To Be Honest

by Maggie Ann Martin

  Once the bell rang to let us out of calc, my stomach was a mess of flutters. I knew this was the time when I’d normally see George in between classes, and I could hardly wait to see his face again. The anticipation rolled over me the entire time I took my quiz, and I could not remember any of the problems that I’d just solved two minutes ago.

  Grace and I made our way to the hallway, and I immediately spotted him (hair first, of course). He’d made more of an effort to comb out his hair this morning, and he wore one of his nicer Marvel superhero shirts, the one that wasn’t faded and frayed from being worn so many times.

  “Hey,” he said as I walked up to him.

  “Hey,” I said back. I felt my body involuntarily leaning toward him again, almost like being within a foot of his presence meant “Welp, I guess I’ve gotta kiss you now.” We were inches apart before he broke the tension and turned down the hallway.

  “Want me to walk you to gym?” he asked, his voice suddenly tight.

  So PDA was not his thing. Noted. “I want you to create a diversion so I can get out of going to gym for the day.”

  “What do you have in mind?” he asked.

  “Wait, are you serious? Do you want to ditch?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Or we could at least go hang out in the band hall. No one ever checks in there to make sure kids are in class. We all just kind of congregate there when we don’t want to go to class.”

  “Okay.” I smiled. “What kind of tutor am I, encouraging you to skip class?”

  “An extremely cool one,” he said.

  As we walked to the band hall I was very aware of the distance in between us. As he walked closer to me it took everything inside me to keep my hand from grasping his. I’d never wanted to read someone else’s mind more in my life. Did he feel that electricity between us? Were his hands trying to launch themselves from his body and grab on to mine? I needed something, anything to confirm that this wasn’t one-sided.

  We walked inside the hall, and we were welcomed by an off-key symphony of students practicing in the little practice rooms dotting the hallway. There was an extremely tiny girl practicing her tuba in one room, a woodwind quartet practicing in another, and a guy playing the Star Wars theme on the piano just for fun in another. We went through a door at the end of the practice room hallway that led to what had to be considered their lounge. There were groups of kids sitting on a couple of old couches in one corner, but most were sprawled out on the floor working on homework. George explained that everyone gathered here for all school-sanctioned off-periods (or made-up off-periods, like us little rebels today). How did I not realize this place existed? Maybe I would have picked up the flute in elementary school if I knew that this would be waiting for me in high school.

  “Welcome to the band hall, the band nerds’ best-kept secret,” he said.

  “This is amazing,” I said. “No wonder you never want to eat lunch in the cafeteria. I would totally bring mine here, too.”

  “It’s not the prettiest space, but it’s ours,” he said. He led me to a spot that was open on the floor, and he pulled out a notebook. He drew a map of the music hall on his sheet of paper and showed me where each of the band cliques hung out. He reiterated that even though he was new, he fit right in with the other saxophones and stayed pretty exclusively allied with them, sometimes branching out to talk to other woodwinds. The cross woodwind and brass friendships were a little bit more strained, as they were considered the natural enemy in this setting. I loved watching the sparkle in his eye as he talked about it all, and I realized how much our time together was spent talking about me and my problems. I wanted to know so much more about him, and it excited me that this was just the beginning of that journey.

  “So, this might explain some of the strange looks you’re getting. It’s generally frowned upon to bring outsiders into the music hall,” he said.

  “You’re breaking some unspoken code? For little old me?” I asked.

  “There are exceptions to every good rule.” He smiled. Cue the melting heart. When he caught me smiling back at him, his drooped for just a second. Just enough of a falter that the same feeling I got when I thought he’d been interested in Elaine Lawson suddenly came creeping back again. Had I completely dreamed last night at Sandcastle Park? Had he changed his mind about me in the meantime?

  “So how’s precalc going? Need any new tutor sessions?” I asked.

  “Actually I’ve been doing pretty well,” he said, shrugging. “I think I’m finally starting to get the hang of things.”

  “Well, I’m happy to help, you know, considering you took the time to learn the words to a very intricate Eminem song in my honor,” I said.

  He barely laughed, not even coming back with a typical retort or challenging me on suggesting that he would have just learned the words for me. I tried to search his eyes, but he was preoccupied with looking down at some random sheet music that he found on the ground. Great. Anything to avoid looking directly at me.

  “You can happily report back to Hannah that I’ve been trying to use the Instagram theme that she suggested,” I said. “Though, I’m not sure how Fiyero feels about being in a constant bluish state. He looks like a little Smurf poodle in every shot.”

  “I’ll tell her,” he said. He couldn’t even riff off of Smurf poodle? That was some of my best work that he would normally be so down for.

  Because I must have been a glutton for punishment, I let the question that had been bouncing around in my head all morning spill out.

  “Are you thinking about going to homecoming at all?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t,” he said. He wouldn’t look up at me, and I felt like we were in the office again during the impromptu clarinet lesson, when he wanted nothing to do with me. How could it flip so suddenly?

  “I mean it could be kind of fun. We’d get dressed up in ridiculous outfits and dance to terrible music, but we’d be able to make whatever we wanted out of it,” I said.

  He paused his doodling in the notebook, looking up at me with squinted eyes for a few seconds. I swear my heart stopped beating as I waited for his reply.

  “I’m not really a dance guy,” he said.

  I deflated. “You’re not really a dance guy, or you’re not really a ‘go to the dance with Savannah’ guy?”

  His pause was deafening. I wanted to curl in on myself. For once in my life I’d put myself out there completely with someone who I thought would reciprocate. How had I been so wrong about how we were feeling?

  I stood up, leaving the lounge and all the band kids who made me feel unwelcome. Why did I let myself go down this road again? Last night was a pity kiss—a kiss to make his guilty conscious feel better about how upset I was.

  “Savannah!” he called after me down the hallway.

  I kept my stride, wanting to get as far away from him as possible. He caught up to me, but I pretended like I couldn’t tell that he was walking in my periphery.

  “Let me explain, please,” he said.

  “I think you’ve already said enough,” I said.

  “Savannah—”

  “Please leave me alone,” I said.

  “Savvy,” he begged.

  A teacher poked his head out of the door and took us both in, eyeing me.

  “Is everything all right out here?” he asked.

  “Everything’s fine,” I said. “George was just leaving.”

  “Sav,” he said.

  “Just leaving,” I repeated.

  He shifted from one foot to the other for a few seconds before turning back down the hallway in the opposite direction. There was silence for a few beats before I heard the sound of George’s sneakers heading off. The squeaking of his sneakers is one of those sounds that will be forever etched into my memory. The pain that I felt as I listened to his sneakers walk away was almost unbearable, and I could feel the tears that I had been holding in fall silently down my face.

  I went into the bathroom and washed my face, but no matter h
ow much cold water I splashed on it, I couldn’t hide the red puffiness that came with crying. There was no way I could go back to class looking like this, and my brain was 1,000 percent not ready to focus or learn. Damn it, George, you took away this one perfect day of school for me.

  I took out a piece of paper from my backpack and forged a note from my mom that I’d be out for the rest of the day for various doctors’ appointments. The lady at the front desk didn’t bat an eye at my obviously fake note and let me walk out the front of the school, no questions asked.

  Norma was still waiting in her beautiful parking space so close to school. I hoped whatever latecomer for the day appreciated the perfect spot that I had cleared for them. On my way home I decided that I would shed no more tears for George. If he was going to be an insensitive ass about my feelings, then I was going to be just as callous back. I would block all communication from him. He should be happy about that—at least then he wouldn’t have to pretend that he was interested in me.

  When I pulled into the driveway, I cocked my head. Mom’s car was still there. She should have been at work for hours by now. Maybe she called in sick? I parked on the street, just in case she’d stopped home for a second and needed to head back out.

  I unlocked the front door and was not greeted by a bounding Fiyero, but I could hear him whining from somewhere inside the house.

  “Mom?” I yelled as I walked in.

  No response. A chill moved through my entire body. I rounded the corner into the kitchen to find Mom passed out on the floor, Fiyero resting his head next to her.

  “Mom!” I yelled.

  My mind seemed to work in slow motion, crouching down next to her and listening for her heartbeat. It was still beating, and I could feel her breath on my cheek.

  “Come on, wake up, you’re okay, wake up,” I kept repeating over and over again.

  I tried shaking her, hitting her cheeks, lying her on her side, but she wouldn’t wake up. Somehow in the middle of this I managed to get my cell phone out and call 911. I don’t remember what I said on the phone, but someone on the other end of the line assured me that they were coming.

  It felt like it took the ambulance ten years to make it to our house. I sat on the kitchen floor trying everything to get her to wake back up. I even got a wet washcloth to pat along her face, but nothing was working. I begged and pleaded for her to wake up, but no matter what I said or who I prayed to, nothing about her situation changed.

  I opened the door for the medics in a daze, and one of them kept asking me questions. “How long has she been out for?” I don’t know; I just got home. “Did she come to since you’ve been here?” No. “Do you need to call your dad?” He doesn’t live with us. The questions kept bouncing back and forth between us, but all I could pay attention to were the EMTs crowded around Mom’s body. It was a flurry of activity around her until one them finally said the magic words I’d been waiting for.

  “She’s awake!”

  I peeked over their shoulders and realized that they’d fastened a neck brace on her and put her onto one of those yellow stretchers like they had in hospital dramas. Her eyes fluttered open for the briefest moment, and it made my heart pound wildly in my chest. She was still in there.

  “Mom, it’s okay, I’m right here,” I said.

  “We’re going to take her to the emergency room,” one of the EMTs said. “You’re welcome to ride in the ambulance with us, or you can follow along in your own car.”

  “I’ll come with you,” I said immediately. The thought of having to control a car right now was unimaginable.

  I held her hand for the entire ride, never letting go. The EMTs tried to ask me other questions to distract from the fact that my mom was being taken to the emergency room, but I couldn’t focus on their words. Everything was hazy and blurry around me, and the only thing that I could see clearly were our hands intertwined.

  When we made it there, the EMTs helped me get out of the ambulance, and one of them told me what the next steps would be. Mom would go back to see the doctor, and they would help me find the waiting room. A doctor would come out and give me an update about her condition as soon as possible, and I could call whomever I needed to join me while I waited.

  The medical team took off with her around the corner, and one of the EMTs stayed to help me find the waiting room, leading me in the opposite direction. He sat me down on the purple plastic chairs, and I became very aware of the people around me. Some of them were sleeping, some on the phone, others crying. I could not stay here alone and be okay.

  I got out my phone and dialed the only person I could think of to come and meet me here.

  “Dad? It’s Mom. She’s in the hospital. I need help.”

  chapter EIGHTEEN

  He made his way into the waiting room half an hour after I made the call, most definitely breaking multiple traffic laws to get there in that time. When he saw me sitting in a purple chair by myself, he raced up and wrapped me in a hug. In this moment, we forgot about the fight that had completely torn me apart this past weekend. Right now he was just my dad, the only other person who could take over the post of being strong while I crumbled.

  “What’s her condition? Have the doctors been back out to talk to you?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “There was a doctor who said they were running some tests when she first got here, but no one has come back since. I’m supposed to stay here so they can find me when there’s an update.”

  “Do you need something to eat? Drink? I can go grab it,” he said.

  I shook my head, but he went to find food. He had the type of nervous energy where you couldn’t possibly sit still. My nervous energy worked in the opposite way. I felt like I couldn’t process things normally, and I couldn’t get the image of Mom unconscious on the floor out of my head. What would have happened if I hadn’t come home from school early? Would she have woken up and gone on with her day? Was this the first time she’d passed out like this? I had a million and one questions for her.

  I went back and forth on whether it was time to call Ashley. What if they came out and said she was anemic and that she just had a really low iron count that caused her to pass out? Deep down I knew that it was something more serious than that, but holding off my call to Ashley let me hold on to the hope that it wasn’t for a little bit longer.

  Dad came back with a can of pop and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and I raised my eyebrows. He’d never liked spicy food. He shrugged at me before digging farther into the bag until he had to tip the Cheeto dust at the end into his mouth. Stress is handled differently by each person, I guess.

  “I’m glad you called me,” he said, starting in on a bag of Doritos.

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” I snapped.

  “Savannah,” he said. “I know that we’ve had a rocky few weeks, but you have to know that I’m always here for you, kiddo. Whenever you need me.”

  “You know how empty that promise has been in the past, Dad. Don’t pretend like this has always been your mantra,” I said.

  He set down his bag of chips and repositioned himself to be facing me head-on. “I’m trying to work on it, Savvy. My life made a complete one-eighty the moment your mom kicked me out of the house. We’d been living together since right out of college. I didn’t recognize my life without her anymore.”

  “You made it very clear that you weren’t happy in the life with her,” I said.

  “Neither of us was happy. And I know that’s not an excuse for what I did,” he said. “And that also doesn’t mean that it wasn’t difficult for me to adjust to a new lifestyle. To adjust to a life where my kids didn’t trust me anymore.”

  “Weren’t you the one who taught us that trust must be earned?” I asked, my voice becoming louder in my anger. I looked around the waiting room to see if anyone was watching us, but thankfully, everyone seemed to be preoccupied with their own family dramas to tune into ours.

  “I did,” he said. “And I still believe that. Savannah, I want to
earn your trust back. I know saying this out loud won’t make it magically happen, but I’m ready to put in the work.”

  “Savannah Alverson?” we heard from the other end of the waiting room.

  When I heard my name called, I realized that this was the moment that I could no longer live in the “Mom’s going to be perfectly fine” bubble. I had to face whatever reality the doctor was going to tell me now. We stood up in unison and joined the doctor at the front of the room. The walk seemed to take eons, and I couldn’t complain. Right now, everything was still fine. Once he opened his mouth and told us the diagnosis, nothing would be the same again.

  “Mr. Alverson?” the doctor asked. “Hi, I’m Dr. Jefferson. I met Savannah earlier.”

  We both nodded in unison.

  “I have some good and bad news for you both. The good news is she was breathing the entire time she was passed out, so there’s no sign of brain or organ damage. The bad news is, her blood work is showing that she is severely malnourished and has been effectively starving herself. We’ve put a call into our adult psychiatry unit that specializes in mood and eating disorders to see if there is a bed available for her. When patients come into my office with these signs and they are no longer able to make their own choices, we admit them,” he said.

  “So … what does that mean? How does this transition happen? When does it happen?” Dad asked. All his questions blurred together in my head. From the moment the doctor said the words starving herself, I completely shut off. I’d seen it—I’d seen how different she was acting, and I didn’t do anything about it. I could have prevented this all from happening. She wouldn’t have to be in the hospital if I had said something earlier.

  “We’ll keep her here for as long as we can and hope that a bed opens up within our own adult psychiatry unit. If not, we’ll put feelers out to units in the area until we can find a place for her to stay. In cases like these, it’s a two-week minimum stay with limited visiting hours in the first week. I’ll be able to give you more information once we know which facility she’ll be moved to,” he said.