Her (27 page)

When I saw her, I had a feeling that she was Dr. Pelchat’s patient. He seemed to get the hard cases. And she had a mean look to her. Rocky, who'd been talking to the new girl, was being pulled into the office with Dr. Pelchat for his one-on-one session.  I watched as Rocky dragged himself behind Dr. Pelchat, his expression stubborn and miserable. I could tell by his body language that he was dreading it.

I dreaded Dr. Cuvo not coming back. I remembered how angry I had been when I had first met him. I had been so mean to him. Now I wanted him to know that he wasn’t the one I was mad at.

I just didn’t know how to talk to Dr. Cuvo when I’d had a chance. I didn’t know how to respond to someone who looked at me with so much tenderness and care. I didn’t know how to get out what I really needed to say to someone who I didn’t know really wanted to listen to me. It wasn’t pride. It was shame for the life that I lived and for who I was. I felt, at that moment, that if Dr. Cuvo had been there, I would have let out everything. I could have just poured my heart out to him about everything. I would have told him about that night I'd taken all of those pills, and he would have known why I'd finally picked up that knife and had tried to cut as deep as I could to make the pain go away and to finally get to sleep. I wanted to sleep. I wished he were here.

“Excuse you!” screamed a harsh voice into my ear while delivering me a rough shove to get me out of her way.

I looked up, and the hazel-eyed, new girl was giving me a cold stare as she walked off with Geoffrey. Wondering what her problem was, I walked over to one of the tables and sat down. The room seemed empty without Janine and the rest of my group. Most of the other kids who were here were ones I didn’t really know. I folded my arms on top of the table and lay my head down.

When I looked up, Daniel was suddenly hovering over me, staring down. This made me bury my head quickly in my arms. Maybe he was just daydreaming, I thought to myself. But when I peeked from under my arms, his eyes were aware and they were gazing at me.

“What?” I shot at him.

He shuddered in shock from the harsh tone of my voice.

“You’re moody,” he noticed.

I told him, “I just don’t like when people stare at me.”

He looked down at my bandaged wrists. “Are those coming off anytime soon?” he asked.

“I don’t know, probably,” I answered.

“Have you seen what your wrists look like yet?”

This question shocked me because I didn’t expect Daniel to ask me something like that.

“Yes! Of course,” I lied to him.

He was staring at me again. He probably didn’t believe me.

“How long has it been since you decided to try to hack yourself to death?” Daniel asked.

I wanted to kick him hard from underneath the table where we were sitting. I lifted my head from my arms and held up three fingers. “It’s been three weeks. Three weeks since I tried to hack myself to death,” I told him as calmly as possible. I didn’t want him to see that he had gotten to me.

“Three weeks? That’s it?” he asked.

He pushed his arms out to me and turned them over to show me his wrists. He had big, bulging scars from where he had once self-injured. The scars were pure white. There were faded lines through some of the scars where he had had stitches.

“When I had cut my wrists, I was in the regular hospital for a long time before they put me into a place like Bent Creek. See, I had cut so deep that I had almost hit the artery. That was my goal. Instead, I nicked my vein. And, well, all that did was make a big mess. But it was deep enough, I guess, for the time.” He left his wrists out and stared down at them as if he were reminiscing. “Man,” he said. “If I had hit that artery, there would have been no turning back. They would not have been able to save me. Would they?”

My eyes softened to his. I don’t know what came over me. Somehow, I was affected by everything he had said. I slowly reached out and let the tips of my fingers touch the scars. I ran my fingers over his painful-looking scars. He jumped as if I had shocked him, but he didn’t snatch his arms away. I traced his scars with my fingers, and I almost felt like crying. He sighed deeply. I had hoped he had realized that I wasn’t going to hurt him.

“Were you serious?” I asked him as I stared down at his wrists and gently caressed them.

“I guess,” he said. “I don’t know.” His voice sounded different, like it had gotten deeper.

I looked up at him. Our eyes locked. He quickly snatched his arms away and put his hands in his lap. I wanted to hug him.

“How old were you?” I asked, even though he wasn’t even looking at me anymore.

“I was thirteen. My dad had just been locked up, and my mom had gone into this deep depression. She wouldn’t go to work. She wouldn’t even get up to go to the store to get food. I didn’t know what to do to make her happy again. So I just...”

Daniel seemed choked up. He took a deep breath and held it like he was holding back his tears. I held back my own tears for him.

“You were so young,” I said.

“How old were you when you started cutting?” he asked me suddenly.

“I don’t really remember,” I admitted to him. “I may have been about thirteen or fourteen. It’s like there’s a big gap in my memory around that time.”

“Why?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I remember bits and pieces from that time. I can recall scenes like a movie, but some things I just can’t see too clearly. It’s like it was just taken away from me. I don’t know.”

Daniel leaned and put his cheek into the palm of his hand while his elbow rested on top of the table.

“I remember everything,” he said.

“When I do cut,” I heard myself say, “It’s almost like it’s not even me doing it.”

“Who is it?” he asked, as if we were just having a normal conversation.

I wanted to tell him about Mr. Sharp, but that didn’t seem right. It might have scared him. Therefore, I just shrugged my shoulders and looked away from his deep eyes.

“Kristen?” He called out when I looked away from him.

The sound of my name coming from his lips made me feel strange. It was something about his voice. He made it sound so delicate. It made me feel like something I had missed a long time ago.

Daniel continued, “What do you first notice about a person when you meet them?”

I smiled, almost wanting to laugh. It seemed like something random at the time. “Their smile,” I answered honestly.

He smiled and said, “You like smiles.”

I nodded. “What about you, Daniel?” I asked him.

“I notice,” he said, thinking about his answer, “the eyes.” I noticed he was staring into mine as he said this.

What was he doing? I wondered. 

I asked, “Who was that girl in that picture you drew?”

“Who?”

“Remember, you were drawing the other day and you didn’t want me to see it.” I smiled, remembering how he’d been behaving.

He was not smiling now. “Do you have my drawing?”

I didn’t want to answer, seeing how he seemed a little irritated.

“No,” I lied. “I just saw it on the floor, and I glanced at it. It’s probably in the trash now.”

“Oh,” he sighed. He looked down and started playing with his shoelaces.

I didn’t know how to take that. Was he disappointed or relieved?

“So,” I pressed on, “who was that?”

“It was my girlfriend,” he said in a low voice.

“I thought you didn’t have a girlfriend,” I told him.

He looked up, shocked. “Where did you hear that?”

I thought about Janine and her big mouth.

“No one. I guess I just...” I didn’t know what to say.

He shrugged it off.

“She’s at home. She’s probably writing me another letter,” he laughed. “She was always bad at reading and writing. She hated talking on the phone. She was so complicated.” He was blushing for some reason. “She definitely doesn’t smile. But under her runny mascara, which she never could put on right, she did. Only, she did it with her eyes. Smiles and eyes. That’s all she was.” He took a deep breath. “Is,” he corrected himself.

I felt my heart melt. Then envy crept inside, and I shook it off quickly.

“Will she come visit you?” I forced myself to say.

He chuckled. “Probably not,” he admitted. “She hates hospitals. I mean she
really
hates them. Once we were walking back to my house when we were coming home from the movies, and it just started raining outside. It was thundering and lightning. The only place that we could go to try to wait the storm out was a hospital that we were passing by. She was more scared of the hospital than the storm. She said that she would rather be struck by lightning than wait inside of a hospital. We ran all the way to my place in the storm.”

He kept laughing as though it was his happiest memory, and he never wanted to let go. He seemed to be holding on firm to it. I tried to smile back at him, but it was too hard. His story seemed too sad, for some reason. There was something else about his story. It made me sad, and I wanted to deny it.

My insides began to tremble, and I felt my skin grow cold. I looked at the clock. Visiting hours were coming soon. I could feel the temperature in the room dropping.

My mother came a half-hour after visiting hours began. As soon as she gave me my blanket, I wrapped it around me.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said, hugging her. I allowed myself to warm up to her.

She smiled and said, “You must be feeling better.”

“It stays cold in here,” I told her. “And they only give you these really thin, white blankets. It’s kind of creepy.”

She laughed.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just nice to see you smiling again. You must be getting better. Are they treating you well?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m fine.” I smelled my blanket. It smelled like wild orchids.

“I brought your school books so that you can get your homework done while you are in here. You’re home schooling, so you have to keep up with that.”

I shoved the books aside and continued to snuggle my blanket.

“Here’s your brush,” she said as she started removing items from a plastic bag. “Make sure you use that, Kristen. Your hair is a mess.”
             

My smile disappeared. Just when I thought that it was okay to start smiling around her again, she reminded me why I couldn’t.

“Here’s a new toothbrush. They took the toothpaste. I guess you can’t have that on your own. She said that they will give it to you in the morning. There’s some extra underwear that I got out of your drawers at home.” She sat the bag down on the floor next to my chair.

“Thanks, Mom.” I said.

“Sure. You needed that stuff, right? So, I brought it.”

Afraid that there would be awkward silence, I spoke quickly. “How are Nicky and Ally?”

“They are fine,” she said. “They are with John’s mother. Mariah is going to watch them until I get home. Nick is getting on my nerves about coming to visit you. But even if he could come see you, I wouldn’t let them come here.” She shook her head at me.

I understood why.

“I don’t want them to see me here,” I told her.

“Think about it,” she said. “You want to set an example for them. “What kind of example is this supposed to be? Do you want to be the big sister who they learn what
not
to do from?”

I shook my head.

She continued. “I really need you to get yourself together, Kristen. All of this teenage depression stuff has to stop. You are getting too old for this. I know that you have been through a lot, but you don’t see Nick pulling this kind of crap. Besides, I don’t want him to look at you and think that, just because you are doing these bad things, it’s okay for him to deal with his anger like this. He has had it a lot worse than you have, and he doesn’t go around cutting himself with knives and swallowing pills for attention. It doesn’t help anyone when you’re like this.”

It took every part of me not to cry. I felt a tear dangling in the corner of my eye. I blinked, and unfortunately, it fell. The first tear ran down my cheek, and I sniffed. Other tears followed. This made Mom angry.

“Get a hold of yourself,” she said. “I’m not yelling at you. For God’s sake, Kristen. Why are you crying? You see? This is your problem. I just can’t have a normal conversation with you. You just start crying, and then won’t say anything. Will you just tell me why you did it? Will you, please?”

I put my hands to my face. I hid behind them and sobbed harder.

She growled angrily, “Kristen, what the hell is your problem? I am your mother. You should be able to talk to me. What is it? How can I help you?”

I uncovered my face. I was stunned. She wanted to help me.

“What can
you
do to help
me
?” I said to her with red eyes and a tear-drenched face.