Counting Backwards

by Laura Lascarso

  To: Taylor

  From: Charlotte

  My heart expands just a bit.

  I browse through the pinups of coquettish ponies until I find one who looks just a little bit defiant. I color her red with a fiery orange mane. I draw in a devilish smirk on her muzzle. By the time I’m done with her, she’s a warrior pony.

  And I feel better.

  I go back to my word problems and tell myself that I’m going to kill them. A couple of hours later I’ve completed every one. I turn the page and go on to Unit 4.

  February brings with it a kind of cold I’ve never experienced before. An actual winter. Where I’m from we have cold spells where people turn on their heat because it’s there, but the afternoons are usually warm still. Here there are stretches of days with freezing temperatures. No snow, though, just an icy cold drizzle, like there’s a huge snow cone in the sky dripping down on our heads.

  The girls on the second floor are crabbier than usual too. When they’re not whining and complaining about one another, they’re fighting over what programs to watch in the common room. I’ve got schoolwork to keep me busy, but I find myself longing for the days of the Chain Gang, working outdoors and feeling my muscles in action. I guess I’m the kind of person who doesn’t appreciate the sunshine until it’s gone.

  “I’ve added a new component to your therapy,” Dr. Deb says to me one afternoon toward the end of February. I knew this day was coming, when we’d run out of therapy games to play and the real talking would have to begin, and I’ve dreaded it.

  “What is it?” I ask her cautiously.

  “Why don’t we go take a look? Grab your jacket.”

  I have several jackets that I pile on top of one another. I use my socks for mittens, even though my dad bought me a pair of gloves—I can never seem to find them. He also sent me a faux fur–lined hat with earflaps that I wear whenever I’m outdoors. In Dr. Deb’s office I pile on my ragtag winter gear and follow her outside. It’s bitterly cold, but by the time we’ve crossed the lawn, I’m starting to warm up. And truthfully, I’d rather be outside in the frozen tundra than inside the mind factory with the cinder-block walls and wheezing heater. I follow Dr. Deb past the school building and down the hill, heading toward the maintenance shed, though I’m not sure why. I notice a guy on the lawn, shoveling dirt, then stop because I recognize him—it’s A.J.

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “We’re introducing a new therapy at Sunny Meadows,” Dr. Deb says, “and we’ve chosen two residents to be part of our pilot program. We’re calling it ‘garden therapy.’”

  I glance over at A.J. and realize she means the two of us. Oh no. I can be cooperative up to a point, but not this. Not him.

  “I don’t know anything about gardening,” I say. It’s the truth. My grandmother once had a garden, but I was little then. I can’t remember the first thing to do.

  Dr. Deb doesn’t answer me but continues on with her spiel. “By agreeing to participate in our pilot program with A.J., you’ll have to forgo one of your therapy sessions per week and two of your group activities.”

  In any other circumstance I’d be jumping for joy. But not in this case. “I can’t even keep a houseplant alive,” I say, but I don’t think she’s listening.

  “Your rehabilitative team has agreed to reward you with a special privilege for your participation.”

  “What privilege is that?” I ask. I’ve gotten so used to living without privileges, I doubt they’ll be able to sway me.

  Dr. Deb pulls something out of her pocket. My MP3 player. I almost don’t recognize it, it’s been so long. But more than my music, that player represents the real me. The person I know and understand.

  “Of course, you can’t listen to it at school or in therapy,” she says, “but any other time . . .”

  I glance over at A.J., who can’t hear us but is watching nonetheless. He sees the prize in Dr. Deb’s hand. He knows I’m being bribed. Maybe he’s been bribed as well. I don’t see how he’d agree to it otherwise.

  If I say no to this therapy, my efforts will count for nothing. My team will know I’m still the old Taylor—defiant and stubborn. And my release date—if it even exists—will be pushed back further.

  But if I agree to it, then they can’t help but document it as progress. I’m cooperating and participating, as long as I can get along with A.J.

  “Okay,” I say at last.

  “Great,” Dr. Deb says. “A safety will be making rounds to check up on you two. For now, good luck.”

  She turns to go.

  “Wait, where are you going?” With her around, at least I know things won’t get too personal. Part of therapy is the therapist, right?

  “Oh, that’s the best part of this program,” Dr. Deb says with a smile. “It’s resident-led.”

  She walks away, and I know that this has all been one big setup. That must be what rehabilitative teams do—get together and think of the worst possible situations they can and then make it part of your “program.”

  I turn back to A.J., who’s resumed digging, and see that he’s scraping up the top layer of brown sod, in foot-long strips, and depositing it nearby.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, because I have no idea where to begin.

  “Making rows for the beds,” he says without looking over.

  Maybe I should be doing the same thing. I don’t need to ask him where the shovels are. I planted enough trees over winter break to know my way around the maintenance shed. I walk in there and grab myself a shovel. Under normal circumstances, they probably wouldn’t let us around this kind of equipment, but the Chain Gang was going in and out of the shed all the time and no one got decapitated, so I guess in that way we earned their trust. Maybe that’s part of why they chose us for this pilot program. Not that I believe that’s what this is. Not at all.

  I take the socks off my hands, find a spot far away from A.J., and start digging up the grass. A few minutes later, he’s standing over me. I’d forgotten how tall he is. Maybe he’s grown since the last time I saw him.

  “You’re too far away,” he says.

  “Does it really matter?” I say in a huff.

  He walks back to the shed, picks up the entire length of hose, throws it over one shoulder, then comes back to me, unraveling it along the way. The hose stops about ten feet away from where I stand.

  “Going to be pretty hard to water.”

  I drop my shovel and stalk over to the pieces of sod, mad that he’s right about this, too. I pick up the clumps of grass one by one and drop them back into place as he stands by, watching me with an amused expression, which only irritates me more.

  “Why don’t you just tell me where you want the rows?” I say. “Since you have to be the one in charge.”

  He raises his eyebrows at this. “Is that right?”

  “That’s been my experience.”

  He crosses his arms. “Maybe,” he says slowly, “if you’d told me what you were planning to do before you did it, I could have saved you a lot of trouble.”

  I respond bitterly, because I know we’re no longer talking about the garden, but about what happened between us. “I guess I forgot how helpful and considerate you are.”

  He shakes his head and walks over to where his shovel lies on the ground, plucks it up, and heads for the shed. He comes out a minute later empty-handed and wraps up the hose.

  “Don’t forget to put your tools away when you leave,” he says as he passes by. I glare at his back as he walks up the hill. He’s probably on his way to get me kicked out of the program. Tattle on me again. Or maybe he’ll quit and they’ll find someone else to take his place, which would be super. Anyone else I could fake being nice to.

  But not him.

  CHAPTER 16

  A.J.’s out there again the next garden day. I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy to get rid of him. I find my shovel where I left it in the shed and resume work on the row I began the last time, which is as far awa
y as I can possibly get from him and still be within the hose’s reach.

  “I thought you quit,” I say in place of hello.

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  Disappointed indeed, especially when I see that he’s finished up two rows to my one. I take off one of my jackets and set to digging, but it’s hard work. And these sod patches are heavy.

  “Why don’t you take a break?” he says to me. “I’ll finish this one for you.”

  “I got it,” I say, even though my hands are starting to blister. I don’t need his help.

  “You don’t have to be so damn stubborn.”

  I glare up at him. “You don’t have to be so damn bossy.”

  “Are we ever going to get past this?”

  “Get past what?”

  “You being mad at me.”

  “Who says I’m mad? To be mad, I’d have to care. And I don’t.”

  He shakes his head and walks away. Just when I think he might be leaving again, he turns and laps the beds, coming to a stop in the same exact place in front of me.

  “All right,” he says. “Let’s just get it out now. Whatever you have to say to me, do it and let’s be done.”

  I throw down my shovel and plant my hands on my hips. It’s been a long time coming. “Did you know the whole time you were going to rat me out?”

  His bravado falters a little.

  “No.”

  “When was it, then?”

  He rakes one hand through his hair, his nervous twitch. “That day on the lawn when you fainted and I carried you up to the infirmary. You were so helpless and weak. I mean, you couldn’t even breathe, Taylor.”

  He carried me? I never knew that. I just assumed a safety had taken me. I never knew my episode had affected him at all. Even so, he didn’t have to do what he did.

  “And then I saw your father with you and I started thinking.” He rubs his forehead, leaving a dirt smudge on his sweaty skin. “You have someone who really cares about you and wants you to get better. I should have never given you that key. But by then it was too late.” He lifts his eyes to meet mine. “You tell me. In the basement, when you said you’d stay until December. Did you mean it?”

  I swallow hard. There’s no sense in lying. “No.”

  He nods his head. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  We stand there a moment longer, staring at each other in silence. Then he picks up his shovel and goes back to digging. I do the same, squeezing the handle with all my anger and frustration, but worse than that is the guilt. The pain in my hands feels good, like a punishment I deserve. I don’t quit until I’ve got three rows completed. They’re not nearly as straight or as tidy as his, but neither am I.

  When I finally lay down my shovel, the throbbing in my hands is so bad its creeping up my arms. He grabs both my hands and turns them over. My palms and fingers are red, and some of the blisters have already grown white, puffy heads.

  “Stubborn,” he says, and drops my hands, then picks up my shovel to put it away for me. I walk up the hill without him. At the top I look back to see our six unmatched rows. His are straight and even. Mine look like the claw mark of a wild animal.

  “How’s garden therapy going?” Dr. Deb asks me the following week, our first session since the garden began.

  “Great,” I say with a happy, happy chirp to my voice.

  “How are you and A.J. getting along?”

  “Super-duper.”

  “That’s wonderful. In a few weeks, I’ll be asking you both to fill out evaluations, so that we can go over them in your respective team meetings.”

  I stop and replay her words in my head. “Are you saying A.J. is part of my team?”

  She smiles. “Consider it more like a peer review.”

  That means A.J. can say whatever he wants about me—it doesn’t even have to be true—and my rehabilitative team will have to consider it. That’s so not fair.

  “Have you been practicing your breathing?” she asks. She glances at my fist, which is knuckling my chest—I do it without thinking. I shove my hands in my pockets so they won’t betray me.

  “Every night,” I tell her, but really it’s been so long that I’ve forgotten the words.

  “Good, then I think we’re ready to talk about what happens when you can’t breathe.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your father described them as your episodes.”

  The feeling is what she wants to know about. I glance at the walls that confine us; the heat keeps coming on and making it stuffy and difficult to breathe. I wish we could go outside for a minute. Just to get some fresh air.

  “Can we do this outside?” I ask her.

  “Therapy?”

  “I mean, I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  “No, I think that’s an excellent idea. Let’s do it.”

  We bundle up and head outdoors. At the crest of the hill I look down and see A.J. in the garden, using a wheelbarrow and pitchfork to make piles of something.

  “What’s he doing down there?” I say suspiciously.

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, I just thought he was going to wait for me. You know, everything together, right?”

  Dr. Deb raises one eyebrow, and I glance back at the garden. He better not be trying to fix my rows. I spot a picnic bench off to the side, far enough away that he can’t hear us, but close enough that I can keep an eye on him. “Why don’t we go sit over there?” I say to Dr. Deb.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  We settle down at the bench. A.J. glances our way, and I nod to let him know I’m watching.

  “We were discussing your episodes,” Dr. Deb says. “How long have you been having them?”

  “A while,” I say as if it’s no big deal.

  “Do you remember when they first began?”

  “No,” I say, which is a lie. I remember exactly when they began, the night the police found me alone in my mom’s car and then took her away. It’s the feeling of the policeman’s arms, confining me, holding me back, only it has somehow morphed over the years, so that it’s no longer just on the outside, but on the inside, too. Just thinking about it makes me feel shaky and weak.

  “Can you describe it for me?” she says.

  “Describe what?”

  “How it feels.”

  The feeling will go away eventually. I’ll outgrow it, like an allergy. I don’t want to explain it. Talking about it only makes it worse.

  “I’d rather not,” I say.

  “If you try, then maybe I can help you understand it. We can figure this out together.”

  I have to let her think she’s helping. Otherwise, she won’t feel as though she’s done her job. One thing I’ve learned about Dr. Deb—she’s no quitter.

  “I’m only explaining it once,” I say.

  She nods. “Okay.”

  “It starts here.” I point to my chest. “It gets really tight, like a fist crushing me, then it feels like hands around my throat. Sometimes I get nauseous, too, and these weird hot flashes, dizzy spells. My heart beats so fast and it’s hard to . . . catch my breath.”

  I stop talking, because I feel tremors of the feeling starting up. I rub my chest, and she waits for me to continue. When I don’t, she only nods. “It sounds to me like what you’re describing is what’s known as a panic attack.”

  Panic attack. I’ve heard that name before, but somehow it never applied to me. Still, that describes it precisely. Panic. Attack.

  “Isn’t there some pill I can take for it?” If there were, I would take it. Then we could skip therapy altogether.

  “There are medications that can be prescribed for anxiety, but they don’t always target the problem as specifically as we’d like. The interesting thing about panic attacks is that they’re brought on by an initial fear or trigger, which intensifies during the attack, forming a positive feedback loop.”

  “A what?”

  “A positive feedback loop is where A produces more of
B, which in turn produces more of A. In other words, a kind of downward spiral.”

  “But what causes it?” I ask her.

  “You do. Your phobias. Your fears.”

  I’m the one causing it? I mean, I know it comes from inside me, but I thought it was some sort of chemical imbalance, like depression or ADHD. It’s not like I’m imagining it . . . am I?

  “Are you telling me it’s all in my head?”

  “Yes, but that’s not to say it’s not very real. Panic attacks are some of the most intensely frightening, upsetting, and uncomfortable experiences of a person’s life. Many people who’ve had them describe it as feeling like they’re going crazy or leaving their body. Have you ever felt that way?”

  “No,” I say, a lie. Why can’t I just be honest with her? Maybe because it means admitting something I’m not ready for. That I might be the kind of crazy that can’t be fixed.

  Dr. Deb sits back. I avoid her eyes and stare at A.J. instead. I wish I were over there instead of here. Anything would be better than this right now.

  “Why don’t you tell me about the first time you had a panic attack?” Dr. Deb says.

  “I told you, I can’t remember.”

  “Try, Taylor.”

  “You’re not listening to me.”

  “I am listening to you. I’m listening to everything you say as well as everything you don’t say.”

  I look up at her. A helpless feeling washes over me.

  “How old were you?”

  “Nine.”

  “Where were you?”

  “In front of a bar.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “I was watching my mom get arrested.” I feel the cop’s arms wrap around me, squeezing me while I screamed at them to let her go, to let me go with her. I really was splitting in two. Because they were taking my mother away from me.

  The feeling starts up like I’m nine years old all over again. Dr. Deb tells me to breathe, but I can’t because the policeman is squeezing me so tight and my mother, when she looks at me, I see the fear in her eyes and it only makes me more afraid. They’re taking her away, and I might never see her again. And it’s all my fault, because I told on her. I told.