by Jo Ramsey
“Tell me what happened this morning.” She opened the folder and picked up a pen.
She had to have already known. My mother must have told her something when she’d called to have Kendra see me.
I swallowed a few times, trying to get rid of the lump in my throat so I’d be able to talk. “Why do I have to tell you?” I asked.
“You don’t have to, but it might help.”
She said that every single time I tried to get out of talking to her. It kind of pissed me off. It was her job to get me to talk. If I said I didn’t want to, she was supposed to persuade me. But she never did. She just told me I didn’t have to say anything if I didn’t want to.
Somehow, that always made me want to say something.
“I hung out with my friends before school.” I was glad I’d been able to finish most of my coffee before we left the donut shop. I could have used a lot more caffeine, though. “When we got to school, they announced that everyone had to go into the auditorium. And then they told us someone tried to commit suicide because of bullying and stuff.”
I paused and took a few breaths. I didn’t want to start crying again.
“That must have been hard to hear,” Kendra said.
“It was the other girl.” I’d never said Maryellen’s name to Kendra, but she knew who I meant. “Last night, I found out he pled guilty. They haven’t sentenced him yet.” I didn’t say Jim’s name if I could help it either, but Kendra knew who I was talking about when I said “him” too. “She probably found out too, so I don’t know why she did this. She should have been happy, but she’s been getting the same crap at school that I have. We both probably should be happy, but I’m not. I keep wondering why he admitted it, and I know it isn’t going to change anything at school.”
“I’m sure the news brought up some complicated emotions for her. And for you.” Kendra made a note in my file. “How are you feeling right now?”
“I don’t even know.” I pulled a tissue out of the box on the corner of her desk and dabbed my eyes. I’d managed to do a decent makeup job that morning even though I was upset. By now, the eyeliner and stuff was probably a complete mess, but I still barely touched my eyes with the tissue. I didn’t want to make it any worse than it was.
I needed to find a mirror and make sure I didn’t look scary. But I didn’t get up, because I doubted Kendra would let me leave the office for a makeup check.
“Do you have any idea?” she asked.
“About how I’m feeling?” This was a part of counseling I hated. I didn’t get why I had to identify my emotions in order to deal with them, as Kendra put it. She should have been able to tell me what to do to get over it instead of making me tell her the names for everything I felt.
Especially since I had times when I didn’t have words for the emotions.
“About how you’re feeling,” she agreed. “I know you don’t like to talk about this, Chastaine. I’m checking in with you.”
“Oh.” She had to make sure I wasn’t going to copy Maryellen, I guessed. If I died, or even tried to, on Kendra’s watch, it wouldn’t look good for her career. “I’m sad. Scared. Furious. Lonely.”
I didn’t even know where that last one came from.
“All understandable.” She wrote something else in my file. “Do you feel depressed or like you want to hurt yourself? I have to ask.”
“I know you do, but it’s stupid.” I rolled my eyes. “Depressed a little, maybe. But not like depression-depressed. Just really sad. And no, I don’t want to hurt myself. I’d like to beat the crap out of a few people at school, though.”
I stopped myself before I said anything else. Telling a mental health professional that I had violent thoughts might not be the smartest move.
“Who do you want to beat up?” she asked.
“For fuck’s sake!” I usually tried not to swear in front of her, but this was a special occasion. “I don’t want to talk about it. People. Just all the people that made her and me feel like we were being punished for something we didn’t even do. All the people who blamed us for what was done to us because they’re too stupid to realize it’s a crime. That’s who.”
She stayed totally calm, even though I was yelling by the end of my rant. That was one of the things that made her a good counselor, probably. I’d never seen her show any emotion at all. “You think the people who harassed her had something to do with her choice?”
“Duh.” I slumped in the chair and stared at my fingernails. Black polish with glitter. Evan had given it to me. “I heard some of the stuff they said to her at school. Calling her a slut and a whore. Telling her she was lying because she changed her mind about wanting to get laid after it was over. All the same things they said to me. And they were probably worse to her online, like they were to me.”
“Do you think she reported any of what was said to her?”
“Why would she?” I glared at her. “Why would I? No one’s going to do anything about it. Maybe at school the principal would do something, but the school can’t control what people say online or in text messages. I changed my phone number a week or so after I reported him. I don’t know if she changed her number, so people might have still been calling and texting her. The principal said she hadn’t heard anything about it until now.”
“You and she have both been treated very poorly.” She put down her pen and folded her hands on the desk. “I’m sorry this happened, Chastaine. How can I help you today? And how can you help yourself?”
“Who the hell knows?” It wasn’t my job to figure that out. “I just want to go back to school. Be around people. Even the crappy people, because at least they’re someone. If I go home, Mom’s going to hover over me and try to feed me and stuff. I don’t want to deal with that.”
“You’re the best judge of what you need.”
“Yeah.” Sometimes I swore the woman had a script she followed every single time she met with a client. “Mom doesn’t think I should be in school. Neither does the school nurse or probably my guidance counselor. That’s why I’m sitting here, I guess. But if you tell them I’m okay to be there, they’ll listen. I want to be around other people.”
I couldn’t explain it any better, partly because my throat was closing up again. But I also didn’t know what else to say. Sitting in my bedroom with the laptop I didn’t want to open because I’d end up checking my social media accounts, having Mom be all smothery and pushy and trying to make me eat, would be awful. Though having her in my face would be better than being alone in my room.
“She was stupid,” I said.
“The girl?” Kendra looked confused.
“Yeah. I mean, if they hadn’t found her in time, she would never have been able to make things better for herself. She would have just given the idiots one less person to pick on. Maybe things will change for her now, but it sounded like they don’t know for sure if she’s going to make it. She’s in intensive care, and her family and friends are going to have to pick up the pieces.”
I was ranting again, but I didn’t care. Now that I thought about it, Maryellen had been a selfish little bitch. So what if people had harassed her? They’d done the same to me, but I hadn’t chosen to ruin everyone else’s life by trying to take my own. Why had she?
“You sound angry about the choice she made,” Kendra said.
“Duh.”
“Sometimes people make choices without thinking things through.” She paused. “However you feel is okay, but she must have been hurting a lot to have done something like this.”
“Yeah, and if I’d listened to her or tried harder to be there for her, she wouldn’t have done it.” Tears rolled down my cheeks again. I struggled to hold myself together enough to talk. “That’s the thing. It’s my fault. Maybe it’s other people’s fault too, but it’s my fault. She would never have even told anyone what happened to her if she hadn’t found out about me.”
“Do you think she was better off not talking about it?”
I shr
ugged. “I was. Up until Guillermo figured it out and asked me, I didn’t think about it. And no one gave me a hard time, because the only other one who knew wasn’t around anymore. He tried to talk to me for a few weeks, but he gave up when I never answered. Then he got sent out of town.” When Jim was arrested for beating up Evan, his mother and stepfather had given up on him and sent him to live with his dad in another town.
“Did you really not think about it?” Kendra wrote something else in my file.
That pissed me off, like she was accusing me of lying. “Yeah, I really didn’t, because why the hell would I? It isn’t something I’m thrilled about, you know. And it didn’t have to bother me. One guy did one thing to me, and I wasn’t going to let it ruin my life. But Guillermo had to jam his way into my business, and now everything sucks.”
I’d sworn again. I hadn’t meant to, but I couldn’t help it. Everything was pissing me off, and Kendra wasn’t even close to helping. I wanted to smack her to get it through her head that she was being an idiot, but I didn’t think that would be a good idea.
The fact that I kept talking and thinking about smacking people worried me. No matter how angry I got, I wasn’t violent. Except sometimes with my brothers, but that was usually because they started it.
“You have a lot to be angry about.” Kendra still looked and sounded completely calm.
I didn’t get how she could be that way. I was furious. She should have felt something.
“Yeah, well, I was fine until November,” I said. That was when Guillermo had realized Jim had done something to me. He’d stuck his nose right in it, first persuading me to tell him what had happened, then convincing me to report it so Jim wouldn’t do it to anyone else.
I should have refused. It wasn’t up to me to save every freaking girl in Massachusetts from the guy. Sometimes I hated Guillermo for making me speak up, but he’d had my back ever since.
Kendra glanced at the clock on the shelf beside the folders. “I had to fit you in between clients, and we’re almost out of time. If you need to talk more, I can find someone else to see my next client.”
I shook my head. “I’m okay. Tell my mom I should go back to school, please. She’ll listen to you, but she won’t listen to me.”
“Are you sure it’s a good idea?”
“What happened to I’m the best judge of what I need?” I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t want to be home. Mom won’t leave me alone, which should be a good thing because I don’t want to be alone. But she’ll keep asking me questions even when I tell her I don’t want to talk, and I’ll end up pissed at her too. It’s better if I’m in school.”
Kendra nodded. “All right. Call me if you need anything else, and let’s make an appointment for you for Monday. That’s only five days.”
“Yeah. I think I can make it that long.” Sarcasm pretty much dripped from my voice. I didn’t care.
She gave me a card with the appointment date and time and walked me out to the waiting area. Mom stood up the second she saw us. “Is everything all right?”
“Chastaine thinks it would be good for her to go back to school for the rest of the day,” Kendra said. “I agree that if she feels it’s best, she should be able to go.”
Mom frowned. “But she was so upset. Should she really be around all the kids who give her a hard time?”
“I’m not going home.” I folded my arms. “I should be in school. Aren’t you the one who’s been complaining about my grades? How good are my grades going to be if I miss a day of instruction and assignments?”
Mom didn’t look impressed about me using her complaints against her, but all she said was “Fine. If you think you can handle it.”
“I can.” I walked away before she could argue anymore.
Chapter 4
THE CLASS blocks at school were seventy minutes long. Five blocks per day, rotating seven classes total, which made for a hell of a confusing schedule. Every day, the secretaries posted a notice in the main office window to let students and teachers know which class, one through seven, was first that day. Otherwise no one would have had a clue.
When Mom walked me into the office to sign me back in, I checked the window. We’d started with class number three in first block. Second block wasn’t quite over yet, which meant I had Italian.
“Are you sure about this?” Mom asked while the secretary wrote my pass. “I can take you home.”
“No.” I didn’t bother explaining. She’d questioned my decision the whole way from Kendra’s office to school, and I didn’t see any point in continuing to argue with her. She wouldn’t believe I’d be okay no matter what I said, and I didn’t care what she thought as long as she signed me back in so I could finish the day.
Everyone looked at me when I walked into the classroom, but the teacher got their attention back on the worksheets in front of them pretty fast. I took my seat and pretended to care about conjugating verbs.
For the rest of the day, no one said much to me. My friends stuck close to me in the halls between classes and in the cafeteria. El-Al sat with us at lunch, which surprised me. It was the first time I’d had lunch with her since everyone found out I’d reported Jim.
By the end of the day, I was beyond ready to get out of the building, but I was glad I hadn’t given up and gone home that morning. It hadn’t been the best day, but at least I hadn’t been stuck at home. Another victory for me.
“Do you want to come over?” Holly asked while I got my stuff out of my locker at the end of the day. I was starting to feel like she’d appointed herself my bodyguard. She’d walked just about everywhere with me after second block, except when I’d gone to the bathroom.
“I don’t know.” I switched books between my backpack and locker, trying to remember which classes I had homework in. Of course I wanted to go to Holly’s. But I wasn’t going to act all excited and giddy about it.
“Evan’s coming to work on the Spanish project,” she said. “I figured maybe we can order pizza or something.”
“Maybe.” If they ordered from the nearest takeout place, I might actually be able to eat. They had better food than even my mom’s cooking.
“I don’t want to be pushy, but we want you around,” she said. “I mean, there’s so much going on, and sometimes it helps to be with other people.”
“I’m not going to do what she did.” I didn’t know for sure whether Holly was worrying about that or not, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to say it.
“I know.” She gave me a faint smile. “But still. Maybe Eleanor Alice can come over too. She has to do that project. And even though you aren’t in our Spanish class, I know you have other homework.”
“Can you say a few more things at a hundred miles an hour so I can’t understand you?” I grinned so she wouldn’t think I was insulting her. Even though she sometimes rattled stuff off way too fast, it was entertaining. And it was one of the things that made her Holly.
She laughed. “Sorry. I guess I am being kind of pushy. Just say you’ll come over. Even if we don’t do homework, it would be cool to hang out for a while.”
“Yeah. As long as my mom doesn’t say I have to come home.” I took my phone out of the tiny purse I carried around school because we weren’t supposed to have large bags during the school day.
Mom didn’t sound too happy when I told her I was going to Holly’s, but she didn’t say I couldn’t. She just told me to be home by supper, and changed it to being home by curfew when I said I planned to eat at Holly’s. Usually she would have argued about that, but she probably figured having me eat at someone else’s house was better than not having me eat at all.
Holly’s house was only a few blocks from mine, but there was a huge difference. My dad and his brothers ran a moving and storage business, and we’d never hurt for money. My parents could have afforded to send me to a counselor with a cushier office than Kendra’s, but that counseling center was the place that had the earliest opening when Mom and Dad started counselor hunting.
Holly’s house was technically in the Highlands too, but it wasn’t in the high part. It was a three-bedroom bungalow with one and a half bathrooms. The third bedroom was only about the size of my parents’ walk-in closet.
The first time I’d gone over, Holly was ashamed of her house. I didn’t know why. The place was in good shape, and since only Holly and her parents lived there, the size wasn’t an issue.
Today we went up the front walk with Evan and through the front door without hesitating. El-Al hadn’t come with us. She had basketball practice.
It was only the third time I’d been there, but Holly acted like it was something we’d been doing for a long time. At least she didn’t seem uncomfortable having me there anymore.
Then again, it was hard to be uncomfortable about much of anything with Evan around. He kicked off his boots, which for a change didn’t have heels, and sat on the floor beside the couch. “Drag show?” he asked hopefully.
“You know the season’s over.” Holly hung up her jacket and took off her sneakers. “I wish this stupid town would do a better job clearing the sidewalks. My feet are soaked.”
“There are these things called ‘winter boots.’” Evan crossed his legs and leaned forward like he was stretching. “And sometimes they have reruns of past seasons or have the show on demand.”
“There’s this thing called ‘boots cost a ton, and last year’s have a hole in the bottom.’ And we have homework that has nothing to do with looking fabulous, so no, I’m not going to see if there are reruns.” Holly glanced at me. “Chastaine, you don’t have to just stand there. Take off your stuff. Don’t worry about hanging up your coat.”
