“How many sessions do you think it’ll take you to get better?”
Leah gives me a strange look. “Why do you ask?”
I pull Dr. Matt’s wrinkled business card from my pocket and stare at it. “Well, my mom told me that I have to get better in three sessions, because that’s all she’s got money for. I only have two left.”
My aunt snorts and rolls her eyes. “Your mother is an absolute trip, Colby.”
I lean forward. “Soooo…more than three?”
“Colby, darling, I will see that you have as many therapy sessions as you need to get well.” She sighs loudly. “I need to have a talk with your mother.”
I yawn, and Leah does, too. She pulls me up and envelops me in a hug. “You are loved, Colby Denton. Just the way you are. And don’t you forget it.”
Something breaks loose inside of me, and it hits me: Leah doesn’t care how much I weigh or if I eat ten boxes of Ding Dongs. It’s like…amazing. I haven’t felt that kind of love since my dad and I used to play “Ask Me Anything” while we looked at the stars on my ceiling.
“Thank you, Leah. Thank you.”
Leah whispers, “No matter how rough it gets, remember our agreement. I’m here for you.”
My words are smothered against her shoulder, but I know she hears me: “I won’t let you down.”
Leah walks me back to the trailer around eleven that night. I push open the front door as quietly as possible, and I’m relieved to find that Mom and Drew have already gone to sleep.
I shower and put on my pajamas, then crawl into bed and close my eyes, dreading what I fear will come as soon as I fall asleep. But tonight, for the first time since Ryan died, I don’t dream of his bloody face, and…I may have imagined it as I went to sleep, but I could swear that the star on my ceiling is glowing.
Chapter Twenty-One
Mom doesn’t talk to me the next morning. She tells Drew to eat breakfast at school, then goes back into her bedroom and closes the door.
Drew’s eyes get big and she whines, “But I don’t like eating breakfast at school.”
I pull a box of cereal off the shelf and hand it to her, then turn to the cabinet for a bowl. “You don’t have to, Drew. We have time before the bus comes.”
Drew asks, “Do you want to go live with Daddy?”
I nearly drop the bowl. “What?”
Drew takes the bowl from me and dumps cereal into it. “Mama called Daddy last night and told him to come get you…Do you want to live with Daddy?”
My head is spinning. I don’t answer; just uncap the milk and pour it on Drew’s cereal, sloshing it over the sides and not caring.
Drew takes a bite of cereal and speaks through her food. “Daddy said you can’t come live with him because he’s got enough problems already. Mama yelled at him and made me go to my room, but I still listened anyway…What’s a spineless asshole? I know what an asshole is, but what’s a spineless one?”
Michael Taylor boards the bus and asks no one in particular, “Have y’all seen my Facebook status this morning?”
A flurry of people whip out their phones and silently read. Within moments: “Are you kidding me?”…“Wow. That’s some cold shit.”…“That sucks.”
I try to make eye contact with Tina, hoping that she’ll tell me what’s on Michael’s Facebook page, but she’s staring at her phone.
Chief Taylor’s exiting the school as I’m going in. Mr. McDaniel turns without a word and enters the office when I glance at him. I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
At the end of morning announcements, Mr. McDaniel asks all the teachers to check their e-mail immediately. Mrs. Clay glances at the speaker in the ceiling and mutters, “I long for the days when my lectures weren’t interrupted by technology.”
She shuffles around her desk to her computer, sits in her chair, taps a few keys, and leans in close to the screen. She sighs heavily, then rises, comes over to me, and gives my shoulder three rose-scented pats. She stays by me, sighs again. I force myself to look up at her. She shakes her head sadly, gives me a rueful smile and a couple more pats, then moves back to stand within reach of her fresh roses.
Whispers break out in the back of the room. Mrs. Clay clears her throat. “Continuing our discussion of homeostasis…”
Anna turns to me, hisses, “What’s going on? Why did Mrs. Clay look at you so funny?”
I shrug.
I enter Fun Math to find a red rose on Ryan’s desk. I try not to look at it. One by one, girls place handwritten notes alongside the rose. I pick up one to read it.
“That note’s not for you,” Kayley blurts from her place next to me. “It’s for Ryan, because he died trying to save you. Now we all know the truth.”
“How did you—?”
She tosses her hair over her shoulder. “It was on Michael’s Facebook page. His dad’s the chief of police so I know it’s the truth. You know: the opposite of lying…?”
“Is she for real, Colby?”
I turn to see Anna.
“Wh-when Sean and I came to see you after Ryan’s memorial service, you said that you tried to save him. Why would you lie about that?”
My voice doesn’t even sound like it’s coming from me. “I’m sorry, Anna. I didn’t mean to; I…just…”
Coach Allison cuts us off. “Okay, folks, we’re not having this discussion here. Mr. McDaniel has instructed us staff members to direct you to Mrs. Healey if you feel the need to talk about it.” He turns and reads directly from his computer screen. “This is a tragedy, no matter who died and who was the real hero. Students may feel betrayed, but we must emphasize the need for compassion.”
He frowns first at me, then at the impromptu memorial growing on Ryan’s desk. “Y’all get out your workbooks.”
In the hallway, some people stare and try to conceal their whispers, while others don’t even attempt to keep me from hearing. Girls write Ryan’s name in big bubbly letters and tape signs to their lockers. Some of the same guys who used to call Ryan a traitor are squaring their shoulders and talking about him like he was their brother.
I open my locker door to find a note shoved through the vent: LIAR. Go back where you came from!
I shake my head and snort. Like I don’t wish every day that I could hit Rewind on my life. I crumple the paper and throw it to the floor.
I slide into my seat in life skills and hear Angela and Kyle talking about dedicating the yearbook to Ryan. When they notice me, they stop talking and glare at me. I pick up my things and walk out the door.
“Colby, wait! Where are you going?”
I freeze in place and hang my head. Mrs. Lowe approaches and puts her arm around me. “Honey, where are you going? Class is about to start.”
I whisper, “I can’t do this. Everyone hates me because of what I did to Ryan.”
Her brow furrows; she shakes her head. “You didn’t do anything to him, sweetheart. It was a terrible accident.”
I snort, “I guess you haven’t heard. He was trying to save me. I was trying to kill myself.” I look away, unable to meet her eyes.
“No, I’ve heard.” She leans down, looks up into my face, and says softly, “You still didn’t do that to him. No matter what you call it, Colby, Ryan’s death was an accident. He didn’t intend to die, and you didn’t intend for him to die, either. That’s an accident in my book.”
“But…I lied about it. I let everyone think that I was a hero. How am I supposed to live with myself?”
The tardy bell sounds, and Mrs. Lowe waits until it stops to speak again. “Everyone messes up sometimes. There’s not one of us who find it easy to own up when we’re ashamed of what we’ve done.” She tilts her head, and her blue eyes are soft. “I just wonder how much pain you must have been in to get to the point of standing in that road, and how much you must be in, now. Are you getting professional help for the feelings you’re having?”
I nod. My promises to Dr. Matt and Leah are heavy on my mind. I’ve gotten so used
to thinking about dying as a way of escaping pain that I have no idea how I’ll be strong enough to let go of the idea and deal with my life. I can’t even imagine getting through the next eight hours.
“Well, I’m really glad that you’re still here with us, Colby. I’m sorry that Ryan’s not, but I don’t hold you responsible. Think you can just try to come back to class? Please?”
I allow Mrs. Lowe to take me by the hand and lead me back into her classroom.
Becca slides a note across the table to me. It’s just a couple of lines:
I know you probably hate me, but I don’t regret telling the truth.
Truth is the only thing that saved Kimmie’s life. Find your voice.
I slide the note into my binder cover and stare at it until class ends.
There’s no way I can face Anna and Sean at lunch. I head for the bathroom and enter a stall, close the door, and hang my backpack on the hook. I unzip the front pocket and pull out The Scarlet Letter, sit on the toilet fully clothed, and pick up where I left off. Reverend Dimmesdale is punishing himself for his sin by whipping himself and fasting, and Hester Prynne is setting herself apart from other women by thinking for herself, seeing as how they won’t have a thing to do with her anyway. If she can survive being hated by everyone, maybe I can, too.
I lift my feet when I hear someone come in, and I nearly fall off the commode when Tina’s face appears under the door. “I thought I’d find you in here.” She goes into the stall next to me. I keep watch, expecting her knees to hit the floor.
“I wish you wouldn’t make yourself throw up. It’s not good for you.”
She sits on the toilet, taps one foot. “You’re not exactly in a position to give advice to anyone about what’s good for them, Miss I Tried to Commit Suicide…Anyway, barfing’s not something that I like to have an audience for. If I’d known you were in here before, I wouldn’t have done it. What are you doing in there? Are you sick?”
“No, I’m reading.”
Tina snorts. “Seriously?”
“It’s better than facing all these people who hate me for what happened to Ryan.” My throat’s getting tight, and I’m on the verge of crying.
“Yeah, what were you thinking? Why didn’t you just tell the truth?”
“You wouldn’t understand…Look, Tina, if you want to yell at me for being a liar, you’d better get in line. No one can hate me as much as I hate myself. Why would I want everyone to know that I meant to die? Kara told me she wishes I’d died with Ryan.”
Tina sounds shocked. “God, she’s such a bitch sometimes!”
I’m blunt: “But you hang out with her!”
“I know.” She sounds like a sad trombone.
“Anyway, me telling everybody the truth is as likely as you letting on that the reason you’re skinny is that you barf all the time. I Googled that, by the way, and you have no room to judge me. You’re trying to die, too, you know. Bulimia can kill you. You could have a heart attack. And your teeth are going to rot out. It’s a sucky way to go.”
Her voice is flat. “So I’ve been told. My mom caught me a few months ago, and if the shrink I’m seeing can’t fix me by Christmas, she’s putting me into a treatment center.” Tina lifts her feet off the floor, too.
“But you barfed just the other day!”
She snaps, “Don’t judge me! It’s progress, not perfection. Anyway, I was freaked out because you were bugging me about the Facebook page.”
“I’m sorry—”
Tina slams the stall wall and says caustically, “No, it’s not your fault. My therapist would be proud to hear me tell you that I alone am responsible for my recovery. If I binge and purge, it’s my choice, because I always have another response that I can choose instead. I slipped, but I chose to get back up. What about you, Colby? You prefer death by semi-truck?”
I gasp, “No.”
She asks in a singsong voice, “Why’d you try to kill yourself?”
“Did you see the video that my cousin, Saint Ryan, recorded of me?”
“Yeah. So?”
“My mom said it was my fault that he made that video. Because I’m so fat.”
“So?”
It’s my turn to hit the stall wall. “What do you mean, ‘So’?”
She answers by kicking the wall. “So, just because your mom said that doesn’t make it true. It just means that your mom’s a hot mess.”
I feel pissed and more than a little stupid. “If you’re so smart, why did you start throwing up in the first place?”
“I told you, I’m trying to stop. I’m in therapy, and it’s fucking hard work.”
“Well, how hard can it be? Just don’t do it anymore.”
“Are you telling me that you have no idea what it’s like to be out of control when it comes to food? I mean, no offense, Colby, but you didn’t get to be the size you are without pigging out.”
I stand, unlock my stall door, and move to Tina’s. “Open your door.”
She slides the lock, and the door swings open.
“How do I stop? Eating like I do is the only thing that makes me feel better. I’ve always done it once in a while, but my whole life has gone to shit in the last few months and it’s like I have no control at all. You might have been fat like me, but you have no idea what it’s like to have my mom as a parent. She’s a former Miss Texas, for God’s sake.”
Tina stands and wags a finger at me. “You have no idea the kind of pressure my mom put on me to lose weight. I’m only fifteen and she was already worried that she’d never have grandchildren if I didn’t lose weight. My mom is certifiably crazy.”
“Oh, yeah? Has your mom ever given you diet books for your birthday?”
Tina makes a face. “No! That would be the absolute suckiest birthday gift ever!”
“Mine has.”
“No way!”
I nod. “It’s true.”
We spend the rest of our lunch period sitting under the windows in the girls’ restroom and comparing bizarre Mom stories.
“You can’t beat this one,” I brag. “My mother wanted to sneak a tapeworm egg into my food so that a parasite would make me lose weight, like, by eating me alive. She wasn’t going to tell me about it, but my dad caught her trying to order one online, and I heard them fighting about it.”
Tina makes a face. “That’s off the charts wacko! Hello, CPS? Come arrest Miss Texas!…This one isn’t that crazy, but my mom tried to get the pediatrician to prescribe weight loss drugs to me when I was eight years old.”
I’m shocked. “That’s terrible!”
She waves her hands. “No, no, that’s not even the worst of it! When my doctor refused, she asked her doctor, but she told him they were for me! So he said, ‘No,’ and she said, ‘Aw, hell, just prescribe them to me, then, and I’ll cut them in half for Tina.’”
“Did you take them?”
“Not for long. The pills were basically speed, and my teacher kept complaining that I wouldn’t shut up and that I was vibrating in my chair.”
“Wow. Okay, it’s a draw. Our moms are both nuts.”
We laugh so hard that I snort. I can’t remember the last time I did that.
It feels good, and sort of normal.
We walk to English together. I’m still getting the stares and whispers, but I’m not alone.
Mr. Van Horn starts class by displaying Jonathan Edwards’s fifteen Resolutions again and asking for volunteers to share their progress. I silently reread the one I chose: Resolved, to think much on all occasions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.
I can practically feel the scratchy rope around my neck and the way the table wobbled when I stepped up onto it. Would I really have stepped off?
Leah’s question: What the fuck are you doing, Colby?
Yeah: what the fuck?
Mr. Van Horn’s voice: “Colby? You look like you’re deep in thought. Care to share your Resolution with us?”
Kara hisses, “I don’t s
ee lying about killing somebody on the list!”
Mr. Van Horn snaps, “What’s that, Kara?”
“Nothing.”
He moves over to stand by her, arms crossed over his chest. “Since you’re so eager to speak up, share your Resolution with the class.”
Kara stammers, “I…um…the one about…not talking bad about other people.” She reads aloud, “Resolved, never to speak evil of any person, except some particular good call for it.” She sits up straight and squares her shoulders. “That one.”
The class breaks out in laughter. Even Mr. Van Horn seems to be having a hard time not busting out.
Anna blurts, “You’re supposed to be already keeping the Resolution, Kara. You couldn’t make it through ten minutes without talking shi—I mean, talking bad about other people!”
Kara’s neck is breaking out in red splotches, but she sits up as tall as she can in her seat. “Um, you’ll notice the part that says, ‘except some particular good call for it’?” She scrunches her face up, which just makes her look like a scrunchy-faced rat, and jabs a finger in my direction. “If anybody deserves to be trash-talked, it’s Colby Denton. She lied to everyone about what happened to Ryan, and he was one of us!” She sits back in her seat, like that settles everything.
My eyes fill with tears; I stare at Becca’s note inside my binder cover, and the words jump off the page at me: Find your voice.
Mr. Van Horn strides over to my desk and stands between me and the rest of the class. He puts his hand on my shoulder, and minutes seem to tick by before he speaks. “Guys, it’s like I told Fredrick the other day, when he was talking about Hester Prynne being a dirty skank. When you know the whole story, your perspective can change. I know that a lot of you go to church, so perhaps you remember this Scripture: Do not judge, or you, too, will be judged.”
He looks down at me. “I, for one, am here to support you, Colby. I know that what you’re going through can’t be easy, and that none of us would want to be in your place right now. What happened was tragic.” He pauses, looks around at everyone, and emphasizes the word: “Tragic. And, given the right circumstances, it could have happened to any of you. Before you sentence Colby to stand on the scaffold, I suggest that you consider how you would want to be treated if you were in her shoes. Open your books. We’re on to Chapter 13.”
Big Fat Disaster Page 25
