Sara and the Search for Normal

by Wesley King

  For the Star Kids

  INTRODUCTION THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY OF THE END OF SARA MALVERN

  Introductions are hard, so let’s just start by punching something.

  I was six years old, but I remember that day perfectly. Especially the lavender. The smell of lavender used to remind me of toilets. Now it reminds me of blood.

  My mom was taking me dress shopping for her cousin Bethany’s wedding. That sounds nice, except I didn’t like shopping, or busy places, or dresses. I didn’t like lots of things. Still don’t. Mom always told me I was a “problematic child,” but I was about to give her some fancy new labels to use.

  My dad walked into my room the night before and sat down on my bed.

  “Sara, try hard for me tomorrow,” he said. “Okay?”

  I used to sleep like a vampire, so I was staring at the ceiling with my arms folded across my chest. It was a simple precaution: No self-respecting vampire would prey on one of their own.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Promise that you’ll try your best to behave yourself. This means a lot to your mother.”

  “I promise.”

  Stupid Sara. Promises always cause problems.

  The next day my mom combed my hair and put a navy blue bow in it and took a picture. I didn’t complain once on the drive, even though she talked the whole time about how a green dress would match my dark eyes. She kept talking all the way to a store called Elleries’. The windows were full of poof-y dresses, and remember, everything smelled like a toilet. Mom took my hand and led me to the counter.

  “We have an appointment for a dress for my daughter,” she said proudly.

  A lady with white hair looked over the counter. “What a dear! I have some set aside.”

  Before I knew it, I was in a dressing room with five dresses and a mirror. I could hear my mom talking with the saleslady. Her name was Anne and she was the living epicenter of the lavender. She wanted to help me change, but my mom said, “It’s okay, she is a big girl, she can do it.” I do enjoy a vote of confidence, but really she just knew I would scream if Anne touched me.

  I put on the red dress and stepped out, eyes on the floor. They cooed and clucked and wanted to see another one. I didn’t like being stared at—another one of the many things I don’t like—but I went back inside to change anyway.

  “You made a promise,” I reminded the impatient girl in the mirror.

  There was pink. Then blue. I put on a green one and tried to stay calm. I was starting to feel warm and more strangers were looking when I came out and I could hear my mom talking.

  “This is very good for her,” she whispered. “She has … some challenges with new things.”

  “She seems lovely,” Anne said.

  I rubbed my forehead because it seemed like everything was getting louder. It did that sometimes. Voices bounced around my head, or maybe my brain just said them back to me like an echo in a cavern.

  She. She. She. My name is Sara Malvern, toilet lady. I am not lovely when I scream.

  “Thank you for saying that,” my mom said. “It can be difficult.”

  “Is she … ill?” Anne asked.

  They were still whispering, but quiet people are experts at listening.

  “No, no. Some behavioral things. It’s hard with strangers.”

  “Oh. She’s very shy, for sure,” Anne said. “Not a peep out of her this whole time.”

  My mom laughed. “You have no idea.”

  I tried to calm down. The voices were still ricocheting around and the dressing room felt smaller now. The green dress was pooling on the floor like a moat and I was drowning in it. I was wondering why I had behavioral things and why Mom made me come here if I was so difficult. The thoughts flowed one into another until they became a flood.

  I hate dresses. I hate strangers.

  But as I stood there looking at myself in the mirror, afraid, I realized:

  I hate Sara Malvern most.

  “I’m finished,” I said loudly.

  “Well, let’s see it, then,” my mom replied.

  “I want to leave now.”

  There was a long silence.

  “There’s only two more dresses,” she said.

  The room is shrinking I am so hot I can’t breathe I can’t breathe. I tried not to scream.

  “Can we leave?” I asked again in my most polite I-am-losing-my-temper voice.

  “Just try the blue one.”

  It turns out that when I am panicking, I do not compromise well.

  But I wasn’t really mad at them. I was mad at the girl in the mirror.

  I slammed my fist into the mirror and maybe I had pointy knuckles or maybe it was a cheap mirror because it shattered. I screamed as my knuckles bled. I shrunk down into the corner and started crying because I had made such a mess, and I didn’t know if I had punched the mirror or the girl in it. Mostly I knew that I was not normal and if there had ever been a normal girl in the mirror, she was in a thousand pieces now.

  I had locked the dressing-room door even though they said not to, but Anne had a key and they found me bleeding. Anne gasped and my mother cried. Mom used her credit card to pay for the mirror. Anne brought paper towels and Band-Aids. Mom put them on and cried while she did it. We didn’t speak in the car. When we got home, my mom went to her room and she didn’t come out again until dinner. My dad came into my room later that day.

  “You promised me, Sara,” he said, looking over my bandaged hands.

  He was disappointed and that hurt worse than glass.

  The next day my parents took me to a child psychiatrist. I guess technically he was the one who gave them those fancy new labels. He wasn’t shy about handing them out either.

  After a few sessions I had all kinds of them:

  Bipolar Disorder: dramatic mood swings, emotional instability

  General Anxiety Disorder: difficulty relaxing, panic attacks, trouble breathing

  Mild Schizophrenia: distorted reality, paranoia

  Depression: a constant sense of dread, unshakable sadness

  He gave me my first pills and now I take four every day. I also realized something after the punch, besides the fact that green was not my color. Sometimes I hear people say, “It must be hard to be crazy.” And it is. But they should also say, “It must be hard to love someone who is crazy.” They have to see the pain, but they never hear the whispers.

  Oh, I’m sorry. I told you introductions were hard. Let’s start again.

  My name is Sara Malvern and it’s very nice to meet you.

  CHAPTER 1 MY HAPPY FAMILY

  Five years after breaking the mirror, I was sitting on the stairs like a gargoyle. I do that a lot. I hunch forward with my arms around my legs, and even though I don’t have wings, I lean precariously far over the steps.

  “—you have to admit that it isn’t working.”

  That’s my mom. She is still embarrassed that she has a crazy daughter.

  “She’s fine, Michelle.”

  That’s my dad. He loves me.

  “Fine? Her teacher said she panicked today and wouldn’t eat—”

  “It can be stressful at school—”

  “It’s normal to be in school,” she cut in sharply. “She’s in seventh grade. This is not normal.”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “I just … I’m worried.”

  She worried a lot.

  “What do you want to do? She’s on the medication. She goes to therapy.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  My dad laughed, but not in a nice way. “So, what? More drugs?”

  “Maybe. Or … you know what Dr. Ring said.”

  “You want to send her away.”r />
  “It’s a six-month program. Maybe a year. She needs intensive—”

  “You want to put her in a padded room. My little girl.”

  “Our little girl—” my mom said.

  “No, you’ve obviously decided she isn’t yours anymore.”

  “How dare you say that to me. After all I have been through.”

  “And Sara and I are so sorry you’ve had to suffer.”

  The silence made my head hurt.

  “I can’t do this with you,” my mom said. “I can’t.”

  “So don’t,” he replied. “Let me worry about Sara.”

  “Sara is sick, and you won’t even admit it.”

  “We are all sick, Michelle. We just have different diseases.”

  My mother stormed off, my father slammed a door, and the gargoyle brooded. I am the gargoyle, in case you forgot. I went to bed after a while. I tried to sleep, but I am good at thinking and bad at sleeping. I gave up and wandered downstairs. Mom had gone to bed, but Dad was usually up late. He was a municipal waste specialist and woke up very early, but he always had a nap when he got home and then had trouble sleeping later. The TV was on.

  I walked down the hall in silence. Sneaking was easy in my house. We had shag carpet the color of skin that my dad said was “perfectly serviceable,” though my mom kept accidentally spilling red wine on it.

  I found Dad in the living room. He was asleep. There were empty beer bottles on the carpet and his hand was curled up beside them like a dead spider.

  “Oh, Daddy,” I said, sighing.

  I threw a blanket over him, grabbed his phone, and set an alarm for four thirty a.m. My dad looked younger when he was asleep. He was somewhere else now. I hoped it was a happy place.

  I sat down next to him and watched a whole documentary about blue whales. I love whales and everything in the sea. The whales were gathered near Hawaii and singing beautifully. The narrator said they usually swim alone, but that sometimes they get together and hang out.

  “We don’t know what they’re saying,” I said as my dad snored, “but I bet it’s something very wise. Maybe they are saying, ‘It would be nice to swim together forever. But we all must be going. You see, we must swim alone. We are too big. It has been lovely to have some friends, even if it was only for a little while.’ ”

  I fell asleep on his legs and woke up the next morning tucked into my bed.

  NOTE

  If you ask a blue whale what she thinks about—if you sing whale, of course—you might be surprised. Most people would guess it was about krill, or ocean currents, or maybe if she was due for some air. But it could also be about her baby who swam off two years ago and whether he found a girlfriend. Or that dolphins are silly. Or maybe that the stars look beautiful tonight, even from underwater. We can’t ask her, so we all just kind of assume it’s the krill.

  Do me a favor, even if it is just for this story: Assume it’s the stars.

  CHAPTER 2 TALKATIVE TUESDAYS

  The next day I was sitting in class. Well, my class. It’s a yellow room with some ugly artwork and motivational posters plastered on the wall that say things like YOU ARE A STAR! and HANG IN THERE! That one had a kitten hanging onto a power line. It probably should have said ANIMAL CRUELTY SELLS POSTERS! I call my class the Crazy Box, but Ms. Hugger doesn’t like that name.

  “Sara, are you paying attention?” Ms. Hugger asked.

  Ms. Hugger liked me sometimes. She had a boyfriend named Sven and she was going for the all-time teaching record of one year with Sara Malvern. There should have been a plaque.

  I looked up from my notebook. “Partially.”

  I only talk to four people: my mom sometimes, my dad always, Ms. Hugger sometimes, and my current psychiatrist, Dr. Ring, on Tuesday nights. I hadn’t talked to anyone else for three years, six months, and eleven days. It was a Tuesday, so it was going to be a very talkative day.

  “Can I have your full attention?”

  I considered that. I was drawing a picture of myself standing on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, which probably wasn’t critical.

  “Yes,” I said, putting my pen down.

  “Thank you.” She turned back to the board. “Now, if you carry the six—”

  “Can I put my head down?”

  Sometimes I do that during the day. I don’t sleep or anything. Not usually. I just let the world go quiet.

  “We’re almost done—” she said.

  “The answer is forty-six,” I murmured, making a nest with my arms.

  I heard her drawing out the problem and mouthing out the answers as I put my head down. Then she sighed and sat down at her desk. She doesn’t like when I jump ahead of her, but I do it a lot. My brain solves things easily. It remembers everything. Well, except how to behave.

  “What are you thinking about?” Ms. Hugger asked.

  I tried to pick out one thing. “That it would be nice to be in normal class sometimes.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “We can try that again one day—”

  “No,” I said. “Strike that. It would be nice to be a normal student sometimes.”

  Ms. Hugger walked over with a pillow. She always has one ready.

  “In ten minutes we should get back to work.”

  “Okay.”

  She crouched down next to me and spoke softly. “Are you about to start a Game?”

  I had my eyes open, but they were full of sweater. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Which one?”

  I thought about that. I could feel the tightness in my chest, like a bubble being blown up and stretching out just below my lungs, pushing everything out … the air and the calm and Sara.

  “False Alarm, I think,” I whispered.

  It was the Game that meant panic attack.

  “What do you call a fish without an eye?” she asked, squeezing my arm.

  I tried to think. “What?”

  “Fsh.”

  I smiled into my sweater. She gave me a pat on the back and went to her desk. I had avoided a panic attack, and that was nice. But I wasn’t stupid. Normal kids didn’t have to put their heads down in class. They didn’t need Ms. Hugger to tell them jokes. And so I hugged the pillow and rocked back and forth for a little while, letting my hair fall over my eyes like someone had pulled the curtains shut. The other kids in school had a name for me. Psycho Sara.

  They weren’t wrong.

  * * *

  A boy sat down across from me. He was new to Dr. Ring’s office.

  His black hair was curly and sprinkled with blond highlights that had almost grown out. His skin was dark, even darker under his eyes. It looked like he had been crying recently. He glanced up at me, and I turned back to my magazine. Dr. Ring said I shouldn’t stare at people. It makes them uncomfortable. But the boy turned back to his cell phone, so I snuck another look.

  I decided he was about twelve. He was wearing black Nike shorts, white sneakers, and a faded plaid button-down. He was alone, which was no surprise. Dr. Ring liked parents to drop us off at the door so that the kids “took ownership of their therapy” and didn’t feel like we were trapped here, even though we were. My mom was in the car doing a crossword puzzle and would pounce on me if I made a break for it. I know because it happened one time.

  Dr. Ring appeared at the door to his office. He was tall and thin and pinkish-pale, with a few wispy tufts of white hair that liked to stand up. I guess the whole thing was technically his office; a glass door from outside led to a small lobby with dark green walls like a forest and then two more doors—one to the therapy room and the other to a bathroom. There was also a desk for a receptionist, but Dr. Ring never seemed to hire one, so it was usually just me and some fake ferns hanging out until he was ready for the appointment. And now this new boy, apparently.

  “Come in, James,” Dr. Ring said. “Sara, we are just going to have a quick chat. I will be with you soon.”

  Then he disappeared back into his office.

  James st
ood up and went to join him. He looked at me and smiled.

  “Hey, Sara.”

  James closed the door behind him, and I sat there, frowning.

  I picked up a magazine and read about developments in brain science. None of it seemed like it was going to fix me.

  They were in there for twenty-two minutes. There is a clock on the wall that alternates between silence and the loudest noise in the world, depending on your level of attention. Then James walked out and smiled at me again. I looked away because he was a stranger and therefore not to be trusted. But the way he stared at me made my skin tingle. I was glad he left.

  “Sorry, Sara,” Dr. Ring said. “Come on in.”

  I sat down on the red corduroy couch that was reserved for crazies, and Dr. Ring sat in the red corduroy chair beside it, which was reserved for him. He was nice enough. He liked clipboards and talking about the past, but I think that was his job description.

  “What does he have?” I asked, looking toward the exit.

  Dr. Ring raised his bushy white eyebrows. He did that a lot.

  “You know I can’t tell you that,” Dr. Ring said.

  His voice was low and sounded a little British. I know because I watch Doctor Who.

  “I’ll figure it out,” I said.

  He sighed. “I don’t doubt it. Ms. Hugger told me you nearly had a panic attack today. Or what is it you call it?”

  “False Alarm,” I muttered.

  They had set up a support network so Ms. Hugger could call my mom and dad and doctor and probably my friends if I had any. I imagined sometimes their faces popped up in holograms around a table and they said things like “the old evil has risen” or “there has been a disturbance.”

  “We might want to look at upping your medications to thirty milligrams. It would help.”

  “Why not sixty?” I said softly, staring at the dusty books behind him. The titles were Talking Through Grief and Child Psychology and The Mysterious Brain. Dr. Ring let me borrow them, and I had read every single one. None of those had fixed me either.

  “Sara, you know the medications are helpful. You know what it was like before.”