“It makes me so upset to think how Adrian must have been in so much pain, so depressed, to kill himself,” she says. “I want to feel sad for Adrian, and all of us really, stuck in our miserable school. But, I keep fast-forwarding to mad. Why did we all do nothing? I mean—”
I cut her off. “Calm down, Chelsea.” Why am I speaking like my dad, Mr. Rational?
Chelsea says in a deliberate, slow, and forceful manner, “Someone should have listened to him. Then he wouldn’t have been so desperate.” Decibels louder: “NOBODY listened.”
I take what she’s saying personally.
I look around to see if the sprinkling of other people in Java are noticing us. “You don’t need to yell, get so emotional. I can hear you.”
Chelsea’s body slumps and her head drops to her arms on the table so her face is hidden. I can barely hear her muffled words: “If I had been more emotional before, maybe I would have noticed Adrian wasn’t doing well. Maybe I could have gotten other people to pay attention, stop the meanness.”
Keeping a low, even voice I say, “Do you think this is our fault?”
Long pause. Finally, I hear, “I think it’s everybody’s fault. And I’m exhausted. I just want to go home and feel sad, be alone so I don’t have to monitor my feelings.”
“Are you okay to drive?” I ask.
She nods. Then, wordless, she gets up and leaves.
Head to toe, inside and out, my body registers beyond normal cool to glacier cold. Hands in my pockets, heavy coat on, hood up, makes no difference. I feel frozen in place, unable to stand up or walk.
Finally I force myself to rise and make it to the door, but as I reach for the doorknob I lose my balance. Leaning against the wall to right myself, I notice the barista behind the latte machine gaping at me. Mr. Cool won’t come back here anytime soon.
Walking along the uneven brick sidewalk covered with muddy footprints, I notice that the sky, already cloudy before, has turned greyer. The tingle of blood flowing through my extremities reassures me. After a few blocks, I hang a left and walk another two blocks, landing me at my therapist’s office.
Inside, the receptionist’s desk looks closed up. Hearing me enter the main door, Dr. Lewis comes out of his office.
“Sean, good to see you. How are you?”
I can’t make small talk right now. “Are you busy?”
After a slight hesitation, he says, “No, come on in.”
His office has no windows. I asked him the first time I came here how he could stand not seeing out. He answered that his job was about helping people see in, not out, and then connecting the two. That’s how he is—always saying things that make me think.
In the middle of telling him about Hiker, I mean Adrian, and my bungled conversation with Chelsea, I blurt out, “It was when Chelsea used the word ‘depression.’ She said Adrian must have been so depressed to kill himself. The shutdown valve in me clicked on. I became like my dad with his no-emotions work voice.”
“I’m glad you can tell me about all this; that you can open up with what is going on for you.” Dr. Lewis rocks back and forth in his chair. The motion comforts me, settles my wildly tangled feelings.
“Maybe it’s because I’m so afraid. Afraid I’m like Adrian. You know, my depression. That I could get to a desperate place. Also, afraid I’m partly responsible for what Adrian did. And embarrassed I couldn’t connect with Chelsea about all this.”
Dr. Lewis gently nods his head. “Say more, Sean.”
“I keep hearing this voice in my head saying, ‘The worst thing you can do to somebody is ignore them, act like they are invisible, like they don’t count.’ I did that to Adrian. He told me he felt empty inside and I said nothing. I could have told him I understood. Well, not exactly. I don’t feel empty so much as I feel like nobody sees me for who I am, just what I am to them.”
“What you are to them?”
“I don’t know, like son, student, Surfer Boy. Like people’s picture of Adrian as gay, an outcast. Is that how people see me? Am I like Adrian?”
“What do you think?”
I’ve finally warmed up. Pulling the cap off my head, my left hand automatically clears the hair off my forehead. Somehow that reassures me and allows me to try to think.
“Well, I am sort of a loner, at least at lunch. But I kinda choose to separate myself because the cliques and all seem so stupid.”
“How do you think Adrian saw you? Did he get it that you wanted to be a friend?”
“Maybe, but a lot of the time I act wrapped up in myself.”
Dr. Lewis stops rocking and leans forward toward me, forearms on his knees and fingers laced. “The appearing cool thing? While your insides are screaming you are somebody beyond your surfer boy looks and oddball items of dress? But you don’t know exactly what the real you is, what you care about for sure. You just know there is more there.”
“Yeah.”
Leaning back in the rocker, Dr. Lewis starts the rhythmic motion again. “What do you want to do about that?”
Now I whip my jacket off. “I don’t know. I’m confused all the time now. My mind keeps going back to California, me on my surfboard, watching a buoy tilt in response to wind and waves, bouncing back. Wish I had an inner buoy to help me see past what’s coming at me to the unwavering part of me.”
Dr. Lewis tolerates silence well; he waits for me to say more.
“I guess I do feel kind of like Adrian, searching for something inside to help me feel okay.”
Dr. Lewis stops the rocker again. “Not thinking of ending the search, are you? Any thoughts of suicide?”
“No!” I say, surprised by him asking.
We look at each other in a no-nonsense manner and he nods slightly, meaning he accepts the truth of what I’m saying.
Dr. Lewis gives me space and silence to think through my feelings. It seems more like getting still and quiet than thinking, until something escapes from my mouth. What pops out is, “It felt good to reach out, have those lunch conversations with Chelsea,” I say. “But then I blew it. I’m sure she thinks I’m a freak, all shut down, not knowing what to say.”
“Death is a big deal, Sean, very difficult for anyone to sort through. I think if you talk to Chelsea—if you’re honest with her, not worrying about whether you sound dumb—she is likely to respond.”
On my half-mile walk home from Dr. Lewis’s office in the center of downtown, I feel calmer inside but the gloom continues. As Dr. Lewis always tells me, he can provide support, but I’m the one who has to do all the sorting out of the jumble that is me.
Our house is a small Cape, in a family neighborhood, no college student rentals, quiet as a tomb. The neat things about the house are a large stone fireplace and a backyard full of evergreen and maple trees. They slope down to our piece of the creek that runs through the town. Thank goodness the fireplace is roaring when I walk in.
“Hey, Sean, we’ll eat in about fifteen. Your dad just left his office to walk home.” Mom always wants to have dinner shortly after Dad gets home so he won’t have time for more than one scotch on the rocks.
“SEAN,” screams Sarah, racing to give me a big bear hug. I know what’s coming: she wants to tell me all about her day. Sarah loves preschool; everything about it is “amazing.” But today I can’t focus, and only pick up a few words.
Dinner dynamics take a particular shape. Mom asks questions; Dad answers at length, constantly interrupted by Sarah talking about her day; and me, I fly below the radar with one-word answers. Tonight, Dad is upset about rapes that have recently taken place on his college’s campus. The school, only one step down from an Ivy League college, is divided about how to deal with the problem.
“Administrators care about the school’s reputation, students care about grades above everything else, faculty blame the strong role of fraternities on campus, and town people want the student binge drinking and reckless behavior that follows to stop,” Dad says.
The events of my day bolster my
courage enough for me to ask, “Dad, has anyone asked and really listened to the students who were raped?”
Mom jumps in to divert the discussion away from conflict. “So, Sean, what’s happening at school for you? Something more pleasant than our previous topic, I hope.”
“A student committed suicide.”
She flinches, clearly not expecting this. “What? Why?”
“Beyond being bullied for years at school, I don’t know.”
“Did you know him?”
“I tried. He was in one of my classes. But he was pretty skittish about trusting anyone. I failed in being a good friend. Nobody, including me, knew how to reach out to him. His suicide makes me wonder, what if I was the one who needed help?”
Mom gasps, stammers, “Sean, don’t talk like that! We would be here for you no matter what.”
Sarah can no longer stand being excluded from the conversation. “When can we talk about what I learned in preschool? I don’t even know what these big words, like suit-side, mean. I learned to make rhymes today, funny ones—zippy, dippy, yippy, hippie, do!”
I excuse myself and retreat to my room. The only good thing about homework is it sets a pattern of legitimate time alone in my room free of expectations, like chores, or command family time, like church. Not that we are religious, but Mom says it is a good way to meet “people of good character” in our new community.
Anger starts rising in me. “We’ll be there for you, Sean.” Bullshit. Drag me here from California after announcing we’re moving. No warning, no discussion about the decision, just, “It will be good for all of us.” Dad gets a higher status job; Mom has more money to spend on the family and a better house; and Sarah truly is “resilient,” as they say … not like me. The big gift to me was “the opportunity to go to a really good school.” Double bullshit.
School eats up my time and energy—while I’m there, at least. Homework is actually not a big deal to me like it is for other students on the grades hunt. I truly don’t care. And I learned last year in California, from my surfer buddies, how to easily meet the increased workload of high school. Techniques like how to skim read and quickly find what the teacher is looking for. I found out that tuning into teacher style and way of thinking is key to what will be on tests. That’s the main thing, but another tip is to figure out the big-picture concepts in the chapter titles, the bolded section headings, the first and last sentence of each section, and questions at the end. For a decent reader, not even a great one, a thirty-page reading assignment can be done this way in about ten minutes. This totals less than an hour for all homework in exchange for average grades. I sometimes miss details that turn out to be important, but the teacher usually mentions some the next day and I jot them down. My parents aren’t happy with “average” but figure Hilltop’s reputation will make up the difference when I’m applying to colleges. They are also giving me some space to adjust to a new school. Maybe I’m depressed because I’m not doing anything that matters to me. Dr. Lewis says depression is anger turned inward. True enough; I’ve got plenty of anger. To others it comes off as me being a detached critic, though.
Maybe my nightly shower will relax my anger muscles so I can fall asleep. I head down the hall to the bathroom, but as I pass Sarah’s room I hear, “Sean?”
She’s calling to me from bed. I poke my head in through her door. “You still awake?”
“Can’t sleep.”
“What up, Sarah Bearah?” I ask, walking toward her. “That’s a rhyme!”
She giggles. Holds her arms out for a hug. I sit on the side of the bed and give her a big old bear hug. “You worried about something?”
Her lower lip sticks out. “I miss Isabella.”
“Well that makes sense, she was your best friend in San Diego. What made you think about her today?”
“A new girl in school looks like her.”
“Just like Isabella, or she looks Latina?”
“Not just like her, but sorta.”
“What’s her name?”
“Catalina. She’s a new student too.”
“That is a Latina name, so maybe Isabella and Catalina have a similar background, like maybe their families are descended from the same country in Latin America. Like how you and I both have the same background. People can tell from our Irish names and the way we look—reddish-blond hair, light skin, and freckles—that we’re probably related. Did you talk to Catalina?”
Sarah nods yes.
“Did other kids talk to her?”
Sarah shakes her head no.
“Did you speak in Spanish to Catalina?”
Sarah shakes her head no.
“Try that tomorrow. It might make her less scared and feel more like she’s at home. Maybe she could be a new friend.”
“Okay.” Sarah switches gears. “Tell me a story, Sean.”
“Was this all a trick to get me to tell you a story?”
More giggles.
“Okay, what should the story be about?”
“Surfing.”
“You trying to make me sad, missing surfing?”
“No. It’s just you’re always happy when you talk about surfing. And you seem sad tonight.”
Sarah has a way of coaxing me to open up. “I could tell you about one time when I got scared surfing—I got totally worked.”
“Tell me.”
“One day I was worried, thinking about the move here, and not paying close attention. I was lined up waiting for a wave, kinda zoned out, and then caught a wave at the last minute. It was a very big wave, and I caught it wrong. I wiped out—got ‘worked,’ as they say. When I went under, I was thrown around and around by the water and couldn’t come up for air. The force of the wave was holding me under. I panicked and struggled until I was exhausted. Then I heard a hearty voice say, ‘Relax, you’re okay.’ I did … and I was! I floated up and surfaced next to a buoy. I held on as it swayed back and forth, always coming back to its pivot point.”
“Whoa,” Sarah murmurs, her eyes closing.
“When I got to shore my surfing buddies said, ‘We thought you were a goner.’ Weirded out, I said, ‘Me too.’ I realized then I’d felt a force with me, like a protector, in the water. I had let go of fear and stopped fighting the turmoil. That’s when release came.”
Sarah is sound asleep.
Deciding to shower in the morning, I head to bed. I haven’t thought about that day since it first happened. I didn’t tell my folks, afraid they would make me stop surfing. The guys seemed embarrassed for me and dropped the subject. But since then, I’ve known the sea is there for me. I am part of it and it is part of me. Alive with motion, power and excitement, sea salt supporting me, playground of gulls flying freely, squawking and wave-crashing music, images painted in sunshine, fish tickling my toes, water forever soft. The sea and me, together, is what I want to be. Here? Now? Maybe my problem has been leaving the sea behind rather than bringing it with me, continuing to live in the ways of the sea. Even if I’m up a mountain without a board. After all, these mountains were once earth under a vast ocean, according to local people I’ve met.
Hilltop Academy looks different today. With more dread than ever, I climb the forty-eight steps up to the massive marble columns guarding the portraits inside of Neanderthal-looking principals and wealthy alumnae broadcasting their success. Today, the over-bearing presence of these people and their standards seems ancient history. I always knew I somehow didn’t fit in here, but before I thought it was my problem. Now I’m free to be … who knows?
Ninth grade, last year in California, was the opposite in many ways of Hilltop. San Diego Westside High was a hodgepodge of immigrants, urban blacks, and middle-class suburbanites. There were three academic tracks: poor kids who didn’t read or speak English well; hardcore street kids, many with drug money but few hopes for a long life, being courted to stay in school; and middle-class kids who felt life was okay if we all just chilled. The kids in my middle-class track saw school as something you
had to do but was no big deal, and like nothing in school really related to our lives anyway. The immigrant kids worked like crazy but always seemed buried. I don’t remember any wealthy strivers; those sure-fire success kids who base life on their upper-class inheritances.
I count the minutes till lunch time. When the bell rings I head straight to the cafeteria and hang out by the door until Chelsea comes in, alone for a change. “Hey,” I say quickly, “will you sit with me in the window today?”
“Sure,” she says. “My so-called friends don’t seem to be big fans of me speaking up about Adrian and how we all treated him horribly. It’s amazing how quickly you can become unaccepted.”
We settle in at the window, neither of us with food.
“People in my classes know about Adrian, but it’s just something exciting to talk about, not upsetting to them,” I say, shaking my head.
“This is my first day of feeling thrown away by people,” Chelsea says. “Imagine how Adrian must have felt—for years.”
I want to be more in tune than I showed at Java yesterday. “You look really drained, Chelsea. Like, your eyes are super red.”
“I’m so tired,” she says. “I cried for hours last night, until no tears were left. Then I got really mad. Somehow I ended up at my computer and started doing research on the name ‘Adrian’—as in, of the Adriatic Sea region, a character in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, about Italic people and others who led the war against Rome in the 4th century BCE. The University of Pennsylvania has organized archaeological digs in that area, now present-day Abruzzi, Italy. They’ve found unique architecture there, different from that of any other known cultures. I was up most of the night. All my research was really interesting. Adrian’s ancestors might go back to that time.”
“That’s pretty cool, possibly connecting someone from here to more than 2,000 years ago.” What a relief to be able to talk with Chelsea again. Maybe she doesn’t think I was such a jerk after all.
“Yeah, I’ve never done any independent research like that, or even cared to,” she says. “Last night, though, it seemed important to attach my feelings to something ‘out there’ and related to Adrian.”
School Tales Page 4