Behind the Falls

by Brenda Zalegowski

“I just don’t understand and…I mean…I like girls right?”

  “Are you sure?” she says it gently.

  “I don’t like guys. I’m sure of that. He’s…I don’t know. It’s just different.”

  “Noah, what if you DO tell him and he does still feel the same way and you like, get together? What are you going to do then? Are you just going to keep it a secret?”

  “I can only deal with one thing at a time. To think that far ahead makes me shake and feel sick and…one thing at a time. I’ll tell you when I figure it out, okay?”

  “Okay, love ya, Freak,” Kimber says and I can hear the smile in her voice.

  “Love you too. Bye.” I lie on my bed and try to make sense of everything until it’s time to go to bed. I’m no closer to an answer when my parents come in to say goodnight. After I turn off the light and curl up around the spare pillow, he’s the last thing I think about as I fall asleep.

  Winter

  It’s a short week at school because we have off on Friday since it’s Christmas Eve. I’m looking forward to winter break. I’m doing well in school and it’s giving me the confidence that I need to really think I’m ready for college but the last month or so has been so stressful that I just want some downtime.

  I walk to lunch with Max after chemistry every day but I usually end up sitting further down the table with Tabitha and Darcy because Mischa has joined our group. Max said she’s going through a rough breakup but she never seems very upset. Maybe it’s just a brave face she’s putting on so her ex doesn’t see her falling apart. Maybe she only shows her vulnerability to Max. Maybe I couldn’t possibly know because I don’t really know her.

  “You could end all of this, you know,” Tabitha says one day when she catches me looking down the table for the fifth time in an hour.

  “What? End what? What do you mean?”

  “I know she thinks Max is hot. I mean, who wouldn’t? I also know she barely talked to him last year. She just wants to make her ex jealous and maybe have a little rebound to make herself feel better. She doesn’t actually CARE about Max. He’s a conquest, a means to an end.”

  “Just how do you suppose I could put an end to it?” I ask. I pick at my lunch and glance down the table again. Max is smiling at something Mischa has just said and could this girl be any more perfect? When she smiles her eyes sparkle. Her teeth sparkle. Her hair is that perfect shade of white blonde with darker strands like honey running through it. The two of them sitting next to each other look perfect. They’re like a greeting card couple.

  “Don’t play stupid, Noah. We all know your grades are only slightly behind his. You’re too smart to play stupid,” Tabitha elbows me.

  “He says my calculus grade is better than his,” I smile. It’s true. He told me he thought he was going to blow the grading curve and it turned out to be me and he teased me. I know he was telling the truth but I don’t know how he saw the grades. Maybe he was snooping when he was tutoring.

  “You know, one day she’s going to wear him down. He likes her. She’s beautiful. It’s not going to take much for him to decide that he’s tired of being single and wants something more even if it’s just meaningless and physical. He’s a guy.” I shrug.

  “Yay him then, right?” I try to make light. Why does she care?

  “You don’t really feel that way. If you did you wouldn’t spend the whole lunch period wishing you could kill her with the power of your stare,” Tabitha notes.

  “No, not kill…just maybe send her away?” I say, surprising myself but not Tabitha.

  “Tell him how you feel and she’ll be just one more girl that couldn’t nail down Holden Maxwell,” Tabitha says knowingly.

  “How I feel?” I sputter, looking around to see who might have heard this conversation. No one is paying attention except maybe Darcy and she quickly looks the other way like she’s not listening.

  “Yes, how you feel. Come on, Noah, why don’t you just admit it?”

  “Admit what? How would you even know? I never…”

  “I knew how he felt about you before he did. I’m perceptive,” she winks at me as she stands to return her lunch tray. I follow her because it’s time for my meds.

  On Wednesday when I’m with Dr. Cooper I plead my case. “I still can’t eat. I’m having trouble sleeping. Can’t we just get rid of the meds?” I ask.

  “Have you had any anxiety?”

  “No,” not really. Nothing I couldn’t handle anyway.

  “How about panic attacks?”

  “None since around Thanksgiving when my friend was in the ICU. I think I’m good. Everything is fine. I would just really like to sleep again.”

  “Okay, we’ll scale back the dosage and see if that helps,” he agrees. “We don’t want to stop completely. I think that the benefits far outweigh the negatives at this point.”

  “Benefits? I don’t see any benefits. I don’t NEED the drugs,” I argue.

  “The benefits are no anxiety, no depression and no panic attacks. You also can’t just stop your meds cold turkey. You know that, Noah. We’ll scale back and in a couple of weeks we’ll see how that works for you.” So, still a slave to the drugs. Lovely.

  Thursday is the last day of school before winter break and we have a half day. At least I don’t have to pretend not to look at Max and Mischa at lunch since dismissal is before lunch.

  The Maxwells are having a Christmas party this evening and we’re invited. I almost tell Mom and Dad I don’t want to go. There will be a lot of people there, adults mostly, that I don’t even know. I’m still not good with that. I don’t beg off though because if I act all anxious about spending a few hours with a bunch of strangers my parents won’t listen to me when I try to convince them I don’t need drugs anymore.

  We’re a little late leaving because Mom is flustered that she forgot to stop and get some wine. She says bringing a gift for the host of a party is good manners.

  “I’m pretty sure there’s liquor in the basement,” Dad says. “Mom always had something on hand in case someone just stopped by. Noah, would you run down and check please?” he asks as he’s tying his tie. He’s having a hard time of it. He’s worn a tie to work for as long as I can remember and just a few months of not wearing one has him out of practice.

  I run down to the basement and it’s not hard to find the liquor Dad mentioned on shelves under the stairs. He wasn’t kidding. There’s got to be at least a case of wine down here as well as a few bottles of what Gran would call ‘spirits’. There’s even a bottle of champagne. I grab a bottle of red and a bottle of white and head back upstairs.

  “I wasn’t sure which,” I say as I hand the bottles to Mom. She looks them over.

  “Hmmm, red is more winter, more Christmas,” she says as she starts looking for a gift bag to put the bottle in.

  “Noah, maybe you should try those beta blockers Dr. Cooper prescribed,” Dad says as he finally gets his tie tied properly.

  “No, I don’t want those. I don’t even know why you agreed to them,” I say.

  “He said to take them when you know you’re going to be in a stressful situation…” Dad argues.

  “It’s just the Maxwells. I’ve been there like a thousand times,” I refuse. Finally I get my way because we’re running late and Dad hates being late.

  Mark Maxwell answers the door when we get there. Sammi is with him and she’s wearing an adorable red velvet dress with a matching bow in her hair. She twirls to show me how her dress floats around her “like a princess”.

  “You look like a yummy cupcake,” I tell her and she laughs. Mark takes our coats and directs my parents to the formal living room where most of the guests are congregated.

  “Max and the other kids are downstairs,” he tells me. Max told me earlier that Tabitha would be there but that most of the other kids around our age were the children of Mark and Lydia’s friends. I have no idea who will be in Max’s room when I get there.

  There’s music playing in Max’s studi
o but everyone is in his room. Tabitha is sitting on the bed watching two guys I don’t know play a video game. There are two girls that look younger and like they’re probably sisters watching the guys play. There’s a girl from our lunch table that I don’t really know. I think her name is Hannah. She’s reading Max’s wall. Max himself is sitting in the comfy chair in the corner offering video game tips (yelling to shoot and duck and what are you aiming at? Really!). When he sees me he gets up and gives me a hug.

  “Merry Christmas,” he says then kisses the top of my head before playfully shoving me away. I don’t think anything of it. This is just the way Max is with his friends. I find room on the bed next to Tabitha and try to settle in and not be noticed. The two guys playing the game continue until one of them finally loses in a fiery death. When their game is over Max introduces me to everyone. I won’t remember their names. I mumble a hello from behind my bangs.

  Max has the winner of the last game and of course he kills. Seriously, there’s nothing he’s not good at except maybe the whole seeing without corrective lenses thing. From where I sit I can see him in profile and the side of his face that doesn’t have bangs hanging over his eye is the one that faces me. Everyone else is watching the action on the TV screen. I’m watching Max. At one point he glances over at me and smiles then looks back to the game.

  I’m still completely at a loss as to what I should do. If I was normal, if I didn’t have a diagnosis and a shrink and meds maybe it would be easier to figure this out. Every option I can think of leads to me worrying and wondering and stressing over outcomes.

  I worry about what will happen if I do nothing. Max and I will almost certainly stay friends but then what? What if Tabitha is right and Mischa or some other girl (or guy) finally catches his attention? How will I make it through five more months of lunch in the cafeteria looking at someone else like that? I already hate it when he gives Mischa that crooked grin, the one that shows his lone dimple.

  If I do something there’s the very real fear that I’ll be rejected. I mean, I was pretty harsh to him and it has been a while since everything happened. He’s probably past it already. That would be mortifying not to mention potentially friendship breaking.

  What if I do something and he’s still interested? That’s a whole pile of scary right there. What if my parents found out about it? What if people at school did? What if I’m just confused about the way I feel and I don’t realize that until I try to act on it and then he hates me later when I tell him I was wrong? What the Hell is wrong with me? I’m at a Christmas party with something like ten days of no school to look forward to and I’m stressing about some crush on my best friend? I’m messed up, but of course I knew that already.

  The game is over and Max is victorious and it’s Tabitha’s turn to play. She takes John or Bob or Rob’s controller and sits next to Max on the floor. Before they can start the game, Max’s cell rings. He looks at the screen to see who is calling then hands me the controller. “You’re up,” he says as he answers the call. “Hello?” he puts one finger in his ear and walks into the studio. Tabitha looks over at me.

  “Mischa,” is all she says. She obviously saw the display when he looked to see who was calling.

  Max is gone for the duration of the game that Tabitha and I play. I do better than I usually do at video games but Tabitha still kicks my ass. Hannah takes my spot and I sit on the bed. Ten more minutes go by before Max returns.

  “You lost my turn already?” he says to me. I shrug.

  “I suck at video games.”

  “Put me back in rotation,” he tells the game playing crowd, “I’ll be back.” Then he heads upstairs.

  “I’m telling you, Blakely, you could end all of this,” Tabitha says even as she takes Hannah out in a glorious display of mayhem and carnage.

  “Shut up, Tabby,” I grumble. At least a half hour has gone by and Max hasn’t returned. Tabitha is on a roll and has defeated Hannah and has moved on to one of the girls that looks like sisters. I hear footsteps coming down the stairs over the game. They’re loud, clunking footsteps and Max was wearing sneakers that made no noise on the stairs when he left so it’s not Max. I’m surprised when Kyle enters the room.

  “I get winner,” he says.

  “Get in line,” Tabitha returns. What the Hell is he doing here? I don’t like the way he looks at me. He makes me nervous for some reason I can’t understand and I can’t stop thinking about the way he pushed Elliot so roughly back in October. When Tabitha finally loses and climbs back on the bed next to me I lean in and speak softly into her ear.

  “What is HE doing here?” I ask. I was uncomfortable as soon as I got here since I didn’t really know these other kids and now I’m beyond uncomfortable.

  “His dad and Max’s dad work together. Well, they don’t work together but in the same company. Kyle’s dad is in the IT department or something.” She shrugs. “Kyle and his parents come to a lot of these kinds of parties. I’d hoped he would stay home tonight but I guess he was bored or his parents made him come or whatever.”

  I know it’s ridiculous but the longer I sit in Max’s room surrounded by people I don’t know and people I don’t trust (Kyle of course) and no evidence that Max is ever going to return, the more uncomfortable I get. The regular social awkwardness is being quickly replaced by anxiety. I should have taken the beta blockers. At least then I’d know if they actually work. The more I try to make myself calm down the worse it gets. I try breathing. I try talking myself through it but it just escalates.

  The thing is I’m not even really freaking out about the people that I don’t know or even Kyle who kinda scares me. I’m freaking out about the fear. I’m so worried that I’m going to lose it in front of everyone that I get more and more wound up and tense. I can feel my heart beating too quickly. I’m starting to feel trapped. I’m starting to panic. I need to get out of here before it gets any worse. I’m still at the point where I can control this. I think I can.

  I head up the stairs thinking I’ll get a drink and find a quiet place to try to calm myself. I don’t want my parents to have to leave because of me and I really don’t want them to know anything is wrong to start with. I open the door into the main hallway off the entryway with the plan to turn right into the kitchen to get some water. If I had turned without looking it would have been fine. I would have gotten my water, maybe gone out to the patio until I got too cold and by then I may have calmed down. It’s not full blown panic yet after all. But I don’t do that.

  I get to the top of the stairs, open the door and look briefly to my left towards the entryway and there they are…Max with Mischa in his arms and her face is pressed into his chest. I’m frozen in this spot. He’s talking to her in a low voice, too quiet for me to hear. She shakes her head at whatever he says and puts her arms around him, encircling him, holding him tightly. He strokes her hair, kisses the top of her head and talks into her ear.

  There’s a fist around my heart and it’s squeezing. I’m already having trouble breathing and now I feel nauseated and I start to shake. Instead of relieving my building panic, this trip upstairs pushes me over the edge. I think, why? WHY?! Why did he mess with my head like that? Why did he make me FEEL something in the first place? It was a mistake to come here tonight. It was a mistake to think that anything good would come of this…whatever it is that I feel for him.

  I can’t go back downstairs. That’s simply not an option. The kitchen seems so far away. I can’t go home. If I could just walk out the door, go home, text my parents and tell them I went home I’d be okay but I can’t. I’d have to go around Max and Mischa to get out the door. I need to get out of here though. I need to find my mom and dad. I can’t even debate trying to hide this from them. If I don’t find them soon I’m going to lose it in front of this whole party.

  I close the door as quietly as I can. There’s not even a click as the door latches. I take two steps into the hallway heading towards the formal living room which is the last place I
know my parents were. Of course Max looks up as I move. He locks eyes with me and I can’t look away. I don’t know what he sees in my face, in my eyes. I can’t breathe. Mischa still has her face against his chest. She doesn’t even know I’m here.

  “Noah,” he gasps and it breaks me out of my trance and I’m able to hurry to the living room.

  Mom is talking to a couple of women that I don’t know and Dad is across the room talking to Mark. I feel like everyone is staring at me as I walk into the room. They can probably hear my heart beating. I can’t bring myself to look at the group of women Mom is talking to with her back to me.

  “Noah? Is something wrong?” Lydia asks and I realize she’s in the group with my mom. Mom turns around and takes one look at me and she knows. She hurries to me and puts an arm around my waist. As soon as she touches me I lean into her and give her control.

  “I n-need t-to g-go,” I stammer quietly into her ear. She signals to Dad across the room. I see the distressed look that passes fleetingly across his face before he’s in control again. He says something to Mark who nods and quickly leaves the room.

  “I’m so sorry, Lydia,” Mom says even as she’s steering me out of the room. “Noah is feeling ill. I’m so sorry we have to leave like this. Have a wonderful holiday.”

  “Can I get you something? Is there anything I can do?” Lydia is worried.

  “No, no, we’ll just take him home and put him to bed,” Mom assures her. Dad is at my side and he takes me around the waist and I feebly drape an arm across his shoulders and lean on him.

  “Just breathe,” he says quietly as he leads me from the room. No, no, no, no, I don’t want to go that way. Max is there…but when we get to the main entryway Max and Mischa are gone. Mark is suddenly there with our coats. Dad has to dress me because I’m shaking too much to even get my arms in the sleeves of my coat.

  “What happened?” asks Mark. Of course he knows about the panic disorder but he still thinks something major needs to happen to cause it. He doesn’t yet realize that it’s all me. It’s all in my messed up head.