by Bryan Bliss
“My world is pretty shitty today,” I finally tell her.
It makes her laugh and she nods, her eyes closed, as if I’ve just solved some kind of Zen koan.
“Shitty, how?”
And so I tell her everything. About Trevor and Right-Wing Report and pretty soon I can feel the anger coming alive, which is the whole reason I stopped by. Because at what point does it end? At what point am I not going to be angry?
“Well, anger is a symptom, Eleanor. You know that. Everybody heals in a different way. Some of us avoid danger. Some of us weep. Some of us disconnect. And some of us scream.” She considers her tea, takes a sip, and then looks at me. “Trauma is often more of a spectrum than a fixed position. Sometimes we might feel normal, but that doesn’t mean our trauma ever really goes away. If we’re triggered, then it’s natural we might go back to the things that seem to heal us. You know?”
“I spend most of my time telling myself everything is okay,” I say. “That I shouldn’t be angry. It’s been months of that. Months of pretending. And sometimes? I catch myself thinking it’s real—that I’m not really, really angry.”
“Or maybe you’re not pretending?”
I sit back in my chair and work the handle of the coffee cup between my thumb and forefinger. Of course, Holston lets me sit there like that, wordless and clueless. Because I have no idea if I’m actually pretending. Or if this sudden flare-up of anger is normal. Or if everybody lives with a bubbling layer of hot lava under every single interaction.
“It hasn’t gone away,” I say. “All the anger is still there, just like it’s been all year.”
“Healing isn’t a straight path, Eleanor. It twists and turns; it curves back in a way that, sometimes, we see where we’ve been. But the path is still moving forward.”
“Unless it’s just a big circle,” I say.
Dr. Holston sits back and considers this, which is something I truly appreciate about her. As if I sometimes introduced a concept that was not only new to her, but something that might affect her life in a positive way.
She sips her tea, playing with the jade earrings she always wears. Early on I made up a story about how she’d gotten them on a trip to Antigua Guatemala in the nineties, where she’d fallen in love with a man named Arturo, who’d driven her around the country on the back of his motorcycle and, for a time, sent her gifts, including those earrings.
“Even if anger were a circle,” Holston says, “that doesn’t mean we aren’t still moving forward. In fact, it might actually prepare us for the ups and downs, the twists and turns, of our life. If it’s a circle, we’ve been there before. What do you think?”
“I think I’d rather be on a flat drag strip with no turns and a clear direction.”
Dr. Holston laughs and says, “Wouldn’t we all, dear. Wouldn’t we all.”
When I get home, Dad is waiting for me in the living room. I know he won’t let me walk by him without at least a little bit of conversation, so I sit down on the arm of his chair and watch the basketball game he’s got muted on the television.
“We could take you out of Ford,” he says. “Put you in private school for the last couple of months. I don’t think it would affect your scholarship.”
“I don’t want to change schools,” I say. “Or leave my friends.”
“It’s could be a fresh start, you know?”
“I’m a hundred percent sure they would all know me at Piedmont Christian Academy, or wherever I went.”
“Well, it would definitely not be that place,” Dad says. “I’m pretty sure they don’t have prom because dancing and chiffon offend Jesus.”
I laugh and pat him on the top of his head. On the television, a player takes a three pointer and falls to the ground, despite obviously not being fouled. When he stands up, hands spread wide and face twisted into a grimace of indignation, I slide off the arm of his chair and stretch my back.
“I just want you to be safe,” Dad says. “I don’t want you to have to deal with all this bullshit.”
“I know, Dad. But I can handle it. So don’t worry, okay?”
Dad looks at me for a long second before finally saying, “Okay.”
As I walk away, he pulls the handle of his chair until the leg pops out and he reclines backward, unmuting the television.
Chapter Six
THE NEXT MORNING I’M RUNNING LATE TO SCHOOL, so I convince Dad to give me a handful of dollars for a little breakfast at Carol’s, which is just up the road. It’s only open a few hours a day, five a.m. to whenever the last furniture worker stumbles out, and the menu is simple—egg sandwiches, fried Livermush, sausage biscuits. Everything you’d ever want.
The parking lot is full of trucks and all other kinds of beaters in nearly every spot. I pull onto the grass near the side of the building, hoping I won’t get blocked in like Tyler did a few weeks back. He showed up for Hoffman’s class, sausage biscuit in hand, trying to explain how the county sanitation workers wouldn’t move their truck no matter how much he pleaded.
But it’s this or a gas station egg burrito, so I throw the car in park and jump out, texting Tyler to see if he wants a biscuit. I’m not looking where I’m going, so when I bump into two guys, I’m apologizing before my eyes come up from my phone.
“Oh, shit. Look at this.”
He’s in his early twenties and wearing a Ford football T-shirt, cut off at the sleeves despite the winter temperatures, and stained with what is either mud or some kind of paint. His buddy in the Carhartt jacket smiles as he takes the last drags off a cigarette.
“You see those T-shirts? I gotta get me one of those,” the first guy says, slapping his buddy on the arm.
I don’t move, don’t react, nothing.
Instead, I step around them, trying to get into the restaurant without a confrontation. My hand is on the door when one of them says my name—I don’t know why it surprises me that they know my name—and I turn to look.
The man lifts his Ford football shirt so I can see the small handgun tucked into a holster on the side of his pants. He smiles. His friend laughs.
“You ain’t never taking away my rights,” he says, the humor dropping from his voice. “You hear me?”
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself,” I say, the words squeaking out. And then push the door of the restaurant open. Too hard. The door nearly takes out an ancient candy machine that still sells a handful for ten cents.
“Careful now, Eleanor!”
Carol, the owner, is a sixty-something woman with a hairstyle from when she was still in high school, tall and meticulous and, seemingly, immovable. Her strict tone softens like warmed butter almost immediately.
“Where’s that good-looking boyfriend of yours?”
But I’m so angry, I can barely move, let alone chop it up with Carol, who normally wouldn’t let me just stand there without another barb, maybe two. She’s about to say something else when she drops the check pad she’s holding and lifts the hinged counter that separates the cashier from the rest of the dining room.
“Hey, honey—what’s wrong?”
I’m shaking, which makes it look like I’m about to cry, but when Carol comes to comfort me, I turn and run out of the restaurant, back into the gravel parking lot. The two men have already left, but I run all the way to the road, the tears finally coming down my face. The morning traffic is just starting to lock the only road to the interstate. I can’t stop myself. I scream.
At the men, already gone. At the passing cars. The sky. The birds. I scream until it feels like my throat is going to rip apart. Eventually Carol comes up behind me, a collection of people from the restaurant congregating in the parking lot watching all of this unfold, and I let her take me by the shoulders and lead me back into the restaurant.
Still too angry to say anything.
When Dad comes into the restaurant, I still haven’t said a word to Carol or anybody, even though every single one of them is watching me, their phones ready to record the next outburst.
Dad is wearing his work clothes, which means he must be starting the new job today. He nods at Carol and sits across from me.
“What’s up, kid?”
I shake my head. The anger isn’t gone. I’m afraid if I open my mouth, the only thing that will come out is another scream. Nothing but screaming for the rest of my life, like a laser beam from my mouth.
And of course, Dad can see it all. Right after the shooting, he would come into my room and I’d be lying on my bed, nearly shaking with the rage. He held my hand. Brought me a soda. Anything to calm me down.
Except, none of it worked. Not then. Not now.
“I’m going to need you to give me a heads-up to what’s happening here,” he says. “Or else I’m taking you to the hospital.”
I give him a look and shake my head again. Manage to croak out a single word. “No.”
He leans forward to pick at the now-cold biscuit Carol gave me, popping a piece into his mouth. He leans back, studying me. Waiting for me to say more.
And the longer I sit there, the more I feel the tension in my jaw beginning to loosen. I think about Dr. Holston telling me that my anger, my rage, is actually fear and pain—a way to adapt.
It doesn’t make me less angry. But it does make me talk.
“Two guys. They had a gun.”
Dad is up and out of the booth immediately, going to Carol, who seems shocked. Dad is ready to tear the building down to the foundation.
“Who were they?”
“I—I don’t know, Ronnie. I didn’t see who she was talking to out there. You know I’d tell you.”
“What did they look like, Eleanor. Be specific.”
I tell him about the Ford football shirt with no sleeves, the Carhartt jacket, the smug fucking smiles.
“That’s Timmy Hoke and Chris Russell,” Carol says softly. “They’re young and stupid, Ronnie.”
“And they’re about to go to jail,” Dad says, tapping the counter once, calm like he’d just ordered a coffee. He walks over to me, already holding his phone to his ear.
“We’re going to file a police report,” he tells me. “And then we’ll get you home.”
I nod, unsure if I could sit long enough for the phone call, let alone for the police to actually get here. I try to breathe the way Holston taught me, in and out through my nose—a meditative trick she’d learned on a yoga retreat—but every time I suck air in through my nose, my mouth opens, as if my body is refusing to release the anger.
“Yep. Over at Carol’s. Yep. Thanks, officer.” Dad hangs up his phone and sits down in the booth across from me. He wipes a hand across his face and doesn’t say anything until the police arrived, almost twenty minutes later.
Naturally, Carol’s is busier than it has ever been at nine a.m. People refusing to leave their tables, nursing coffee cups and nibbling on the crumbs of egg sandwiches, pretending not to watch as I tell the story once again, trying to remember every detail. Trying not to seem as angry as I am.
“He had it holstered?” the police officer asks me.
“Yes. What does that have to do with anything?”
The officer ignores me. “And did he advise you that he had a permit?”
“Jesus, do you think he was trying to give me a lesson on conceal and carry?” I ask, my voice rising above the low din of the restaurant. The police officer stares at me hard before turning to Dad.
“It’s not illegal to carry a weapon in the state of North Carolina if you have a permit.”
“I’m pretty damn sure it’s illegal for him to intimidate my daughter with it, though,” Dad says.
“Until we talk to Mr. Russell, I don’t feel comfortable making any assumptions about his intentions.”
I laugh and everybody in the restaurant turns to look, no longer pretending.
“Sure. Of course. You wouldn’t have a Right-Wing Report T-shirt on under your uniform, would you, officer?” I ask.
“Eleanor, I think the officer has everything he needs,” Dad says, reaching for my hand. The officer makes a note on his pad as Dad walks me out of the restaurant.
Before we’re out the door, the officer calls out, “We’ll let you know what we find out.”
Dad doesn’t say a word.
Once we’re out in the parking lot, I cuss loudly and kick at a can of soda that somebody had obviously thrown toward the garbage can, missing badly.
“What a joke,” I say.
“Eleanor.”
“Well, it is.”
Dad opens his mouth, but then he shrugs. “You’re right. And I’m sorry.”
“Does that cop seriously think those guys were scared of me?”
“Honey, I have no idea what is going through the minds of most of the people I meet. But I’ll tell you this: you have more fight in you than just about anybody I know.”
“I mean, shit. Do they really think I’m going to drive up to Washington, D.C., and shred the Constitution? And God, even if I did, does that mean all of our rights will just disappear? Suddenly we’ll go back to being a colony or some shit?”
This tickles Dad.
“Well, for what it’s worth, I think you should leave the actual Constitution alone.”
“I just don’t get it,” I say. “I’m the one who went through the shooting. I’m the one who could’ve died. These guys are just out here pretending like they need to carry a gun in case the government decides to . . . hell, I don’t even know. And what do they think they’re going to do against tanks, Dad? A bunch of untrained rednecks aren’t doing shit.”
I don’t realize I’m still shaking until Dad comes over and puts his arm around me.
“They’re scared and ignorant, plain and simple. And that’s a dangerous combination, especially when they encounter a person with actual integrity. So all they can do is resort to the only thing they know—intimidation.”
My first year of travel basketball, a girl fouled me hard. For the rest of the game, every time she came near me, I’d pass the ball like it was a live grenade. It got so bad—I ended up with what had to be a state record for turnovers in a single game—that my coach pulled me out and made me watch from the bench.
Up until that point, I didn’t know what it meant to be intimidated. I’d lived a mostly anxiety-free life. An easy life save a few skinned knees and other normal childhood mishaps. So, when this girl came at me hard, I had no idea how to respond.
And I hated it.
As I got older, I learned how to deal with aggressive players. How to use their aggression against them. But more importantly, I learned that I couldn’t control every situation. Sometimes I had to respond, even if it meant going beyond my comfort zone.
But I have no idea how to respond to this. I have no idea how to use their intimidation against them.
“Can I go home?” I ask.
“Yeah. Of course. Are you good to drive? I can come back and get your car later, if you want.”
I tell him I can drive and he gives me a long hug. As we’re standing in the parking lot, he whispers that he loves me—so much—and, for a second, I want to believe that it’s enough to wipe away the anger, if only for a couple of minutes.
Chapter Seven
MOM IS COMPULSIVELY CLEANING THE KITCHEN WHEN I get home, and after she finishes hugging me, I go back to my room and close the door. I pull out my phone to text Tyler and realize he’s sent me almost thirty text messages.
Where are you?
Everything okay?
Boone, text me back.
Please.
I type out a quick message.
Sorry. Not coming to school. Call me at lunch.
Killing me, Boone.
KILLING ME.
I drop my phone on my bed and sit there with my eyes closed, trying to calm down. It isn’t hard to remember how I felt in the days and weeks after the shooting. As if every part of my body was plugged into an electrical current, every muscle simultaneously alive and constricted. Ready for a fight that had already happened.
> That’s how the FUCK GUNS shirt came about. A need to do something. To expel that energy, that anger, any way I could. And for a brief moment, it worked. It made me feel as if I was in control of my life, if only in that one small way.
I never wanted to be on the news.
I never wanted the interviews.
I just wanted to feel whole again.
I open my eyes and sit up, sliding to the floor. I reach under my bed and pull out the dusty shoebox that has been there for a little under a year now. When I open it, the smell of paint and permanent markers greet me—still strong, months later. I pull everything out. A few newspaper clippings. A dirty rag. Some stencils. And in the bottom of the box, one of the original shirts—musty and forgotten.
When I stopped wearing the shirts, I made a big show of getting rid of them for Tyler and Ben, mostly because they were starting to get worried about where it was headed, but also because I knew they’d let other people know it was finished.
And it mostly worked. I packed this box under my bed, stopped wearing the shirts, and everything got back to normal for a little while. But sitting here now, holding the T-shirt in my hands, I can’t deny the simple thrill of it. What if I put it on right now and go to school? What would they do? What if I refuse to stop screaming? What if I don’t let anybody forget—not ever—what happened to all of us?
But the truth is, I don’t want to wear the shirt anymore. I don’t want to be a target. I want it to be over. But if they aren’t going to let me forget, if I am going to be forever labeled as a troublemaker, what’s the point?
Mom knocks on my door and is in my room before I can get the T-shirt back into the box. When she sees it, she sucks in a quick breath and then bites her bottom lip.
I put the shirt away—hoping that will be enough for her. It isn’t.
“I don’t think that’s going to help,” she finally says.
“I wasn’t going to wear it,” I say. “But I wanted to see it. To touch it again. It probably sounds stupid.”
Mom comes and sits on the floor next to me, picking the shirt back out of the box and holding it up so she can study it.