“Abby, seriously? Barbra Streisand is only the most famous singer and actress ever.”
“She can’t be that famous if I’ve never heard of her.”
“Google her. The monologue is ‘I’m a Bagel.’ ”
I don’t want to hear about it. I’m the funny girl, not Caitlin. I should be the bagel.
“Abby!” Mom calls from downstairs. “Ten minutes until we leave for your doctor’s appointment!”
I hear a girl call Caitlin’s name in the background. “I gotta go. You want to hear the best prank ever? We’re putting grape Kool-Aid in our counselor’s shampoo. It’s going to dye her hair! Text me, okay? I’ll get your mind off those losers you’re stuck with.”
We say our good-byes, and I hang up without telling her to break a leg. She is having my adventure.
Dummy school…those losers you’re stuck with.
I put my pillow over my head and scream. When I come up for air, there are soft, white feathers flying out from a small rip in the pillow seam. I tear the rip wider, pull out more feathers, spread them across my palm, and blow. They float away, fall across my bed. Cool. I tear the rip wider, blow feathers everywhere.
My door flies open. Like a tsunami, Mom rushes in. And gasps. Not a small gasp either. A seeing-a-dead-body, there’s-a-tarantula-in-my-bed gasp. “What did you do to that pillow?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” I start stuffing the feathers back in.
“Why did you rip that?!”
“It was already ripped. Look, I’m fixing it.” Not really. Feathers keep escaping.
She puts her hand on her forehead and closes her eyes. “Please come downstairs. Now. We’re leaving.”
SLAM.
I hate my life.
Before my appointment starts, Mom speaks to the new doc in her office while I sit in the waiting room. Mom doesn’t know what to do with me anymore. I know this because I overhear her saying, “I don’t know what to do with her anymore.” I can’t hear much else through the door, except the word incentives a couple of times.
After a few minutes the doctor calls me in. Dr. Ann Marie Catalano has puffy, blow-dried hair striped with yellows and browns like a marble cake, chunky jewelry, and lots of makeup. She tells me to call her Dr. C. Something about her eyes freaks me out. It’s like she’s looking at me, but she isn’t.
Dr. C goes to get something, leaving Mom and me alone on her couch. “What’s wrong with her eyes?” I whisper.
“I think the left one is a glass eye,” Mom whispers back. “My roommate had one in college.”
“A GLASS EYE?” I whisper-shout.
“Shhhhh!”
“But how is that possible?”
Mom can’t answer, because Dr. C comes back in and sits at her desk. She talks to me, but all I hear is Glasseyeglasseyeglasseyeglasseye. Dr. C puts her elbows on her desk. “Are you listening, Abby?”
“What?”
“What’s on your mind?” she says. “You can be honest.” Yeah, right. Whenever you’re honest with an adult, they get royally ticked off or start lecturing you about whatever you just told them.
“I was just, um, wondering how long this is going to take.”
“Are you sure you don’t have any other questions?”
“What? No, I don’t have a question about your eye.”
Oops.
Mom shifts in her seat, touches her earring, then points to a painting of a smiling cat. “Well, you have a good eye for art. I love Britto.”
“Thanks, I love Britto too,” Dr. C says. “So, here’s the thing. I have a glass eye.” Mom raises her eyebrows at me pointedly, her sign for I’m always right. Later, she’ll say it out loud, for sure. “I was in a car accident when I was seventeen,” says Dr. C. “I flew through the windshield, and they had to replace my left eye. Do you have any questions about that before we continue?”
Well, yes, I have a lot of questions. Is the place where her eye used to be hard and bumpy like the inside of a walnut, or soft and shriveled like a prune? When she sneezes does it ever shoot out like a ball at a batting cage? Does it feel like a marble? Or is it more like a grape? Can she break it like a lightbulb? What I decide to ask is: “When you put on eyeliner and you accidentally poke your glass eye, does it hurt?”
“No. I can’t feel it at all.”
I nod, indicating that I’m done, but add, “It’s very pretty. It matches your other eye exactly.”
“That’s very sweet, thank you.”
“I also like your hair,” I tell her.
“Thank you,” she says, running her fingers through her bangs.
“You could be a fashion stylist,” I add. “For women your age. Not for teens.”
Mom gives me her stop talking look. “Why don’t we get started?” she says.
“Okay,” says Dr. C, opening her laptop. She puts on purple reading glasses with rhinestones, types a little, then looks at me. “So, Abby, your mom explained why you’re in summer school, but I want to hear it from you. How do you think you got to this point?”
I don’t have an answer. I don’t know why or how I get to any point.
“Do you know what an impulse is, Abby?” Of course I know what an impulse is. She tells me anyway. “It’s a sudden, strong urge to do something without thought.” Duh. Dr. C shifts her attention to Mom. “Did you know there was a problem with Abby’s English grades?”
“No.” Mom fidgets with her purse strap. “I’ve been pretty hands-off. Abby’s grades were excellent in her other classes, so I never guessed there was a problem in English.”
Hands-off? How about whole body off? If Mom was honest, she’d admit she’s been putting me on hold these past few months because she’s been OBSESSED with Drew’s bar mitzvah, plus her fiftieth birthday and everything but me.
“Look at what her drama teacher said.” Mom pulls a booklet out of her purse. It’s my program from Grease. I thought I’d lost it. “I brought this so you could see this side of Abby.”
Dr. C opens the program and reads, “To the best Rizzo I’ve ever directed, you are an exceptional comedic actress. From your biggest fan, Mrs. A. Jenkins.” Dr. C peers at Mom over her reading glasses. “You must be proud.”
Mom takes the program back. “Abby is very talented.”
She doesn’t say she’s proud.
Dr. C turns back to me. “So, tell me, since you’re obviously intelligent and have a lot going for you, what do you think went wrong in Mr. Finsecker’s class?”
“Well…I couldn’t concentrate when he was teaching.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s slow and boring and mean.”
“What about keeping up with your work?”
I shrug. “What we were reading made no sense, at least not to me. I started skipping the reading, and then thinking I had more time for assignments when I didn’t….” I shrug again.
“And everything went downhill from there,” Dr. C says, typing as I talk. “Time management was an issue.”
“Yes. It also went downhill because Mr. Finsecker picked on me. Ask anybody.”
Dr. C nods, listening. “That happens. I wish every teacher could be like your drama teacher, but the truth is that a lot of teachers don’t have much knowledge about ADHD. It’s terrible, but that’s the way it is.”
“It is terrible,” I agree. I expect her to ask what I did in class that made Finsecker single me out, but she doesn’t.
“Eye contact, Abby,” Mom reminds me quietly. Sometimes I forget to look adults in the eye when I’m talking to them. I usually look at their lips. It dawns on me that Mom shouldn’t have said “eye contact” in front of a lady with one eye. Mom must be realizing that right about now too, because she quickly goes, “Never mind.”
“What about your behavior outside of class?” Dr. C asks me. “Do you have conversational accidents? Times when you say hurtful things to someone without meaning to?”
Hello, and welcome to the story of my life. “All the time
,” I say.
Dr. C stops typing. “I have a patient who says her mouth is like a bomb, and after it goes off, she’s always cleaning up the damage.”
“Yes! That’s exactly what it’s like.”
Dr. C leans toward me. “Listen, your brain is working so fast that your mouth can’t keep up with it. Having a fast brain is a good thing. It’s part of what makes you so smart and talented. But it means you have to slow down in social situations. Stop and think about how a person will feel before you say out loud whatever pops into your head. Same thing goes for when you’re angry or upset.”
I’ve heard the “Think Before You Speak” speech before. It’s right up there with “Be More Careful” and “Control Your Impulses.” If all those things were so easy to do, I would have done them already.
There’s only one thing that helps. “My meds slow me down. They help me stop my mouth, although I still say stuff I shouldn’t once in a while,” I tell her. “It’s worse when I forget to take my medicine.”
Mom explains, “I put her pill out and leave Post-it reminders for her, but she still forgets sometimes. She only takes it on school days, so she doesn’t struggle with sitting in her seat and staying focused. On weekends, she doesn’t take it at all, unless there’s a lot of homework.”
Dr. C types and talks. “It’s your responsibility to remember, Abby. Do you ever forget to brush your teeth in the morning?” I shake my head no. “Then can you remember to take your pill?” I nod. “Good,” Dr. C says. “Your mother has to get ready in the morning like you do. She can’t watch you every second. You’re old enough to find a system that works for you.”
“I know that.” No more babyish Post-its. I’ll prove to Mom I can remember.
Mom looks worried.
Dr. C asks me more about Finsecker’s class and school. She doesn’t get that glazed look people sometimes get when I tell a long story. She talks about how I need to stop and think about what I’m feeling when my anger takes over, and compares it to hitting pause on a remote control, or slamming the brakes on my bike. Then we discuss managing my emotions, how I need to respond, not react. She says I can come in anytime I’m going through a rough patch or want to see her, that I don’t need to wait for my three-month checkup, and asks if there’s anything else I want to mention. I tell her about how I spend so much time saying I’m sorry to people, and I’m not very good at it.
“Why don’t you start writing letters?” she suggests. “Sometimes writing a letter can be the best kind of apology, because you can get the words just right.” Dr. C closes her laptop, laces her fingers together, and rests her chin on her hands. “Let me ask you something, Abby,” Dr. C says. “How do you feel about the way things went down these last couple of months, or your new summer plans?”
How does she think I feel? “I’m not happy about it.”
“So, then, are you interested in doing some work on yourself and making changes?”
I’m about to joke that “doing work on yourself ” is what my grandma calls a face-lift, but Dr. C holds up her hand like a traffic officer. “Wait. Take your time before you answer me, because if you say yes, I’m going to hold you to it. Think.”
I picture Beth crying because of what I said in the restaurant, and the looks on Mom’s and Dad’s faces when Finsecker was telling them about me on the sidewalk. I think about the car Caitlin and I ruined with devil pictures, about the mark on Magic Max’s forehead when I accidentally hit him with my pen, and how I made him turn red in Tony’s class.
I think of Mr. Finsecker on his driveway in his faded bathrobe.
“So?” Dr. C asks. “Are you willing to make changes?”
“Yes. I’m willing to make changes.”
Mom and Dr. C share a meaningful look, like they’ve made a breakthrough.
A thick heaviness fills my chest. Because I know the truth. At the end of the day, I’ll still be me, and that’s not what they want.
ROUGH DRAFT:
Dear Mr. Finsecker,
I am writing to you to apologize. I’m sorry I was ever put in your class with your mushroom-and-old-sofa-smelling self. I’m sorry my dad had to write a check to get your neighbor’s car repainted, which I have to pay back by working at his store. I’m sorry I’m grounded, because staying indoors and doing nothing is a lot harder for me than it is for most people.
Did you know, Mr. Finsecker, that camp was the only bright, shining beacon of light at the end of the long, dark tunnel of horror known to you as school? Now that light is gone, thanks to you.
I almost puked when you told my parents it was a pity you didn’t teach summer school, because if you had the opportunity to teach me all over again, I could start over with a tabula rasa. I don’t know if a tabula rasa is a death threat or some kind of Mediterranean pita dip or what, but I do know that I’d rather kiss a rabid dog, clean a public toilet, see my grandpa in a Speedo, and go to juvie than have to sit through the torture that is your English class.
Please glue this note to your useless English book, or stick it in your giant hairy ear.
Love,
Abby Green
FINAL DRAFT:
Dear Mr. Finsecker,
I am writing to apologize for the pain and suffering I have caused you. I am sorry for not applying myself in your class, for being disrespectful, and for the car incident with your neighbor, Mr. Aldo Meyers. I deeply regret my actions. I will do my best to right my wrongs by doing community service and working hard in summer school.
Please accept my apology.
Sincerely,
Abby Green
ROUGH DRAFT:
Dear Mr. Aldo,
My name is Abby Green, and I am writing to apologize for the unfortunate incident with your car. My friend Caitlin and I used poor judgment. Then again, you used poor judgment when you bought those tighty-whities. Nice underpants. Also, what kind of name is Aldo? That sounds like a dog food. And what kind of person swings a bat at kids? Do we look like terrorists? You’re obviously mental. Thanks for making my cruddy summer even worse by forcing me to volunteer at your old-folks’ home. Can’t wait to hang with you and the fossils. I’ll bring the Clay Aiken CDs, you bring the Activia. Later.
Love,
Abby Green
FINAL DRAFT:
Dear Mr. Aldo Meyers,
My name is Abby Green and I am writing to apologize for damaging your car. I used poor judgment, and for that, I am sorry. I look forward to volunteering at Millennium Lakes. Please accept my apology.
Sincerely,
Abby Green
Mom said I only have to write letters to Mr. Finsecker and Mr. Meyers.
But there are a couple more I want to write.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: Apology
Hi Beth,
I’m writing to you to apologize for saying I can’t wait to see you get fat. I’ve been thinking about you a lot. Drew says my mouth is an early riser, but my brain sleeps in, which means I say things that come out wrong. I hope the baby looks like you and not Mike, because you’re very pretty, no matter what weight you are.
When the baby comes, I’ll be happy to babysit for you, if you’ll let me. For free, even. I hope you don’t get sick and throw up a lot like Mrs. Jenkins did when she was pregnant. She barfed into the wastebasket in class. It was gross.
Sorry again.
Love,
(Soon to be) Aunt Abby
PS When Mike said I need to fill out, that hurt my feelings too.
PPS If you decide not to name the baby after a dead relative, please consider the name Sabrina for a girl, or Brett if it’s a boy.
What Dr. C said about brushing my teeth helps me come up with a way to remember to take my medicine: I leave myself a giant note in my bathroom. It works. This morning, I make my breakfast, take my medicine, make my bed, and put away my laundry (throw it in the closet, same thing).
“It’s a start, Abbles,”
Mom says. “Try to remember to put the milk away next time.”
The milk. I always forget something.
Before I head out, I check my email. No reply from Beth. Fine. I don’t want anything to do with her either. Maybe she didn’t get my email? I could send her a text. No. She didn’t accept my apology. Some things you can’t undo. I try not to think about it, but I keep checking my email on the way to school.
When I get there, I spot Max in the hall, speed walking to avoid me like I have the bubonic plague (a gross infection from Shakespeare’s day we learned about yesterday). I catch up to Max pretty quickly since I’m wearing sneakers and shorts today. “Max, wait up!” He turns around, and I hand him my note. “IwouldhavetextedyoubutIdon’thaveyournumber,” I babble before taking off. I don’t want to stand there while he reads it.
Max, I didn’t mean to upset you yesterday. I like to joke around. You may have noticed. I didn’t think you’d get so angry. I thought you would laugh. You should sit with Trina, Amy, and me. We Palm Middlers are pretty much all we have this summer. We have to stick together. Come sit with us again.
Abby Cadabra.
(See how I turned my name into a magic reference? You’re welcome.)
When I get to our room ahead of Max, I’m surprised our tables aren’t in a big circle anymore. Then I remember that Tony and I rearranged them at the end of class yesterday, so now we’re sitting in groups of four called quads. He also had me put an extra couple of tables in the back corners, facing the wall.
Tony set up my quad away from the window, since I get distracted watching cars go by outside. Amy and Trina sit with me, but Max doesn’t. Instead, he pulls up a chair at another quad with four other boys. I guess my note had no effect on him whatsoever.
Tony takes one look at Max, says, “That’s not going to work,” picks up Max’s laptop, and places it across from me. “Max, you’re sitting here.”
“Guess you’ll have to talk to me now,” I say to Max after he sits down. “Did you read my note?”
This Is Not the Abby Show Page 5
