A Really Awesome Mess

by Trish Cook

  “Well, I’m not,” Emmy said. “Level two.”

  And nobody else said anything.

  “Wait. Really?”

  “Well, I’m only on five,” Jenny said. “But I’m going to have a big breakthrough in therapy this week. And then level six. And then once the ’rents get here, I’m out.”

  “Wait. So. Wait. So people are leaving on Family Weekend?”

  “People leave after every Family Weekend,” Tracy said. “It’s like an audition or something. You jump through the hoops right when Mom and Dad are here, they let you leave with them. And if you don’t, it’s back to the dorms. We were all here before you and Emmy. Didn’t it occur to you that we might leave before you, too?”

  “I guess … um. Like Diana says, I’m stupid. But at least I don’t smell like pigshit.”

  “He’s not lying,” Tracy said. “No offense, ladies, but I can definitely get a whiff of that porcine funk drifting off you.”

  “Great,” Emmy said. “What the hell are we going to do about this pig?”

  We debated the fate of Little Willy for a while. Emmy said that the pig was going to have to go, and Diana said Emmy just hated the pig because of her body image issues. Diana offered to take the pig full time until Family Weekend, Emmy said great, and Jenny said no way. And then Chip said this: “Um, Jenny, Diana. If you get to go home after Family Weekend, who’s taking the pig?”

  Nobody said anything for a full thirty seconds. “Well!” I finally said. “Guess it’s not just Justin who’s stupid! Guess there’s plenty of stupid to go around!”

  Everybody glared at me and left the table. Little Willy’s fate was left unresolved.

  But I wasn’t really worried about the pig. Mostly because I didn’t have to live with it. What I was worried about was me. I was only on level two. There was no way I was going to be able to go home after Family Weekend. I mean, the only things that had felt good and fun since I’d been here were the things I wasn’t supposed to be doing. I didn’t feel like anything was changed or resolved.

  Except this: I’d made some friends. I didn’t have to feel like the craziest one in the room all the time like I did at my old school, but more than that … I liked these people. I like actually looked forward to spending time with them. So who was the genius who’d made it so we’d have to separate so quickly?

  I was feeling pretty good about stuff for a while, but as soon as I got back to my room after dinner, I started spiraling into the depths I knew too well. All of a sudden it just felt like I was never going to ever have any fun again. It pissed me off. I opened a book and tried to read for a minute (I did actually read, no matter what Emmy thought. Just because I didn’t read a stupid book about a girl and her pet pig and a spider who died. Okay, I saw the movie. I just forgot she was Fern), but I couldn’t think of anything. I wanted to smash something. Or someone.

  Which was when Tracy walked through the door.

  “Whoa, J, where’d that black cloud come from?” he said. “The one that’s on top of you, I mean.”

  “The only thing black and on top of me is your mom,” I said, and Tracy laughed.

  “Okay. Good. So you’re not completely gone.”

  This did get a smile out of me. “Yeah, well, I may not be great at lying, but I can crack a joke that’ll get my ass kicked.”

  We didn’t have anything to say after that. I mean, I kind of wanted to say, yeah, I was really scared of you at first, and I hated you for a while, but now I don’t want you to leave. But you didn’t say that to another guy. It sounded weak—like you needed somebody else, and guys weren’t supposed to be like that, or if we were, we were only supposed to show that side of us to girls, and then we could pretend we were just faking it so we could get in their pants.

  “So,” I said after a couple of minutes. “Level six. How’s it feel?”

  “I don’t know. I mean. Good. But not, like, I’m totally fixed.”

  “You gonna … like go back to regular school and stuff?”

  “Not the one where I conned everybody with my fake drug business. Not really welcome there. But yeah, I’ll be headed back to school. Not to be a little bitch, but I’m a little scared of that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m gonna have to try not to lie my way through it. I haven’t done that since … like, as long as I can remember.”

  “Well, I’m a scared little bitch, too. I can already feel myself slipping down, and there’s a serious chance my dad might just blow off Family Weekend like he’s blown off most important things in my life, which would probably send me slipping down even more, and it’s like … I won’t have anybody here anymore.”

  “Maybe you should take the pig. Then you’ll have somebody.”

  “Maybe you should take the pig.”

  “I can’t believe you told a kid named Mohammed to take a pig. That’s haraam! Unclean, man.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not Mohammed.”

  There was a pause while he considered this. “Yeah, I’m not. I’m still not taking that nasty pig, though.”

  But somebody was going to have to. When we arrived at breakfast a couple of days later, we found a haggard-looking Diana staring at a plate full of bacon.

  “I gotta say, I’m a little surprised you’re taking care of a pig and eating bacon,” I said.

  “That porky little shit kept me up all night,” Diana said. “He was, like, rooting around and stuff, and when I got up, I saw that he ate freaking everything. I mean, stuff I didn’t think mammals could eat. And then finally at, like, four in the morning he crawled into bed with me. And I thought he was going to cuddle or something, but instead he just took a big crap at my feet. So this is my revenge. I managed not to kill him with my bare hands, but I am gonna eat his cousins and enjoy it,” she said, defiantly chomping a bacon strip.

  “Well, it’ll be fun to see how Jenny takes this,” Tracy said, gesturing at the plate of bacon.

  “That’s what Chip said,” I said, and Diana mustered the energy to high-five me.

  Fortunately, when Jenny and Emmy arrived, they were too preoccupied to notice that Diana was eating the equivalent of an entire pork belly.

  “Guys, we’ve been talking all night,” Emmy said, and Tracy interrupted.

  “Really?”

  Emmy paused, looked at Jenny, and said, “Well, I did most of the talking.”

  Jenny put up the blah blah blah hand signal, and everybody laughed except Emmy. “Whatever,” Emmy continued. “Anyway, we’ve made a decision. Little Willy really can’t live here.”

  “Tell me about it,” Diana said.

  “So we’ve gotta get him to safety.”

  “Where’s safety?” I asked.

  “There’s a farm refuge thirty miles from here. They take in farm animals and don’t slaughter them or anything.”

  “Um, great. But how are we gonna get Willy somewhere thirty miles away? Might as well be a thousand.”

  “Still undetermined, we’ve gotta brainstorm that—” Emmy started to say but Diana interrupted her before she could go any further.

  “We’re gonna break out!” she squealed.

  We came up with a breakout plan involving laundry and food delivery trucks that sounded really cool when we brain-stormed it around the table and incredibly stupid almost immediately afterward.

  What the hell were we going to do about this pig? It was making me sad. Nobody wanted him. I mean, yeah, he was a big pain in the ass who ate everything and shit everywhere, but he was just being a pig. He was born that way. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t fit in. I wanted to help him, but I didn’t know how.

  I was still trying to think in my session with Max.

  “You seem preoccupied,” Max said. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m just trying to work out a problem,” I said.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  I really wanted to spill the beans because I wanted to talk this out, but one word out of me and Willy got the ax or wha
tever they use to kill pigs, and I became a social pariah. No thanks.

  “I guess, I’m just … well, you know, I’ve made some friends here, and I was just thinking about how to help one of them.”

  Max tapped his iPad. One day I swore I was gonna catch him playing Angry Birds on the damn thing. “Well, that’s nice, Justin, but you know you can’t fix anybody else. Everybody’s on their own journey.”

  “Well. Yeah. Sure. I guess I just feel bad for him. He’s a pain in the ass, and nobody wants him around. But he’s just … he’s got issues, you know?”

  Max looked at me for a long time. “Yes, Justin,” he finally said. “I think I do. But why do you think nobody wants him around?”

  Oh crap. He thought I was talking about me. Well, better than him guessing I was thinking about a pig. I decided to go with it.

  “Well, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? His dad ran eight hundred miles away from him. His mom got remarried and popped out a couple of replacement kids so she could have a family she wanted. And then there’s me.” I tried to make my voice crack a little bit on the last part, hoping if I faked a breakthrough I’d get to move up a level.

  Max didn’t say anything for a full minute. “So. I don’t know about you, but I think you’ve just identified the kid’s core issue. Nobody wants him. Am I right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I had totally suckered this guy.

  So why was I crying?

  ONCE THE LAUNDRY TRUCK/FOOD DELIVERY PIGGY BREAKOUT plan got nixed, we spent most of our free time brainstorming other dumb ideas. Every one of them came up short. For instance, for all her quirkiness and semi-cluelessness/coolness, it just wasn’t realistic to think Tina would drive us to the farm refuge herself if we confessed. In fact, she’d probably freak even more than the rest of the staff would because she was the one who took us to the fair and promised our parents we wouldn’t do anything inappropriate while we were there in the first place. And, stealing the Assland short bus just didn’t seem like a very bright idea. There was no way we could cover up the Heartland Academy: A Caring Place slogan painted on the side, so the cops would no doubt be chasing us before we even got on the highway. Besides, no matter how great any breakout plan we thought up sounded in the caf, it meant a greater than one hundred percent chance that whoever was ferrying Little Willy to safety would not be leaving Assland this weekend with their parents. And I knew for a fact Tracy, Chip, Jenny, and even Diana really wanted to go home (especially now that Diana’s mom was supposedly working the steps in AA and SA, and they’d both be living with her nice grandma).

  All this still left us with the stinking little piggy, and the question of what to do with him.

  “Let’s play a game here,” I said at lunch as Diana was manhandling everyone’s buttered rolls into a napkin and stuffing them in her gym bag. “Let’s just say all of you get the go-ahead to leave, and me and Justin here are stuck with Mr. Smelly. What then?”

  “Then you’ll continue to take care of Willy until you can figure out a way to get him to the farm refuge,” Jenny said.

  I caught Chip patting her leg under the table, and I didn’t even heckle them about it. It was like he just wanted to show her he was there supporting her, no need to freak out. It was so sweet it reminded me of … well absolutely nothing Mason had ever done for me. I wondered why I had ever liked him so much in the first place. Why I’d been willing to accept the crumbs of his affection when I could have held out for a relationship in which the guy would actually be seen with me. Actually be with me, talk to me, hang out with me, love me. It was exactly was what my next boyfriend would have to give me to earn the spot.

  This place must have really gotten to me. Either that, or I was just so nervous about Family Weekend—which started tomorrow—that any stupid thing could make me go all sappy.

  “Dude, get a grip. It’s not gonna happen,” I told her, my voice gentle but my words strong. “It’s time for Plan B.”

  “Fine,” Jenny said. “In that case, I’m sneaking out tonight after lights-out and hitching a ride there. Hopefully I’ll be back by the time my parents get here. But if I get hacked to bits by some creeper before then, at least I know I tried my hardest to get Little Willy to safety—which is a lot more than I can say I did for Wilbur.”

  “But what about our plans—” Chip said.

  Jenny shrugged miserably.

  “Poor bastard really likes her,” Tracy muttered under his breath. Justin nodded in agreement.

  “You are not sneaking out,” I told Jenny. “You’d be risking everything you’ve worked so hard for. I won’t let you.”

  “You’re giving me no choice,” she said with a shrug. “Either you promise to somehow get him to that refuge after I leave, or I’m outta here tonight.”

  I let out a huge sigh. “Fine. You win. Again.”

  I barely got any sleep that night at all. Between all my tossing and turning and mentally picturing how the reunion with my family was going to go—and I couldn’t imagine it would be anything other than humongously awkward for all of us—and Willy’s snorting and rooting around and gassing up the place, I was lucky if I got ten minutes of sleep.

  When I finally dragged myself out of bed just after the sun came up, it was like there was a weird current running through my body. Really, through the whole school in general. Jenny was already awake, sitting at her desk, looking green.

  “You okay?” I asked her.

  “I feel like I’m going to puke,” she said.

  “Welcome to my world,” I said. She didn’t even crack a smile.

  “Seriously, what are you worried about? It’s all going to be fine. You’ll hang with your parents, they’ll see how much better you are, and you head home with them. Easy peasy.”

  “What if I haven’t changed?” she asked. “What if I just go right back to that bad place and stop talking again?”

  I knelt down in front of her, put my hands on her knees, and looked her straight in the eyes. “You won’t. But even if you do, you know you can stop yourself before any of it becomes a habit again. You’ve learned a lot here. You have a lot of tools you didn’t have before.”

  She shook her head. “Well then, what if my family hasn’t changed at all? What if my stepdad is as big of a controlling asshole as ever, and my mom still lets him walk all over her? And us kids? What then?”

  I shrugged. “You know what they tell us around here … you can’t control anyone else’s actions, only how you respond to them. You’ll figure out how to stay out of their way. You’ve only got one more year until college, it’s not that long. Listen, as much as I’m going to be lonely without you as my roommate here, I truly think you’re ready.”

  The sick look finally drained from Jenny’s face and she grinned at me. “Good thing you have Willy to keep you company then, right?”

  I tried to smile back, but my anxiety about seeing my fam and the realization that I was going be stuck here all alone after Jenny was gone turned it into more of a grimace. By this time, though, Jenny was happily getting dressed and didn’t seem to notice.

  I witnessed about twelve sobby/huggy/apology-filled reunions on my way to Brittany’s office, where I was supposed to meet up with my family, and it just amped my jitters to epic levels. By the time I actually got there, I was a complete wreck. Feeling like all the breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and dinners I’d been actually eating for the past week were about to come flying out my mouth.

  “I don’t think I can do it,” I gasped to Brittany when I opened the door to her office.

  “I know you can,” Brittany said, and gestured for me to get on the scale. I knew I was expected to get on facing away from the display. That was part of the deal: Brittany didn’t want me obsessing over the numbers, so I wasn’t allowed to see them for now.

  I stepped on and closed my eyes. I knew I’d gained weight this week. I hated the tightness of my waistband and the lack of control I’d felt eating semi-normally. My body, however, disagreed strongly. I h
adn’t had a headache all week, and I had more energy than since the end of me and Mason.

  “Good, good,” Brittany murmured.

  I hopped off the scale and stood with my hands on my not-quite-as-bony-as-they-were-last-week hips. “How good?” I asked. It was like I wanted to torture myself or something.

  “It’s progress,” Brittany said, and gave me a hug. “So here’s the scoop. We find it’s best for your first Family Weekend to have siblings spend a little time reconnecting before the whole family comes together. Kind of takes a little pressure off everyone to do these things gradually, you know? So your mom and dad are attending a parents’ roundtable this morning. You and Joss will go to the gym for sibling game time until I’m ready for you all to come back here for family therapy after lunch.”

  I looked at my watch. That gave me and Joss about three or so hours to catch up and ignore the dodgeball game or whatever they expected us to play. And Brittany was right, it did take a lot of the pressure off. I was way less nervous and way more excited now that it would just be Joss and me for a while.

  And then there she was in the doorway, all golden-haired and looking like Tyra should be begging her to audition for the next cycle of America’s Next Top Model. I went leaping into her arms and she twirled me around. We were both laughing hysterically.

  “I really missed you!” Joss yelled.

  “Why don’t you girls get on over to the gym,” Brittany said with a smile, shooing us out her door. “I’ve got a Sexual Reactivity group to teach.”

  We walked in silence for a little while. I was feeling shy and weird about what to say, where to start my story of what had really been going down at Assland. Thankfully, Joss broke the ice.

  “While we’re on the subject of sex,” Joss said. “I’ve got something here for you.”

  “I’m scared to even ask,” I told her as she rummaged around in her bag.

  “Here,” she said, handlng me a big envelope. It was fat, like it had been stuffed with a senior thesis or something.

  I opened the flap and pulled out the stack of papers inside. She’d printed out all my Facebook wall posts since I’d been gone, and they were nice as hell. One of my friends Lainey wrote a different thing she loved about me every day and had even gone so far as to start a Bring Back Emmy Magnusson group, which apparently had something like four hundred members in it.