Girl on the Line

by Faith Gardner

  I’d argue with her, but what would be the point.

  As soon as she parks, Marisol has to rush off to go fix some transcript debacle in the administrative office, so I’m left alone walking back into the bustle of laughter, hand-painted signs for canned food drives, and our principal making unintelligible loudspeaker announcements. Nothing about the place has changed, but somehow it looks different to me now, the way my elementary school appears doll-sized. The light has changed. It’s a movie set. That same feeling nags me, the one I’ve had since the year started—that I’m watching life happen around me instead of participating. I smile and wave, accept hugs and condolences about mono, yes, the rumors are true, Jonah and I broke up. It’s amicable, it was mutual. Lie, lie, lie.

  The truth is, I don’t feel that bad besides the gross pit in my stomach whenever I think I see Jonah, but I’m utterly bored by school. I stare out the window at the windy day blowing oak leaves and trash through the empty halls, my class all repeating Spanish conjugations out loud together in chorus. Instead of imagining a hole opening up that I can jump into, I conjure a spaceship landing in the middle of the quad, me getting on it and ascending into the sky. Ta-ta, sayonara, so long, earthlings.

  Finally, there Jonah is, in the lunch line, and it takes every ounce of willpower for my face to not break into a thousand pieces. He gives me a nod like I’m some passing bro. Seriously, screw him. I turn around and decide I’m not as hungry as I thought I was, go sit under a tree next to Marisol as she crams for an AP English test. I pen a letter into my composition book.

  Dear future self,

  I know depression has its treatments. But does unhappiness?

  My nerves are calm but my brain burns, my heart screams. I’m sitting at school looking through the glass, life’s lone audience member. Watching food fights and maniacal laughter and skateboarding tricks and make-out sessions on green grass. All these people seem to know where they’re going—to jobs, colleges, families. But when I look forward to spy a future, I don’t see anything. I’m stuck and I don’t know how to move forward. I guess my question, future self, is—who the hell are you?

  Marisol peeks over my shoulder and takes her earbud out.

  “So dramatic,” she says, pointing to my letter.

  I close my book, annoyed. “Maybe life is dramatic. Does that make you uncomfortable?”

  “No, but the fact you tried to—” She makes a cutting-off-her-head motion with a wheek sound. “That makes me uncomfortable.”

  “I didn’t try to sever my own head.”

  “You are like the most frustrating cocktail of drama and then joking so much you can’t have a serious conversation about it.”

  And I’m not about to have a serious conversation about it now, in public, when I feel like I’ve been glued back together and am ready to fall apart again. Here is not the place to be a human wreck.

  “So you’re saying I’m a dramedy?” I ask.

  Marisol puts her earbuds back in. “Goodbye.”

  “So dramatic,” I tell her, elbowing her, which I know she despises.

  “You asked for it.” She pulls her earbuds out again, puts her books down, cracks her knuckles, and tickles me to the point where I’m writhing on the grass beneath her, begging her to stop.

  “ASSAULT!” I scream, and she finally stops.

  I sit up, wiping my eyes, which have been cried out from the tickle attack. Marisol looks very satisfied with herself.

  “You feel better, though, don’t you,” she says.

  “If by ‘better’ you mean my makeup is a mess and my sides hurt, sure.”

  “That should be a thing,” she says. “Tickle therapy.”

  “It has to be a thing, right?” I ask. “In this big, weird world?”

  I look it up on my phone. Sure enough, it exists. There are even “tickle spas” where you can pay people to tickle you with feathers in a dark room with incense. Well, I’ll be jiggered.

  “Maybe I should become a professional tickler,” I say. “Maybe that’s what I’ll do after high school’s over.”

  “You’re going to do great things,” Marisol says with a serious brown stare behind her red frames.

  “Tickling people?”

  “I’m serious. You say you don’t see anything in your future,” she says, pointing to my composition book on the ground. “I see so many amazing things for you.”

  The smile on my face disappears. Easy for her to say. Her life’s shining ahead of her, filled with scholarships and school acceptances and new cities to explore. She’s spending Thanksgiving weekend in Chicago to check out the university there with her mom. Soon she’ll have a million new best friends. I’ll be . . . superfluous.

  Usually, this is where I would think of killing myself. I don’t matter, the world will go on without me, yada yada. But instead, I focus on my breath.

  “JoJo?” Marisol asks. “You with me?”

  I nod.

  “Promise me something,” she says. “You’re doing better, and I’m proud of you for getting through that suicide attempt.”

  “Don’t say it so loud.”

  “Nobody can hear us. And you don’t need to be ashamed.”

  I roll my eyes, because really? Anyone in my position would be ashamed after pulling a stunt like I did.

  “I know holidays are hard,” she goes on, “and I’m worried about you as they come up. I was reading that suicide attempts happen at an especially high rate this time of year.”

  “You’re so good at cheering me up.” I feel a pang, knowing she’s been researching this, spending however many worried hours online.

  Marisol pulls my book toward her, uncaps a pen. “Let me write down something for you.” She opens it up and, in her big, bubbly eight-year-old-girl penmanship, jots down a local phone number I don’t recognize.

  “This is the number for the local crisis hotline,” she says. “They’re available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”

  “How do you know it by heart?” I ask.

  “Well, the last four digits spell HELP. Also I almost volunteered there this school year, for community service. But ended up going for the tutoring gig instead.”

  We have a community service requirement at school. Last year I did shifts at the local library. It was so boring that time itself stopped while I was shelving books. I haven’t even started on my requirement for this year. I look at the number she wrote down in purple pen and imagine all the people who call it every day. All the bizarre crap the hotline operators must listen to.

  Must be fascinating, actually.

  “Thanks,” I tell Marisol.

  The bell rings.

  “Walk you to PE?” she asks, standing up.

  Indoor PE: the bane of my existence. The stench of vinyl mats and sweatpants no one washes. The weight machines that resemble medieval torture devices.

  “Lucky me, I have a counseling appointment,” I tell her.

  “With who?”

  “Hooker.”

  Hooker is the chillest of guidance counselors at our school, responsible for students with surnames starting with M through Z, with an unfortunate last name himself. To make matters worse, his first name is Richard. I’ve heard him referred to as “Rich Hooker” and of course “Dick Hook” by those who both hate and love him. He wears sandals and burns sage in his office, has old posters from hippie concerts all over his wall. He kind of reminds me of an even more extreme version of my dad. Due to my nosediving grades, I’ve unfortunately had enough sessions with him in the last year to get to know him all too well.

  “Have fun,” Marisol says, hugging me. “My Secret Obsession’s on later. Watch and text?”

  “I wouldn’t rather observe some weirdo make out with a finger puppet with anyone else,” I tell her.

  I go through the halls toward the admin building, feeling pretty good, actually. The sun is shining so bright I have to put on my cat-eyes. I can do this, I think. I can do this life thing.

 
Then I see Madison walking toward me, her damn perfect box-red hair up on top of her head. She’s model-tall and dresses like some kind of stylish mom with her fringy scarves and long skirts.

  “Hi,” she says, smiling.

  “Hi,” I say.

  When she utters that syllable it seems long, bouncy, uplifting. When I say it, it sounds like I threw a brick at her head.

  I don’t slow down. Keep walking, girl. But I am an elevator now, heading fast for the basement. My smile disappears and I keep reliving that dumb nothing and everything of a moment. I wonder if Jonah still talks to her, if she’s the reason for the space—STOP IT, BRAIN. Brains ruin everything.

  I head inside the admin building and concentrate on my breath as I sit in a chair in the waiting area. A photocopier whirs and squeals, repeating a mechanical cry for help. The air stinks like ink. There’s an almost-empty water cooler, a wall covered in class photos from over the years that all look, from here, depressingly alike. A secretary keeps coughing into a tissue behind the desk. I remember I forgot to take my medication today.

  “Journey Smith!” Hooker says when he opens the door, showing off the Grand Canyon gap between his top front teeth. “My favorite Journey!”

  This guy’s like four Red Bulls deep, all the time. I’m already exhausted just looking at him.

  “I’m sure you’ve counseled a lot of Journeys,” I say.

  “That’s the joke!”

  I sit on a cushioned chair. On his wall hangs a giant framed pic of a stick figure with the words Life is the dancer, and you are the dance.

  Hooker takes a seat at his desk, where he has one of those mini sand gardens, a couple cacti, and pic of him and I assume his wife person standing in front of a waterfall with big hiking backpacks on. He also has a hacky sack, which he picks up and starts squeezing as he leans back in his chair and swivels, studying me.

  I’m sure this session is about my grades, the amount of school I missed, how I should be thinking about some sad college somewhere that takes sad sacks like me. There’s no way he knows that I tried to kill myself. But somehow it’s like he does.

  I shift in my chair.

  “So, wow, you’ve had a lot of absences recently,” he begins. “I’m a bit concerned you’re falling behind.”

  “I had mono.”

  “Ugh, the worst.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Even before that, though, your midterm grades were . . . in need of some mojo.”

  “Yep, I suck” is all I can think to say.

  “Hey, come on—you don’t believe that.”

  “Just stating the obvious. They don’t call all-stars into the guidance counselor office multiple times a semester.”

  “Now that is bogus. I talk to everyone.”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s going on?” he asks, leaning in. “Come on. Open up.”

  “I just . . .” I sigh.

  I could say a million things right now. But I already have a therapist.

  “I kind of hate school,” I tell him.

  “Hate’s a strong word.”

  “Yeah. I feel strongly.”

  “What are you thinking in terms of college?”

  “You’ve seen my grades. Kinda blew my chances at a four-year.”

  “Do you want to go to college?”

  “I’ve thought about city college next year. Or maybe just working, saving up money and traveling.”

  “I look at you and I see a wonderful candidate for higher learning.”

  I laugh, because I think this must be a joke. But his lips don’t twitch.

  “I’ve actually thought about dropping out,” I tell him.

  Mainly just today. Just today that popped into my head, walking around—what’s the point of even graduating? I have a terrible GPA and no hope of university life. And I don’t ever want to see Jonah again.

  “Come on, Journey,” he says. “You know dropping out’s not an option.”

  “I don’t want to be here,” I say, the words hurting my throat on the way out.

  “Where do you want to be?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “You’re bored,” he says, putting the hacky sack down with a thwunk. “What they offer here”—he gestures to his open window that looks onto the school’s front lawn—“it’s just not doing it for you.”

  I can’t disagree, but hearing this coming from a guidance counselor’s mouth is so unexpected that I’m not sure how to respond.

  He leans in. “You and I have met a lot over the last year. And you know what I think? I think you’re struggling because you’re too smart for this place.”

  Now I know he’s messing with me. Me? Smart? When people like Marisol with 1500 SATs and straight As wander these halls? When kids in my classes are applying to Harvard and other fancy-pants places? Come the hell on.

  “Ever heard of middle college?” he asks.

  “Is that college for screwups like me?”

  “Not at all,” he says. “It’s a program that allows juniors and seniors to attend city college to get both high school and college credit. You’d go to city college early, get your diploma at the end of the year—win-win. I actually think you’d be perfect for it.”

  “If I can’t even handle high school, how do you expect me to pass college classes?”

  “Because you’ll be engaged and interested in the material you’re learning. You can take poetry classes, anthropology, improv.”

  “Huh,” I say. “And I’d get credit for that . . . here?”

  He nods. “Getting you on the path to middle college right now would mean we’d be able to transfer you to an interim program for the rest of the semester, get you into some makeup work you could do at home and salvage your grades. Because at this point, at least in government and English and precalculus, passing is starting to look . . . iffy.”

  I didn’t realize how far behind I’d fallen. Also, is he really offering me an out right now? Like I’d never have to go back to high school again? Because that’s looking pretty good from where I’m at . . . although what about Marisol? Could I really leave my best friend and go to school with a bunch of grown-up strangers?

  Hooker pushes a city college catalog and a flier that explains the program toward me. “Think about it.”

  “Okay.”

  “And then come back and talk to me about it. I’m serious. I don’t recommend this program to many people, especially nearly a quarter into their senior year. But I think you would really thrive in city college.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  I take the catalog and flier and put them in my purse, tuck them in a half-read memoir about a celebrity with bipolar disorder. Hooker gives me a high five when I leave. And I hate to admit it—but his four-Red-Bulls-deep attitude is sort of infectious. I find myself enjoying the flutter of excitement in my belly as I walk away from his office. This glimmer of hope is shiny and it makes me nervous all at once.

  Marisol’s got some essay contest thing after school so I ride the bus home today. Probably for the best, because I imagine that she’d shoot down the middle college idea and beg me not to ditch her during senior year anyway.

  Not that that’s fair, I think, having an imaginary argument with her. She’s going to be ditching me next year, isn’t she? I’m probably the only senior on the bus and, golly, earplugs and a nose plug would be nice. I grab a seat toward the back and flip through the spring city college catalog. Human sexuality. Astronomy. Yoga. Improv. I imagine myself going to college, with adults. Why’s that even weird anyway? I’m eighteen since August. Technically an adult.

  It’s strange, this lighter-than-air feeling I have when walking home, passing the lake, which, right now, twinkles like glass, surrounded by blond grasses, like some fancy painting on a wall. I can’t see the oak tree from here. I just see the lake I spent my childhood riding bikes around and exploring.

  For the first time since I did that stupid thing, I can imagine something ahead of me.


  I can imagine a future.

  “Absolutely not,” Mom says.

  It’s Saturday. We’re in a booth at the café where she works, waiting for Levi to come pick her up after her shift is over. She’s still got her pink polo on with her name stitched on it. The ceiling fans reflect off silver spoons and vinyl seats.

  “You haven’t even read the flier,” I say, trying not to raise my voice even though I want to scream. “You haven’t even heard me out.”

  I knew this was going to be a tough sell on her, but she’s not even letting one toe in the door here. Dad already knows about the program and thinks it’d be a good idea. Anything to get me on the college track and keep me from having a nervous breakdown.

  She pinches her fingers together to show me what a millimeter looks like. “You are this close to graduating the right way.”

  A small fire of frustration burns in me. I’m trying so hard here. Trying so hard to find a solution that pleases everybody and looks like a life I want to live.

  “You know, I’m eighteen,” I tell her. “I technically don’t even need my parents’ permission to do anything anymore.”

  “Then why are you even asking me?”

  “Because I want you to be on board with my plan.”

  “Have you been taking your medication?”

  As if whether or not I’ve been chomping a pink pill is the end-all. The answer, in fact, besides a couple missed doses here and there, is yes. But I have been wondering what would happen if I stopped.

  “What does that have to do with this?” I ask, pushing the flier forward. “Listen, I would graduate. That’s the whole point of this. To get me on track to actually graduate. Because right now I wouldn’t pass all my classes this semester. Next semester I would be going to city college and taking classes I’m challenged by and interested in: improv, poetry, anthropology.”

  “I’m sure if we explained the real circumstances of your absences this semester and made it clear to the administration you were hospitalized for a suicide attempt, they would make an exception.”

  “I don’t want anyone knowing what I did,” I say.

  Even the words suicide attempt flood me with shame. It’s like the farther we get from what I did, the more unreal and horrific it becomes. The more I want to hide it, hide from it.