“My parents made an appointment for me go to the counseling office and see Dr. Matthews on Friday,” I said after the topic switched from boys to what our schedules were for the rest of the week. “She’s going to give me some college catalogs.”
“Been there, done that,” Nic replied. “I got three applications out over break. You have to apply for scholarships early.”
“Yeah, well, I’m definitely a little behind.” Nic and I had always had the best grades in our class. She was better in math than me, and I usually excelled in English. In the other courses we were about the same. Our GPAs had always been nearly identical, although mine had been slightly higher overall before I left for Australia last year. Not anymore though. The Australian grading system wasn’t the same, and I hadn’t taken school assignments as seriously there as I did here. Nic would be our valedictorian, and I knew she deserved it more than me.
“I’m thinking I may not go to university,” Kelli said.
“What?” I glanced at Nic, who cast her eyes downward, giving away nothing. “What do you mean?” We had all planned to go to college.
“Well, not right away. I want to be near David, and I’m not sure I have the grades for Stanford. He thinks I should just take a semester off and get in-state status and then decide what to do.” She lifted the cup to her lips to drink. One of her cuticles had what looked like dried blood rimming the edge, making me think she must have been picking at them again.
“Have you told your parents?” Kelli didn’t have the grades Nic and I had, but our teachers were always telling her she had potential for great things. Her likability factor alone opened doors for her that challenged so many others. How could she not plan on university? Surely they would set her straight.
“Not yet. Just Nic and a couple of other people know, and now you,” she said. “But I’m sure they’ll understand.”
Chapter 5
Counseling Session
“Tell me about your first few days back at school.”
Behind Dr. Matthews’s glasses I noticed the wrinkles around the corners of her eyes that deepened when she smiled or concentrated. They made me think of her analytical role now that I was meeting her alone under these circumstances. Her office seemed gray. The blinds on the single window side wall were partially closed, casting horizontal stripes of light on the floor between us. “They’ve been busy. Good, I guess.”
“Happy to be back?”
“Uh-huh.” I nodded, looking again around the room, and noticed the shawl over the back of her chair, the eighteen-ounce Circle K cup of coffee on her desk, and the yellow legal pad beside it. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, but nothing set me at ease.
“Well, I’m glad. Your parents want to make sure you settle back in okay, and I want you to know that I’m here if you ever want to talk about anything.”
I smiled at her, grateful for what she didn’t know.
When I arrived back home less than two weeks ago, my parents immediately scheduled me for a series of doctors’ appointments. Several of them were with dentists, because I had a running accident in Australia and had broken four teeth in my upper jaw, but another was with a regular MD for a complete physical. I had lost weight while I was away, and my last host mother had written to my parents, and told them she thought I might have had an eating disorder. It was embarrassing to talk about and probably embarrassing for my family to think about, but I tried to be up front about what happened. I carefully admitted to not eating and sometimes purging in the past, but did my best to reassure them that that part of my life was triggered by feeling out of control and alone for a relatively short span of time, and that it was gone now. I had learned that a little honesty put that part of my past further behind me, but I was ashamed to speak about it unless absolutely necessary. So, the MD said that although I was underweight for my age and height, it would be wrong to assume I still had an eating disorder or that I ever had one, given the circumstances of having problems using my teeth and the stress of being away for a year, and that I seemed okay. I could see the relief on my parents’ faces at his assessment, but he still suggested that if they were concerned with my overall mental health that perhaps I should see a counselor for a few sessions.
My next appointment was with a shrink who asked me during the initial meeting if I’d ever been abused and whether I liked my mom and dad. My parents told me I didn’t have to go to him again after I repeated these conversation points, which is how I wound up with Dolores Matthews, our school counselor.
“We can have her talk to the school psychologist if you think it will do any good,” my father said late one night as he soothed my mother while they discussed once again whether it was beneficial to send me to counseling at all. I overheard them as I passed their bedroom on my way to get a drink of water. “Kara is a strong, smart girl,” he’d said. “There’s nothing wrong with her.”
“Of course not,” Mom had agreed. “But just in case she needs someone to talk to since we can’t be there at boarding school with her, I’d like to give her the option.”
It was their desire to protect me and make everything easy on me that got me into Dr. Matthews’s office. It wasn’t because in their minds I was doing anything wrong.
“They’re keen to know I am going to get back on track for college,” I said to Dr. Matthews now. They’d be happy to know I still had academic ambitions and plans if any of our conversation got back to them. I thought maybe eventually I could work for a multinational organization and learn another language or two.
The corners of her lips turned up. “I have a stack of catalogs for you. You can take them back to the dorm for a while, and we can talk about them with more detail next time. So, tell me about Australia. I love your accent, by the way.”
“Thanks. Lots of people say that. I didn’t even realize I picked one up until I got home.” I’d also heard the phrases “You’re so tan,” “You look great,” and “You must have learned a lot” at least ten times each in the past few days. Everybody said the same thing, but I was wary of elaborating on it too much. They told us not to at departure camp. They said friends and acquaintances wouldn’t relate to what you had been through and would probably feel bored if you kept talking about your experience after initial conversations. I’d been careful to not talk about Australia too much, except to Nic and Kelli. I mostly downplayed the whole year and told those who asked that I was happy to be back, not offering to say anything about life there except if someone asked a direct question. And it was both amazing and telling how quickly the conversations changed to the here and now. “Australia was fun. I had a good time. Saw lots of animals. Made some friends.”
“Do you miss your friends there?”
“A little.” It was just a little. I was having fun with people, but I was ready to come home when I did. When I had separated from Ben five months before in Tasmania, that was when I really missed people there, him especially. “I’m happy to be back. I missed my friends here.” That was true.
“Well, that’s good to know. I know you were missed, too.”
I pressed my lips together in a half smile, looking down into my lap. It was nice of her to say, even though she was probably only trying to make me warm up to her. I could think of a couple of people, or at least a couple, I thought drily, who didn’t seem too happy I was back. I shrugged.
“So, tell me more. Are classes going well?”
“Yeah, pretty good. I’m getting all my homework done.”
“And your friends are still the same as you remember?”
My eyes met hers. That question made me hesitate. I had hoped they would be. “I guess.”
“Tell me about them.”
“Well, I think you know I live in the dorms. There are twelve of us seniors there now. My best friends Nic and Kelli are still boarding, too. There are a couple of new faces in the junior s
ection. They seem nice.” I paused again, thinking about the little changes I’d seen in them. Nic had grown in confidence, and it was a good change. Kelli was still a sweetheart, but what she said about not going to university the other night disturbed me. It was too private to tell Dr. Matthews, but it didn’t seem like the Kelli I remembered to consider blowing off university. Neither was her nail picking. “Mostly the same, I suppose. Still smart, funny, and beautiful,” I bantered. “I’ve probably changed the most of all of us.”
“Have you? How?” She shifted in her seat, slightly tilting her head to the side. Her eyes crinkled.
She wasn’t quite sure why I was here, I knew. My parents had promised me they wouldn’t tell the school anything except that they wanted me to have a smooth readjustment and start talking to someone about college. And yet, I kind of did want to talk. To test a theory.
“I feel like I’ve grown a lot this past year. That I don’t really think the same as before. Don’t care about the same things as before.”
“Such as?”
“Boys. Maybe I don’t feel like a teenager anymore. Just…older. Like I have more life experiences. More perspective. More control.”
“Are you trying to say you feel like you’ve grown in ways that your friends have not?”
Was I saying that? “I dunno. I feel the same around them. I really love them. They welcomed me back to Trinity like I’d never been gone. That was great. We’re practically sisters.”
“But?” I guess that all sounded too good to be true to her, too.
“But…last year, they weren’t there. And I wasn’t here. And there are gaps, like the feeling that something happened and you missed it.”
“You have a lot of catching up to do.”
“I guess.”
“That’s normal.”
“I never said I wasn’t.”
She laughed. I joined her, looking at all the psychology titles she had on the back wall in her bookcases while she spoke. The Rise of Teenage Smoking. The Adolescent Mind. Teenage Pregnancy. Interpreting Body Language in Teens. I’m OK—You’re OK.
“There is one person who seems very different from before, when I left.”
Her eyebrows rose in a question.
“Ryan Hutchins. He and I used to date. Now he dates this other girl, and he doesn’t talk to me. Why do you think that is?” I glanced at her diploma, interested in what someone who supposedly had so much experience with high school seniors would have to say about that.
“Could be a number of things. Why do you think it is?”
I sighed. She just turned the question around. I hated when adults did that. Still, I really wanted her opinion. “Maybe because he’s angry at me. Or his new girl is jealous of me. Maybe I hurt him, and he’s getting back at me. Maybe he still likes me. Or maybe he just doesn’t care.” I was a little breathless after sharing my list of possibilities. They spilled quickly out of my mouth as if I had recited them by heart.
She ran her hand through one side of her hair, and around her ear to rest under her jaw, leaning in with her elbow on the table, as if taking a closer, more confidant stance with me. “I agree that it could be any one or possibly a combination of all of those things. Have you tried to talk to him and ask him yourself?”
I grimaced. She made the solution sound much easier than it was. “Sort of. Well, I haven’t asked him why the cold shoulder. I’ve just tried to say hello, basically. But mainly he’s always with her, and there’s never a chance to have a conversation. Actually, he acts as if he would rather not talk at all.”
“Do you still have feelings for Ryan, Kara?” Her voice was softer.
“No, not like before,” I said automatically, realizing how on this point she was suddenly direct. I sat up in my chair and noticed her straighten up, too. Didn’t she listen to me earlier when I told her I didn’t think of boys the same way? “He was a really good friend, that’s all. I miss that part between us.”
Dr. Matthews took a drink from the Circle K cup. “You’re right that you may have a more mature outlook about some things than your peers.” Her eyes crinkled again. “But Christie and Ryan have a very intense relationship right now. It might be hard for you to resolve your own past with him at this time.”
Christie? I didn’t tell Dr. Matthews her name. “How do you know it was her I was talking about? You know about…couples here?”
She shrugged, and leaned back again into her chair. “It’s my job, and besides, everyone at Trinity knows about them. They make their relationship pretty obvious.”
I blinked back at her. I couldn’t tell if she was supportive of their relationship or not. Perhaps like everyone else, she was politely telling me I had to be on the outs with him now. I didn’t buy it. They could advertise they were a couple as much as they wanted to, but the way he was acting was too far from the Ryan I knew. What we felt for each other once was a subtle pull that came from a much deeper, hidden place. That was the only form of real love I knew about. And it didn’t just go away.
“Are you okay? You’re frowning about something.”
“Of course I am.” The bars of light on the floor between us had shortened throughout our conversation and inched closer to her side wall. “I was just listening.”
Chapter 6
About a Woman
“What do you think the overall themes are in this novel?”
We had finished the Heart of Darkness in just a week and knew an essay assignment was coming up for the weekend. Now Mrs. Sandvig was giving us a chance to develop some ideas in preparation.
I’d come to class after my counseling session, walking through the small park between Dr. Matthews’s office and the main building, thinking of her word for Ryan and Christie’s relationship: intense. I had changed the subject after that comment. We talked about different college application deadlines for the rest of the session; unfortunately, I had missed many.
“The dark power of the jungle.”
“The darkness of the human soul.”
“Colonialism.”
“Man’s inhumanity to man.”
Ryan offered this last theory, one that Mrs. Sandvig wanted the class to expand on. “Do colonialism and inhumanity have anything in common?” she asked.
“Exploitation,” Ryan said. “They are both about one group treating another badly.”
He was a smart guy. I loved listening to his ideas. They were always some of the most compelling things about him—those, and his way of expressing them. But he was also always fun to challenge.
“Great Britain colonized a huge part of the entire world at some point, and I am not sure people view it as entirely a negative thing. The US started as a colony, and we’ve been the colonists—just think about the Native Americans.” I directed my comments partly at him and partly at Mrs. Sandvig.
“Which feeds into my point. We put them all on reservations.” He didn’t look at me when he said it, but a slight strengthening in his tone told me he was firing up his argument. Or maybe it was the fact that he was countering me.
“Maybe, but the word ‘inhumanity’ contains the word ‘human,’ so I am just saying all humans aren’t so far removed from a little inhumanity.”
“So, being horrible to each other is our nature, and that makes it okay to hurt others?” Emotion rumbled through his voice. It made me hesitate before continuing my argument with him, but only for a moment.
“I don’t know—maybe. Maybe that’s what Conrad is saying. Except for the okay part. I don’t think he said it was okay necessarily. I’m not sure he passed judgment at all. He seemed to both like and fear Kurtz, you know.” Now I was getting excited, and losing my train of thought. I looked down at my desk, trying to come up with another example. His choice of words about hurting others made me think of our relationship and why I first suspected he migh
t not be talking to me. I wondered if he was trying in some way to compare the idea of a heart of darkness to the figurative color of my own heart and head. Or maybe it was I doing the comparison, and I was projecting.
“Well, Kara and Ryan, this is very interesting,” Mrs. Sandvig interrupted. “But I want to hear from others. Kelli, we haven’t heard from you yet. How do feel about this idea of the nature of man, or did you pick up on any other theme in the novel you want to add?”
“Well…” Kelli picked up her book. “I know the story is about what Marlow saw and felt on his journey to and in and back from the jungle, but I also felt sometimes when he was thinking about Kurtz, he was thinking also about himself.”
“What do you mean?” Mrs. Sandvig looked pleased.
“Just that he was part of it all, too. He was observing the action, but was also part of it. He was almost happy when someone died so he could get his chance to go to the Congo.”
She had a point. And it was similar to my own, although I guess I didn’t express it as well.
“And I almost thought he wanted Kurtz’s fiancée for himself at the end. And he lied to her, too,” Kelli added.
“Well, why do you all think he lied to her?” Mrs. Sandvig turned away from Kelli to elicit other students’ opinions.
Some people said to protect her innocence. Others said because he thought she couldn’t handle the truth about him or that she was more clueless than innocent. Matt said he was protecting Kurtz more than her by not ruining his reputation. I hadn’t thought of that scene like Kelli had, but maybe he did desire her for himself, and what happened to them eventually was something one could speculate about, especially if Marlow ultimately saw her as Kurtz did.
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