Say Something

by Jennifer Brown

  Mr. Angerson, the principal, ended up coming to our house that night instead. He sat at my kitchen table and talked to my mom about… I don’t know—God, destiny, trauma, whatever. Waiting around, I’m sure, for me to come out of my room and smile and tell him how proud I was of my school and how I was more than happy to serve as a human sacrifice for Miss Perfect Jessica Campbell. Maybe he was waiting for me to apologize, too. Which I would do if I could figure out how. But so far I hadn’t come up with words big enough for something this hard.

  When Mr. Angerson was in the kitchen waiting for me I turned up my music and crawled deeper in my sheets and let him sit there. I never came out, not even when my mom started pounding on the door, begging in “company-voice” for me to be polite and come downstairs.

  “Valerie, please!” she hissed, opening the door a crack and poking her head into my room.

  I didn’t answer. I pulled the sheets over my head instead. It’s not that I didn’t want to do it; it’s that I just couldn’t. But Mom would never understand that. The way she saw it, the more people who “forgave” me, the less I had to feel guilty about. The way I saw it… it was just the opposite.

  After a while I saw headlights reflecting off my bedroom window. I sat up and looked into the driveway. Mr. Angerson was pulling away. A few minutes later, Mom knocked on my door again.

  “What?” I said.

  She opened the door and came in, looking all tentative like a baby deer or something. Her face was all red and splotchy and her nose was seriously plugged up. She was holding this dorky medal in her hand, along with a letter of “thanks” from the school district.

  “They don’t blame you,” she said. “They want you to know that. They want you to come back. They’re very appreciative of what you did.” She shoved the medal and letter into my hands. I glanced at the letter and noticed that only about ten teachers had signed it. Noticed that, of course, Mr. Kline wasn’t one of them. For about the millionth time since the shooting, I felt an enormous pang of guilt: Kline was exactly the kind of teacher who would’ve signed that letter, but he couldn’t because he was dead.

  We stared at each other for a minute. I knew my mom was looking for some sort of gratitude from me. Some sense that if the school was moving on, maybe I could, too. Maybe we all could.

  “Um, yeah, Mom,” I said. I handed the medal and letter back to her. “That’s, um… great.” I tried to muster up a smile to reassure her, but found that I couldn’t do it. What if I didn’t want to move on just yet? What if that medal reminded me that the guy I’d trusted most in this world shot people, shot me, shot himself? Why couldn’t she see that accepting the school’s “thanks,” in that light, was painful to me? Like gratitude would be the only possible emotion I could feel now. Gratitude that I’d lived. Gratitude that I’d been forgiven. Gratitude that they recognized that I’d saved the lives of other Garvin students.

  The truth was most days I couldn’t feel grateful no matter how hard I tried. Most days I couldn’t even pinpoint how I felt. Sometimes sad, sometimes relieved, sometimes confused, sometimes misunderstood. And a lot of times angry. And, what’s worse, I didn’t know who I was angry at the most: myself, Nick, my parents, the school, the whole world. And then there was the anger that felt the worst of all: anger at the students who died.

  “Val,” she said, her eyes pleading.

  “No, really,” I said, “It’s cool. I’m just really tired is all, Mom. Really. My leg…”

  I pushed my head deeper into my pillow and folded myself into the blankets again.

  Mom bowed her head and left the room, stooped. I knew she would try to get Dr. Hieler all worked up over “my reaction” at our next visit. I could imagine him sitting in his chair: “So, Val, we probably should talk about that medal…”

  I know Mom later put the medal and letter away in a keepsake box with all the other kid junk she’d collected over the years. Kindergarten artwork, seventh grade report cards, a letter from the school thanking me for stopping a school shooting. To Mom, somehow all those things would fit together.

  That’s Mom’s way of showing her stubborn hope. Her hope that someday I’ll be “fine” again, although she probably can’t remember the last time I was “fine.” Come to think of it, neither can I. Was it before the shooting? Before Jeremy walked into Nick’s life? Before Dad and Mom started hating each other and I started searching for someone, something to take me away from the unhappiness? Way back when I had braces and wore pastel-colored sweaters and listened to Top 40 and thought life would be easy?

  The snooze alarm sounded again and I pawed at it, accidentally knocking the clock to the floor.

  “Valerie, come on!” she yelled. I imagined she had the cordless in her hand by now, her finger poised over the 9. “School starts in an hour. Wake up!”

  I curled up around my pillow and stared at the horses printed on my wallpaper. Ever since I was a little kid, every time I got into trouble, I’d lie on my bed and stare at those horses and imagine myself hopping on one of them and riding away. Just riding, riding, riding, my hair swimming out behind me, my horse never getting tired or hungry, never finding another soul on earth. Just open possibility ahead of me into eternity.

  Now the horses just looked like crappy kids’ wallpaper art. They didn’t take me anywhere. They couldn’t. Now I knew they never could, which I thought was so sad. Like my whole life was all a big, dumb dream.

  I heard clicking against the doorknob and groaned. Of course—the key. At some point, Dr. Hieler, usually totally on my side, gave my mom permission to use a key and come into my room whenever she pleased. Just in case, you know. As a precaution, you know. There was that whole suicide issue, you know. So now anytime I didn’t answer her knock she’d just come right in anyway, the cordless in her hand, just in case she walked in and I was lying in a pool of razor blades and blood on my daisy-shaped throw rug.

  I watched as the doorknob turned. Nothing I could do about it but watch from my pillow. She crept in. I was right. The cordless was in her hand.

  “Good, you’re awake,” she said. She smiled and bustled over to the window. She reached up and pulled the Venetian blinds open. I squinted against the early morning sunlight.

  “You’re in a suit,” I said, shading my eyes with my forearm.

  She reached down with her free hand and smoothed the camel-colored skirt around her thighs. It was tentative, like it was the first time she’d ever dressed up before. For a minute she looked as insecure as I was, which made me feel sad for her.

  “Yeah,” she said, using the same hand to pat the back of her hair. “I figured since you were going back to school, I should, you know, start trying to get back full time at the office.”

  I pulled myself to a sitting position. My head felt sort of flat in the back from lying down so long and my leg twinged a little. I absently rubbed the dent in my thigh under the sheets. “On my first day back?”

  She stumbled over to me, high-stepping over a pile of dirty laundry in her camel-colored high heels. “Well… yeah. It’s been a few months. Dr. Hieler thinks it’s fine for me to go back. And I’ll be there to pick you up after school.” She sat on the side of my bed and stroked my hair. “You’ll be fine.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I asked. “How do you know I’ll be all right? You can’t know. I wasn’t okay last May and you didn’t know that.” I pulled myself out of bed. My chest felt tight and I wasn’t sure I wasn’t going to cry.

  She sat, gripping the cordless in front of her. “I just know, Valerie. That day won’t ever happen again, honey. Nick’s… he’s gone. Now try not to get all upset…”

  Too late. I was already upset. The longer she sat on the side of my bed and stroked my hair the way she used to do when I was little and I smelled the perfume that I thought of as her “work perfume,” the more real it was. I was going back to school.

  “We all agreed that this was best, Valerie, remember?” she said. “Sitting in Dr. Hieler’s office w
e decided that running away was not a good option for our family. You agreed. You said that you didn’t want Frankie to have to suffer because of what happened. And your dad has his firm… to leave that and start all over again would be so tough for us financially…” she shrugged, shaking her head.

  “Mom,” I said, but I couldn’t think of a great argument. She was right. I’d been the one saying that Frankie shouldn’t have to leave his friends. That just because he was my little brother didn’t mean he should have to change towns, change schools. That Dad, whose jaw tightened angrily every time someone brought up the possibility of our family having to move to a new town, shouldn’t have to build a new law firm after working so hard to build his. That I shouldn’t have to be stuck in my house with a tutor or, worse, to switch to a new school my senior year. That I’d be damned if I’d slink away like a criminal when I’d done nothing wrong.

  “It’s not like everybody in the whole world doesn’t know who I am anyway,” I’d said, running my fingertips along the arm of Dr. Hieler’s couch. “It’s not like I could find a school where nobody has heard of me. Can you imagine how much of an outcast I’d be at a new school? At least at Garvin I know what to expect. Plus if I ran away from Garvin, everyone there would be even more sure I was guilty.”

  “It’ll be tough,” Dr. Hieler had warned. “You’re going to have to face a lot of dragons.”

  I’d shrugged. “What else is new? I can handle them.”

  “Are you sure?” Dr. Hieler had asked, his eyes narrowed at me skeptically.

  I’d nodded. “It’s not fair that I should have to leave. I can do this. If it’s terrible I can always transfer at the end of the semester. But I’ll make it. I’m not afraid.”

  But that was back when summer stretched in front of us, impossibly long. Back when “going back” was just an idea, not a reality. As an idea, I still believed in it. I wasn’t guilty of anything except loving Nick and hating the people who tormented us, and there was no way I’d slither away and hide from the people who believed I was guilty of something else. But now that it came down to putting my idea to practice, I wasn’t just afraid; I was terrified.

  “You had all summer to change your mind,” Mom said, still sitting on my bed.

  I snapped my mouth shut and turned toward my dresser. I grabbed a pair of clean underwear and a bra, then scavenged the floor for some jeans and a T-shirt. “Fine. I’ll get ready,” I said.

  I can’t say that she smiled just then. She did something that was kind of like a smile, only it looked a little painful. She took a couple false starts toward the door and then apparently decided it was a good decision and headed for it completely, gripping the phone in both hands. I wondered if she’d accidentally take the phone to work with her, thumb still poised over the 9.

  “Good. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

  I dressed, pulling on the wrinkled jeans and T-shirt haphazardly, not even caring what they looked like. It’s not like dressing well was going to make me feel any better or any less conspicuous. I hobbled into the bathroom and ran a brush through my hair, which hadn’t been washed in about four days. I didn’t bother with makeup, either. Didn’t really even know where it was. It’s not like I’d been to a lot of cotillions over the summer. For most of that time I couldn’t even walk.

  I slipped on a pair of canvas shoes and grabbed my backpack—a new one that Mom had bought a few days ago and that had sat empty in the very place she’d left it until she finally came in and stuffed it with supplies herself. The old backpack—the bloody one… well, that probably ended up in the garbage, along with Nick’s Flogging Molly T-shirt, which she’d found in my closet and thrown away while I was stuck in the hospital. I’d cried and called her a bitch when I got home and saw that the shirt was missing. She totally didn’t get it—that shirt didn’t belong to Nick the Murderer. It belonged to Nick, the guy who surprised me with Flogging Molly tickets when they came to the Closet. Nick, the guy who let me climb up on his shoulders while they sang “Factory Girls.” Nick, the guy who had the idea that we would pool our money to buy one T-shirt and share it. Nick, the guy who wore the shirt home and then took it off and gave it to me and then never asked for it back.

  She claimed that throwing the shirt away was advice from Dr. Hieler, too, but I didn’t believe it. Sometimes I had a feeling she just blamed all her ideas on him so I’d roll with it. Dr. Hieler would understand that Nick the Murderer didn’t own that shirt. I didn’t even know who Nick the Murderer was. Dr. Hieler understood that.

  All dressed, I was struck with a sensation of being too nervous to go through with it. My legs felt almost too weak to take me out the door and a light coating of sweat covered the back of my neck. I couldn’t go. I couldn’t face those people, those places. I just wasn’t strong enough.

  With shaky hands, I fumbled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Dr. Hieler’s cell phone number. He answered on the first ring.

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said, sinking down onto my bed.

  “No, I told you to call. Remember? I was waiting for it.”

  “I don’t think I can do this,” I said. “I’m not ready. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready. I think it was a bad idea to—”

  “Val, stop,” he interrupted. “You can do this. You’re ready. We’ve talked this through. It’s going to be tough, but you can handle it. You’ve handled a lot worse over the past several months, right? You’re very strong.”

  Tears sprang to my eyes and I wiped them off with my thumb.

  “Just concentrate on being in the moment,” he said. “Don’t read into things. See what’s really there, okay? When you get home this afternoon, call me. I’ll have Stephanie patch you through even if I’m in session, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And if you need to talk during the day…”

  “I know, I can call.”

  “And remember what we said? Even if you make it through only half the day, it’s already a victory, right?”

  “Mom’s going back to work. Full day.”

  “That’s because she believes in you. But she’ll come home if you need her. My prediction is you won’t, though. And you know I’m always right.” There was a smile in his voice.

  I chuckled, sniffed. Wiped my eyes again. “Right. Whatever. I’ve gotta go.”

  “You’re going to do great.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I know so. And remember what we said: you can always transfer after this semester if it doesn’t work out. That’s, what? Seventy-five days or so?”

  “Eighty-three,” I said.

  “See? Piece of cake. You’ve got this. Call me later.”

  “I will.”

  I hung up and picked up my backpack. I started to walk out the door, but stopped. There was something missing. I reached under my top dresser drawer and fumbled around until I found it, tucked into the frame of the drawer, out of Mom’s investigative reach. I pulled it out and looked at it for about the millionth time.

  It was a photo of Nick and me at Blue Lake on the last day of school, sophomore year. He was holding a beer and I was laughing so hard I swear you could see my tonsils in the picture, and we were sitting on a giant rock right next to the lake. I think it was Mason who took the picture. I couldn’t for the life of me remember what was so funny, no matter how many nights I stayed awake trying to drum it up.

  We looked so happy. And we were. No matter what the e-mails and the suicide notes and the Hate List said. We were happy.

  I touched the laughing still shot of Nick’s face with my finger. I could still hear his voice loud and clear. Still hear him asking me out in his serious Nick way, at once bold and angry and romantic and shy.

  “Val,” he had said, pulling himself off the rock and bending to pick up his beer bottle. He picked up a flat rock with his free hand and took a few steps forward and skipped it across the lake. It skipped once, twice, three times before it dove into the water and stayed. Stacey laughed from somewhere
nearby in the woods. Duce laughed just after her. It was getting on to nightfall and a frog started croaking somewhere to my left. “Do you ever think about just leaving it all behind?”

  I pulled my heels up against the rock and grabbed my knees. I thought about Mom and Dad’s fight the night before. About Mom’s voice drifting up the stairs from the living room, the words unclear, but the tone venomous. About Dad leaving the house around midnight, the door shutting softly behind him. “You mean like run away? Definitely.”

  Nick was silent for a long time. He picked up another rock and slung it across the lake. It skipped twice and fell. “Sure,” he said. “Or, you know, like driving off a cliff and never looking back.”

  I stared at the setting sun and thought about it. “Yeah,” I said. “Everybody does. Totally Thelma and Louise.”

  He turned and kind of laughed, then swigged the last of his beer and dropped the bottle to the ground. “Never saw it,” he said. Then, “Remember when we read Romeo and Juliet in freshman English last year?”

  “Yeah.”

  He leaned over me. “You think we could be like them?”

  I crinkled my nose. “I don’t know. I guess. Sure.”

  He turned again and stared out into the lake. “Yeah, we could. We really could. We think alike.”

  I stood up and brushed the backs of my thighs, which felt dimply from the texture of the rock we’d been sitting on. “Are you asking me out?”