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My Secret Boyfriend

For days, a movie of our kiss has run over and over in my brain.
But since Sylvia’s been busy at Blue Hawaii, Roman’s gone there every day after school so I haven’t had a ride to Brookside. And I actually have homework to catch up on since I’ve been letting things slide a little. But in my head, I’ve been making plans for us—places for us to go and things for us to do when he gets out of Brookside, when he’s ready to get on with his life.

In my head, things work out for us, even though he’s older. Even though I have no idea where he’ll live or exactly what he’ll do. The details of our future are sketchy, but our kiss is part of every cell of my body. I can see his face leaning into mine, and he is beautiful.

Bobby, my secret boyfriend.

When Things Fall Apart

The second I saw Becca’s face, I knew something wasn’t right.
Something happened. Something terrible. She was pale and serious. My body was tense all over. I saw Roman’s face, and I knew it wasn’t just me.

“Becca, where’s Bobby?”

“He’s okay. He’ll
be
okay.”

“He’ll be okay? What do you mean? What happened? What’s going on?”

My alarm bells were going off, adrenaline pumping, senses in overdrive.

“Okay.
First
, remember. He’s okay,” then she blurted out the rest, “He tried to kill himself last night.”

Oh God
. I felt sick, like I needed to throw up.
Oh my God
. Hot all over. Nauseous.

“How?” I asked, desperate for information.

Becca looked me directly in the eyes like she was really trying to focus. “Dante found him. His wrists were bleeding, but the cuts weren’t too deep—thank God—so he didn’t
really
hurt himself.”

“How did he—”

“Does it matter?”

“Becca!”

She sighed. “I don’t know. He found something sharp. Maybe scissors. Apparently, it isn’t an easy thing—killing yourself that way,” she said softly, like she was trying to handle me carefully.

“Where is he now?”

“They took him to County. He’s on a seventy-two-hour hold. They’re observing him to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself again.”

There was a knot in my throat, and it was hard to swallow, but I got the words out, “
Why
, Becca?
Why
did he do it?”

“His parents came to see him yesterday, and they ended up getting in this big blowout fight—in front of everybody. Bobby was yelling at his dad, his dad was yelling at him—kept calling him ‘Robert.’ ‘Robert’ this and ‘Robert’ that. Then they left. They were all upset. I heard his dad say something to him like, ‘You can’t stay here forever, you know. You need to get on with your life, son. You’ve got to suck it up and live in the real world.’ It really set him off.”

“God, Becca,” I said, starting to sob.

“And I
tried
to talk to him, but he wouldn’t let me. He literally pushed me away when I tried to reach out to him. I’ve never seen him like that, so upset.”

Roman hugged Becca, and she just kind of folded into his arms.

“When will he be back?”

“He won’t,” she said quietly. “Dante told me he’d go somewhere after his hold, but it won’t be back here. I’m so sorry, Stacy.”

And she really did seem sorry. Her eyes were wet, like she was on the verge of tears. And she didn’t say “I told you so,” even though she
had
told me so.

“I need to go.”

My heart was broken. Shattered in a million pieces. The knot in my throat was so big, I couldn’t swallow. The tears came, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Outside, I sat on one of the little benches in front of Brookside, and the tears streamed down my face. Of course, I didn’t have any tissues on me, so I had to keep wiping my eyes with the sleeve of my jacket. My sleeve was getting soaked. Thoughts raced through my head:
How could he do this to
me
? How could he do
that
?

What about me?

What about me, Bobby?

I wondered if I’d ever see him again, and I felt shattered inside. It was as if the whole world had gone crazy, not just my sister. It was like the feeling you get each time you learn something new about the world, something terrible or horrible that you couldn’t have dreamed of on your own. It leaves you raw and numb inside.

I sat there on the bench feeling cold and miserable. Dazed.

How did I get
here
?

So Tell Me:
When Was It Again
That My Life Didn’t Suck?

At school, I didn’t want to talk to anybody. No one.
And when Chad saw me in English and asked if I was okay, I mumbled, “Having a bad day,” and barely looked at him. Instead of meeting the girls for lunch, I hid in the library—something I’ve never done before, but I just couldn’t face Rose and Bethany and their happy faces and their chatter. I just didn’t
feel
like explaining to anybody why I looked like I’d crawled into this bottomless pit of despair.

There wasn’t one single person at school who knew what I was going through, who could possibly relate. Really, how many girls out there can say they’re in love with a guy in a psych ward who’s on a seventy-two hour-hold because he tried to kill himself? I’m pretty sure I’m the only one in school who has this problem. The only other person in the world who understands is Becca, my schizophrenic sister, which sounds like a joke, but it isn’t.

I told Roman no when he offered me a ride to go see Becca.

“There’s no way I can go there,” I said. It was too painful. Too raw. Too much. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“C’mon, get in. I’ll give you a ride home.”

The look on his face was too sympathetic to just blow him off. His big brother side had kicked in. He drove me home, and we didn’t say anything. I looked out the car window and everything was gray—sky, trees, grass.

I mumbled “bye” as Roman dropped me off, and I went inside, nudging Charles away with my foot as he ran over to meet me. Instantly, I felt bad and picked him up. “Who’s a good kitty? Who’s a sweet baby?” I buried my face in his fur.

The Truth Comes Out

I caught Mom after dinner as she was about to light up.
I stepped outside to join her.

“I’m trying to quit, I promise,” she said as she exhaled a big cloud of smoke.

“I know, Mom. It’s okay.”

She stared at me, her eyes narrowed. She was onto me.

“Stacy, what’s wrong?”

Mom can read all of us girls like a book. There was no use telling her I was fine, so I told her about Bobby. The last thing I wanted was for her to cry, but I
had
to tell her. I needed to tell someone.

“Oh, baby. Come here.”

And she put her cigarette down and reached out to me and took my hands in hers, and that
really
got me. Then when I couldn’t see her anymore, because my eyes were just filled, I wiped the tears off on my sleeve.

“Poor Bobby. That poor boy. Oh, his parents. I can’t imagine how they must be feeling.” She picked her cigarette up and took a drag, then put it down again. “You know, Stacy, I was so afraid you’d get hurt.” She was wiping her eyes now. “He’s a troubled young man. I was so afraid you’d get your heart broken. And I’m your
mother
, I’m supposed to
protect
you from things like that.”

“I know, Mom. But how
do
you protect your heart from getting broken? How do you manage that?” I asked, begging her for an answer.

Mom took another drag of her cigarette and stood there for a minute.

“Sometimes the only way is not to get started, you know what I mean? You have to be careful who you get involved with. But even
that
doesn’t always work. Sometimes you can’t really tell what someone’s like on the inside until you really get to know them.”

My mom, who’s been so strong since my dad died, stood next to me with tears rolling down her face.

“Stacy, sometimes life is just hard, you know? Too hard. I just wish sometimes it could be a little easier.” Then she sighed and shook her head, like it was too much to deal with, and she kind of seemed to just brush off her sadness, release it.

It was starting to get cold, and my nose was already numb at the tip. We stood next to each other on the patio, not saying anything while she finished her cigarette, then she stubbed it out and turned to me, saying in a soft voice, “You know what we need? We need not to be sad for a while. We need a good laugh. Come on.”

I followed her back inside, and I watched as she rummaged through our TV cabinet, through our collection of DVDs.

“This is what we need right now.” And she held up
Airplane
, the dumbest movie in the world.

“Oh, no, Mom. Not
that
.”

“Oh, yes.” And she gave a little smile, and we sat on the couch together, watching the dumbest movie in the world, saying lines along with the actors, because this was one of my dad’s favorites, and we’ve seen it a million times.

Surely you can’t be serious.

I am serious…and don’t call me Shirley
.

If only real life were more like the movies, where you can just change the plot around when you need to, where the girl and boy ride off into the sunset, always a happy ending. Not that I want life to be like the movie Airplane though, because that would just be weird, and life can be weird enough as it is.

Marking Time

At work at my ridiculous job, I spent hours
that felt like days going through Sylvia’s files and shredding old receipts. The shredder was starting to feel like a family member, I’d spent so much time feeding it paper. When I finished shredding, Sylvia handed me a stack of about a million holiday cards to
hand address
to make them seem personal.

Just when I felt like sticking a fork into my arm so I could actually feel something, it was time to go home.

When Roman dropped me off, I noticed that our condo didn’t look like Christmas at all. No mistletoe, no wreath on the door. Mom will probably drag the tree out of the garage soon, though, when she realizes that Christmas is less than two weeks away and she hasn’t done anything to prepare for it.

I gave up on hearing from Bobby. After asking Becca about fifty million times if she’d heard anything about him and her just shaking her head; after asking every person at Brookside, including Dante, and him telling me, “No, baby. I don’t know where Bobby is. And even if I did know, I couldn’t tell you,” after asking every random person, including Katie with the wide eyes, I gave up.

It feels like I’m marking time, counting the days until winter break. At school, I’m just going through the motions, going with the flow, trying to be as sociable as I can. Since nothing is obviously wrong with me, like my leg in a cast or something, nobody seems to notice anything at all.

In Algebra, I sat there as Ms. Harper passed out the tests with the familiar queasy feeling that I usually feel before a math test. But this time when I looked at my sheet, at all the problems, the numbers actually made
sense
to me, like they were actual numbers and not some strange, foreign symbols.

When I finished, I put my paper on Ms. Harper’s desk, and I felt pretty confident except for two problems I was a little iffy on. I sat back at my seat and thought about Bobby, who I’ve managed to think about only twenty-three hours a day instead of twenty-four.

Maybe we’ll meet again someday. Maybe.