Take My Advice

by Tristi Pinkston

  Amanda continued, “So I went in and got on the stage crew. Now I can be part of the play and hang out with you guys without having to put on makeup and memorize lines and stuff.”

  Phew. Crisis averted. “That’s awesome!” I reached out and grabbed her hand. “This is going to be a lot of fun.”

  “I’m glad you finally think so. Now you can stop looking like you think you’re on the way to the gallows or something.”

  “Oh, I just don’t think I am—I pretty much know I am.” I glanced around again, but there was still no Bruce. Sheesh. I’d spent so much time avoiding him, but now that I wanted to see him, he wasn’t anywhere. “Have you seen Bruce?”

  “Yeah, he’s over on the football field.”

  “Walk over there with me?”

  “Sure.”

  Dylan caught up to us halfway there. “Hey, Jill. When do you want to start running lines?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Tomorrow?”

  “Awesome.” He gave my shoulder a little shove. “Carrots.”

  “Oh, don’t even start.”

  We climbed up the bleachers and sat, watching the football team. Bruce was jogging around the perimeter of the field with half the team while the other half ran drills with Coach, but he looked like he was hanging back a little bit. His ribs should have been better by now, but maybe he was trying to avoid putting too much stress on them too soon.

  “So, why are we here?” Dylan asked. “We aren’t really sit-in-the-bleachers-and-gawk-at-the-football-players types. I might gawk at cheerleaders, but they’re not out right now. ”

  “Jill wants to rub it in to Bruce that she got the lead in the play,” Amanda informed him, and his eyes lit up.

  “Ooooo, revenge. I do love revenge.”

  Bruce seemed to be moving slower now, which irked me because I was waiting for him to make it back to this side of the field so I could talk to him. I’m not the most patient person—obviously—and I could swear he was slowing down on purpose just to mock me. But then his arms went around his stomach and he fell onto the ground. I watched, not breathing for a second, and then I stood up and screamed.

  “Coach!”

  Coach turned from where he was drilling the team and looked at me, then followed my point. He took off at a sprint across the grass, pulling a cell phone from his pocket while he ran to Bruce’s side.

  “What . . . what’s going on?” I asked, my mouth numb and barely able to form the words.

  Amanda tucked her arm through mine, not saying anything. Dylan trotted down the bleachers and onto the field, calling out something to Coach.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked, clutching Amanda’s fingers.

  “He’s lifeguard trained or something.”

  “But we’re not at the pool.”

  “It’s the same stuff, mostly.”

  We stood there and watched as Coach and then Dylan spoke to Bruce, who hadn’t moved since he’d collapsed. He was talking, though, and that had to be a good sign, right? The football team waited awkwardly, shifting from one foot to the other, and I could see from the looks on their faces that they wished they could help, but didn’t have any clue what to do. I felt exactly the same way.

  Some long minutes passed, and then we heard the sound of a siren coming closer and then stopping at the gates to the field. Two paramedics dashed across the grass, carrying small suitcases. They knelt down next to Bruce, and Coach and Dylan moved back. Dylan looked our way and shrugged exaggeratedly so we’d know that he didn’t have any idea what was going on.

  A few minutes later, Bruce was loaded up on a stretcher and the ambulance pulled away, the siren going again. Coach wiped his hand across his face and returned to the team. He spoke to them, and one of the players pulled off his helmet and threw it on the ground. That was never a good sign.

  Dylan walked toward us slowly, and Amanda’s fingers tightened on mine. “What’s wrong?” she called out as soon as he was within earshot. He didn’t answer until he reached us.

  “They think it’s his appendix,” he said, plunking back down on the bench. We sat too—my knees weren’t going to hold me up another second.

  “That was so freaky,” I said, squeezing my hands together. “I’ve never seen anyone just go down like that.”

  “Is he going to be okay?” Amanda asked.

  “They couldn’t say so soon. They asked Coach to contact Bruce’s family, and that’s all I know.”

  We stood up and walked back to the school, definitely more somber than we’d been when we first got to the field. I don’t know what was up with me. I didn’t like Bruce—I never had. He was so full of himself, such a bully, and yet I’d never wish for anything like this to happen to him.

  I had an appointment with Ms. Young the next morning, which, thankfully, got me out of math. I had to discuss my career options with her, as per the list that still bound me tight. I could choose between my student advisor or my school counselor, and since I knew Ms. Young so much better than I did Mr. Leffert, it was a no-brainer.

  We chatted for a few minutes about this, that, and the other thing, and we looked over my transcripts and saw that I was pretty much on track for college. She was pleased that I’d been able to pull a B+ on my last math test and encouraged me to keep it up.

  “Did you hear what happened to Bruce?” I asked, hoping she’d have more information about what happened.

  “I did. We were talking about it in the teachers’ lounge this morning.” Ms. Young crossed her legs and put her glasses on the desk. “You were there when it happened, right?”

  “Yeah. I was sitting in the bleachers with Dylan and Amanda. Bruce was running, and then all of a sudden, he just dropped like a stone.” I blinked rapidly. I hadn’t slept well the night before, and my exhaustion was catching up to me. Yeah, that was it—I was definitely not crying over Bruce. That was just crazy talk.

  “He had an emergency appendectomy shortly after he got to the hospital. His appendix had ruptured. He’ll be on a stiff round of antibiotics for a while and he’ll stay in the hospital for at least a few more days, but they think he’ll be fine.”

  I exhaled sharply. “Good.”

  “You still feel responsible for him, don’t you?”

  Ah, she went right to the heart of the matter. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Jill, you have to know that none of this is your fault. You did the right thing, what any caring person would do.”

  “I know that. Logically, in my head. But in my heart . . .” I sighed. “I still think about quitting the paper sometimes.”

  “You could do that. You could walk right in there and resign and never look back. But I don’t think it would work like that. I think you would look back, and it would just be one more thing for you to add to the already long list of things you feel guilty about.” She looked at me for another minute. “And there’s something else, isn’t there?”

  Why did I have to be so transparent? “My mom and dad are getting a divorce.”

  “Ah.” She sounded like she now had the answers to all the questions in the universe. “And because you can’t fix what’s happening at home, you try to fix everything else.”

  I blinked. And blinked some more. I honestly had no answer for that. Is that what I was doing—trying to fix everything else because I couldn’t fix my own life? My first instinct was to deny it. That wasn’t something a thinking, rational person would do—they would understand that they weren’t in control of other people’s decisions, and they would allow others the right to do as they liked with their own lives. But I was trying to fix things. I was trying to make things right for everyone else and feeling guilty when I was unsuccessful. And not only that, but I wasn’t trying to fix things the right way.

  Ms. Young didn’t say anything. She just sat there and waited for me to draw my own conclusions. I wished she would say something to end this torrent of very uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, but she must have wanted me to feel them. She was a sneaky one, no doub
t.

  “I . . . really don’t know what to say.” I swallowed, trying to get the lump in my throat to move.

  She leaned forward in her chair. “Jill, my parents were divorced when I was about your age, and I know how you feel. Believe me, I know. And so do a lot of other teenagers. Think about it—with a divorce rate in our nation of one every four minutes, how many of those affect teenagers living in the home?”

  “There’s a divorce every four minutes?” I was dumbfounded.

  “That’s right. You’re not alone, Jill, and you don’t need to move through life as though you are.”

  Once again, her words punched me in the gut. She was going to have to stop doing that or I’d lose it right in the middle of her office.

  “Can . . . can I get a pass for the rest of the day? You’ve given me a lot to think about, and I just . . . I just can’t be here right now.” I didn’t think I could even stand being in her office another minute. My chest was starting to hurt, and I had to get out. Away.

  “Of course.” She scribbled for a moment on the paper in front of her and then handed it to me. “Give this to the office. And Jill? If you need to talk again, my door’s always open.”

  I nodded, not really seeing her anymore, not really seeing anything. I handed in the note and left the building, not really sure where I was going, but sure that I needed to be alone. Really, truly alone.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I walked home, kicking leaves as I went. They’d fallen not long before, crispy little red and yellow things all over the sidewalks and filling up the gutters, and they crunched under my feet as I moved through them.

  I didn’t know what to do with myself when I got home. It was still morning, and the house was dead silent. That was fine by me, but after several minutes of staring at the wall, I had to get out. I had to go somewhere, think about something—anything. Now I wished more than ever that I had a car.

  I went out to the garage and pulled my bike off the rack. I hadn’t ridden it for a couple of months, but the tires were fine, and I coasted down the driveway with my ear buds cranked up high.

  One pedal after the other after the other. I rode until my thighs were burning and then stopped to see where I’d ended up. I was on the outskirts of town—I’d never ridden that far before. I saw a diner up ahead and ducked in to use the bathroom and grab a snack, and then I was on my way again. I just needed to keep moving, to numb my brain.

  I gave out when I reached the small forest a couple miles outside of town. Developers had been after that spot for years, but the owner refused to sell. He said he needed a little bit of wildness in the middle of our world of civilization and concrete. I remembered that because I’d been the one to write it up for the paper. I didn’t really get what he meant at the time, but now—sitting on the ground on a bed of pine needles, my knees pulled up to my chest and a canopy of branches over me, nothing but the wind and the chirp of birds to keep me company—I knew, and I understood.

  I’d been pushing back the conversation in the counselor’s office, refusing to think about it, but now I could. Ms. Young was an amazing lady. She always had my best interests at heart, and I knew she wasn’t trying to hurt me. But when someone peels away your mask and points out your Phantom-like features beneath it, there will be pain. Lots of it.

  It was time to be honest with myself—really, really honest. As I let my mind wander back to when I was little, I remembered overhearing my mom and dad fighting one night. They yelled back and forth for a few minutes and then my dad left the house and drove away, the tires of his car screeching on the street. It was dark in my bedroom, but a little sliver of light shone under my bedroom door. I remember being scared, thinking that we wouldn’t be a family anymore. But then my mom came in and tucked me in, just like always, and I figured everything was fine.

  That was it. That was the moment this had all begun for me.

  Pretending everything was all right, moving forward like nothing was wrong, painting bright faces on dark thoughts. Over time, the fighting continued until it simmered down into cold avoidance, and because it wasn’t loud, I was able to ignore it all the better. I threw myself into writing and school, and the better my grades were, the happier my parents seemed to be. If I could just keep performing, just keep being the perfect daughter, the lid would never have to pop off. I could distract them, give them something to be proud of, a common interest. I would be the glue that held our family together.

  And it worked. Until it stopped working, and I felt as though I had colossally failed. That my accomplishments weren’t enough anymore, that I wasn’t enough anymore.

  Tears ran down my cheeks, and the pain in my chest was almost unbearable. I knew I shouldn’t feel this way—I couldn’t control whether or not my parents still loved each other. But no matter how logical I chose to be, I was still that little girl in the dark bedroom, staring at the sliver of light under her bedroom door, wondering if her whole world was going to break apart and if there was anything she could do to stop it.

  I must have sat under those trees for a good hour before I moved. My legs were stiff and I hobbled to my bike, knowing it was time to head back into town. I’d given some thought to buying a tent and just staying out here forever, but that doesn’t work so well in real life. I pedaled home slowly, this time paying more attention to where I was going so I’d end up where I was actually trying to get. That’s the thing about wandering aimlessly—you’ve got to get back home sometime, and it’s good to know where you are. By the time I pulled up in front of my house, it was around five o’clock, and I’d pounded a lot of my frustration into the pedals.

  My cell phone was buzzing like crazy on the counter when I walked into the kitchen. Oh, yeah—I’d forgotten to take it with me. That hadn’t been the best thing to do—girl goes off into the woods on a bike and doesn’t take her cell phone. I’d have to remember that next time I was super upset and needing to run away from it all.

  I had five text messages and three missed calls. No surprises—they were all from Dylan and Amanda. I couldn’t handle Amanda’s puppy-dog-like devotion right then, so I called Dylan.

  “Hey,” he said after the first ring. “Where have you been?”

  “I needed some time.”

  “Well, did you get some?”

  “Yeah. Hey, have you got a car today?”

  “What do you need?”

  “A ride to the hospital.”

  “Be there in ten.”

  I appreciated that I didn’t have to explain myself. Dylan was pretty cool that way.

  By the time he picked me up, I had brushed the leaves out of my hair, changed my pants, and washed my face. I now looked a little less like a forest urchin. I grabbed an apple off the counter and pulled the door closed behind me after making sure I had keys and my phone.

  “So, where’d you go?” Dylan asked as he pulled the car onto the street.

  “Long bike ride.”

  “You didn’t call Amanda.”

  I shook my head. “I just . . . she loves me a little too much sometimes.”

  He didn’t say anything, but he nodded once. I think he got it. Amanda is the best friend ever. She would do anything for me, never let me wallow in self-pity, insist on cheering me up. And I didn’t want that. I needed to wallow for a little while. I wasn’t ready to feel better. I was much better off with Dylan. Sure, he called me on the carpet for all my stupid stuff and never let me get away with anything, but I knew he’d let me feel sorry for myself without insisting that we go to lunch or get cheesecake. That would come later. Right now, I needed to feel selfish and ornery and ready to crawl into a hole.

  When we got to the hospital, I asked at the nurses’ station, and they pointed me to Bruce’s room. I took a deep breath. I felt like I should have brought a card or something, but how lame would that be, bringing a football player a card? And no way was I going to get him a balloon—I’d had enough to do with balloons to last me a whole lifetime.

  “Yo
u coming in with me?” I asked Dylan, who seemed to be hanging back.

  “No. You’ve got this.” He plunked down in a chair in the hallway and gave me a thumbs-up. The punk.

  I paused another second before going in the room—now who was holding back?—and finally stepped inside. A tired-looking woman sat in a chair next to the bed, and she turned when she saw me.

  “Are you a friend of Bruce’s?” she asked.

  “More like a frenemy,” I replied, and she smiled.

  “Why don’t you sit with him while I grab a drink from the machine?” She motioned me toward the chair. “It’ll be good for me to stretch my legs.”

  I didn’t take the seat immediately. I edged toward it, wondering what I was even doing there. Bruce looked terrible. He was pale, and the dark circles under his eyes made his face look like a reverse ski mask. Maybe he’d stay asleep and I could just tiptoe out when his mom got back. But then he opened his eyes.

  “Jill?” His voice was barely above a whisper.

  “Hey.” I sat down and glanced around the room. It was every bit as bare as a hospital room usually is, not even flowers or anything. But then again, bringing a football player flowers was kind of odd too. Seriously, what were you supposed to take? And I didn’t have any idea what to say.

  “So, how are you?” I asked, feeling totally lame.

  “Okay.” He glanced around. “My mom leave?”

  “She just went to get a drink. Said she’d be right back.”

  He nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “Um, I heard they did surgery.”

  “Yeah. Took out my appendix.”

  “That’s rough.”

  “Yeah.”

  Another long moment of silence.

  Finally I cleared my throat. “So, listen. Um, I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry, and you were right.”

  He blinked and focused on me. “I was right? About what?”

  “I shouldn’t be trying to tell other people how to live their lives. I’m crappy at it, and I’m causing more problems than I’m solving. So I’m going to quit the paper.” I didn’t know I was going to say that until the words came out of my mouth. “I’m going to finish the bet because I made a promise, but I’m not going to write any more articles.” I wasn’t sure if I would write anything ever again—I just didn’t feel like I had it in me anymore. “So you win. I’m done.”