Stories for Amanda

by Amanda Todd Foundation

  By

  Karina Halle

  Featuring characters from The Artists Trilogy

  © Copyright 2013

  Edited by Megan Ward of MKW Editing

  I never thought much about hope.

  The word never meant that much to me.

  Until I met Ellie Watt.

  Suddenly I knew what hope was. It was something that could save me from my classmates, save me from my parents, save me from myself.

  It was a crazy hot day in August when I first met Ellie. In Palm Valley, California, most days were crazy hot and I often made it worse, dressing the way that I did. It was because of my “questionable” attire that my parents decided it was about time to haul me off to the town’s quack, Dr. Edison. I knew it was a matter of time and I really didn’t care anymore. When the whole town thought you were a freak, what was a trip to a psychiatrist’s office?

  “Now remember to be honest with the doctor,” my stepmother, Raquel, had said from the front seat, not bothering to turn around and look at me. She rarely looked at me. She only had eyes for her daughters, Kelli and Colleen, two little ten-year-old brats from hell. Even though she’d married my dad four years earlier, she still treated me like I was a nuisance, a waste of space. It would have been nice if she didn’t perpetuate the evil stepmother stereotype, but no such luck there. Not that Raquel was evil. She just didn’t give a shit about me. But I suppose when you’re dealing with a teenager, that can be seen as the same thing.

  I grunted in response and looked down at my nails. She’d confiscated the black nail polish I bought from the drugstore, so I had to fill in my nails with black Sharpie. I know she still hated it, the fact that it looked like I’d painted my nails when I was a thirteen-year-old boy. But I liked it. It made me feel dark, dangerous—different.

  “We don’t want you starting the ninth grade looking like a faggot,” my father sneered from behind the wheel. I looked up at the rearview mirror and saw his eyes blazing in it, full of disapproving fury. Normally, I was scared when I saw those eyes with that kind of fire behind them, but I knew he wouldn’t dare hit me here in the car, not in front of Raquel and not before I was about to see a shrink. Raquel damn well knew he knocked me around when she wasn’t looking, and though she never did or said anything about it, I don’t think she’d stand for it if she actually saw it happen.

  Then again, what did I know?

  “For the last time, I’m not gay,” I told him, my eyes trying to hold his. But like an Old West showdown, I looked away first. It was hard to be contemptuous without pressing my luck.

  “Then why do you have to dress like that?” my father whined. For being Palm Valley’s sheriff, he often sounded more like a spoiled dog than a man.

  “It’s called self-expression,” I said, sighing loudly. I pressed my forehead against the window, feeling the heat searing through the glass, and shifted in my seat.

  My pants were black and skintight, covered with patches I’d sewn on myself: Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, The Ramones, The Cramps, Korn, Deftones. I loved them but even I was starting to realize that my clothing choices weren’t the smartest for the end of the summer. My balls were sweating like nobody’s business.

  “Well what the fuck are you trying to express?” My dad said.

  “George,” Raquel warned.

  “Oh, shut up,” he sniped at her. “Like you’ve never sworn in front of your kids.” He looked back at me. “Well? You going to tell me or do I have to guess?”

  I swallowed hard. “I’d rather tell the shrink. That is why you’re sending me there, isn’t it? So that you don’t have to deal with whatever I’m going to say. Whatever truth there is? You can just put me on medication, hoping I’ll stop listening to evil music and drawing on things.”

  My dad just shook his head. I was right and he knew it. He couldn’t handle me; he didn’t know what to do with me. I was like a vermin problem, a rat that refused to get caught in the traps. And I knew what the cheese was—what he was offering. He would treat me better if I acted normal. Maybe he wouldn’t beat my ass once a week. But I knew that wasn’t true. I was always Dad’s little scapegoat, even when my mother was around. Hell, he hit her more than a few times too, before she died.

  I hoped I’d never turn into him.

  We rode in silence the rest of the way before we pulled up to the medical building at the end of the main drag. Clouds of dust blew up around us as we parked and Raquel got out. She, not my father, would take me in to see the doctor. Heavens fucking forbid someone should see the sheriff bring his son to Dr. Edison.

  I got out of the van and followed her through the shimmering heat of midday. Raquel was a frail-looking woman with wicked lines by her eyes, and though I didn’t remember my own mom too clearly anymore, I knew she was prettier. Raquel favored handbags that looked fancy but you could tell were cheap, and high heels that made her look like an idiot in our neck of the desert. Rancho Mirage or La Quinta, sure, but Palm Valley? She both tried way too hard and didn’t try at all.

  She opened the door for me to go into the building just as an elderly woman with a walker was slowly coming out. The elderly woman looked at me and nearly had a heart attack. She then looked to Raquel who gave the old lady a sympathetic smile. I know she wanted to say, “He’s not my son,” and she’d be right about that.

  I just grinned at the old woman, hoping she’d see the real me underneath. I may have dressed like a goth but I wasn’t about to knock her over and steal her handbag.

  Raquel jerked her head, motioning for me to get inside. The old lady was frozen in place, unblinking, as she took me all in. For once I was grateful that I wasn’t wearing black lipstick or eyeliner. Lately I’d been on a big Robert Smith kick and had been trying to emulate The Cure singer’s looks.

  “Excuse me,” I said to her as politely as possible as I walked past. She flinched at me as I came close and then shook her head, making a disgusted noise with her toothless mouth. I should have been used to the stares and whispers I got. In fact, most of the town had seen me, or at least I’d thought they had. But it didn’t stop me from feeling bouts of shame, and it didn’t stop them from making their pithy observations.

  Raquel walked through the open foyer and up the stairs to the second level of the building and into a small waiting room. The frosted glass door with the words Dr. Edison painted in garish font clicked behind us with a sense of finality. Thankfully, the waiting room was empty, the table strewn with a mix of Reader’s Digest and Psychology Today magazines, the walls covered with dull landscape paintings. If the doctor let his patients decorate his office, he’d probably be blown away at their originality. But that’s what being original got you these days—a trip to the shrink. While Raquel went to go check in with the receptionist, I sat down and picked up a copy of Reader’s Digest. The “Drama in Real Life” stories were the best.

  I only got to read one page on how someone survived a bear attack at Lake Shasta before the receptionist called me in.

  “I’ll come back in an hour,” Raquel said, giving me a smile and wave—all for the benefit of the double-chinned receptionist—as I was hustled into a dark office.

  Dr. Edison was standing in the middle of the room. He looked like I thought he would—widow’s peak, thinning hair, rectangular glasses that were similar to mine. He also had a steely look of observation that I was sure most psychiatrists had. I was a specimen under the glass, waiting to be examined.

  “Have a seat, my boy,” he said, gesturing to a love seat in the corner. I was glad he didn’t make the obvious joke about me looking like a girl, thanks to my shoulder-length hair. Oh right, and the makeshift nail polish.

  I smiled uneasily and walked over to the love seat, lowering myself cautiously.

  “I guess there’s no room to lie down, is there?” I asked, half-joking.

  His thin lips twitched up into a brief smile as he peered over his glasses and sat elegantly in his stiff-backed leather chair. “That’s only in th
e movies.”

  I nodded, swallowing down my uneasiness and watched him as he briefly looked over a file in his hands.

  “So you’re Sheriff McQueen’s boy, I see,” he said. It wasn’t accusatory; in fact, there was no emotion in his voice. He could have been reading the back of a cereal box for all I knew. But I bristled anyway. Anytime someone brought up my father it was usually followed by a look of “where did he go wrong?”

  Being born an asshole is where he went wrong.

  The doctor raised his brow as he studied me. “Camden McQueen. Perhaps we should start by talking about your father. He is the one who called me, after all. He said you needed to get your head on straight. Now, what might he be talking about?”

  I sighed. I was already overwhelmed. I let my eyes drift over to the window and the dust motes dancing as the harsh light came streaming in. I felt entranced by them, willing my mind to bring me somewhere else, anywhere but here. It was a coping mechanism that worked. Anytime I was upset or angry, when I felt like the rage inside was going to consume me, I could just get away in my mind. It saved me so many times. I think it was the closest thing I had to hope at the time.

  I don’t know how long I sat like that, just staring out the window in my own world, but eventually I heard the doctor’s voice come through, as if in midsentence.

  “Self-expression is normal for kids your age—teenagers especially—but I am sure your father has a right to be apprehensive about you.”

  I eyed him coldly. “A right?”

  He pursed his lips for a second. “Yes, at least in the way he’d figure it. Being… homosexual—”

  I rolled my eyes. “Jesus Christ, I am not fucking gay. Do you think Marilyn Manson is gay when he’s banging Rose McGowan’s ass all day long?”

  “I am not familiar with the personal life of that artist.”

  “Okay, let’s take someone like David Bowie then,” I said, leaning forward. “Ziggy Stardust wore makeup, embraced his androgynous look, all for the name of art. Self-expression.”

  “David Bowie was a homosexual.”

  “David Bowie is bisexual,” I corrected him. Did he really think I couldn’t school him on music? “He’s married to a supermodel, Iman. She’s gorgeous. And black, too. Another reason he’s my hero. My point is just because I dress like this and just because other artists do too, doesn’t mean we’re gay. It doesn’t mean we’re weird. It doesn’t mean we’re a threat to society.”

  He barely nods. “So you consider yourself an artist?”

  I shrank back in my seat and shrugged. A piece of hair fell in front of my face. “I don’t know. I want to be. I like to draw, to paint. I like to create. I like playing guitar too—hope I can buy one if I save up enough money. I know my dad won’t ever buy me one.”

  The doctor tapped his pen three times against his file and then said, “I don’t think your father is against your self-expression the way that you see it. It’s just that in this town, with all the military we have here and the base so close, people aren’t very… accepting toward people like you.”

  I raised my brow. “People like me?” For a shrink, he totally lacked tact.

  He sighed. “Are you this defensive with everyone?”

  I blinked.

  He went on and gestured to my clothing. “You’re expressing yourself. I see that. Everyone sees that. But it doesn’t make life easier for you. It gives people the wrong idea.”

  “Being gay is the wrong idea?”

  “Because you’re not gay, or so you say. If you’re straight and normal, then you should act it. Lose the makeup and the scary clothes and go make proper friendships with people. Start looking at girls. Camden, this is for your own good.”

  That little thing called rage? Yeah, it was sneaking up on me again. I had to take in a deep breath and count to ten. Zoning out wasn’t going to help me this time. Ten, nine, eight…

  “My own good,” I repeated under my breath. Seven, six, five…

  “Yes. Your father told me that you don’t have any friends. That you get beat up. That people are scared of you. You know why this is and yet you choose to self-express yourself this way anyway. The only thing I can think of, if you aren’t gay, is that you want to be hurt. You want people to look at you unfavorably.”

  Four, three, two…

  “Can you imagine how your life would change if you just acted… normal?”

  One…

  I breathed out through my nose in a sharp burst and looked at him with a wry smile on my face. “If I acted normal, no one would talk about me. And everyone would be happy. Except for me.”

  He studied me for a long time before he said, “Do you think of yourself as a martyr, Camden? Do you feel like you’re not done making your point?”

  “There’s always a point to be made,” I said with a shake of my head. And if I didn’t make a point—about life, about everything—then no one ever would. Not in this close-minded, ignorant town of dust and decay.

  The rest of the session was complete nonsense as well. The more that Dr. Edison talked, the more I realized he wasn’t here to help me—if I even needed help. He wanted to help my father and the town and the overall look of things. He wanted to stop looking at me. He wanted me to go away and come back as somebody else.

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  When it was all over, I got up and thanked him for his time. It was the polite thing to do and made me look better. Sometimes being nice was the best ammo of all.

  I was at the door when he called out to me, “One day, Camden, you’ll leave this town and wish you did something nice for the people in it. Maybe even for your own family. There are other lives out there other than your own. Sometimes we need to make sacrifices in order to keep loved ones happy, even if we don’t think they deserve it.”

  I didn’t turn to look at him. I ignored his words, letting them roll off me like drops of oil, and stepped out into the receptionist’s area. There was a lanky woman with blonde eighties hair sitting in the corner pretending to read a magazine. In reality, she was eyeing me with disdain. My stepmother wasn’t anywhere.

  I looked at the receptionist. “Um, have you seen…”

  She jerked her head toward the exit. “Your stepmother called and said she’s running late and for you to wait for her outside.” She didn’t even look at me, just called the other woman over instead.

  I exhaled and headed out of the medical building and back into the inferno. The sun was high in the sky now, searing my pants to my legs in seconds. I shielded my eyes from the glare and looked around. The van wasn’t in the parking lot. I guess Raquel and my father fucked off somewhere. Too bad it was too hot out to even think about walking back home by myself.

  I sat down on the curb and waited. A few cars puttered past on the main road, the dust rising like sandy plumes behind them. There was something pretty about that and had I been in a better mood, or at least had my sketchbook on me, I would have tried to capture that in colored pencil. Pen was too blunt for something that ethereal.

  Then I saw something even more poetic: the silhouette of a girl walking through the dust clouds along the sidewalk. I couldn’t see her face, just her shape, though I could tell she was small and walked with a pronounced limp. She turned in my direction and headed toward me. As soon as the dust cleared, she stopped and looked around as if she were lost.

  Wow. She was pretty. Very pretty. She looked about my age, too. She had long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, big dark eyes, a round face, and pouty lips. I’d never seen her before—I would know if I had. I knew every girl in town—from afar, of course. No girls ever talked to me. But I kept all their names and images in my head, using the prettiest ones when I was spanking it in the shower.

  But unlike a lot of the girls in Palm Valley, this one wasn’t showing a lot of skin. You get used to it in this heat, seeing your classmates walking around in cut-offs and bikini tops that only the coolest girls could fill out. This girl already stood out by w
earing flared jeans, Doc Martens boots and a T-shirt. She must have been boiling hot, just as I was.

  She started walking toward the building, but stopped as soon as she saw me.

  My first instinct was to smile at her. It made most girls turn and run away.

  But then she started walking again, slower this time and with deliberation. She was trying to control her limp, her focus now dead ahead, not letting her eyes waver to me. I couldn’t tell if it was because I weirded her out or if she was self-conscious. Maybe both.

  She was just a few feet away, refusing to look at me, when I said, “If you’re looking for the psychiatrist, he’s upstairs.”

  The girl stopped and looked at me, a mix of shock and fear on her face. Up close she was even prettier, with a smattering of freckles across her petite nose. She filled out her jeans and black shirt pretty well too. I adjusted myself and prayed I wouldn’t get another inappropriate boner, though at least there’d be a reason for it this time.

  I kept my face deadpan. Might as well give her another reason to be turned off. “I mean, I’d know, I was just at the shrink. Guess my father thinks I’m a bit nuts.”

  She looked me up and down, her face relaxing slightly though she still looked puzzled. Finally she said, “I’m looking for a pharmacy.”

  I squinted up at her. “You’re not from here, are you? I mean, this town?”

  She shook her head. She looked really uncomfortable.

  “Aren’t you hot in those jeans and boots?” I asked.

  Her face immediately went red and I knew I struck a nerve. But instead of feeling proactive, like I’d shut her down before she had a chance to shut me down, I just felt bad.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quickly and got to my feet. “I’m not one to talk.” I towered over her, awkwardly adjusting my pants and rattling my wallet chain, but to her credit she still stood there and folded her tanned arms across her chest. Her T-shirt was an aged looking Metallica Master of Puppets. I nodded at it. “Cool shirt. Do you like Metallica or did you pick that up at a thrift store?”