“Oh hey, what’s up.”
We stand face-to-face in the doorway.
“Nice hair,” I blurt, and instantly regret it. For one thing, it isn’t true. Mixed in with the brown and blond and orange are now a few strands of blue. I don’t think nice is what she’s going for.
But she ignores me, points her head toward Ms. Haas, and mouths, Good luck. Then she slips soundlessly down the hall.
I wait in the doorway for Ms. Haas to notice me. She’s pretty old and kind of heavy, but not in a bad way. Her gray hair is pulled back in a bun and she’s wearing purple feathers as earrings.
She sees me and says, “You must be Caitlin. Come in.”
Ms. Haas is the school therapist. Although I have been invited many times, this is the first time I’ve been in her office. It’s small and decorated in a way that’s a little too inviting. The floor is covered with a bright yellow shag rug, and all the chairs are big and soft. Trees and sunsets and other nonthreatening images hang on the walls. I swear one of the pictures is by Ansel Adams—below a tall, strong-looking tree, the caption reads: Sky’s the limit. Disgusting. I choose the chair farthest away from Ms. Haas’s desk and try not to sink too far into it.
She introduces herself and talks about all the “wonderful services” she’s here to provide. I try to tune her out. When she’s finished, she asks me, “Do you know why you’re here?”
“Yeah,” I say.
She beams. “Great. Why?”
“Because Ms. Delani doesn’t know how to deal with anything or even communicate at all, so she feels the need to hand me over to you,” I say.
Ms. Haas leans back in her chair and clasps her hands together. I move my shoe across the shag rug, make the yellow darker, then lighter, then darker again. I wait for Ms. Haas to respond.
Then, finally, she says, “I hear that you and Ingrid Bauer were close friends.”
My stomach clenches up. I stop moving my foot and shrug.
“Maybe you would like to spend some time talking with me about her.”
She waits, and when I don’t say anything she says, “Maybe you would like to tell me how you felt when you were with her? What was special about your friendship?”
I try to sit up a little more in the chair, but it’s too soft. I say, “I don’t understand your question. I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”
“Okay,” she says, her voice full of patience. “I’ll tell you where I’m going with this. I’d like to help you voice any feelings of guilt or anger or depression that you might be feeling and to work with you to overcome those feelings. Now”—she leans toward me—“tell me what you would like.”
I look up from the rug to her face. She’s smiling in the nicest way.
“What I would like,” I say, “is to go back to class.”
26
I leave school directly from the office and walk to my house the back way so no one will catch me. When I get home, I shut the door to my room even though no one else is there, just because it feels good to be alone, surrounded by my tacked-up band posters and magazine clippings. I unzip Ingrid’s journal from its pocket and sit down on the chair in the corner by the window. I open to the next entry, hoping Ingrid won’t be drooling all over Ms. Delani again.
I propel myself out of the chair and into my closet, holding Ingrid’s journal gingerly, like it’s too hot to touch. I pull all my clothes out of my hamper, drop the journal to the bottom, and stuff the clothes back on top.
It wasn’t unfair to not want to talk about Jayson every single minute. I mean, I always went along with plans she made to try to bump into him and to casually walk by his house after school sometimes, hoping he’d see us. Just because I wanted to talk about something different for a few minutes a day doesn’t mean that she had to write that about me. And that whole hurting thing? Ingrid and I felt the same about almost everything, so I don’t really understand. Maybe I misunderstood it. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to think about it anymore.
I go outside. I walk past my parents’ garden, where their parsnips are beginning to sprout, to the heap of wood. I pull a long plank off the pile and start to drag it away, down the slope of our backyard. It’s heavier than I thought it would be. I pull the plank past the brick patio, past the flowers, up and over this little hill, to the part where the land stops looking like a backyard and more just like a grassy area with a bunch of trees, almost dense enough to be a forest. I drop the wood at the base of the tree I like best. It’s a big oak. I used to climb it when I was a kid. After I catch my breath, I start back toward the house to get more. If I ever figure out something to build, I’m not going to do it with everyone watching.
Later, my parents call me down to the kitchen. I find Mom washing lettuce and Dad heating olive oil and garlic in a pan.
“What?” I ask them.
Dad turns to me. “Well, hello to you, too,” he says.
He’s taken his tie off and unbuttoned the first two buttons of his dress shirt. He holds his arm out to hug me, but I pretend I don’t notice and open the freezer instead. The cold feels good.
“How was your day, sweetheart?” my mom asks.
“Okay. Do you want help?”
“You could chop that onion,” she says.
I grab a knife from the drawer.
My dad continues some story he must have started to tell my mom before I came down. At first I try to listen, but I have no idea who he’s talking about. I cut the onion in half and my eyes burn.