Girl on the Line

by Faith Gardner

“How do you know about Zoloft?” I ask, surprised.

  “Commercial,” Stevie says.

  “Maybe I need lithium,” Ruby says, finger-brushing her hair.

  My neck prickles; heat hits my cheeks. I know she’s talking about me. She’s probably been peeking in my medicine cabinet. Ever since our chat when I stayed at Mom’s, I get the feeling Ruby despises me.

  “God, let’s hope not,” Marisol says. “Remember last year when you were a witch princess for Halloween? How fun that was? And you spent all that time on your costume?”

  “No one knew what I was,” Ruby reminds her. “The costume ended up at the Goodwill.”

  “Just ignore her,” I tell Marisol.

  Dad snaps a picture of us before we depart. He’s dressed in a button-up shirt and smells like cologne.

  “Where are you going?” Ruby asks him.

  “Meeting a friend,” he says.

  “You have friends?” Ruby asks.

  “Ha ha,” he says. “Have fun, girls. Be back by nine.”

  He leaves, his cologne lingering in the air. We all look at each other.

  “I was being serious,” Ruby says. “Who wants to be friends with someone who smells like that?”

  “Man,” Marisol says to her. “Thirteen has hit you hard.”

  We walk outside. The yard still looks so empty without the chokecherry tree. Sunset’s smeared the sky with color; moon is high and waiting. It’s windy and leaves scatter on the asphalt. Batman and a fairy ring a doorbell across the street. We walk from house to house and Marisol tells me everything that’s been going on at school, how so-and-so broke up with so-and-so and another so-and-so got in trouble for having fireworks in his locker and there’s a new so-and-so in her advanced French class who is totally hot. Some of the so-and-sos she talks about have messaged me or texted with well wishes.

  I’m glad Marisol cares—good for her, that must be nice—but it’s like listening to someone prattle on about a TV show I’ve never seen. I have to go back to school tomorrow, and I wish I never had to go back there again. I’m not even excited to see anyone at all. In fact—what’s the opposite of excited? The circles we’ve floated in are circumstantial: fellow semi-punk music lovers we go to shows with on weekends sometimes, some folks from last year’s failed poetry club. We’re friendly, but I’m not sure we’re really friends. Not in the “hey, let me tell you about my nervous breakdown” kind of way. The lie is, I have mono. Nobody but Marisol knows about the whole trying-to-kill-myself thing. I’d like to keep it that way. In fact, if I could move forward and never think or talk about the fact I tried to kill myself again, I could die happy. Or not die happy. What a weird phrase that is, now that I think about it: die happy.

  We walk past the entrance to the lake, surrounded by eucalyptus trees, and I can’t help but crane my neck to see if I can catch a glimpse of the top of the oak tree down the hillside where apparently a dog found me and saved my life. I say nothing, although I can feel Marisol tense up beside me. She must be aware of what we’re walking past. Stevie and Ruby are steps ahead, arguing about the merits of Almond Joys versus Mounds bars.

  “When will Halloween be fun again?” I ask Marisol.

  “In college, when we get to go to parties and have an excuse to wear sexy costumes.”

  “Some of us aren’t going to college.”

  “Stop talking like life is over when we’re just getting started.”

  We’ve had this particular conversation before. Marisol refuses to accept I’m not university-eligible, and she certainly refuses to accept I don’t care. Next year, she’ll be somewhere cold and far away and full of tall buildings. I’ll probably still be here. She thinks somehow some glorious opportunity is going to present itself for me, because she has so many to futures to choose from, she can’t imagine what it’s like to feel like you have none. And it probably makes her feel less guilty for leaving if she thinks somehow I’m going to leave, too.

  “Marisol,” I remind her, “I had straight Cs last semester.”

  She doesn’t answer, shoves her hands in her Muppety (Muppetous?) pockets.

  For the longest time, next year seemed so far away. But as I stand here, I realize . . . Halloween . . . end of October.

  “Are you applying right now?” I ask.

  “Yeah. I’m in the middle of my applications.”

  With that one simple sentence, it’s like I’ve realized the world has turned beneath my feet. I’ve been stuck in this timeless, desperate place, a thing with feathers but broken wings. Meanwhile, my best friend plans to fly.

  We stop in front of a house with a bougainvillea-tangled trellis and a birdbath. A white-haired man opens the door for my sisters and shouts, “A unicorn! Now I’ve seen it all.”

  “So you’re really going to go to Seattle,” I say.

  Marisol’s in love with Seattle. She went to camp there every summer, adores rain and gray skies, finds Southern California and its relentless sunshine horrific.

  “I hope so. Or Chicago,” she says.

  “Good for you.” Man, I hope that didn’t sound as bitter as it felt coming out of my mouth.

  We go to the next house—a beige number with beige wood chips on the lawn and a beige woman in a beige dress answering the door for Stevie and Ruby. I hear Ruby say “I’m dead” again.

  Marisol reaches out and gives me a half hug. A pity half hug. A my-friend’s-a-loser-who-will-probably-never-leave-her-hometown half hug.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she says.

  I sigh and blink away tears. “I’ve been so down in this hole I forgot about school, deadlines, college, everything.”

  I kick a wood chip. We walk behind Stevie and Ruby as they pelt each other with candy-heavy pillowcases. I swear the only person who can evoke the kid in Ruby these days is Stevie. Ruby hates Stevie less than everyone in the world combined.

  “Those new meds are kinda spacing you out, huh?” Marisol asks.

  “It’s like I’m half underwater.”

  “I know it’s probably not the right thing to say . . . but I miss you, JoJo. I miss you even right now when we’re together.”

  We stop in front of a house with an overgrown lawn covered with plastic toys. I look up at the moon. Same old moon. Crazy, not crazy, medicated, unmedicated, suicidal, ecstatic—moon doesn’t care.

  “I miss me, too, sometimes,” I say. “Here I am, all Sylvia Plath, and I can’t even write a freaking poem.”

  “Maybe it’ll get better once they adjust your medication again.”

  “Do you think I’m bipolar?”

  “I’m not the person to make that call.”

  “Your aunt is bipolar.”

  “She’s a lot of things. Think of a disorder, she probably has it. Have I told you she’s in group therapy now for shopaholics? Those American Girl dolls. Her house is, like, filled with them.”

  “We should try to get her on that TV show.”

  “That would be mortifying but also amazing.” Marisol smiles. “Anyway, you’re not like her. But she’s not the singular representative for bipolar disorder. Neither are you. Neither is anyone.”

  We walk around a corner, across from my old elementary school, the one where Stevie goes now. Funny how miniature everything looks these days—like the whole place shrank to doll size and I stayed the same, when really it’s me who became a giant. I know this street. I walk it in my dreams.

  “I know what you’re doing, Journey,” Marisol says.

  “Walking?” I ask, staring at my sparkly flats.

  “Sometimes I think you’re so convincing you even convince yourself.”

  “Of what?”

  “You know exactly what,” she says, flicking her gaze to the street sign.

  I shrug. But she’s so onto me. Damn best friends.

  I was trying to shove it out of my mind, that we were headed his way, but deep down, I knew where the magnet of my unrequited love pulled me: right back to Jonah’s doorstep. And now here we are, one h
ouse away. My heart races at the sight of his SUV in the driveway. He’s probably home.

  There should be a word for this mix of hope and dread that pricks my eyes with preemptive tears. It’s not Weltschmerz, a German word meaning “world grief” that describes a romantic but gloomy outlook on life often specific to privileged young adults. Something more like dor, the Romanian word for sadly yearning for someone or something—but that’s not quite it, either.

  “Are you sure this is wise?” Marisol asks.

  “We’ll just say hi and let the girls trick-or-treat. What? It would be more awkward to skip his house.”

  Marisol pulls my sleeve. “JoJo . . .”

  Stevie and Ruby seem blissfully unaware as they head up the walkway I’ve walked a thousand times, the one lined with rosebushes Jonah’s dad cuts all weekend long, the one with the porch decorated with Jonah’s mom’s wind chime collection. As soon as they see the wind chimes, Ruby turns around with a look of doubt on her face.

  “Wait, isn’t this . . . ?” she asks.

  But Stevie’s already rung the doorbell. The door opens. And there he is, standing in his band shirt and adorable tight jeans with a bowl of candy.

  “Happy—” he says, and then his stupid, beautiful eyes widen in surprise at the sight of us and he forgets to finish his festive greeting. He gives me a nod and meets my gaze like he hasn’t been avoiding me since he texted asking for more space ten days ago. And come on. Ten days is space. “Hey.”

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Jonah!” Stevie says.

  “Hey, kid,” he answers, giving her a fist bump.

  Stevie’s always had a sorta obvious crush on Jonah. It’s adorable. She almost cried when I broke the news that Jonah and I were no longer a thing.

  “Nice costume,” he says dryly to Ruby.

  “I’m dead,” she says.

  Palpitations. My nose stings and I want to start bawling. The whole terrible night we were on the phone, the suicide attempt, everything rushes back to me in a tsunami of shame and pain.

  “Can we talk?” I ask, throat tight. “Have I given you enough space?”

  “Um,” Jonah says, looking down at his socks.

  There’s a long silence.

  “Well, this is awkward,” Ruby says. “Can I at least have some candy?”

  “Come on, girls,” Marisol says, putting her arms around Stevie and Ruby and ushering them back to the sidewalk.

  Now it’s just me and Jonah and a bowl of peanut butter cups.

  “Can I come in?” I ask.

  “My parents are home, Journey,” he whispers. “Can we talk soon?”

  The humiliation burns my face, tears blur the scene. I can’t help it. I spill over. “Why? Why are you ignoring me? You weren’t just my boyfriend, you were my best friend. So much has happened, I—”

  He comes out onto the porch and pulls the door shut behind him. “I know. I really wish I could invite you in, but . . . but my parents had a talk with me and they told me they think we should give each other a break.”

  Of course they did. All his parents care about is good grades—appearances. They’ve always thought I was too unstable, too wild.

  “I’ve been so stressed out lately, Journey,” he goes on, eyes shiny. “You have no idea because you’re so worried about yourself all the time. But I don’t know how to help you. And that hurts me so bad.”

  “You can help me,” I say. “You make everything better.”

  “It’s scary loving you,” he tells me, fighting tears. “I just—I just want to be a normal guy, you know? School and guitar and . . . skateboarding.”

  “Who said you couldn’t skateboard?”

  “I don’t want to have to worry that the person I love the most is going to kill herself,” he says.

  “This makes no sense,” I tell him.

  “I’m not saying this is forever, I’m just asking for space.”

  “Space,” I repeat.

  That word—that absence of a word, that nothing of a word. I hear the leaves skittering behind me and think Waldeinsamkeit, a German word for the feeling of being alone in the woods. Lately, it’s like I have that feeling all the time. The whole world is deep, dark woods I am lost in.

  “Can you give me that?” he asks.

  “Don’t talk to me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’m three.”

  This is one of those moments. I wish I were dead. I try to focus on my breath but it’s useless. I want that hole to open up and swallow me. I want to not be here. I want to be gone, to hurt him with my gone-ness, I wish I never was.

  “Journey,” he says, all exasperated.

  I walk away before I start screaming at him. What he’s saying . . . I get it. I just wish he wanted to save me instead of saving himself.

  I join Marisol and the girls at the next house. Marisol’s got a worried look behind her glasses as I approach and the girls finish up their latest trick-or-treat. I’m trying to wipe my tears away but they come so fast.

  “What’s going on?” Stevie asks, her face a mirror of sadness in the middle of her unicorn onesie. She’s so pretty and perfect. She has no idea about things like heartbreaker boys and wanting to die.

  I want to scream, run, light a fire. I’m dull all day, and then when I most need help, the medication does nothing. I still feel too much. A little Frankenstein’s monster runs by, drawn-on crude stitches railroading along his forehead.

  Where’s my lobotomy?

  I wipe my eyes quick, blame allergies, force myself to smile.

  Kill yourself, the voice whispers.

  But an ever so slightly louder voice says, Shut the hell up. You’re what got me into this mess.

  It’s kinda startling, that louder voice.

  “You okay?” Marisol asks.

  I nod, suck in my breath, hold my sisters’ hands, and keep on walking.

  “Yeah. I think I am.”

  Present

  It’s February, second week of city college. I’m sitting in philosophy class. Our teacher is a bald guy with a monotone whose last name is Sacks. I text Marisol this fact and get an immediate !!! in response. He lectures about egoism versus altruism, chicken-scratch chalk on the board divided like a pros and cons list. I try to take notes but find myself staring out the window at the glowering gray clouds that hover over the green trees, the wind shaking them helpless.

  Egoism would mean that everything I do is selfish, for me. Trying to off myself was the most selfish thing I’ve ever done. I’m sure if my parents or Marisol found out I stopped taking my meds they might call that selfish, too, even though it feels like the right decision for me. This is probably why I keep putting off sharing this info with anyone. But then there’s altruism, or its possibility—like my volunteering at the crisis center. Helping people, just because. But what if it feels good to help people and that feeling good is why I do it? What if even being selfless is only something I do to help myself? There’s something so hopelessly depressing about that thought.

  Etta sits near me, scribbling notes all thirsty-brained. She bites her nails so close to the quick, betraying some kind of anxiety beneath her gregarious surface. Halfway through the class my pen dies and she whispers to me that she can loan me one. I get a peek at the inside of her backpack, a shockingly disorganized abyss of crumpled papers and travel-sized toiletries. She finds a pen and hands it to me, flashing me a red, red smile.

  Since school started, I’ve found myself distracted, just a little. By Etta. I don’t want to call it a crush. That sounds so dire. It’s more like a . . . leaning. I’m leaning into her, the more I get to know her. At first I thought I envied her. Then I thought I wanted to be her friend. Now I wonder if it’s more than that.

  After class is done, she lets me share her umbrella and we walk to lunch together. The coconut smell of her mixes with the rain. We hurry across wet cement that reflects the world back up at us, blurry, wet smudges of shadow and color.

 
She makes a kaboom-like noise. “That class explodes my brain.”

  “That class is undoing months of therapy I’ve spent trying to learn how to stop thinking so much,” I say.

  She laughs heartily. I get a swell inside, a mix of relief and the high of making her happy. Also gladness that she didn’t skip a beat at the therapy comment.

  “Also, Sacks kind of sucks.”

  “Don’t be mean to Professor Sacks!” she says, batting my arm.

  “He is so boring.”

  “He is kind and pensive,” she says.

  “And his name is Sacks.”

  “Do you know how hard that must be for him?” she asks. “I know, because my last name is Farthing. I’ll let you connect the dots.”

  I’m not about to fill her in on the eighteen years of irritating puns about trips and classic rock I’ve had to put up with. “My condolences.”

  “Professor Sacks is a darling and a dear. He has a picture of his cat on the home screen of his phone and his cat’s name is Harold.”

  Sometimes I truly think Etta’s too nice. She never says anything mean about anyone. Everywhere she looks, she seems to only see the good in people. I wonder what she sees in me.

  “Okay, egoist or altruist?” she asks.

  I’d like to think I’m a good person. I try. But I tried to kill myself mere months ago. I can’t reconcile that—the most selfish act imaginable—with being a truly good person.

  “Probably an egoist who thinks I’m an altruist,” I answer. “Wish there was a word for that.”

  Funny. I can tell you words for the way the moonlight can glow like a road on water (mangata, Swedish) and the wet ring a cold glass of water leaves upon a table (culaccino, Italian), but there is no word that I know of for a person who does right for all the wrong reasons.

  Past

  Today is the day. I’m finally going back to high school after two weeks “sick” with “mono,” dolled up in my favorite dress printed with strawberries and matching lipstick, filled to the brim with fruit-flavored dread. Marisol picks me up and brings me a breakfast sandwich. She has my favorite playlist on her speakers.

  “It’s going to be just fine,” she tells me as she drives us there.