by Cassie Beebe
It was a gift, for his birthday, and following that gift came another. Sarah was the first to bear witness to his deepest shame, and she still lay beside him that night, desiring justice for him. She never looked at him any differently.
She never looked at him the way Jenna looked at him that night.
With a sigh, he resigned himself to sleep, slipping back under his blankets. After the short absence of its presence, he could feel the cold chain resting on his neck. In that moment, he accepted that Sarah Parker was the best of his life. Maybe life only gives you one – one truly beautiful, amazing chapter in the midst of otherwise depressing drudgery, and Sarah was his.
Nobody would ever accept him the way she did. He knew that now. And whether or not she ever actually loved him – a question he was actively choosing not to ponder – he knew it was the closest he would ever come.
He had Maggie, and then he had Sarah, and now he was alone. And he was okay with that.
His throat tightened with emotion, contradicting the statement, but he cleared it away and closed his eyes, willing himself to sleep.
Tomorrow would be a new day, and he would choose to live on, despite knowing that the best of his life was already behind him. He nearly laughed at himself for ever thinking he could get over his feelings for Sarah. He knew, now, how silly of a notion that was. He would love her until his last breath, engagement ring be damned. She had a hold on his heart, and he told himself there was no room left for anyone else, even if they wanted there to be.
So, really, it would be easier if Jenna hated him. Whatever the future of their friendship had once held, it could never measure up to the way Sarah had changed his life, so what was the point? No, this was better.
His throat was thick again, and a tear slipped from the side of his eye.
This was better.
HE STARED AT THE mug in his hands, churning the last bit of coffee around in circles, watching the white cream swirl through the dark brown liquid.
“Jacob?”
He snapped out of his haze and looked up at Doctor Summers. She was watching him with a concerned crease in her forehead.
She closed her notepad and set it on the table between them, and he glanced at the clock. An hour already?
“Jacob… I’m concerned about you,” she stated with cautious appraisal.
“What do you mean?” he asked in a flat voice.
She sighed. “I mean, it’s been two weeks since we discussed Jenna’s reaction to learning of your past, and I’m afraid her rejection has set back your progress here.”
He flinched at that. “I’m fine,” he said in firm voice. “Nothing’s happened. I mean, I’m still taking my medication and coming here and going to my parole meetings, and –”
“Except, you’ve barely said two words in our last several sessions,” she raised her eyebrows pointedly. She gestured to the clock. “It’s been an hour, and all we’ve discussed is how your classes are going.”
He shrugged, looking down at his coffee again.
“I know you said you wanted to have your major declared by the end of the semester. Have you given any more thought to that?” she asked.
He had given a lot of thought to his major. In fact, two weeks prior, he was full of confidence in his future as a social worker, but all of that fell apart when he was reminded of what a burden his history is to bear.
How could he be expected to help others when he couldn’t even save his sister or himself? How could he set aside his past and set out to make a better future for kids like his younger self without going to bed every night feeling like a massive hypocrite? He couldn’t preach to others about how to handle their difficulties in life with grace and class when he always did the opposite. And the only thing he brought to the table was mutual understanding, the details of which he would never be able to share without the other party judging him or running away in terror.
“I don’t know,” he said, ignoring the internal battle in his mind. “I guess not.”
Doctor Summers pursed her lips, considering that. “Well, how about this,” she suggested, ripping out a sheet of paper from her notepad and beginning a list. “This week, I want you to write down the names of four people you admire.”
Jacob raised his eyebrows at that, unsure if that many existed in the world.
“Then, next to each name, I want you to write at least one quality you admire about that person,” she continued, jotting down the instructions for him to follow later. “And when you’re done with that, I want you to make another list. I want to see five qualities,” she lifted up an open palm, wiggling her five fingers. “Five qualities that represent the person you want to be.”
She handed over the list, and he stared at it, already intimidated by the task.
“And then, next week, when you come back, we can discuss that further. I’m sure we can figure out a suitable field of study for you to settle on.”
He tried to give her a smile, but it came out stiff, and he was sure she saw through it.
She smiled back, more genuine than his. “It’ll be alright, Jacob,” she said, reaching forward to place a steady hand on his forearm. “I know it feels like all is lost right now, but we can get through it together.”
He took a deep breath and nodded, trying to allow her words to sink in.
She took her hand back and rested her chin on it, squinting at him to try to read beneath the surface.
“Okay,” she declared in a louder voice that nearly made him jump. She sat up in her chair and grabbed a small pad from the bookshelf by her side, jotting something down on the page. “I’m giving you a new prescription.”
That got his attention. “What? What do you mean? I’m doing fine. I don’t need more pills.”
“Nope, you don’t,” she said, tearing off the page and handing it over. “But this you do need.”
He read her cursive scrawl and his face fell.
“I’m ordering you to spend some time with your friends this week,” she said, pointing at the pretend prescription with her pen. “It’ll do you good.”
It had been a few weeks since Jacob had spent any time with Callie or Angela. They invited him to things often, but he always found an excuse to turn them down. He knew they had noticed his depression and the fact that Jenna wasn’t around anymore, and unfortunately, neither of them were as non-invasive as she had been. They were sure to bring it up, and he still hadn’t come up with a good lie to explain their sudden parting of ways.
And surely, he couldn’t tell them the truth. He had seen how well the truth went over, and he had already made a vow with himself to never open up about that side of his past again. If anyone was going to take it well, it would have been Jenna, with her casual “live and let live” attitude toward life. If she couldn’t handle it, nobody would.
So, he had resigned himself to the fact that his past would remain in the past. Nobody needed to know. Eventually, when the wound no longer felt so fresh, he would sit down and come up with a story, something to explain his peculiarities: his lack of modern pop culture knowledge, the nearly 15-year gap between when he should have started college and when he actually did, the secrecy of his childhood and unwillingness to talk about anything before the day he enrolled at Westbridge. Someday, he would work out those details. But today was not that day.
“I don’t know,” he shook his head at the paper in his hands that read “one night out with a friend.”
“It’s just one night,” Doctor Summers replied. “We’ll call it an addition to your homework for this week, and you can tell me all about it in our next session.”
She rose from her seat, and he followed suit, setting his plain white coffee mug by the drink cart as she escorted him to the door.
They said their farewells and he headed off to the bus stop to wait for his ride to Officer Millburn’s office.
To his surprise, the conversation he and the officer had about his parents’ addictions in his make-up meeting had actually s
eemed to soften the man a bit. He still wore a grumpy expression and filled most of their time together with sighs and grunts, but he seemed to be lightening up on his negative view of Jacob. Slowly and hesitantly, he was beginning to stop expecting the worst from him.
After his meeting, the anxiety of the upcoming weekend set in.
The weekends were the hardest. With no classes and little homework to distract him from his thoughts, he spent most of the hours fretting over the idea of running into Jenna on campus. Every time he turned a corner in their building or tried to stop his eyes from habitually scanning the cafeteria for her pixie, blonde hair, his stomach twisted into a knot at the anticipation. He was conflicted, his emotions falling back and forth like a see-saw between hoping he would run into her and dreading what would happen if he did.
But much to his simultaneous relief and dismay, he hadn’t seen her since that night at the bonfire. He realized he had taken all of those unintentional run-ins with her for granted, now that they weren’t happening anymore.
That being said, he wasn’t going to take any extra chances. He decided to hole up in his room, grabbing a quick snack from his locker in the lobby kitchen first to tide him over until dinner. There was no more homework for the rest of the semester, since the following week was set aside for final exams. But even though he had plenty he could study, he was already pretty well-versed in all of the subjects on his study guides. Given the last few weeks of solitude, he had spent a lot of that time getting ahead in the material, studying everything until he had nearly memorized it all. So, because of that, he decided to get started on his impossible assignment from Doctor Summers instead.
He sat down at his desk, and for a long while he stared at a blank page in his notebook while he munched on the crackers he had snagged from the kitchen.
The first name he added to list was a given: Maggie.
There was so much that he admired about his sister, and he could get lost in those thoughts for hours if he let himself. But as he searched through his memories, sorting them into various categories in his mind, he determined that one of his favorite things about her was her kindness. She was always looking out for everyone around her, pulling up a chair next to the shy new kid in the cafeteria, taking care of all of Jacob’s post-dad injuries. She had a soft heart, and yet it somehow made her the strongest person he knew.
That was the easy one. Once Maggie was out of the way, he went down the mental list of significant figures in his life. He loved his mother, but he wasn’t sure if he could honestly say he “admired” her. She did the best she could with what she was given, but she was far from perfect.
He thought about some of his old high school teachers, but nobody stuck out in his mind more than the others, so he dismissed them all together. He went through his memories, chronologically, and the next place he landed made him fidget in his seat.
It was definitely an accurate answer, but a difficult one to write. He wrote it, nonetheless: Sarah.
He admired so much about Sarah. Her positivity, her great work ethic, her willingness to go above and beyond and put herself out there to stand up for what was right. But without a doubt, there was one quality of hers that stood out far above the rest, and that was her ability to always see the best in people.
Not only was it an ability, it was a responsibility, to her. She made it her mission in life to hand out second and third and fourth chances like they were candy, and he always marveled at how she managed to do that and keep a sincere smile on her face.
He recorded that in his notes and moved on down the list in his mind. He certainly admired Doctor Yang, but he wasn’t sure that counted. There were good qualities about his friends at Bellevue, but nothing particularly noteworthy to him. Callie and Angela were special in their own way, but he couldn’t quite place a finger on what made them each admirable. And then came an unexpected thought.
The picture had crossed his mind before he had a chance to push it away, and suddenly he was deep in memories of Jenna. He thought of her bright grin, the way her tongue pressed against her teeth when she was extra excited about something. And it seemed that with Jenna, there was always something to be excited about.
Her enthusiasm for life was infectious. There was an air about her that felt light, like life and troubles and messiness didn’t have to be such a big deal when she was around. Regardless of how little she shared about her own life, he could see that she was just as damaged as him, in her own way, and when he was with her, he felt like he could be completely himself. He didn’t have to hide his scars, because she had them too. He didn’t have to be whole when he was with her, because she wasn’t either. They could just be broken together.
At least, that’s how it used to be.
Jacob sighed at his paper. He had written down Jenna’s name, followed by three adjectives: easy, authentic, fun. Before he could get too depressed about all the beautiful things he had lost from his life, he pressed on, determined to come up with a fourth name for his list.
He tapped his pen against the notepad, mulling over his options. He felt like he would come across as too much of a suck-up if he wrote Doctor Summers, so he nixed that idea, but authority figures often had a lot to offer in the admiration department. He thought about his professors, and with a grin, he remembered Doctor Stein, the chairwoman of the Social Work department.
He quickly wrote down her name, followed by “compassionate.” The word nearly wrote itself, like a natural follow-up to the woman’s title.
Doctor Stein, Ph.D., Compassionate.
It radiated out of her all throughout that workshop, and it was one of the things that drew him in, intriguing him toward her lifestyle. Any job that could encourage that kind of quality in a person was a job he was interested in learning more about.
He tried to move on to the next part of his assignment, writing down qualities he wanted to see in his future self, but he was drawing a blank. All of the good qualities of the women on his list looked fine to him, so he decided to call it good. He was preoccupied with thoughts of the Social Work introduction and how strongly he felt the call toward pursing that subject as a major.
With one final thought, he wrote out on the bottom of the page:
I want to be a man who fights for justice.
The next morning was, to Jacob’s gratitude, filled with work at the diner. Al had discovered a project he had been putting off for years, re-organizing his filing system to make things more efficient and get rid of some paper clutter, so he enlisted Jacob’s help to get through the work more quickly.
As soon as he clocked out in the late afternoon and stepped outside the restaurant doors, however, the anxious anticipation of an empty evening welled up inside him. He walked slowly to the bus stop, savoring the fresh air and procrastinating making it back to campus for as long as possible. With a quick look at the bus schedule by the bench at the stop, he saw that he just missed the previous bus, which served to ease the pressure on his chest.
He took a seat on the empty bench, leaning back and breathing in the frigid breeze. It didn’t take long before the cold of the air made him regret his slow pace, and he wished for another bus to come along soon and put him out of his discomfort.
He thought back to the previous evening. He had spent most of the night daydreaming about where he pictured himself in the future. That assignment from Doctor Summers had gotten him thinking, and he realized, once again, how much he wanted to help the kids like him and his sister, those who suffered in silence, not knowing where to turn or whether or not they would even be believed, or if anyone would listen.
He wanted to listen. He wanted to be the one to tell them he believed them, that life wasn’t supposed to be like that and that parents were supposed to be a source of love, not fear. He wanted to give them the life he never had.
It was his history that made him passionate about those kids, and he thought that might even make it all worth it. If his past experiences could lead him to pursuing a life o
f taking others out of that darkness and bringing them into the light, then all of his pain would have had a purpose.
His teeth were nearly chattering by the time the next bus arrived, but he hopped onto it with more pep than he had felt in weeks. With every mile he got closer to campus, his resolve was more and more solidified. He vowed that as soon as he was back, he would waltz right into the admissions building and declare his new major in Social Work. He couldn’t meet with his admissions counselor that day, since they didn’t work on Sundays, but he didn’t want to wait another minute to declare his path determined.
The fatigued woman behind the counter of the registrar’s office wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic about Jacob finally choosing a major as he was, but her surly indifference didn’t dissuade his excitement.
After filling out the necessary form and scheduling a future meeting with his admissions counselor to discuss the change, he headed to the cafeteria with the closest thing to a smile he had worn in weeks.
It was burger night, which was a bit of a disappointment. Eating dinner at Al’s so often, he was beginning to get sick of burgers and fries, but he made his way through the line anyway, dishing up a plate. He paused at the end of the counter, scanning the room for a place to sit.
This time, he tried extra hard to avoid doing a double-take every time he spotted bright blonde hair in the crowd. He was simply looking for any table with a good number of empty seats.
He finally spotted one in the back of the room and made his way toward it. It wasn’t until he was a few feet away that he realized the only two people sitting at the table were Angela and Callie. They hadn’t seen him yet, so he stopped in his tracks, instinctively turning around. But then he remembered his second assignment from Doctor Summers, and he turned around again and strutted over to the table before he could second guess himself.