“Of course not. I just wanted to have a chat to see how you’re faring.”
“I’m fine,” I said evenly, trying to control the tremor in my voice.
“You’ve been through…an ordeal. It’s a lot to process in such a short period of time.”
“But I’m okay now.” It may have seemed short to her, but to me it felt like forever. “My doctor said so, too. I can get him to write you a note if you want.” Everything in high school was taken more seriously when you had a note.
Dr. Green removed her glasses and leaned forward, as if she was letting me in on a secret. “I understand that your body has healed, Olive, but sometimes it takes the mind a little longer to process a trauma.”
“Are you really a doctor?” I was never this bold, especially not with authority figures, but I was sick of people sticking their noses where they didn’t belong. Plus, she was using that same tone my mother had adopted since the accident, the one where it sounded like she was talking to a two-year-old, or someone who was mentally challenged.
“I’m not a medical doctor, if that’s what you mean. But yes, I have a doctorate in psychology,” she said, gesturing to the framed diploma behind her. “You can call me Stacy, though, if it makes you more comfortable.”
She wasn’t wearing a wedding band and there wasn’t a single personal item in her office except for the stupid diploma on the wall. How was she supposed to understand what I was going through? What insight did her “doctorate” give her into my so-called trauma?
“Olive, I have experience dealing with issues like yours.”
I pulled at a loose piece of knotted wool on the couch. “I’m not really sure what you’re talking about,” I said, but I had a good idea I didn’t like where she was going.
“I’m talking about your suicide attempt.”
“I,” I started. “It was…” My breath caught. It felt like all the air had suddenly been suctioned out of the room. By now it was obvious that’s what everyone thought. But it was different being confronted like this, straight to my face, as if it were an undisputed fact.
“You let out a cry for help and I want you to know that it’s been heard.”
She reached for my hand but I jerked it back. “No. It was an accident.”
“I can’t make you talk to me, Olive. That’s not productive for either of us. But you do need to talk about what happened with someone. And more importantly, to talk about why it happened so that it doesn’t happen again.” She paused and stared right at me.
Talking about that night with Dr. Green—or anyone else—was definitely not going to help. In fact it was the surest way to guarantee that I’d feel even worse. She reached down and retrieved a glossy orange pamphlet from her desk drawer. The caption on the cover read DO YOU EVER FEEL ALONE? in big red letters, above a picture of a teenage girl staring dejectedly out a window. “There are a number of therapists and support groups listed here,” she said, handing me the pamphlet. “Take a look and discuss the options with your parents.”
I shoved it between the yellowed pages of Mrs. Dalloway and left without saying another word.
I thought I’d feel better once I was out in the hall, away from the pitying stare of Dr. Green. But the idea of going back to class made my stomach churn. My classmates’ stares would be judgmental, which was the only thing worse than pitying.
I roamed the empty halls, enjoying a brief moment of anonymity, until I remembered it was Annie’s free period, which meant she was in the darkroom working on the yearbook. The darkroom was completely out of the way, in the basement, next to the music and art studios. I hadn’t been down there in a while. The last artsy class I took was theater, and that was back before I met Derek. When I wanted to take ceramics this fall, he said it was stupid to waste an elective on art, that to college admissions officers, it looked almost as bad as a failing grade.
“Finally,” I said as the darkroom door swung open.
“Get in fast.” Annie cupped her hands around her eyes. “The light’s killing me.”
I followed her down a short, narrow corridor, through another door, and into the darkroom itself. The pungent odor of sulfur and processing chemicals hit me at once. Surprisingly, they didn’t make me feel queasy like everything else these days. If anything, the foreign mix smelled strangely appealing.
“Isn’t it supposed to be completely dark in here?” I asked, looking up at the dangling red bulb that dimly illuminated the black walls.
“That’s only if you’re printing in color. For black and white you can use a red safelight.”
While the design and layout of the yearbook was all done digitally, Annie was a purist, adamant about preserving the art and romance of photography, and insisted on shooting exclusively on film.
As my eyes adjusted, the objects in the room began to take shape. A sink, beakers, various canisters, and a wide, sunken area carved into the counter containing three large metal trays filled with liquid. It looked more like a science lab than an art studio.
“Why the sudden interest?” she said, placing a blank sheet in the first tray.
“Just curious,” I shrugged. It was the first time I had ever been in here, a fact I was slightly ashamed of given it was basically Annie’s second home. She’d been taking pictures since she got her first camera when she turned twelve. While I loved seeing the finished product, I never thought to see how it was all done.
She turned around to face me, not buying it. “Are you going to tell me why you’re really here?”
“Okay fine.” I hoisted myself up on the counter next to where she was working. “I couldn’t face going back to class.”
I told her about the envelope, how I had been humiliated in front of the whole class and summoned to see Dr. Green. I told her how smug Dr. Green had been, acting like she knew everything about me. I left out the part about her accusing me of trying to kill myself, and my so-called cry for help. “Can you believe her?” I asked when I was through.
“That’s just how shrinks are.” Using a pair of tongs, she transferred the dripping wet paper from one tray into the next, like a game of musical chairs. “Don’t take it personally.”
But it was personal. It was about as personal as it could be.
After a few minutes, Annie removed the paper from the last tray. I followed her to the other side of the room, where she clipped it to a clothesline. It dangled like a flag, next to a bunch of other drying prints.
“What are these?” Each sheet on the line contained rows of smaller images, like a tic-tac-toe grid. My eyes strained to make them out in the dim light.
“Contact sheets. They’re all the pictures from a single roll, and I pick which ones to enlarge so I don’t waste time developing the bad eggs,” she said, taking one down. “Here, take a look.”
I stepped in closer to get a better view. They were miniature pictures from the school Halloween pageant last fall. Everyone looked so small, like they could fit in the palm of my hand. I scanned the page until I came across one of me and Derek. I was sitting on his lap, dressed as a cheerleader, wearing the shortest skirt I’d ever worn in public, clutching a pair of blue and gold pom-poms. Derek went as a quarterback, complete with the black streaks smeared under his eyes and the shoulder pads that made him look all muscle-y and twice his actual size. The costumes were his idea. He said it was supposed to be an ironic twist on the typical “American Dream,” but deep down I knew it was just an excuse for him to pretend he was an athlete for the day. Sports were the only thing he wasn’t very good at. They were also practically the only thing his father ever talked about. Derek’s sister was his dad’s favorite, and it wasn’t because she was his only daughter; she was the only star athlete among his children. Staring at the tiny image, I remembered how self-conscious I had felt in that skirt with my pale, exposed thighs, and how just like Derek, wearing a costume wasn’t enough to mask who I really was. The sheet slipped from my hands as a crushing realization popped into my head: Betsy Brill was a c
heerleader, a real one who didn’t have to fake it.
“Ugh, I’m sorry, Ol.” Annie came up behind me and picked up the fallen print.
“Don’t,” I said, and snagged it away just as she was about to tear it in half. “Have you seen him again? I mean…with her?”
“With who?” It was a small relief that she had no idea who I meant.
“Betsy Brill.” The way she leaned into him that day at lunch kept replaying in my mind, how she flipped her flowing blond hair and whispered in his ear. They barely knew each other. She had no right to be acting like that, like he was hers. “She was sitting next to him that day in the cafeteria.”
“Oh please, that doesn’t mean a thing. If it did, then I guess I’ve dated practically the whole school, and we both know that would never happen.”
Maybe she was right. Maybe it was all in my head. But I had every reason to be upset because there was more she didn’t know. More I still hadn’t told her about that night…
“You know what sucks?” Annie said, jumping up on the counter next to me. “That you didn’t get amnesia when you died. Isn’t that supposed to happen? If I could have magical powers, I’d erase all your memories of Derek O’Brien, just like this.” She reached over and palmed my head, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Zap!”
I gave her a weak smile. But the truth was I didn’t want to forget about him. Just what happened.
“Is that from Dr. Green?” Annie asked, pointing at the orange pamphlet poking out of my book.
“Why?” I asked, pushing it further back into the pages of Mrs. Dalloway. The glossy paper it was printed on made me think of those giant orange traffic pylons that signaled danger.
“Just curious,” she said, mimicking me from earlier as she hopped back down off the counter. “And you know, maybe talking to someone isn’t such a bad idea.”
“Please, not you too.” I felt my back tense up. “And I am talking to someone,” I insisted.
She gave me her trademark look, the one with the head tilt and the right eyebrow raise. “You know what I mean.”
“I swear your parents have brainwashed you. Not everything needs to be talked to death.”
“No pun intended, I assume?”
“Maybe you should consider becoming a comedienne if this photography thing doesn’t work out for you.”
“Maybe you should,” she teased back, laughing.
“Sorry it’s taken me so long to check this place out,” I said, lingering by the door. It was a whole different world in here. It reminded me of being out in the garden at night, under the cover of darkness.
“You’re forgiven.” Annie tugged on the earbuds that still dangled around my neck. “And you’re welcome here anytime,” she added. It was like she understood that I wanted to come back without my having to say it.
As I made my way out of the basement, I felt both lighter and stronger than I had in weeks. Positive thoughts were cycling through my head when I got to the third floor. I rounded the corner and was almost at my locker when something stopped me dead in my tracks.
Betsy stood with her back against Derek’s locker, her foot pressed into the mustard-colored metal door, accentuating her long, lean legs. Derek was facing her, running his fingers through her perfect blond hair. With his other hand, he gripped the bent knee that suggestively poked through a gaping tear in her skintight jeans. They were both laughing, lost in their own world.
My arms went slack. My bag dropped to the floor. How could this be happening?
Derek stepped in closer. As his lips brushed up against hers, a biting chill ran through my veins. The song sped up in my head, playing at warp speed. The lyrics jumbled and overlapped until they were incomprehensible, just a bunch of gibberish. It felt like I’d been catapulted down the rabbit hole, where everything I’d always believed was turned upside down, where nothing made sense anymore.
My legs felt wobbly, like I was fainting standing up. I couldn’t move or breathe or even feel my heart beat. All I could do was watch as their lips parted, as Derek reached for Betsy’s hand, as they walked down the hall in the opposite direction, away from me, like I didn’t exist.
CHAPTER 8
“MRS. DALLOWAY SAID she would buy the flowers herself.”
I re-read that first sentence at least ten times. I was incapable of focusing, even though the line was highlighted in pink with three exclamation points beside it, courtesy of my mother. Apparently she was already obsessed with flowers when she was a teenager. Her notes were scattered throughout the book, next to doodles of misshapen hearts with things like MC + HB Forever scribbled inside them. Those were my parents’ initials. They’d been together since they were fifteen. My mother’s handwriting was different back then, all squiggly and loose, like a schoolgirl in love. I wondered when it had changed, when it had become so exact and formal the way it was now, and if it meant that her feelings for my dad had changed, too.
I used to think that love lasted forever. Now I knew that wasn’t true.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Derek kissing Betsy. The image was seared in my brain. The Derek I knew didn’t believe in PDA; he was much more private. He never gazed into my eyes or kissed me or even held my hand when we were at school. He saved it all for when we were alone, when he couldn’t keep his hands off me.
I opened my eyes and tried to start over but the memory still burned. Derek caressing Betsy, playing with her hair. I sprang up and tried to shake it off, but looking around my room, all the reminders of Derek stared back at me. They all seemed to be taunting me—for being so foolish, for believing in happily ever after in the first place.
Anger roiled inside me and I swiped the dried roses off the shelf. The flowers were so brittle, the petals practically disintegrated into dust mid-flight. Crouching down, I pulled a floral hatbox out from under the pink bed skirt and placed it on the bed. The hatbox originally belonged to my mother. She had given it to me when I was little, to store all the clothes and makeup she’d handed down for dress-up. Now it was where I kept my most treasured keepsakes from my relationship with Derek. But what was the point of keeping them now?
I flipped off the cover and turned the box upside down. Everything came tumbling out—the cocktail napkin from our first date at Maggiano’s, the ticket stubs from our first movie, programs from all the debate matches I had attended over the last two years. I tore it all up, shredding every reminder of our happiest moments.
I flopped down on the bed, the adrenaline still coursing through me. Staring up at the pink princess canopy, all I could think about were the countless times I had lain here with Derek. The way the billowing fabric draped down used to make me feel so protected, especially with him next to me. Looking at it now, I felt like I was suffocating, which only made my anger flare more. Reaching up, I grabbed a fistful of fabric in my hand and pulled with all my strength. One of the bedposts snapped in half, bringing down the entire canopy in one fell swoop. A deflated pink parachute. It looked exactly the way I felt.
About twenty seconds later, my bedroom door came flying open. My mother appeared, a frantic look on her face. She was wearing her gardening apron, holding a spatula. Chocolate icing dripped onto the remnants of a debate program. “What is going on in here?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” She picked up a piece of the broken bedpost. “You call this nothing? I’m sure half the neighborhood heard the commotion.”
“That must be very embarrassing for you,” I said, squaring my arms across my chest.
She let out a deep sigh. For the first time I noticed lines forming on the edges of her pursed lips. “I know this has been a difficult time, but enough is enough. You’re moody and erratic. You won’t talk to me. You hardly leave this room, and now this?” she said, waving her arm across the debris, the shredded memories. “You’re not the same, Olive. I cannot and will not allow this to go on.”
“Or what?” I said, digging my toes into the carpet. She was right about one thing. I was
n’t the same anymore. I never did things like challenge authority, talk back, tear down bedposts. Or crash cars. But I had nothing left to lose, no one to pretend for.
She shook her head and surveyed the damage. “Is that the brochure from Dr. Green?” she said, noticing the bright orange paper poking out from my pile of schoolbooks.
“How do you know about that?” I asked as she bent to pick it up.
“Because she called me after your meeting. She’s concerned, and frankly so am I.”
I waited while she flipped through the pamphlet, hoping that once she was done, this conversation, this topic, could somehow be forgotten, swept under the rug the way things usually were in this family. The photo of the depressed-looking girl on the cover stared back at me. She had long brown hair that covered half her face and was wearing an oversized gray sweatshirt over baggy faded jeans. As I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror on the back of the door, I realized we looked almost identical. It wasn’t just our clothes or the style of our hair. It was the slump of our shoulders, the low hang of our heads, the blank expressions on our faces.
“There are some very good options in here,” she said, reviewing the resource list on the back page.
“Can you let me be the one to pick?” If there were no choice about getting “help,” getting to choose would at least make the whole thing a slightly easier pill to swallow.
The kitchen timer went off. The sweet smell of warm chocolate wafted into the room, announcing that her cake was done. My mom was normally so precise about these things, but she didn’t budge as the buzzer continued to fill the silence.
“Fine,” my mother finally relented, handing me the brochure. “But if I don’t see any improvement, I’m getting involved, no questions asked.” She lifted a piece of the torn canopy with her free hand and turned to face me. “You loved this bed.”
• • •
A few nights later, Annie drove me to my first meeting.
“Are you sure this is it?” she asked, pulling up to an old, dilapidated building on Hollywood Boulevard.
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