by Matt Burns
She didn’t say anything for so long that I started to wonder if I had only imagined spewing all of that at her. Was the heat melting my brain? Or maybe it was the Accutane. Was I having hallucinations? It wasn’t too late to tell Dr. Sharp to cancel my last month’s prescription.
But then Alex tilted her head. “Why didn’t you just tell the guys you were on Accutane? I don’t think any of them would actually care, do you?”
I shrugged. “Probably not. But, like — I know this is gonna sound stupid, but we never really talk about my acne. And if I told them I was on Accutane, well, suddenly it’s this thing that’s out in the open. I mean, my face is already visible to everyone, but just . . .” I smiled weakly. “Like I said, this is all stupid.”
“No, I get it,” she said, looking thoughtful. “I just wish you could’ve told me all this earlier. I wanted to hang out with you when I switched schools, but instead it always felt kind of . . . weird. Like you resented me for being there or something.”
“I guess I did,” I admitted, hating myself for it. “But not because you were, like, meeting my friends or whatever. I guess I figured you’d stop wanting to be friends with me once you had better options. I mean, you fell in with the God Squad almost instantly. . . .”
“What’s the God Squad?”
“Jen and Haley and Veronica and Emma and all them?”
She laughed. “Why do you call them the God Squad?”
I shrugged. “Just because they make this big point of being Christians and whatever. Like with all their fake charities and church camp T-shirts and stuff.”
She stopped laughing. “You know they all volunteer at the hospital every Saturday, right? And they really do raise a lot of money for homeless people and stuff.”
“Huh. For real?”
She nodded. “They raised enough money for Mark’s surgery.”
“Who?”
“Emma’s brother? He had a brain tumor?”
“What?”
“You didn’t know?”
“How was I supposed to? No one tells me anything.”
“Did you ask? Or did you just assume that their fund-raising was, like, part of some elaborate scam . . . ?”
“Yes . . . ?”
“For their final project for Meyer’s class, they’re making this video about some of the people they helped with all the different fund-raisers they did this year. They did coat drives and programs to get people to recycle or donate books or money to help build schools around the world.”
“Jesus Christ. Shit. Welp.” I could no longer consider myself superior to the God Squad because I’d seen Being John Malkovich and they hadn’t. “Hang on, though. Like, is it true that Haley’s dad was an extra in the rave scene of The Matrix Reloaded?”
“What?”
“The Zion rave. With Morpheus.”
“What?”
“I’ve spent a ton of time on IMDB and, like, I don’t think extras get credited, so there’s no way for me to know for sure.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“It’s the only thing anyone knows about Haley.”
She narrowed her eyes. “It sounds like it’s the only thing you’ve chosen to know about Haley.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Fair point.” I squinted against the sun. “Hey, can I ask you something else?”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
“Well, what about their music? Like, the pop-country stuff? And, like, NSYNC or whatever. Are you into that or are you into, like, Elliott Smith?”
She looked confused, and for a moment I thought she had somehow figured out that I’d creeped on her and the other girls dancing along to “Bye Bye Bye” from the darkened street below Emma’s window. But what she said was “Uh, all of the above? What, am I not allowed to like different types of music?”
“Huh.” I had to stop asking her questions because the answer to all of them was that I was a dumb-ass. There were never two versions of Alex. She was just herself. And anyway, it’s not like taste in media has anything to do with being a good person. If there is a heaven, it will one day be full of people who saw The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift opening weekend.
“One last question . . .” I said, taking a deep breath. She nodded gamely. “Are you and Luke . . . ? I mean . . . Like, what’s going on between you two?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, that. No. I was interested for, like, a few days, but then I came to my senses. I mean, I know he’s your friend and all — and he’s not a bad guy or anything — but sometimes you talk to somebody and just realize it doesn’t click, you know?” She bit her lip. “Sorry if that put you in a weird position or something. I probably shouldn’t have called you like that.”
“No, I get it. It’s okay.” I nodded and turned away to hide my smile. I knew it was dumb to continue this made-up competition with Luke, but goddamn did it feel good to see him strike out. “Oh, wait, so what does ‘socks’ mean?”
“Is that, like, a riddle or something? And what’s with all the questions? You realize that there wouldn’t be all this mystery if you’d just talked to me these past few months.”
“I know. I’m an idiot. But I’m working on that.”
“So, what about socks?”
“On Facebook, Carter Canton posted ‘socks’ on your wall after the middle-school thing and it’s been kind of bugging me trying to figure out what that meant.”
“Oh, that. At the middle school we saw a pair of socks on the floor by the lockers and he laughed at it.”
“That was it?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it funny?”
“No.”
“Why’d you respond ‘lol’?”
“Did I?” She shrugged. “Probably because I didn’t know what to say, but I felt like I had to respond.”
“Wow. All right. Well. Good to know.”
“Yep. Sorry it wasn’t interesting.”
“No, this is good.” I laughed a little and said, “I feel left out of that whole night or something, but it was my fault. I could have gone. Just . . . the last few months, I thought I was better off being by myself, watching movies alone on weekends. I thought there was something noble about ignoring high school.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s probably not healthy in the long run to romanticize loneliness.”
“Uh-huh.”
She bit her fingernails and we both sat there for a few seconds. I felt cleansed somehow, unburdened of months of doubt and resentment and anger and baggage. I felt, finally, like a new version of myself — a better version.
“Do you, uh . . .” I squinted. “Do you want to talk about your parents?”
In the background of some of our waiting room talks had been this plotline about her parents’ divorce, but I’d been too focused on myself and on trying to win Alex over to actually listen to her.
“Oh, uh . . .” She sounded surprised, and I worried that I’d weirded her out. But then she shrugged. “Sure, I guess. It might be nice to talk to someone about that stuff. If you really don’t mind listening?”
I shook my head.
And so she told me about how hard it had been, watching her parents’ relationship crumble. At first they fought all the time, but toward the end they barely talked to each other, and that was worse. She told me how she’d had to choose who she wanted to live with, and what an impossible position that put her in, and how she worried that her mom would never forgive her for choosing her dad. “I’d rather live with her, actually. But my dad’s struggling with some stuff and I didn’t feel right leaving him alone.”
“Wow. That sounds super shitty. I’m really sorry. I didn’t know you were dealing with . . . whatever, too. I just thought . . . I mean, you always seem, like, good.”
“It’s probably best to never assume anything is easy for anyone.”
“Yeah.”
She shrugged. “I mean, some days my life feels super shitty; other days it’s fine. At least my parents aren’t a
lternately screaming at each other and ignoring each other anymore.”
I nodded, thinking about how lucky I was to have two parents who seemed to genuinely love each other, even if Dad did pare Mom’s stories down to size, and even if Mom made fun of Dad for being so impatient.
I looked at Alex, and she was looking at me, too. Our eyes met and held, and we both smiled. How long had it been since we’d actually looked each other in the eyes? For a moment, a flicker of hope burned in my chest. Maybe now that she was seeing the new me, she’d realize that —
“You know, you kind of remind me of my dad,” she said.
“Huh?”
She laughed. “Don’t look like that. My dad’s a great guy.”
I was starting to float on those words, imagining her dad was a wildly successful and attractive man, when she followed them up with “But some of the things you’ve said to me in the past about all your anxieties and stuff . . . well, it made me think of my dad. And I . . . I worry about you sometimes. When I saw you at our first appointment . . . I thought you might be, like, legitimately depressed.”
“Wait, what?” My brain was frantically replaying our first appointment. “Is that . . . why you talked to me? Because you were worried about me?”
She looked worried now. “I’m sorry! I don’t mean to freak you out. I’m not a therapist or anything, obviously. So I could be totally wrong. I just recognized some similar behavior and stuff from things my dad has said and done, and . . . please don’t be mad. It’s nothing to be ashamed of — assuming I’m even right. Which I might not be.”
I was still evaluating my memories of our early meetings, reframing those interactions as interventions rather than proof of her budding love for me.
I blinked and tried to clear my head of the old noise. Be honest, I reminded myself. Don’t shy away from your emotions. I met Alex’s eyes again. “Maybe you were right to worry. I think I was depressed. I thought maybe it was the Accutane, but I wasn’t even on it when I first met you, so if you were noticing the signs then . . .” I shrugged. “Anyway, it doesn’t really matter anymore. My car wreck kind of snapped me out of it. Well, that and Judy Blume. I’ve been figuring out my feelings more. I think in some way the crash, like, cured me.”
“Cured you?”
“Yeah.”
“Of what?”
“Like . . . I don’t know. Sadness or . . . depression, like you said. I confronted it, and things are different now. Better.”
She looked at me steadily. “That sounds good, but a car crash isn’t really a cure. Even if you feel better now, those other feelings might come back. Depression isn’t a thing you can just fix, but you can learn how to handle it.” She cringed. “Sorry, I sound like an ad for an antidepressant.”
I nodded. “Right. Yeah. Well, I guess I just mean that I figured it out. I figured out what was wrong with me. It wasn’t really depression or anything as dramatic as that. I just need to stop being an asshole.”
She stared into my eyes. I looked back at hers. She didn’t look away, and neither did I. Locked in a game of chicken.
Was I being honest with her? With myself? Finally I caved. “I mean, I might have been depressed or whatever.” She kept looking into my eyes. I cleared my throat. “Like, even before this year. For a while. And I guess there’s a chance I might still be depressed,” I acknowledged. “Maybe not as bad as your dad or whatever,” I added quickly. “But, yeah, I was having really bad thoughts about myself the night of my car wreck, and . . . I mean, I feel good right now, but . . . I guess that if that urge was real and it just sprung itself on me, that maybe it could happen again.”
She nodded supportively. She’d pulled it out of me, but I didn’t feel embarrassed or ashamed. I felt relieved.
“You don’t have to compare yourself to anyone,” she said. “It’s not a competition. However bad you feel is how bad it is. And you can’t blame everything on yourself. It might be more complicated than that. There’s chemical and genetic stuff that’s part of it.”
I knew she was right. It was easier to take the concern when it came from her. Advice always sounds like bullshit when it’s the wrong person or the wrong time, but it’s magic when it’s the right person at the right time, and you’re open and vulnerable and ready to accept it.
“If you want, I can text my dad and get his therapist’s number?”
“Oh, uh . . .” It was one thing to talk about my hypothetical depression. I wasn’t sure how I felt about taking concrete steps toward addressing it, though.
“Look,” she said, “if you want pizza, you call the pizza place. If you’re feeling really down, you call this guy and get an appointment. It’s as simple as that.”
“Yeah. Okay. I guess I probably can’t just fix myself. Thanks.” It felt monumental and casual at the same time, the way she always made me feel.
“And if you start seeing the therapist and feel weird about it and want to keep it a secret, I’ll tell everyone that you’re taking another writing class.”
I smiled.
“Wait,” I said, sounding more serious than I was. “You said depression can be genetic?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s interesting because now that you mention it, I’m remembering my dad sawed his head off in front of me on Christmas morning, my mom drowned herself, my grandfather flew a helicopter into a mountain, and then my three other grandparents made a pact and stood in a triangle and all shot each other at the same time. Does this put me at risk?” She looked scared for half a second and I laughed. “If this is a real thing I have to deal with, I hope I’m at least allowed to make fun of it.”
She smiled a little and shook her head at me. I realized the reason I’d liked her was never because she wore a perfectly fitted T-shirt or understood my movie references. I liked her because she was nice to me and she cared about other people.
She said, “So, what else is going on with you recently? You haven’t told me, like, anything about your life in months.”
“Oh, yeah, um . . . I guess . . .” I didn’t know where to start. “Not much. I mostly just sit around in different chairs.”
“Come on. Something must have happened.”
“Not really,” I said instinctively. And then I remembered that wasn’t true at all. “Wait, no. Something did happen to me recently.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I was stomping around the golf course all pissed off and alone one night, and I tripped and fell into a pond full of goose shit.”
She laughed. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. And then, I swear to god, I went home and my entire family plus my sister’s friend and a plumber were in my room unclogging a year’s worth of tissues from, uh . . . you know — from my toilet.” Oh, no. A second too late, I realized that was a way more embarrassing story than I’d realized when I’d started telling it.
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Wait. You flushed tissues?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not supposed to flush anything but toilet paper.”
“How does everyone know this but me?”
“They drill it into girls’ heads about tampons.”
“Unbelievable. Girls are always five steps ahead.”
She laughed. Talking to her, really talking to her, felt great — natural and easy and fun. “I’m sorry, again, that I screwed everything up. We had these appointments together where we had each other and could ignore everything else, and I screwed it all up the last few times. I shouldn’t have ruined this. I guess we can hope we’ll both get some blood disease and wind up back here together.”
“There’s nothing magic about that waiting room,” she said. “It was special because we were honest with each other. It can be like that out in the real world, too.”
I looked at the ground, biting my lip and smiling.
“You wanna get something to eat?” she said.
“Yeah, let’s do it.”
She pulle
d my hand open and slapped her car keys into it. “You’re driving.”
I held them out to her. “I, uh . . . I still feel weird about . . .”
“I know. That’s why you have to drive. We won’t play music. You can go ten under the speed limit. I’ll be there to help.”
Her face was bright and open, in a way that reminded me of the first time I saw her. I couldn’t help smiling. “All right.”
We walked into the parking deck to Alex’s Jeep. I put the keys in the ignition, took a deep breath, squeezed the steering wheel, and eased out of the parking space as slowly as possible.
Alex applauded.
At the intersection to turn onto the road, I waited until I got a green left arrow, made sure no one was coming from either side, then crept out and made the turn. I breathed steadily and felt calm. I was by far the slowest person on the road. Everyone else could go around me and have fun slamming into each other. I was perfectly fine back where I was, driving twenty miles an hour.
I must have looked like an idiot with my goofy grin, but I didn’t really care. I wasn’t obsessing over what I assumed Alex thought of me. I wasn’t scripting my next line. I wasn’t scared to drive. I was present.
It felt how I always wanted it to feel with her. It felt right.
I’d call Alex’s dad’s therapist. There was a chance he’d tell me I was just your typical stressed-out sixteen-year-old kid with acne and normal problems everyone experiences and it was fine for me to go back on Accutane. Or maybe he’d tell me there was more to it than that; something serious was off about me. Maybe he’d say the pills messed with my head and I shouldn’t go back on them. I could deal with that. I’d easily choose being able to laugh again with my friends through my bleeding, zit-ridden face over sitting in my silent room with perfect skin, alone and feeling nothing.
Or maybe the therapist would tell me to stop searching for some simple explanation for how I felt. If I was depressed, I probably had been for a long time, and it was more complicated than a pill. What’s the point of obsessively searching for some clear-cut excuse when there was no way to know for sure? Whatever caused it, I knew I had a problem and should work to get help and move forward instead of stalling, stuck in my head searching for a scapegoat in all these vaporous feelings.