“Well, it doesn’t make sense, for one thing,” he says.
“What doesn’t?”
“Talk therapy. You told me it’s an illness. Would you give a cancer patient medicine and then ask them to tell you about their mother?”
Laudner laughs. “Perhaps I would. Is it strange for a doctor to ask a patient personal questions?”
“It’s a little strange. I mean, how is talking about what’s happening between a cancer patient and his absent mom going to help him get better?”
This makes Laudner sit up taller and stare at Aaron, as if waiting for more. No. No more, Aaron thinks. This is exhausting and too much. He imagines the faces Laudner must make when he has sex with his husband/wife/partner/self. This gives Aaron a boner.
When Aaron doesn’t say anything, Laudner says, “Well, I don’t know. It’s not a terrible question. How do you think it might help? And can you see any differences between cancer and depression? What differences might exist there?”
Aaron scratches his knee through his jeans and yawns. Too many questions. It’s beginning to feel like Aaron’s the kid in that old karate movie, Laudner is his wise sensei, and Aaron has to answer endless riddles.
It’s exhausting.
At Marie France’s suggestion, Winnie brings Britt to their appointment. Britt sits on the floor, legs splayed like an M.
“So, Britt. I’ve heard so much about you,” Marie France says, her voice warm and honeyed.
Britt stares at her. For Winnie, the difference in Britt is beyond stark. Two weeks ago, Marie France would have gotten a hug.
“I hear you like to dance?”
A shrug.
Marie France crosses and uncrosses her legs. “I understand that your family has had some really bad news.”
Britt picks at the hardwood floor with a fingernail.
“Do you want to talk about that?”
Not even a shrug this time. Winnie looks to Marie France, whose return look says, I got this. It’s okay.
“Britt, do you like to draw?”
A nod without looking up.
“Would you like to draw?”
A half shrug, half nod.
Marie France grabs a sketch pad and some magic markers out of her drawer. She places them on the floor in front of Britt. “Do you want to go to the table or stay there?”
“Here is okay.”
Marie France goes back to her desk, and the two adults watch Britt sit there with a red marker in her hand, staring at a piece of blank paper.
Tillie went away, Britt thinks. She didn’t leave me a note saying goodbye, or anything.
That means she didn’t love me.
Why do people say they love you if they don’t? Why do people go away without saying goodbye?
The lady with the nice black skirt wants me to draw. I don’t want to but I will, anyway.
I draw a house. It’s square and red. I scribble in the paint. I put clouds above it in gray, and some green grass below.
“What do you have there?” the lady asks.
“A house.”
“And who lives in that house?”
It’s just a drawing, Britt wants to tell her. No one lives there. I just want to take a nap.
“Me and my dad,” Britt answers. She thinks of her daddy, who is on a business trip. He was away last night and probably will be again tonight.
She looks up and the lady and her mom are looking at each other. Mom is wiping her eyes. Again.
“Mom, also,” Britt says, hoping she’ll stop crying. She hates when her mom cries. She cried when she told Britt what Tillie did and Britt didn’t like it at all. Her dad didn’t cry and that was good. Britt just wanted to play pretend. Like pretend it was before Tillie did suicide, and when her mom wasn’t so sad all the time.
Her mom doesn’t stop crying, though. Britt is sorry about her drawing. She thought it was too small for three people. She didn’t know the rules.
Amir’s mother is horrified that her son’s been suspended. Utterly horrified to the point that she barely spoke to him all weekend.
The one thing she did say: “How could you put everything in jeopardy?”
He tried to explain but nope. She wasn’t having it.
He spent most of the weekend in his bedroom, lying in bed, because his mom took away his phone, his laptop, everything. No TV privileges.
“I want you to really think about whether this is the kind of man you want to be,” she said on Monday morning, before going off to show an apartment on East End Avenue.
Now he sits in the living room, in the dark, knowing that the TV is off-limits, and the funny thing is, he’s glad she’s taken things away.
She should take away more.
Molly braves turning on her phone for the first time in three days, and it’s worse than she expected.
Forty-three messages. Forty-one of them death threats or in that general arena. Two of them from Gretchen.
What’s up, ho? reads one.
The other: Fine, be that way. Everybody here hates you by the way
Somehow, this hurts even more than the threats, which she mostly doesn’t read. Well, she reads some of them. Glances over to see if any names come up. Only one. Sammi Petrowski, who is an Emma, which is what Gretchen, Isabella, and she always have called the B girls who would run each other over to be A, because they’re all named Emma. Sammi has always been sort of a shark, on the perimeter of their posse, circling around, waiting for blood.
Sammi’s text reads, well this is awkward … what do you say to a murderer? Sorry not sorry
Molly feels a squeezing on her heart, like the air is being taken from her chest. Her head feels dizzy. Dizzy and cold, because now it’s bald.
She texts Gretchen.
She waits. For the bubbles to form so she’ll know a response is coming. No bubbles.
Then some. Her heart lurches.
Then they disappear, and Molly stares and stares, waiting for them to come back. Because they need to. Because without Gretchen she has no one left.
In the afternoon, Aaron sits in his room with his computer open to GarageBand. He’s riffing on the synth, thinking about how groups like Vicetone aren’t shiny, in the same way he isn’t shiny. They just make great beats.
He could be like that, maybe?
He tries an ’80s synth beat and speeds up the RPM until it sounds almost hypnotically fast, and an idea comes to him. With “Walking Alone,” he went slow to match the lyrics. What about a somber high-energy song? He’d started that “In My Corner” thing. Maybe it needs to be fully written and made into a celebration?
He smiles. Yes. This is the kind of über-random, crazy idea that makes people famous.
He grabs his notebook, keeping the sped-up beat on to inspire him. His pen stays motionless on the paper for quite some time, and he laughs. Yeah, not so easy to write a dance dirge.
He rereads it, and unlike the other day, when he thought it sucked, this time it lights him up a bit and he feels a warmth pass through his chest and perk up his shoulders. That’s the chorus, he realizes. He needs a verse. A couple verses. And maybe a bridge.
A shiver passes through his rib cage. He finds the melody so easily he has to wonder if it’s something someone else came up with, but he can’t think of what it is. It’s just … not half bad.
Maybe his dream isn’t over after all? Maybe the Viral 50 is within his reach? He lies down in his bed and goes into a happy trance, listening to the loop of the frantic beat, singing the lyrics over and over in his head and imagining the synth and how it will sound with that melody. Then he’s thinking about his Grammy acceptance speech for “In My Corner,” and Sarah’s expression when it hits 41 on the Viral 50, and the cool kids like Chloe at his lunch table, watching his video on his phone over his shoulder, and Evan Hanson saying, Hey, can I talk to you about something? And making out with Evan in a broom closet in the main building’s entrance hallway …
The lyrics just come to him like somet
imes they do. How does that happen? Why is it that other times he can’t write a single word, but times like this, fully formed verses come to him and they’re great? This one’s just two lines, with a repetition for the end of the first verse, and it just … works.
He sets up to record it, realizing his depression is lifting because for the first time in a few days—weeks, really—he is really imagining a future again, and it’s not entirely un-bright, and he knows he’s special and there’s something about his life that is different and maybe it’s not fully shiny but it’s there.
He finds the melody, and sped up it sounds trippy and happy and it makes him laugh as he bangs it out and lays it down, and then a super-subversive bass line in bass guitar, and he imagines telling the story of how he came up with that incredible bass line. Oh, I was severely depressed. It was days after I almost committed suicide. Now that, that was a story.
His dad knocks on the door.
“You have a phone call.”
Aaron’s heart jumps. He somehow knows. He slowly stands, takes the phone from his dad, and sits in the rocking chair.
“Hello?”
“Aaron!”
His mother’s voice cracks and he can tell from the plaintive way she says his name that she’s crying. He closes his eyes and feels like a piece of dirt.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Why would you—you don’t do that, okay? You don’t jump off a bridge. You have your dad. You have me. You can call me anytime, right? You get that, right?”
“Yep,” he says, thinking, That happened five days ago and you’re just calling back now, so.
“Do I need to come down there?”
His heart pulses in a way that he knows is instinctual, biological. Mother bear and cub. The promise of proximity. Needed like oxygen.
“I guess. If you want,” he says.
She pauses. “Well, do you need me? I mean, if you need me … I’ll have to cancel, um. Well, it’s only just started rehearsal and it’s not exactly a major part. It’s a supporting, but forty-three lines so major supporting. But yeah, of course. Sure. I’ll quit. It’s not a big deal. Or if it is a big deal, I’ll deal with it. I’ll deal. Yes. It’s basically fine. Nothing is such a calamity if you think about it. Even if I were to get blacklisted in the Boston theater community—”
“It’s okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Well, listen. You have so much to live for. Your music! Right? You love your music.”
His esophagus tightens and a heavy blanket envelops his shoulders and pushes down. It’s the you. She makes it sound singular, which it is. You, and only you.
“You’re just a good person, Aaron. You are. I’m so very pleased with how you’ve turned out. If I could have chosen a child to be mine, it would have been you. Well, without the depression. I would not choose that, of course.”
“Thanks.”
“Just … you’ll be here in a few months and I promise. I absolutely promise. No big productions. I’ll hold off until the fall. I mean. That’s not such a huge problem that I can’t—for you, anything.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Oh, shit. I’m late. I love you so very much. You’re perfect just the way you are. Okay?”
“Okay.”
He gets off the phone and climbs into bed, under the blue paisley comforter, turning to face the wall. He feels the mattress shift as his dad sits down. He’s ready for the talk. Expectations. Limitations. Narcissism. Not personal. He has it memorized.
But he doesn’t get it, or any words. He just gets a sturdy hand on his midsection. What would be called obliques if he wasn’t so lazy and he worked out, like, ever.
That hand is better than any words could be, so he closes his eyes and allows himself to disappear into sleep.
Amir is waiting at the kitchen table when his mother comes home from work. It’s time. To tell her. Even if it means she kicks him out. Maybe he wants her to. He deserves to be punished.
She bursts in and puts her keys and the mail on the kitchen table, sorts through it, pours herself a glass of water. All without saying anything to Amir.
“Mom. I need to talk to you. About something.”
She stops and looks at him. “Unless it’s to apologize, there isn’t anything to talk about.”
He rubs his head. “Mom. Stop. There’s something I need to—”
She takes a sip of water and doesn’t look at him. “That suspension is on your record. What if Georgetown rescinds your admission? How could you do something like this?”
“Do you know what that guy said to me?”
“I really don’t care, Amir. Nothing is worth this. Nothing.”
Amir says, “A girl is dead, Mom.”
She puts a piece of mail down. Suddenly he has her attention. “What?”
“A girl. Is dead. The girl I was dating. Tillie. She killed herself.”
His mother’s mouth gapes open.
“You see, she killed herself, probably because I broke up with her. Well, worse. I didn’t break up with her. I was too much of a coward to do that.”
Amir’s tears come now.
“She killed herself because I was such a coward and I didn’t even text her to break it off. And then, at school, Jason Mathes comes up to me, like, the next day, and he says, ‘You bleeped that girl to death.’ So yeah. I punched him. I couldn’t help it. And now my life is ruined, not because of what could happen to Georgetown, but because I killed a girl with my secret—”
His mother comes to him. She hugs him. She’s not a hugger, and it feels weird to Amir, but also nice. Necessary. She doesn’t seem to hear the thing he says about a secret.
It’s now or never, he realizes. He needs to keep going. Rip the Band-Aid off quick. Tell her why. Why he ghosted her.
She says, “Oh, Amir. Dear god. That’s a lot, Amir.”
The words approximate kindness to him. He holds on for dear life to the moment, swallowing down the thing he absolutely needs to tell her, knowing that it might take this moment away, and he cannot possibly deal with losing it right now.
CHAPTER 6A: APRIL 24
Aaron’s first day back at school is Weird with a capital W.
“My best friend from summer camp, Paige Johansen, is on antidepressants,” Sarah says to him as the subway arrives at the 110th Street stop.
“Ah,” Aaron says, thinking that Paige Johansen may not be a big fan of a friend sharing her personal business, and that soon enough Paige Johansen will surely know that Aaron Boroff takes antidepressants, too. Stop the presses.
“Yeah, and they totally help her, and we all know in the bunk and we’re super down with supporting her.”
“Cool.” Aaron nods, thinking that this is vaguely reminiscent of the I have gay friends period that followed his coming out last year.
The conversation is sporadic, as Aaron’s attention is split. The idea of walking back through the front doors of the main building at Fieldston has him feeling jittery all over. Clearly everyone knows about the physics event. Shit like that gets passed around like prescription pills at a party.
“Well, look at the bright side,” Sarah says as they coast into 168th. “You get a three-day week. I’d die for one of those.”
“Absolutely. Bright side attained,” Aaron says, wishing the word die didn’t hit him right in the solar plexus, didn’t make him think of the photos he saw of Tillie Stanley online.
“I didn’t mean—”
He smiles. “It’s fine, Sarah. I’m fucking with you. I’m actually fine. Nervous, but fine.”
She puts her head on his shoulder, which is oddly intimate for their friendship level, and Aaron realizes this is somehow related to his depression and he’s not sure how. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“Thanks.”
“And by the way. That thing I said? About Rent? That wasn’t—”
He laughs. “Yeah, I really had a mental breakdown because you told me I’m a ba
d singer.”
“You’re not that bad a singer,” she says. “You just—”
“Sarah. Dude,” says Topher. Aaron hadn’t noticed he was sitting on his other side. Or if he had noticed, he’d forgotten.
“It’s fine,” Aaron says, and he stares at the ads for a storage company above the seats across from him and thinks about how nice it would be to grow up and have space for all his stuff.
On his way to homeroom, Aaron’s intercepted by Dr. Flores, whose ultra-white teeth glimmer too loudly when he smiles. He shakes Aaron’s hand like he’s the next contestant on The Price Is Right, or they’ve just done a real estate transaction and Aaron is now the owner of a charming one-bedroom in Tribeca. Then he beckons Aaron into his office.
The walls are brown, slightly darker than the well-filled bookshelves, about the same as the leather chair behind the mahogany desk, about the same as the wooden chair into which Aaron slides. Flores definitely has a brown fetish.
“I just wanted to touch base with you,” Dr. Flores says, sitting down across from Aaron. On his desk is a picture of him in front of the Eiffel Tower with a blond woman whose teeth are also a little too white.
Aaron stifles his desire to say, “Base touched.” He looks around and wonders if vice principals at private schools are rich. He’s never been in the vice principal’s office before. It’s weird. He looks around at the various posters about reading and safe zones and wonders whether vice principaling would be a good fallback for viral music sensation.
“I’m okay,” he says.
Dr. Flores takes a sip of brown coffee from his brown mug and smiles all white.
“You have support here. If you need anything, come to me. Come to Ms. Marshall. She’s aware of the situation. We’re both allies, okay? We know how hard it is to come out, how challenging it is to be different.”
Aaron freezes. Wait, what? But he nods, because, yeah, he’s seen Love, Simon. He knows it’s hard to be gay. Just not so much at Fieldston to this point, for him. He’s told people in hopes that some other gay kid will want to date him, but so far his gayness is entirely theoretical and no one seems to really give a shit about who, theoretically, he might sleep with.
The Bridge Page 6