Blank

by Trina St. Jean

  I can’t believe I’m telling my biggest secret to someone who is practically a stranger. But I feel lighter, somehow, having said it.

  “Whoa,” she says. “That’s wild.” She leans beside me on the fence, and we finish our fudge bars, the sound of revving tractors and the cheering crowd behind us. When we’ve cleaned the last drops off the wooden sticks, she sighs loudly.

  “I thought I had problems,” she says. “Man.”

  We walk back toward the bleachers, and being out too long in the sun hits me all of a sudden. I am tired, so tired, and when Mother sees my face she nudges Father to tell him it’s time to go. Tarin says goodbye and tells me to take it easy, and when we’re halfway to the truck she runs up behind me and hands me a wooden ice-cream stick with a phone number scribbled on it.

  “In case you ever get bored,” she says.

  Stephen watches her through the window as we pull out of the grounds. “She’s weird,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I answer with a smile. “Yeah, she is.”

  Ancient History

  It’s past midnight, but the long nap I took after the Mud Bog has me charged up and ready to watch some cheesy made-for-TV movies. I am not alone in my restlessness. As I descend the stairs to the basement, I hear the murmur of the TV. Father sits on the couch, watching a long wooden boat float across the screen. I clear my throat, and he turns around.

  “Can’t sleep either, hey?” He pats the spot beside him. “Come watch this documentary with me. It’s a reenactment of life in ancient Egypt. Pretty amazing stuff.”

  I sink into the couch as, on-screen, brown-skinned men in loincloths jump out of the boat and pull it onto the bank.

  “You always loved watching these things with me. They put your mother to sleep.” Father chuckles. The next half hour is about the transportation methods of the Egyptians and the role the Nile played in their lives, and though it’s not mind-blowingly fascinating, it does take my mind off little old me, me, me. I feel safe there with him.

  When the credits roll, Father yawns and clicks the TV off. He starts to stand up, and before I have time to chicken out, I grab his arm.

  “Can you tell me about what happened?”

  He freezes in position, half standing, and looks at me, puzzled. “What? What happened—”

  But I don’t need to answer, because his eyes widen and he slowly settles back into the couch. “Ah,” he says. “I see.”

  “I’m ready to hear the details.”

  His entire body sags from the weight of my request. “There isn’t much that I haven’t already told you. But I can try.”

  We sit there in the quiet, looking at each other, and then he sighs. “I’ve thought about it a lot, struggled to piece it all together. I thought at first that you fell into the pen, but then I realized you wouldn’t have been so far from the fence. But why would you ever go in there on purpose? What could have come over you to make you do something you knew was so dangerous?”

  Come over me? Doesn’t he mean Ramses?

  Confusion must be written all over my face, because Father’s eyes narrow and he leans closer. “You do mean why did you go in the pen, right?”

  A jolt goes through me. “Wasn’t I feeding them or something?” I’ve been assuming all this time that there was a reason I went in the bison pen in the first place. That I was simply being a regular farm girl going about my daily farm business.

  Father shakes his head. “We only use the pen for giving them shots or when we need to get them on or off trucks. I feed them with the tractor; watering is done from outside the pen. And they didn’t need to be watered or anything that night. You knew that. All I know is I came out of the shop, walked toward the pen and saw you lying there on the ground. I still can’t figure it out. You knew the bison well and were always careful around them, knew better than to waltz in there like it was a petting zoo.”

  All this time I’ve thought maybe the family was keeping something from me, some horrific detail they didn’t want me to hear. But the truth is, they didn’t know any more than I did about what went wrong. My head is reeling, and I take long, deep breaths to try to calm my racing heart. Where’s that yoga lady when you need her?

  Father closes his eyes and rubs his hands over his forehead, as though he is trying to erase the image. “At first, when I saw you lying there, I didn’t even realize it was you. You looked like”—he swallows hard—“a rag doll, limbs stretched out at awkward angles. I called your name, louder and louder, as I ran to you. By the time I got to you, I was screaming for help. From whom, I don’t know. God maybe?”

  I look over at this man who, I know from photo albums, was not only my father but also my buddy, and I sense the strength draining out of him as he talks about what happened. His eyes meet mine, the muscles in his jaw clenching. “When I got close and saw the gash on the side of your head, and Ramses standing there, near the gate, it was like someone punched me in the stomach—hard. The air went right out of me. I opened the gate and Ramses took off into the field to join the others. I held your head in my hands, didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t move you, knew that might injure you even more. I needed to get help but was terrified to leave you there, alone with the bison. So I screamed and yelled at the top of my lungs, and somehow Stephen heard me and got your mother. The rest is a blur. The ambulance came, and then we spent the night at the hospital, waiting to see if you’d pull through.”

  A shudder goes through his body. “I don’t know if I should really tell you all this. But if I were you, I’d want to know too. So I’ll level with you: it was all terrible, every second of it. A parent’s worst nightmare. But the very worst was yet to come. All those days you were in the coma, hooked up to machines, we agonized, sitting by your bed, waiting. All we wanted was a sign, a tiny wiggle of your pinkie toe or whatever, to show us you were not going to die.”

  He chews on his bottom lip before he continues. “And then, finally, good news. You had come out of your coma. Your mother and I laughed and cried at the same time, we were so happy. We were ready to smother you with kisses and make you promise never to scare us like that again. Then came the part that nearly broke your mother’s heart.”

  “When I didn’t remember you?” I say.

  His eyes glisten, and he puts his hand on my knee. “No, no, not that. That was hard too, of course. Worse was seeing you sitting in the corner of the room like a scared animal, then reaching to touch you and having you scream and scratch and pull your own hair.”

  “Is that when I hit Mother?”

  His eyebrows lift. “How did you know?”

  “Stephen.”

  His body relaxes now, likely with relief that he has told me and I haven’t freaked out on him. “That little turkey.”

  We sit there and watch the blank TV screen. “You okay with all that?” Father asks. His face looks tired but peaceful, like he’s gotten a heavy weight off his shoulders.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I guess.”

  “Being a parent is a tough gig sometimes,” he says, maybe more to himself than to me. “We don’t always know if we’re making the right choices. I hope I never let you down.”

  I shake my head. “You’re a great father,” I say.

  He looks at me with earnest eyes. “I’m a father, yes. But mostly I’m your dad.”

  I nod. “All right,” I say. “Dad.” And I like the way it sounds.

  We stay there, his hand on my knee, until he announces that he needs his beauty sleep and that I should get to bed too. He kisses me on the forehead, then heads up the stairs. I stay in the quiet of the basement and try to let the details sink in: lying in the pen like a rag doll; Father—Dad—screaming; the Girl (or was it me, or neither of us but some other version of this Jessica?), scratching and crazed, head spinning around on her neck like the girl in The Exorcist.

  Now that I’ve finally worked up the courage to ask questions, I can pester Dad and Mother and Stephen all I want to give me a second-by-second, play-by-pla
y account of every detail they remember. But I also know now that it will get me nowhere. Because the truth is hiding in one place and one place only: the corners of my own broken mind.

  Rose-Colored Glasses

  Stephen and I spend Sunday running around outside, throwing Nerf balls at each other. I’m grateful he is there to take my mind off my chat with Dad and the questions it left me with.

  After dinner, though, when Stephen is working on his homework at the kitchen table, they creep into my mind. Why did Jessica go into the pen? How will I ever figure it out when my brain refuses to cough up the memories?

  I decide to watch TV, then remember that tomorrow is my next appointment with Dr. K. and I still haven’t done my homework. I sit at the desk in my room and take out some paper and a pen.

  I am too strong for self-pity, Dr. K. said. I’m not sure what she meant exactly, but I am going to give this positivity thing a try.

  10 Things I Am Grateful For

  The first five come easily.

  1. I am grateful that I can walk. And talk. And I don’t drool or have to wear diapers like some of the people I saw in the hospital.

  2. I am grateful that my family has not given up on me.

  3. I am grateful that my little brother pretends not to notice that he is smarter than me now.

  4. I am grateful that Ginger doesn’t seem to notice that anything has changed.

  5. I am grateful that Mother lets me eat all the cereal I want.

  Then I am stuck. All that comes to mind is the negative: I’ve lost my past, I make my friends squirm, I watch too much TV, I sleep too much, my brain doesn’t work properly. But I know Dr. K. will not let me get away with doing half the work, so I try to fake one.

  6. I am grateful for my frog collection.

  I eye the pathetic little creatures with their cracks and missing body parts, and I can’t lie. I cross it out.

  A new number six:

  6. I am grateful that I don’t smell bad. Not that I know of anyway.

  I’m totally scraping the bottom of the barrel.

  7. I am grateful for Felonia and Sam and Dr. DiCaprio on Through the Hourglass. They give me something to look forward to every day.

  8. I am grateful for the trees and sky and squirrels.

  9. I am grateful for naps.

  The last one is only mostly true, but it’s the best I can do.

  10. I am grateful that, on that Very Bad Day, Ramses was not pissed off enough to kill me.

  I take stock of the page, doubting this is what Dr. K. is after. But it’s all I’ve got. I open my desk drawer and dig around for an envelope to put it in, but I don’t find one, so I head to Stephen’s room. His desk is piled high with books and papers and a bunch of magnets, and in the corner there’s a framed photo of the Girl and him, hiking sticks in hand. In the top drawer, there are pencil crayons and some LEGO pieces. The next drawer holds construction paper and a plastic bin. I try to pull the bin out, but something is wedged behind it, so I reach in and feel something soft—maybe a sock. A good yank, and the bin slides out of the drawer.

  Even though it’s partly balled up, I recognize the soft thing from the Girl’s weird selfies: it’s the bright red scarf she draped over her face and wrapped around her neck. An odd feeling, like I’m holding something the Girl cared about, something private, comes over me. Stephen must have been playing with it or using it to tie up some contraption. As much as I hated those photos, the scarf was hers, and maybe it meant something to her.

  I give up on the envelope and shove the scarf in my pocket. Back in my room, I put the scarf where it belongs: in the Girl’s shoebox, with all the other mementos of her lost life.

  Spontaneity

  This time I ditch the sweats and wear a nice outfit to see Dr. K.: a short denim skirt and a green jacket with guitar-shaped buttons. She whistles when I walk into the room.

  “Hello, gorgeous,” she says, and I feel myself blush.

  I settle into the metal chair, and she asks me if I did my homework. I read her the list of things I am grateful for, and she nods and smiles. “Nice job. Try making that a regular thing, and finding the positive side will become more natural. For next week, I’d like you to try something a little different. I want you to write a letter to your pre-accident self.”

  “Letter?” I say. “To say what?”

  “Whatever you want. What do you think?”

  I shrug. “You’re the doctor.”

  Then she leans forward in her chair, and the dreaded question comes. “So, how are things? How was real life this week?”

  Take it question by question, I tell myself, and keep breathing. She’s here to help.

  “Well,” I say, “lots of things happened, I guess. We had a party.”

  “How’d that go?”

  I decide to be honest. “I kept it together mostly. I did freak out a little, but alone in my room.”

  She nods. “Mmmm. And have you ever thought of maybe talking to your parents, telling them why you’re freaking out? I’m sure they’d listen.”

  She has a point. It hasn’t actually occurred to me to turn to them when I’m coming undone. But don’t they have enough to deal with already?

  “I guess,” I say. “Oh, and I went to see the bison.”

  “Wow.” She scribbles in her notepad. “That was brave.”

  I shrug. “Not really. They just ran away.”

  “Sounds like an all-right week,” she says. “Any disappointments?”

  I should have known she wouldn’t let me just scratch the surface. I think of Dad in the basement, and all those questions that are floating around in my head now. “I found out some things about the accident,” I say. “Like, no one knows why I went into the bison pen in the first place.”

  Dr. K. sits up straight. “Is that right? I didn’t know that either. Is that bothering you?”

  A long sigh comes out of me, and I know I can’t lie. “Yeah. I have no idea how to figure out what happened. If I never remember…”

  And it’s there, suddenly, hanging in the air between us, the thing no one wants to talk about. What if my memories never come back? Could I be stuck like this, in limbo, for the rest of my life?

  “Well,” she says, her voice softening, “you will probably remember more of your past with time. But it is possible you will never remember the details of that day exactly. Are you prepared for that possibility?”

  Frustration flickers inside my chest. But I don’t want to be like that today. I want to stay thinking positive, try not to dwell on the black hole that has sucked up my life. I look her straight in the eye, clear my throat and decide to take a leap.

  “I want to go back to school,” I say.

  Need for Speed

  Dr. K. talks to Mother after my appointment, and arrangements are made for me to spend a morning at school.

  But until then, there are more days to kill at home. Mother asks me to help with some cleaning, but I say I’m tired and hide in the basement to watch my soap. Hot doctor DiCaprio has proposed to Felonia. She tearfully accepts. Brain damage seems to be the best thing that ever happened to her.

  I flip through the Girl’s photo albums yet again. There’s a photo of Stephen and me cruising down the driveway in ATVs. A mini Mud Bog. I pull it out of its little transparent sleeve and slip it into my pocket. Later, I fall asleep on the couch and wake up to Stephen shaking my shoulder. He plunks down on the floor.

  “It’s nice out,” he says. “Wanna do something?”

  Maybe it’s out of pity for his pathetic couch-potato sister, but whatever. I’ll take what I can get.

  “Yeah.” I sit up, pull the photo out of my pocket and show it to him. “This.”

  His lips turn up in a small smile. “Quadding? You really think they’re going to let us?”

  Our parents are nowhere to be found in the house, so we slip on our rubber boots and head outside. The door to Dad’s shop is open, and when we step through the doorway, Dad has his arms around Mo
ther, her face buried in his shoulders. He sees us and pulls away. “Hey,” he says, and Mother swipes her cheeks before looking over at us. I can imagine the conversation we interrupted. School? Can she possibly be ready for school?

  Stephen pretends not to notice the awkwardness. “Can Jessie and I take a spin on the quad?”

  Dad looks over at Mother. “I don’t know,” he says. “That seems a little soon.”

  “Please!” Stephen begs. “We’ll go super slow and wear our helmets.”

  Dad sighs. “Well, only if you ride with Stephen, Jessie. You need to take it easy for a while.” Mother doesn’t look enthused but must be too drained to fight us. She shrugs.

  Little Man and I high-five each other and head outside. He points at a smaller building. “Go grab some helmets.”

  In the shed, there are bikes and skis and all kinds of sports equipment. Hanging on hooks are helmets of different sizes and colors. I grab a red helmet that looks like it would fit Little Man and a bigger one for me, then find Stephen outside the shop, dusting off the black seat of a yellow quad. All this must be exciting Ginger, because she wags her tail so hard it thumps loudly against the gas tank.

  “Jess,” Stephen says, “those are ski helmets!”

  “Right,” I say. “I knew that.”

  He shrugs. “Minor detail.” Pulling on the red helmet, he slides onto the seat. When he turns the key in the ignition, the machine shakes to life. It’s loud, and exhaust pours out the back. Stephen’s goofy grin under the shiny helmet makes me laugh.

  “You know how to drive this thing for real?” I ask. “Aren’t you a little young?”