by Kyla Stone
He steeples his fingers beneath his chin. “It was a hunch. I saw something in your eyes, both of you. There are different ways we harm ourselves, close ourselves off from the world. I felt like you could help each other, and it didn’t feel right to add other students into the group. It would be you and Arianna or it wouldn’t be anyone at all. It seems to be working. Doesn’t it?”
I don’t know what he expected, but he looks surprised when I say yes. “Very good. I hope I’ve helped you this year. I hope there’s some good starting to shine through in your life.”
“Doc, that’s a pretty poetic line. Are you moonlighting as a beatbox poet?”
“Not at this time, no. I think the students here keep me busy enough. Do you have weekend plans? Filling out college applications, perhaps? There are still some colleges with open enrollment.”
“No. But not for the reason you think.” I fill him in on our new lives with Aunt Ellie, our house hunting excursions, our visit with Zoe Rose, who is doing well, considering. Michaela Davis told us a family in Niles is interested in adopting her. They’ve worked with FASD children before. They know how to help her. And they want Zoe to grow up knowing us, her siblings. This thought is like a bubble I keep cupped in my hands, still so fragile I’m afraid to let it out into the light.
Aunt Ellie’s put the boys in counseling. I hope talking to someone who’s an expert on feelings can help Frankie sort through his. I’m seeing a new counselor, too. My first appointment is next week, but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop visiting Dr. Yang. I have a grudging affection for this chair.
He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt.
“Wait—Doc, are you crying?”
“Just allergies.” He smiles at me with watery eyes.
“In February? Come on.”
“Sidney, I cannot tell you how proud I am of you these past several months. You are incredibly strong.”
“Or stupid.”
He shakes his head. “Certainly not stupid. Please tell me you’re planning on going to college.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dr. Yang grabs his chest and mock-falls like he’s having a heart attack. “Sir? Really? I didn’t realize you even knew that word.”
I shrug. “I’m trying it out.”
“It suits you. You thinking about a possible major?”
“Yep. Interpretive dance. Does that suit me, too?”
“Not even a little. How about for real?”
“Okay, for real. Art education, maybe. It would be fun to teach little kids how to paint and draw and stuff.”
“That sounds excellent. As long as you refrain from punching anyone in the face.”
“That, too. Attempting to spice up therapy with a little comedy routine, Doc?”
He smiles. “We are all capable of change, Sidney. At any age, and no matter what we’re up against.”
I spin my rings. I take off the blue sapphire one from Aunt Ellie and press it between my fingers. I shape the words in my mouth with my tongue, smoothing them like stones. “Did you really mean what you said, about wanting to help me?”
“Are you kidding me?”
I wonder how it might have been different if I was brave enough before, if I’d been able to open my mouth and let those ugly, secret words out into this room. If I’d allowed myself to trust him. Would Ma still be serving out her sentence in prison? Were there other ways I could have helped her, saved us all, if I hadn’t been such a coward? If I’d known then how people can surprise you, if you find the right ones, the ones who are broken but also strong. The ones whose broken pieces fit like puzzle pieces inside you. But you have to keep looking for them, you have to keep risking parts of yourself in order to find them, to help them find you. You have to keep risking. Every day.
I think Dr. Yang is one of them, one of the good ones who opens up spaces for other people, who helps them see how to let the light in.
The words are sticky in my throat, but I know I need to say them. “My dad was a bad guy. He did some really bad things. He hit me sometimes. He did worse things. I tried to protect my brothers. I had to take care of them because my mom was drunk all the time and out of it. But she wasn’t always like that, so I hate her and love her at the same time.”
“Thank you for telling me.” Now he really looks like he might cry. I keep talking. He keeps listening. It’s hard, and I’m scared the whole time, but he doesn’t take his eyes off me. He never looks bored or angry or judgmental. By the time the bell rings, we’ve both got copious amounts of wetness in our eyes.
“You need to keep doing this, keep talking,” he says. “Every time. Not just once.”
I shake my head. I feel sad and uncomfortable and drained. But I’m also lighter, and cleaner, somehow, like after a hard run. “I don’t think I’m brave enough.”
“When you’re at the foot of the mountain, it’s terrifying just to look up,” Dr. Yang says. “It’s so high and looming and it feels impossible. You feel terrified, not brave, but you decide to do it anyway, because it’s worth doing. So you act brave, even though you don’t feel it, and you take a step. And you act brave again and again and again. Pretty soon you find out you aren’t just acting anymore. You are brave. You just need to keep going, day after day, until you stop and look back and discover you’ve traveled further and higher than you ever thought possible. And the view, the view is breathtaking.”
“Doc, you’re doing that poet thing again.” But his words sink all the way down into the core of me. “It’s hard. Everything you’re talking about.”
He smiles, and he doesn’t look tired anymore. “If you remember anything from these sessions, Sidney, I hope you remember this. Anything worthwhile is hard as hell. Sometimes the most difficult things are the most important, and the most rewarding.”
When the bell rings, I grab my backpack and head for the door. “Dr. Yang,” I say, pausing in the doorway. “You are. Making a difference for me, I mean.”
Then I’m gone, out into the rush and crush of students impatient to rush to the next class, the next thing, the next moment, the next, the next, the next.
50
I wake up in the dark, sweating, trembling, my heart jittering in my chest. I feel the need, the wanting, so strong it’s overpowering. I stare up at the darkness above me and I force myself to breathe in, breathe out, breathe in. Sometimes the loneliness and the sorrow and the sense of loss is like a crater in my chest. It’s a black hole drilling through my ribs. The wanting for things I can’t have will never leave me. The pain of my past, the bad things I’ve done and the bad things done to me, they will not go away.
I fumble for the razor I tucked into an old shoe on my closet floor. The process is so familiar, I can do it in complete darkness. I slide the blade across my ankle. The sweet, hot pain slices through me, cutting through the tangle of guilt and sorrow. I close my eyes, wait for the relief that comes with the pain. But there’s something else, a little pulsing ember of hope. I’m stronger than this. I can be better than this. I deserve better than this.
I deserved to be loved. I deserve love.
I think about the things Dr. Yang says. And Lucas. And Arianna. We have to go through our fear, our pain. Not under or around it or behind it, but through it.
I put down the razor. I stop seeking relief, seeking numbness. I let myself feel it. The emotions hit me like a flood, a tsunami of sadness. Anger. Sorrow. Regret. Rage. Grief. I let in each feeling as it comes. I don’t turn it away. I don’t grind it into rage. I don’t slice it into bloody ribbons.
It comes. It roars through me. It comes again. The tears stream down my face and I am sobbing, gasping, weeping. The pain radiates through every inch of me. I don’t push it away.
I was hurt by the people who were supposed to love me the most. It wasn’t fair, or just, or right. It wasn’t my fault—it isn’t my fault. I am motherless. I am fatherless. Yet, I am still me. I am who I am in spite of them.
I still have t
his darkness inside of me. But I am also strong. And brave. And good.
I have to fight the darkness.
Every day, I fight it.
51
Every day I run. Sometimes with Lucas. Sometimes by myself. I run the river path. I run the track at school. I run the dirt road to the old red barn. When the bad thoughts come prowling in, I outrun them. I run until my mind is scoured clean. My feet slap the wet dirt in tune with my heart beat. The world is snow and ice and mud. I am galloping through it, a part of everything.
At school, Margot leaves us alone. If she sees us, she snorts, tosses her hair, and pretends she needs to turn and walk in the opposite direction. She and Eli break up. I don’t know why, and I don’t care. When I see Jasmine in the hallways or the cafeteria, we nod at each other. That’s all. I already have my true friends. That’s all I need.
Last week, Aunt Ellie went back to Ohio to clear out her apartment, see old friends, and take care of whatever she needs to before she can start her new life here. She put her belongings in storage until we find a house that isn’t this one. All of her jewelry comes back with her, stuffed inside two giant suitcases.
Most evenings after supper, I pull out my drawing pad. I use my Prismacolor pencils and a thick sheet of water color paper. I use my greens, yellows, and whites to color the rich shades of the Luna Moth. I take my time, putting down layers of waxy pigment on the thick, textured paper. I burnish everything to blend and smooth the colors, regularly wiping my hands to keep them from smudging the paper. I concentrate on my work, hatching and crosshatching each layer of color for the brilliant, pale green wings.
The focus keeps me centered. I feel calm, still. I can give myself to the page, to the white paper and the smudgy charcoal and the rich, inky pastels in a way I couldn’t with cutting, when my canvas was my own skin, my own self. When you give yourself to the razor, it takes pieces of you. But art is different. Art gives you back to yourself.
Sometimes Aaron sits next to me with his construction paper and sparkly neon crayons. When I’m finished with my own work, I draw him Ratty Bunny sleeping on his very own bed in his very own room, Ratty Bunny jumping on a trampoline, Ratty Bunny enjoying a rabbit-sized Jacuzzi. Aaron starts giggling. “What?” I ask him as I sketch a floppy ear.
“Ratty Bunny’s farting up all those bubbles.”
“Is he?” I pencil in bigger bubbles popping around Ratty Bunny’s submerged tail. I give him a smug, satisfied grin beneath his whiskers.
Aaron leans into me, his warm body shaking as he laughs harder. “More farting bubbles!”
So I do. Later, after I folded his drawings into triangles and he tucked them into the pocket of his sweatshirt, I take out my pastels and show him the parts of the butterfly. How she uses her proboscis like a straw to suck up flower nectar. How her leg is five jointed, and how her foot, the tarsus, can actually taste each flower petal she lands on. How her brilliant colors are from both pigment and structure, the tiny scales shingling her wings like the roof of a house. How the iridescent flash of her wings are like the tints reflected in a glass prism, the spectrum of a rainbow, the refractory blue of the sky, the pearly sheen of oil on water. How exquisite she is, and she doesn’t even know it.
He listens, his face rapt. He smells like Cheetos and crayon wax, like the Suave Ocean Spray shampoo he never quite gets all the way washed out of his hair. We even get Frankie to come over and draw his own version of Ratty Bunny. I make a joke and he laughs. My heart squeezes in my chest. What I feel for them swells up inside me, bubbles of emotions I can’t quite name.
Frankie’s thin, wiry body presses against mine. I think of the darkness inside both of us. The monster with sharp teeth ripping and tearing at our insides. The monster that makes us lash out at everyone who could help us.
No one but me can fight my monster. No one but Frankie can fight his. But I can still be there for him. I can let him know he’s not alone. I can tell him it’s worth fighting the beast coiled inside him. That he has to, or it will eat him alive. I will tell him. Over and over again. Until he finally believes it. Until we both do.
52
I spend as much time with Arianna and Lucas as I can. Lucas comes over and meets Aunt Ellie and the boys. He wins them over completely with his easy-going charm. We take the boys to see Zoe Rose, to cuddle and cradle her and wrap her up in as much love as we can soak into her little body. Lucas drives us all the way out to the indoor roller skating rink in Grand Rapids. We slip and fall all over the place, laughing at each other until our sides ache.
One day after school, Lucas takes me to Delia’s Ice Cream Shoppe. It’s still cold out, but Delia’s has gourmet coffees, cappuccinos, expressos, etcetera, etcetera. The booths are lime-green with pink Formica table tops. A toy electric train runs continuously around a track hanging from the ceiling.
We share a booth in the back, around the corner from the noisy kids. I drink a peanut butter and chocolate swirl shake, while Lucas sips a mocha latte, extra mocha. Our legs press against each other.
Lucas pulls out his mom’s pink lighter and taps it on the Formica table top. The skin around his mouth tightens.
I press my shoulder against his. “What’s wrong?”
“I lied, before.”
I tense. “What do you mean?”
“I told you I made peace with my mom’s death. I acted like it didn’t bother me, but it does. Sometimes, I feel like a horrible person. I’m out here, living my life—falling in love, even—” My heart jerks at his words, but he stumbles on. “I spent so much of my childhood trying to make her happy, trying to be funny and goofy and never add to her sadness. It kind of worked, for awhile. Then she got sick. And I—I resent her. How terrible is that?” He flicks the lighter on and off, on and off. “That’s killer, right? Resenting someone who’s dying, who’s leaving me forever.”
I shove my leg harder against his, trying to beam all the warmth and comfort I can straight into his sadness-infused body. “That sucks.”
“I don’t run for fun. I run to get away from the bad feelings I don’t like inside myself.”
“I think that’s a pretty normal feeling.”
“Is it?” His gaze flickers over my face, searching for something.
“It is.” I finally feel like I can see him. And I want to know more. I want to see everything. Because I know he understands, at least a little, that quicksand of shame—how fast it takes you down, how deep it goes.
“Half the time I desperately miss her, half the time I’m already grieving for her death, and half the time I’m furious with her. That probably makes no sense at all.”
“Only the parts where I question what kind of math they’re teaching you down in Florida. Three halves?”
He snorts, then laughs, then does this sort of gasping, sob thing.
I entwine my fingers through his. “Remember what you told me? You feel your way through it.”
He scrubs his arm across his eyes.
“You’re not alone. I’m here.”
He squeezes my hand. We sit like that for a long time, our drinks melting, forgotten.
It’s so ordinary, I think, to break and be broken. It’s so much more extraordinary to put in the hard, agonizing work of rebuilding yourself, piece by piece, shard by shard.
My heart tightens. I need to show him parts of myself he might not want to see. I don’t know much about relationships, but I know this: I need to share myself with him, the way he’s shared himself with me. I need him to see into me the way I see into him.
I lick my lips, inhale a shaky breath.
“You okay?” Lucas puts his arm around my shoulders. I sink into him, smell the clean, woodsy scent of his sweatshirt.
Will he hate me once I’ve told him? Will he be disgusted and turn away, like Jasmine, like Ma? I don’t know, but I need to do this anyway. For me.
I start with the least of my secrets, but even this is enough to make most guys run for the hills. I know that much. “I have scars.”
“Most of us do.”
“No. Real scars. All over my legs. They make me ugly.”
“From an accident?”
My throat is dry and scratchy. “No. I—I did it to myself.”
“Will you show me?” His voice is gentle.
I pull away and lift my leg up on the booth. With trembling fingers, I roll up my pants to my shin, revealing the crosshatched scars and cuts. My skin looks like a battleground.
Now is when he turns away, his face contorted in revulsion. Only he doesn’t. He reaches out and touches the lumpy scar tissue above my ankle. “Sidney, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s worse in other places.”
“What made you need to hurt yourself like that?”
I blink rapidly. “I—things happened at home. Bad things.”
A shadow passes over his face. His lips tighten. “Who hurt you?”
“I want to tell you. I want to tell you everything. But I can’t. Not yet.”
“If someone’s hurting you—”
I shake my head. “No. Not anymore. I just—I can’t yet. Can you understand that?”
“As long as you promise me you’re safe.”
I nod.
“Are you still . . . hurting yourself?”
“I’m working really hard not to. I promise.”
His face loosens. He draws me in close. I go to him, let him wrap both his arms around me. I nestle into his chest. His strong, steady heartbeat thuds against my ear. I wind my fingers through his and hold on tight.
“Scars make you strong,” he says into my hair. “They mean you’re a survivor. And that makes them beautiful. You’re beautiful.”
“I have scars nobody can see,” I say, my voice weak.
His arms tighten around me. “You can show me when you’re ready. I’m here. Okay? I’m right here.”
I close my eyes. Something opens up inside me, a deep, rich warmth, a beautiful tenderness, like sunlight, like star shine on silver waves, like the flutter of iridescent wings. It expands inside me, filling up the hollow places in my heart.