Somebody knocked on the door. Ms. Armstrong grabbed it.
“Yes?” she said, making it a question. “Yes? Yes?”
When she wasn’t looking, I stuck out my tongue. Three times.
She jotted something on her hand. What sort of teacher didn’t carry a notepad?
Watching Ms. Armstrong scribble on her skin, I got a terrible itching for antibacterial soap.
“I need to use the restroom,” I said.
Ms. Armstrong wasn’t buying it. “You were late for class.”
I nodded three twice.
“Why don’t I come with you?” she said, opening the door.
We walked to the bathroom together. Sharon Lubbitz and her followers were there, ripping up magazines and rubbing the perfume samples on their arms. Just smelling them made me nervous, so I flipped the lights on and off three times. They must’ve told Ms. Armstrong, because she went in after me. She dragged me outside.
“It costs more to flip the switch on and off,” she said, “than to leave it on.”
“No, it doesn’t,” said Thayer Pinsky, who had been watching from his usual detention spot on the graffiti-infested bench in the breezeway. “I’ve checked.”
Ms. Armstrong blinked. “Excuse me?”
“I turned my bedroom light on and off for a few minutes and checked the meter.”
The girls made faces at him but said nothing. I wanted to mention that I had tried the same experiment last summer, but as I opened my mouth, Thayer looked at me hard. All I could hear was slithery laughter in the parking lot, the baseball team swearing behind their pickup trucks.
Thayer Pinsky was still talking about energy. “Why don’t we ever do anything fun in class? At my old school, we used to have a kick-ass science fair.”
Ms. Armstrong warned Thayer about using the word “ass,” but he continued his story.
“So everybody used to do the dumbest things like weather balloons or baking soda volcanoes or absorbent cat litter. My science teacher’s name was Ms. Veronna. I called her Ms. Piranha. She gave me major attitude.”
I didn’t doubt it.
“Here’s what happened.” Thayer talked with the speed of a machine gun. “Miss Piranha says, ‘Where’s your project, Thayer?’ And I go, ‘It’s the glowing pickle,’ and I get up and walk to the front. And I tell her how everything in the world is made of atoms, including us. Even though I wouldn’t mind being a boulder or an oak tree, I got stuck with people atoms.”
“Are you sure about that?” said Sharon. But he kept rolling.
“So the Piranha can’t figure out how I made the pickle glow. Basically, it worked like someone frying in the electric chair.”
“That’s enough,” said Ms. Armstrong.
“If I get suspended again, my mom says she’s sending me to military school.” He snorted. “That’s what she thinks. I’ll just run away to New York and stay with my gram. She’s mad cool. Like, on the B train, she’ll tell me when to look out the window and see these dope-ass tunnels where all the subway writers went underground.”
“That kid is so weird,” said Sharon, as if he wasn’t even there.
When Thayer ran out of words, I ducked in the bathroom. I huddled in the stall while Ms. Armstrong waited. Thayer was so much himself. He buzzed like neon, oblivious.
OCTOBER
15 3 20 15 2 5 18
Balancing
Dr. Calaban had decided that I suffered from a chemical imbalance.
She let out a sigh. “There are two types of clinical depression: seasonal affective disorder, which relates to the time of the year, and dysthymia, which is identified by hopeless feelings.”
One month, three meals, two types.
“I’d like to try medication in conjunction with psychotherapy,” she said.
“Medication for what?” I shook my head. “I don’t want to take medication. That stuff can have major side effects.”
“Well, ‘major’ is a strong word. Think of it this way. If you were sick, you’d go to a doctor and he or she would prescribe something to make you feel better. This is the same thing.”
“But I’m not sick!”
She wrote down a prescription, just like a medical doctor. It had my name on it, along with the word “Paxil.”
“There are many different reasons that a person may feel anxious or depressed,” she explained. “Depression may be caused by a neurochemical disorder. One thing that many patients have in common is a low level of serotonin, the ‘happy chemical’ in the brain.”
“So my ‘happy chemicals’ are low?”
“Think of it this way. Serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as Paxil increase serotonin and help the brain communicate.”
It was official. My brain, like people on daytime talk shows, was having communication problems.
Dr. Calaban explained that it would take a few weeks for the Paxil to work. I was almost disappointed. I couldn’t wait any longer. And what if it didn’t work at all? Or worse—what if it changed me into someone else, a robot blissed out on artificial emotions?
Mama didn’t seem convinced. She took Dr. Calaban’s prescription and crumpled it in her purse.
Why was Mama so ballistic over the medication, especially after dragging me to a shrink? Why would she sabotage my chance to get help? I had my own ideas. This was the woman who wouldn’t buy lunch meat because it was laced with cancer-causing nitrates. I grew up in a house without sugared cereal or soda. When I got sick, she always told me to take more vitamins. When I was sad, she said the same thing.
I had a feeling that my problem was bigger than vitamin C.
Gossip
Days passed and NERS didn’t write. PLEASE, I scribbled again and again. ANSWER.
Still nothing.
On Monday, I stood guard near the girls’ restroom, watching couples lean against lockers. Sharon was sucking face with her latest conquest. I saw them from the side: Sharon’s firm, bright mouth, and the boy’s stubbled chin, dotted with toilet paper. They kissed and kissed as if trying to prove something. Sharon’s hands were all over the place. She tugged his jacket. The boy stumbled. I watched them slink away, holding hands and staring in opposite directions.
How could someone so mean score a boyfriend?
I pushed the door open.
At the sink, Sharon’s disciples, Colleen and Jessica, were smudging blush on the apples of their cheeks. I thought about leaving, but I had to see if NERS had answered me.
“Hi,” I said, sliding around them.
The girls didn’t glance at me. They giggled as though I had told a joke.
I ducked inside the handicap stall. As usual, the others were out of order.
H. K. still loved C. J. forever and Casey sucked four-letter words. But there, in black Sharpie, beneath WHY? were the words:
WHY NOT?
The letters had dripped and faded. I leaned forward and sniffed their faint, mediciney stink.
“Can you believe that skank? She thinks she’s all that.” Colleen’s mosquito-thin voice grated in my ear.
I inched backward, though nobody could see me.
“She’s nothing but a chickenhead,” Jessica chimed in.
“I can honestly say that Sharon needs to disappear,” said Colleen.
Could this be happening? Sharon, the alpha female, was getting trashed by her so-called buds.
“I’m not trying to be a hater,” Colleen said. “I mean, I like her most of the time. But there are definitely better-looking girls out there.”
“And she has this fake shake-and-bake tan.”
“And what’s up with the dude that she’s macking on? He shaves his eyebrows so he won’t look so Latino.”
“Nasty.”
“Hold on,” Colleen said. “I need to pee really bad.”
I nibbled a hangnail. No way could I sneak out without snagging more attention. Not after that gabfest. The girls had really mastered the art of fakery. For no reason, a best friend could turn on you. If boys had a
problem, they just punched each other out. And weirdoes like Thayer didn’t belong in any category. They floated under the radar.
“Don’t take all day.” Amber pounded on the stall. “I’m, like, going to explode in ten seconds.”
My mind clung to the digit.
“Make that nine,” she added.
God, I hated that number. It had this less-than-perfect aura about it. Not to mention, when you turned it upside down, it morphed into six.
“Get a move on, stupid.”
I stared at the wall. I needed to whisk the nines out of my brain, so I doodled a wreath of them.
Colleen lost it. She kicked the stall with such force, the lock slipped out of place. I jammed it back again. I didn’t want to deal, so I kept drawing. With my luck, she wouldn’t go away.
“I know it’s you, Frances. God. What a freak.”
Better than being a slut, I wanted to say. Why didn’t I just spit it out? She wore tight clothes—microminis, low-rise jeans. She hid nothing.
“Why don’t you just kill yourself?” she said.
I needed to tune out.
I drew nine chains of nine. After that, I was almost at peace. Then I looked down and saw Colleen’s face near my feet.
My pen hit the floor and rolled.
“You’re going to be in so much trouble,” she told me.
“No, I’m not,” I managed to squeak. “Because if you rat on me, I’ll tell Sharon what you said about her.”
Colleen was still hanging upside down, trying to peer inside the stall.
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
Her face disappeared.
“Whatever,” she said.
The door creaked and banged shut.
The words on the wall had given me special powers.
I took a deep breath and wrote, WHO?
The next day, NERS responded with, WHO DO U BELIEVE IN?
On Friday, I wrote, WHAT?
Later that afternoon, NERS scribbled, WHAT U SCARED 4?
But our match ended the morning I wrote, WHEN? and NERS asked, WHEN CAN WE MEET?
I spread my left hand wide enough to outline it with a Bic pen (but not so wide that it resembled a manatee). The pen wobbled and skittered over the wall’s gum-caked grooves. Then I added:
ELEMENTARY PLAYGROUND. IN 7 DAYS. 12 NOON.
Before I left, I thought of one last thing.
TRACE YOUR HAND ON THE WALL, I wrote.
Guinea Pig Girl
On Saturday morning, Mama was digging in the dirt, pretending to “garden.” Verb form of a noun. Not that we had a garden. Not in Florida, where the dirt is choked with rock.
Mama put me to work, washing shells in a plant saucer. The shells were stuffed with dead acorns, along with unidentifiable chunks of mulch. I was bringing them back to life. Each shell held a ghost, the spirit of sea-things past.
“Where are these from?” I asked.
“Don’t you remember?” Mama said. “Sanibel Island. You had fun collecting them.”
I remembered the trip but not the shells. Just my parents yelling.
My parents had two ways of fighting. In the first round, they hollered. Dad always won because his lungs were bigger. Mama always won the second round. She could ignore Dad for days. And since words were his favorite weapon, he didn’t have a chance.
Dad worked for a giant ad agency, making up sentences he called “copy.” If you’ve ever read the back of a cereal box, it’s possible Dad wrote the crap about starting your day with a smile. He kept notebooks full of stupid phrases like “clusters of wholesome, hearty bran” and “plenty of plump, juicy raisins and real oats in every low-fat serving.”
It’s true. Dad ate cereal with little hearts on the box.
When the ad agency landed another “good for your heart, lower your cholesterol” campaign, they grew so big, they moved a branch south. At first, Dad was psyched. Although he mostly wrote about crunchy granola at home, he’d grown sick of driving back and forth to New York for meetings.
Mama couldn’t wait to ditch Vermont. She had bought a Sun Box lamp to banish the winter blues. But once we moved to Miami, we didn’t act like the unstoppable Nash trio anymore. Dad was “busting his hump” round the clock. Mornings, he left with a briefcase, and at night he collapsed on the couch.
He didn’t talk much about his ad pitches. “Top secret,” he’d say, as if Mama and I were spies. He’d crack open a Heineken without saying a word.
Mama would hide in the kitchen, scrubbing pots. She rinsed them over and over again, though she’d spent a lot of money on a new dishwasher. She kept her hands busy, rinsing and scrubbing, as if that would make things right.
The trip to Sanibel Island was Mama’s bright idea. Dad wasn’t too thrilled. He lugged his laptop to the hotel and passed the week squinting and barking at it.
That’s when I got on bad terms with the ocean. I hated the aquarium taste of the water and the way it stung my eyes. It dried into a salty crust and knotted my ponytail so tight, I cut the tangles out with scissors.
I sat in the itchy sand, watching seagulls rip a fast-food wrapper apart. The pound, pound, pounding of the Gulf’s pulse jangled my nerves. I needed a pause button. Or a pair of earplugs.
My parents were at each other’s throats. After the shouting, they waged a creepy battle without sound. Kids say there’s nothing sadder than hearing your parents fight. But at that point, I would’ve given anything for a little screaming and yelling. It was so much worse when they didn’t care enough to argue.
Dad holed up in our room, clacking away on his PowerBook. Mama paced back and forth on the beach, collecting shells, as if she could tidy up the entire coast.
The space in my head needed filling, so I started cramming it with numbers. Safe, solid numbers, like fives and tens, that stood on their own, no explanation required. Words just cluttered my thoughts. The beach kept time with my inner metronome, a sound that went on and on, whether I was there to hear it or not.
I turned off the garden hose and looked at Mama. Even the constellations of moles on her upper arm seemed unfamiliar. I stared at the cigarette glowing between her fingers. “It’s a little early for a smoke, don’t you think?”
“Two is my limit.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Make that two-thirty in the afternoon,” she said.
Mama waited for me to laugh. When I didn’t, she said, “Don’t get on my case.”
She was shoveling handfuls of wet dirt and rotten leaves into a garbage can. I was supposed to be raking, but instead, I sat there, wondering how to reach her. I closed my eyes.
“The shrink wants me to take medication,” I said.
I hated the idea of taking pills. More than that, I hated the idea of taking pills for something that I should handle on my own.
Mama said, “I saw your prescription. Paxil is heavy stuff, Fin. It’s been linked to suicide. I saw it on the news.”
I said, “Something has messed up my head.” For some reason, I couldn’t stand the word “depression.”
Mama found an empty jelly jar on the railing and tipped ash into it. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with your head, Fin.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
Mama tilted her head. She peered through the shadow of her baseball cap.
“Some people think medication can fix anything.” I watched her exhaling smoke. “Yet this country tells us to ‘say no to drugs.’”
“It’s not a drug. It’s medication,” I said.
“Antidepressants are terribly overprescribed,” she said. “They’re giving that stuff out like candy these days.”
First Mama pushed me to see a doctor. Now she was contradicting herself. I couldn’t stand listening to her anymore.
“I didn’t ask to see Dr. Calaban. It was your big idea.”
“Medication is for sick people,” she said. “My daughter is not sick.”
I thought about what Dr. Calaban had de
cided, that I suffered from a chemical imbalance. Did this explain why I worried so much? Or why I needed to wash my hands until they bled? Or why numbers floated through my mind when I heard music? Would that go away if I took medication?
“The pharmaceutical bigwigs are worse than the tobacco industry when it comes to marketing this stuff to kids.” Mama’s voice dropped to a croak. “Their only goal is to get kids hooked so they pop pills for the rest of their lives.”
“Hold on. I haven’t decided if I want to try it yet.”
“I refuse to let my daughter be a guinea pig.”
“It’s not like I’m the first person to use antidepressants.”
“And where is the money going to come from?”
“Mama, you work for an insurance company. You know this stuff. Dr. Calaban said we could look into it.”
I tried to focus on what Mama was saying. Something about Dad’s company.
“I don’t think they’re going to cover it,” she said.
What did Mama know anyway? She wasn’t a doctor.
I threw the shells in the garbage. That’s where I found my prescription, wet with coffee grounds. I took it out and stuffed it in my pocket. Then I scrubbed my hands under the hose until they were scraped clean.
They Have No Idea
I had forged Mama’s signature, biked to the drugstore, and gave it to the white-coated woman behind the counter. For an hour, I wandered the aisles. I pushed buttons on the blood pressure monitor. I hung around the photo department. An old man had taken pictures of nothing except his Dalmatian puppies. It must get pretty boring developing snapshots of other people’s happy occasions, all those proms and birthday parties.
Back at the prescription counter, I handed the lady pharmacist a few wadded-up twenties, the last of my birthday money, and bought the pills. On the bottle was my name and the letters RX, which I juggled back and forth, counting one two, one two. XR RX XR RX. Like holding the letters up to a mirror and seeing them stretch into infinity.
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