Undiscovered Country

by Jennifer Gold

  “It’s okay,” I reply, because what else can I say. I wrap my arms around her, inhaling deeply. I take in her scent—vanilla deodorant and Pears shampoo. I don’t know how long we stand there like that.

  ...

  My mom gets her biopsy results the same day I get my midterm back in Chem. I knew it would be bad news, because I aced the Chem test. Karma is like that. The Universe giveth, the Universe taketh away, or something along those lines. But anyway, as soon as I see that ninety-six, I feel my stomach bottom out. I stare at the poster of the periodic table of the elements tacked to the wall, wishing I could reverse the two numbers.

  “What’s wrong?” Tess mouths. She’s watching me from across the aisle, a quizzical expression on her face. “Bad?”

  I shake my head, and flash her my paper. She furrows her eyebrows in confusion, and I gesture at my breasts in explanation. Tess just looks increasingly baffled. Jonah Campbell, who sits next to her, winks at me suggestively.

  “Ms. Marks?” Mr. Josefson, the chemistry teacher, regards me with an odd expression. “Is everything…all right?”

  I feel my cheeks flame as I cease poking at my chest with a number-two pencil. “Yes, Mr. Josefson.” I slouch down in my seat. “Sorry.”

  Jonah gives a snort of laughter, but I ignore him. Instead, I stare at the series of neat red checkmarks on my near-perfect midterm, overcome with trepidation. Why couldn’t I have blown it?

  I don’t call or text my mom to find out. In my heart, I know that, if it was good news, she would have sent me her own text, full of her trademark caps and exclamation marks and series of completely random emoji. Instead, it’s been radio silence all day.

  It’s dark when I enter the house. All the lights are off on the main floor, which is unusual. Ordinarily, my dad has to nag us into shutting off the lights, because “do you know how many papers I have to grade to pay for the electrical bill,” and so on. But today, it’s dark, and dark is never good. I’ve seen enough movies to know which way this is going.

  I walk into the living room, where I find my father on the couch. The TV isn’t on, and he hasn’t got any books or a newspaper or anything, he’s just sitting there, in the dark, staring at the wall. He’s clutching a family-sized bag of plain Lay’s and there’s a bag of red licorice half-empty on the table. I don’t remember either of these things being in our pantry, and I wonder, briefly, if my dad actually made a stop at the grocery store to load up on stress food after the hospital.

  “Dad?” I venture cautiously. I hover in the doorway, watching as he takes another heaping handful of chips.

  “Cat,” he says with a start. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  “It’s four,” I say quietly. I brace myself, waiting for the words I know are coming. I half hope he won’t say anything, because until he says it out loud, it isn’t real.

  “Is it? Already?” He looks confused for a moment, then shakes his head. “Sorry.” He struggles to look at me, and I can see his eyes are filling with tears behind his round frameless glasses. His thinning gray hair, usually combed neatly to one side, is sticking up in various directions. It looks sort of fluffy, like a ruffled baby chicken.

  “It’s okay,” I say brusquely. “You don’t have to say it.” I fold my arms around myself for protection.

  “Oh, sweetheart.” He’s crying now, and I feel the panic rise in my throat. “Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay. The doctors were very positive.”

  He keeps talking, but I don’t hear him. The doctors were very positive. It’s funny how a statement about positivity really isn’t very positive at all.

  “Where’s Mom?” I interrupt. He’s blathering on about support groups, which irritates me. My mother isn’t the support-group type. She’d probably rather have an extra biopsy than bare her soul to a roomful of strangers.

  “She’s sleeping,” he said. “They gave her something to help her sleep. She was upset.”

  I take the stairs two at a time, and poke my head into my parents’ bedroom. My mom is curled up on top of the duvet, still in her clothes.

  On the dresser, I see a small bottle. Xanax, it says. Alprazolam. Quietly, I open the bottle and shake one into my palm.

  Chapter 4

  After

  “Was that a rat?”

  I’m still half-asleep when I hear the girl’s voice, loud and bordering on shrill, followed by the thud of her luggage being dumped on the ground. I groan loudly and sit up, squinting blearily at the new arrival.

  “Hi,” I say. “I’m Cat Marks.”

  She’s very petite, with long, straight jet-black hair and almond-shaped eyes. Her skinny jeans are tucked into a pair of little black boots with impossibly high heels, and she’s wearing several tank tops in different colors layered over one another. Her purse is Louis Vuitton, and there’s something about her that suggests it’s real, not purchased furtively on a side street in Chinatown, or whatever.

  “Margo Chang-Cohen,” she says abruptly. She looks around, an expression of disdain on her face. “Wow. This place is even more disgusting than I thought it would be. That’s special.”

  I yawn and release my hair from its ponytail, fastening the yellow tie around my wrist. “Did you say you saw a rat?”

  “I think so.” Margo peers around suspiciously. “I saw something move over there.” She points toward the back left-hand corner of the room, and we both stare, waiting. Nothing happens.

  “Whatever.” She shrugs. “Nothing we can do anyway. It’ll be like home.”

  “You have rats at home?” I eye the designer bag doubtfully.

  “Not in my home, obviously. But I live in downtown Toronto, so yeah. Rats. You see them on the subway tracks and stuff.” She sits down gingerly on bed number three. “Assuming there are rats in South America.”

  “Aren’t there rats everywhere?” I frown. My eyes dart around the little barracks, on alert now for furry little creatures. All I see are dust bunnies and dirt, and what looks like a crushed can of Diet Coke in one of the front corners.

  “No. There are no rats in Alberta. But I can’t say for certain about anywhere else.” She opens her purse and begins rummaging through it.

  “Why no rats in Alberta?” My curiosity is piqued.

  “No clue.” She pulls out a Butterfinger. “I read it once, in a magazine. Want some?”

  “Sure.” She snaps off a half and hands it to me. Bright orange crumbs rain to the ground, adding to our potential vermin situation, but I’m too tired to do anything about it. We chew in silence, while I continue to survey the room for signs of non-human life. Except for a couple of disturbing insects, it seems okay, but I still can’t help worrying about rats, especially when the night rolls around. I saw a story on the news once of a baby who had been attacked by rats in her crib. They tried to gnaw off her face. It was in London, though, where rats and people have a long history of mutual enmity. I’m not sure how it is here in the jungle.

  “Hello?” A new voice, this one male, pipes up from the doorway. A tall guy about my age hovers, looking uncertain. “This is Barracks B, right?”

  “Well, there was a great big letter B on the outside wall,” says Margo. I can’t tell if she’s intentionally being sarcastic, or if she’s one of those people who manage to sound that way even when they’re being nice.

  “I thought the barracks were…segregated,” says the boy.

  “Segregated?” Margo raises an eyebrow and swallows the last of her chocolate. “You mean like the American south? I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure that’s illegal now.”

  “No. No!” He turns an unfortunate shade of scarlet, clearly flustered. “Like, guys and girls. Separated.”

  “So, you’re not a racist, then,” Margo smirks.

  “No! I’m Latino! How could I be?”

  “Relax, I’m just playing.” She waves him over. �
�I’m Margo, and this is Cat.”

  I smile feebly. “Hi.”

  “Taylor Mendez,” he says. “Nice to meet you guys.”

  Taylor is tall and olive-skinned, with wavy, almost black hair worn to his shoulders and a pair of expensive-looking aviator sunglasses perched on his head. He’s wearing skinny jeans with PUMA sneakers and one of those T-shirts that is meant to look retro, but is actually brand new and mass-produced in China or Bangladesh or some other place where they force toddlers to work sewing machines for five cents an hour. It has an eighties-looking box of Rice Krispies printed on the front.

  “Well, that’s it then.” Margo nods.

  “That’s what?”

  “You have a girl’s name. That’s how you ended up here.”

  “Taylor is not a girl’s name!” He looks affronted.

  “Taylor Swift? Taylor Momsen? Taylor Schilling? Come on.”

  “What about Taylor Lautner?” he challenges.

  Margo waves her hand dismissively. “He doesn’t count. The Twilight movies were crap. He won’t be in anything else of note, mark my words.”

  “Didn’t Trish notice you were a guy?” I interrupt. “Maybe the dorms are coed.”

  “Is that the office manager? She wasn’t there.” Taylor waves the paper in his hand. “This was on the counter for me. It says Bed Two.”

  “Well, you’re welcome to stay.” Margo nods at bed number two. “I don’t have any issues with a coed dorm. I lived in one my freshman year.”

  “You’re in college?” I ask eagerly.

  “Yeah, of course.” She eyes me suspiciously. “Why? How old are you?”

  “I just graduated. High school,” I add quickly. “I’m taking a gap year before college. I deferred.”

  “I should have done that,” says Taylor. He drops his bag on the ground, and sinks down on one of the opposite beds. “I just finished freshman year.”

  “That’s a weird time to do a year abroad,” says Margo, frowning at him.

  “Let’s just say I needed to get away,” he answers. He’s not giving us anything else—his tone of voice makes it clear that conversation is over, for now. Margo shrugs and turns back to me, kicking off her spike-heeled boots. She takes a bottle of violet nail polish from her purse and shakes it briskly with one hand, peeling off her socks with the other.

  “So why are you guys here?” she asks, carefully painting her big toe, chin resting on her knee. “And not the bullshit helping-people reason. The truth.”

  The truth. My breath catches, as if I’d been hit in the stomach by one of Margo’s stilettos.

  Taylor gives her a slantwise look as he opens his bag and retrieves a granola bar. “You start,” he says, tearing off the crinkly wrapper.

  “Sure.” Margo finishes her left foot, and wiggles her toes as if this will hasten the drying process. She replaces the brush with a delicate touch and looks at us evenly. “My cousin got into law school.”

  I wait for further explanation, but apparently none is forthcoming. Margo starts on her right foot, swearing under her breath as she accidentally smears purple polish around her cuticle.

  “So?” Taylor asks. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “So, my dad is a competitive prick,” says Margo, her tone matter-of-fact. “He basically told me, if I don’t get into medical school, he’ll never be able to face his brother—that’s my Uncle Steve—ever again. And I don’t have the extracurriculars to get into med school. And my Spanish is pretty good, so here I am.” She makes a face. “It’s just a year, right?”

  Taylor looks mildly repulsed. “No offense, but that’s, like, the worst reason I’ve ever heard for volunteering.” He swallows the last of his granola bar. “Do you even want to go to med school?”

  “Not really,” Margo says. Finished with her toes, she swings her feet around so they’re dangling off the edge of the bed. She’s so short that her soles don’t even brush the ground. “I’d probably be better off alone in a lab somewhere, but my parents are both doctors, and they’d never get over the shame of a daughter with a PhD.”

  “That’s insane,” says Taylor. “Why do you have to do what they say? You’re an adult.”

  Margo narrows her eyes at him. “You have no idea what they’re like. Lucky you, that you’re so…unencumbered by your family.”

  Taylor turns yet another deep shade of scarlet. It’s like red is his skin’s natural spectrum. He looks away silently.

  “So why are you here, Cat?” Margo turns to me. “Got into a crap college? Bad breakup? Parents’ divorce?”

  For a minute, I don’t say anything. I stare at my hands, weaving them in and out of each other. Finally, I look up, and take a deep breath.

  “My mom died,” I say. “Breast cancer.”

  “Shit,” says Margo. All the sarcasm has leached out. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Yeah, it’s been…terrible.” After months of pretending, I feel surprisingly liberated by my confession. “Everyone asks, ‘Are you okay?’ and I say ‘Yeah, I’m dealing,’ but really, I’m not. Not at all, actually. I’m a fucking mess.”

  “Of course you are,” says Taylor. His eyes are full of sympathy. “Your mom died.”

  “Were you close?” Margo asks quietly.

  I feel tears prick at my eyes, and my nose tingles the way it does before I start to cry. “She was my best friend.”

  They’re both quiet. I take a deep breath. “When I first signed up, I didn’t think I’d actually go. I thought my father would step in and…I don’t know…save me from myself, I guess. But he’s been on his own planet since the diagnosis, not that I can really blame him. I kind of lost it when she died.”

  “Lost it how?” Margo looks interested. She pokes at her toes and makes a face as a bit of polish smears her finger.

  “I got really depressed.” I shudder, remembering the black hole that swallowed me the moment my mother’s heart stopped beating. “Before that, when she was in treatment, I was okay. My dad was useless, so I handled everything, and I went to school, and I was doing everything, and then when she died, I just…crashed.”

  “Did they make you see someone?” asks Margo. She has a knowing expression on her face.

  I flush, and don’t answer. Way to go, Cat. Now they’re going to think you’re crazy.

  “It’s okay,” she adds. “I’ve been in therapy since I was fifteen.”

  “Sixteen for me,” says Taylor.

  I look at them, taken aback. I’ve never met anyone else my age who needed to see a psychiatrist. “Yeah,” I say. “Dr. Shapiro.”

  “Did they let you get away with depression?” asks Margo. She draws her knees into her chest, hugging them.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you get diagnosed with depression,” she clarifies, “or did they turn it into a bigger issue? Like, for me, when I felt depressed, they said I had a borderline personality disorder. Same thing happened to most of my friends.”

  “Most of your friends have seen a shrink?” Now I’m totally flabbergasted.

  She shrugs. “I went to a hypercompetitive private school,” she says. “It’s a cultural thing. So—let me guess. Generalized Anxiety Disorder?”

  “Bipolar II,” I mutter, not looking directly at her. “He said my…my behavior before she died was hypomanic.”

  Margo makes a noise that sounds like a cross between spitting and laughing. “Bullshit!” she crows. “They’re so full of shit. I should have guessed. Bipolar II is the diagnosis du jour. All the rage right now in the head-shrinking community. Let me guess—Seroquel?”

  “Abilify,” I answer, still amazed that she’s such an expert in all things psychological. “But he was talking about switching. Not that I take any of it. I flush it all down the toilet.”

  Taylor speaks up. “I’ve been on Abilify. Th
ey should call it Inabilify. I was a zombie on that drug. I couldn’t get out of bed for three months.”

  “Me too!” I exclaim. “It’s the worst!”

  “Clearly you’ve never been on a tricyclic,” says Margo bitterly. “The old-school antidepressants? You can’t imagine.”

  I have no idea what she’s talking about, but Taylor looks aghast. “Dude, why not an SSRI?”

  Margo shakes her head. “They made me suicidal. I tried to kill myself on Paxil.”

  She drops it so casually, she could have been talking about lactose intolerance. It takes me a moment to react. “You…you tried to kill yourself?”

  “Yeah. It’s a lesser-known side effect of the SSRIs in teenagers. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors,” she adds helpfully, seeing the bewildered look on my face. “You know, like Prozac or Effexor.”

  These I’ve heard of, so I nod dumbly. My dad’s on Effexor. It hasn’t done much, in my opinion. I wince; thinking about my dad is like being punched suddenly in the gut. Does he miss me? I wonder. Does he even notice I’m gone?

  “I take Pristiq now,” says Taylor. “It’s like Effexor, but it doesn’t make you fat. I gained ten pounds on Effexor. I had to work out three hours a day for six months to take it off.” He shudders, his hands clutching at his now-flat abdomen.

  Margo looks at Taylor with sudden interest, studying him. “Are you gay?” she asks, suddenly. “I wouldn’t have guessed.”

  I stare at Margo in horror, feeling my stomach seize in an uncomfortable and familiar way. You can’t just ask someone if they’re gay, can you? Like asking them if they’re vegetarian, or have they been to Disneyland? It’s personal. I wonder if this line of questioning is normal in Canada. They legalized gay marriage ages ago, so perhaps it’s basic conversation up there.

  Taylor stares at her, open-mouthed. “You can’t just ask someone if they’re gay!”

  “But I just did. And you are.” Margo rolls her eyes.

  Taylor exhales. “Yeah,” he admits. “I am.”

  “Shall we assume that’s why you’re here?” Margo leans back on her pillow, and makes a face. “Ugh, this thing is like a rock. I knew I should have brought one from home.”