Then again, I never thought people would react so cruelly to a nosebleed.
I couldn’t prove Isabel had talked. Especially with her falling all over herself to make a phony show of concern for David’s benefit. He never witnessed her fake smiles that turned into condescending smirks the moment he turned his back, or the looks she gave me—like I wasn’t worthy of following her dog with a pooper-scooper. But he did see her accompany him to my locker, put her hand on my shoulder, and ask how I was feeling.
I wanted to take that hand and slam it in the metal door.
“Oh,” I said. “I’m fine. Lucky that it was nothing more serious, but I wish I could’ve gone to the dance.”
Isabel smiled, huge and fake. “Aw, Kelsey.” She flipped the ends of my hair with her finger, immediately making me self-conscious about wearing it down. “There will be other dances. Getting better is what’s most important.”
“Riiight.”
“Kelse, I’m going to walk Isabel to class,” David said. “You want to walk with us?”
I slammed my locker shut, wishing I could have figured out a way to catch Isabel’s head in it as I did. “No. I have to stop by the guidance office.”
The only way I could convince my mother of my mental stability after the bathroom incident was to agree to a few sessions with the school psychologist, Mr. Petri. Even though she knew what she’d seen wasn’t what it looked like, she was afraid of the toll everything had taken on me. I knew I didn’t need his so-called services, but I would have done anything to make my mother stop hovering over me like I might fly over the cuckoo’s nest on a moment’s notice.
“Actually, David,” Isabel said, “I have to go that way too. I’ll walk with Kelsey.”
I would’ve rather swallowed worms. “You don’t have to.”
Isabel ignored the disdain in my voice. “I want to.”
“Cool. See you guys later, then.” With that, David walked away.
Come back! Don’t leave me here with her!
“So,” Isabel said the moment he was out of earshot. “If you weren’t trying to kill yourself, then what were you trying to do?”
“I wasn’t trying to do anything. I had a rough night and—” I realized I’d let her unnerve me and wanted to kick myself for it. “Wait, how is any of this your business?”
She folded her arms and squared her shoulders. “David was white as a sheet when he left my house. Are you willing to sink that low to get his attention?”
A wave of dizziness passed over me. “Are you kidding me? I was sick, Isabel. How could you think I did any of that on purpose?”
“You were so sick that you forgot where your bed was?” She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Kelsey. You were playing at something. And whatever it was, it worked, because David went running.”
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak.
“I know you hate me,” she continued. Her eyes bored into mine. “But if you care about David, then let him make his own choices.”
I should’ve told her to take her own advice. I should’ve said that David had never even wanted to go to the dance with her, that if he chose me over her, it would never be because I forced him.
Instead I watched as she turned on her heel and walked away, her hips swinging like the angry flick of a cat’s tail.
I stood rooted to the spot with her words echoing in my head until I finally remembered how to move my feet. Then I turned and headed to my appointment.
I signed in at the reception desk in the guidance office, and the receptionist told me to have a seat in one of the chairs between Mr. Petri’s closed door and my guidance counselor, Mrs. Malone’s, office. I looked up to find one of the chairs already occupied. By Maddie, of all people, because apparently this morning hadn’t sucked enough already. She sat there, twirling the ends of her hair around her fingers, avoiding my eyes and shifting around like she hoped the chair would grow jaws and swallow her.
“Hey,” I said quietly as I sat down, dropping my book bag on the floor. Her mouth twitched into a fleeting semi-smile.
“Kelsey. How are you?”
There was that question again.
“I have to meet with Mr. Petri. So someone must think I’m not doing all that great.” It was a lame attempt at humor, but I thought she’d at least crack a smile. She didn’t.
“I heard about what happened. It isn’t your fault.”
Shit. So Isabel had opened her trap.
“Maddie, this whole thing got blown way out of proportion. I don’t have an effing death wish.”
“Of course not.” She paused, studying the arm of the chair for a second. “But I’m glad you’re getting help anyway.” And there it was. She might as well have said, Sure you don’t.
My fingers dug into the faded upholstery of the seat, but before I could force words through my clamped teeth, Maddie added, “And at least David got to you in time. Oh, and I heard your dad has a new job. That’s good news, right?”
Her words knocked the wind right out of me. “David . . . what?”
Maddie’s face went as blank as mine was horrified. “Got to you?” she repeated slowly, as if I hadn’t spoken English my whole life. “Before anything got out of hand?”
I sank in my chair, the sound of keyboards clacking and coffee mugs clanging suddenly roaring in my ears. Everything was out of hand.
Mr. Petri’s door opened then, and he ushered another student out. “So sorry to keep you waiting, Ms. Crawford—”
“Actually, I need one more second.” I barely glanced at him.
I stood up and threw my bag over my shoulder, then turned so I could face Mr. Petri and Maddie at the same time. “I want you both to know that I didn’t try to kill myself.” I yanked the sleeve of my shirt up to my elbow, exposing the bandage covering the slice Miranda had made down my hand. “This happened before the dance, and it was an accident.” I jerked up the other sleeve, where the cut from my dad’s scissors was fading to nothing more than a scratch. “No one had to rescue me, because nothing happened.”
“Maddie?” The sound of Mrs. Malone’s voice interrupted my speech. The door to her office had opened, and Maddie made a beeline for it. She hesitated in the door frame and turned back to me, like she’d reached safe territory and suddenly felt brave.
“Maddie.” My voice came out in a pleading whimper. “Why don’t you believe me?”
She looked at the floor, still twisting a section of her hair into a taut funnel. “It just makes sense. Why you’ve been pushing everyone away.”
“Why I’ve been—” I all but fell over. I wanted to do something, anything other than stand there like a dumbfounded idiot, but my brain refused to cooperate. So I stood there like a dumbfounded idiot.
“If you want to talk about it,” Maddie said hesitantly, “I’ll listen.”
With that, she disappeared inside Mrs. Malone’s office, and I stayed glued to the floor. She really didn’t believe me. Worse, I’d seen her mock me, and now she was treating me like a charity case. And I had a feeling she wouldn’t be the only one.
The next twenty minutes didn’t help me feel any less like a leper. Mr. Petri was nice enough, asking questions about my childhood, my friends, my goals for the future. But to me, every question felt like a thinly veiled attempt to expose me as a wack job. When he asked how things were at home, I heard, Do your parents make you want to kill yourself? When he asked about my friends, I assumed he meant, Do you not have any, and that’s why you tried to kill yourself?
It seemed funny, in a very unfunny way, that I’d been so worried about becoming the Sick Girl. I’d never thought about being the Girl Who Tried to Kill Herself, because, well, I’d never tried to kill myself.
Not that I would have had to think about it at all if it hadn’t been for David’s big mouth and his extremely crappy choice of girlfriend.
I stood the minute I sensed our meeting wrapping up. Every second that ticked by allowed for more gossip to spread like a disease, and I was anxious to get into the hall before it filled with more curious stares and thinly disguised whispers.
David had first period right around the corner, and I waited by the door of the classroom for the bell to ring. I ambushed him the moment I saw him, grabbing his arm and dragging him into an empty corner of the hall.
“What happened to not saying anything to anybody?” I hissed.
“What are you talking about?”
“How did Maddie know about my dad’s job offer?”
David flushed. “I—sorry, Kelse, I didn’t know it was a secret.”
“You know what, David? When something’s not your news to share, don’t share it.” He mumbled an apology, but I barely heard it over my tirade. “What else did you tell them? Why does everyone think that I tried to kill myself and that you came to save my sorry ass?”
I waited for him to get angry, or indignant, or have any kind of reaction other than the one he had. He scratched the back of his neck and shifted from one foot to the other. “That’s crazy, Kelse. No one thinks anything like that.”
My eyes widened. “Yes, they do!” I told him about my run-in with Maddie, about what she’d said. “Am I supposed to let people think I’m a suicidal maniac? You have to make them stop this, because if she didn’t hear it from you, then she heard it from Isabel.”
David straightened, clearly offended. “I never said anything like that to either of them, and I’ve told you before, Maddie doesn’t hate you. She wouldn’t go around spreading rumors about you for the hell of it.”
“Isabel would.”
“Jesus!” David yanked a hand through his hair like he might rip it out of his head. “Do you realize anyone who was at her house the morning after the dance could be saying this shit? Shit, which, by the way, I hadn’t heard a word of until right now.”
“If they’re thinking it, I’m sure they’re saying it—”
“Kelse, listen. Who cares what people think? You know what really happened, and so do I. Don’t worry about what anyone else says. It’ll all blow over.”
I couldn’t believe those words had actually come out of his mouth. He made it sound like someone had insulted my shoes, or my choice of topic for a school project, and I should brush it off and get on with my life.
I narrowed my eyes at him, feeling my face flush with heat as I recalled Isabel’s accusation. “Easy for you to say. You come off looking like a hero in all of this, like you rescued the pathetic little damsel in distress. I hope you know I’m not that desperate for your attention, David.”
A flash of something shadowed his face, something that told me I’d hit a nerve despite the hardened expression that replaced it within a split second. He made a sound somewhere between a scoff and a snort.
“Trust me,” he said. “I know.”
Then, without another word, he turned and left me standing in the hall.