Wake (56 page)

“Iris” comes to a close, and it’s my turn to pick. I scrol through Willa’s list of songs, looking for her Great Big Sea collection. We need something upbeat, something to remind us of how our weird friendship began, and I have a particular song in mind: “Bad As I Am.” Willa is mildly amused by this selection. She can’t help but tap her toe to the beat.

When it’s her turn to pick she takes us back down again with “Mad World” sung by Gary Jules. I hold Willa a little tighter, stroking circles on her wrists. It’s a simple piano melody and the words are slow and measured, like something in a dream. The lyrics could have been written about Willa.

“You dream about dying?” I whisper.

“You do too.” It’s not a question. I both love and hate how she just knows me like that.

“Never of cancer,” I tell her.

“Of course not. That’s too obvious.” She sighs. “You always die by falling.”

“How’d you know?”

Willa shrugs. There’s a sort of finality to it, like she isn’t going to tell me now or ever. “I always lie down alone, like a wild animal in the woods, and it all just slips away.”

“Willa…was it really the meds?” I hope she’ll know what I mean without me having to really say it. I don’t like to think of her trying to kill herself.

Willa shrugs. “You can’t tell that you’re fucked in the head when you’re fucked in the head.”

“Was that the only time you thought of…?”

“No.” Willa turns down the volume on her iPod so we can hear each other better. “And yes. I experimented with cutting, but that didn’t last long. I just wanted to try it ‘cause some of the other kids in Group were doing it.”

“You harmed yourself to fit in?”

“I wanted to see if it was really a satisfying release. They were just little nicks. I used the blade from a pencil sharpener—can’t do much damage with that. It didn’t make me feel any different, so I stopped.”

Willa turns the volume back up, effectively cutting off this line of conversation. The song ends and she passes the iPod over her shoulder to me.

I want to suggest “Jumper” by Third Eye Blind. “Too much?” I ask.

Willa rolls her eyes and mutters something that I probably don’t want to hear. The only word I catch is ‘dumbass.’ I opt for “Lightning Crashes” by Live instead.

“I’m kind of glad I told you when I did,” Willa says suddenly. “It saved us a lot of wasted effort.”

“What?”

“The way you reacted, the way we can barely be friends now—it just proves that we didn’t feel that strongly about each other. A crush crumbles easily like that.”

“I don’t
not
like you.”

“I don’t not like you either.” Willa looks over her shoulder at me. “But an ‘us’ wouldn’t work. There’s no trust. We can barely manage respect.”

I want to say ‘give it time,’ but I don’t want to make a promise that I might not be able to keep.

“Did you think about an ‘us,’ before?”

“I wondered.”

“About what?”

“A lot of things,” she answers vaguely. “It doesn’t matter now. The failure of it all hinges on the fact that, once again, I am my mistake. I can’t undo that; just have to live with it.” If I didn’t know her I might have missed the undertone of pain in her voice. It saddens me to know she thinks of herself that way, bogged down and isolated by guilt.

I tighten my arm around her middle, holding her securely. “You’re not your mistake.”

“But you still don’t forgive me.”

“No, I don’t.” I don’t think I can. It will color how I look at Willa from now on, but…but I’m not done looking at her.

“That’s okay,” she says softly. “You’re not alone.”

It’s a strange sort of truce, this. We don’t hate each other. We don’t exactly
like
each other. We’re friends in the most intimate sense of the word. We’ve apologized, but not forgiven. We’ve trusted and sacrificed for a payoff that isn’t clear yet. It feels…right. I’m content with the arrangement. I ask Willa if she is and she answers in a tone of surprise: “Yeah. I am.” Her warm little hand laces its fingers with mine. “This was really…honest.”

“That’s new for us.”

Willa snorts with wry amusement. She takes the iPod and announces that we need something relaxing. “Something that sounds like a lul aby.”

“Are you sleepy?”

“I’m coasting.” She puts on “Possibility” by Sierra Noble and tells me it’s her go-to on nights she can’t sleep. My go-to on sleepless nights is the sound of Willa’s voice. I don’t tell her that.

Willa falls asleep first. I stay awake to watch her, enjoying the slow cadence of her breathing and the simple fact that she’s comfortable enough to fall asleep next to me. I can’t stay awake for long, though.

It’s the first peaceful sleep I’ve had all week.

*

A hand on my shoulder roughly tugs me back to consciousness. Frank Kirk has quite a firm grip. My eyelids flutter and he turns my shoulder so I’m lying on my back. He looks pissed off, but I guess I would be too if I found some guy in my sister’s bed.

“What are you doing here?”

The sound and movement makes Willa stir.

“I, uh…”

“Downstairs.” I don’t hesitate to obey. I know the man has at least two firearms in the house and I’m already on his shit list.

Willa’s bedroom door shuts behind me. I head for the stairs, but I can still hear the conversation through the door.

“What’s this all about?” I feel bad that Willa is the one being gril ed for something we share equal responsibility for. I stop to listen on the upper landing, but I can’t hear Willa’s reply.

“You don’t
know
?” His tone pisses me off, even if he is her guardian. He asks her if ‘things’ are ‘serious’ with ‘that boy.’ Whatever the hell that means, in the most condescending terms.

Willa answers no and Frank demands to know why I was in her bedroom.

“We were just hanging out. We fell asleep.”

He tells her not to piss on his head and tell him it’s raining. “You were just hanging out, all wrapped around each other, and fell asleep?”

“Stranger things have happened.” Maybe I should reopen the question of Willa’s sanity if she’s willing to be cheeky at a time like this.

“You’re grounded.”

Willa laughs—actually laughs out loud—and says that grounding is moot in a sleepy town like Smiths Falls. She should have kept her mouth shut, because the next thing she loses are her phone privileges for talking back.

“So where were you last night?” What a strange question to ask. Her tone is light and genuinely interested, like she’s not in the middle of being punished.

“You’re going to sit up here and think about what you’ve done,” Frank says. Willa’s bedroom door opens and I hurry down the stairs. “What are you still doing here?” he calls after me. “Go home.”

I head out the door as quickly as I can. I check my watch and realize that Willa and I were asleep for over an hour.

As I dig through my pockets for the car keys I realize I left my backpack with the photo album upstairs on Willa’s floor. Shit. She’ll have time to go through the whole thing now, when I’m not around to influence her impressions with an explanation of each photo. It’s a hundred page record of what a pathetic, sick bastard I am.

I stop on the sidewalk and consider going back to the house. What’s worse, interacting with Willa’s pissed off brother or permitting her open access to my photos?

A paper airplane to the side of the head interrupts the formation of my mental pros and cons list. I look over to see Willa leaning out her bedroom window. She points to the paper airplane on the lawn and I bend to pick it up.

Sorry. He’s not usually rude. He fears history will repeat itself.

I cross the lawn to stand under her bedroom window. “Can I have my album back?”

Willa disappears inside for a moment and comes back with my bag. She drops it carefully out the window and it doesn’t take much to notice the weight difference. She took the photo album out.

“Give it back.”

“I’ll give it to you at school tomorrow.” Willa withdraws her head and shoulders from the window.

“Just throw it down.”

“I’ll trade you.” Willa leaves the window, and when she comes back and throws a smaller blue book down to me. “See you at school.” She closes the window, ending all communication until eight o’clock tomorrow. Her mouthing off means I can’t call her and I don’t have her email address to bother her in cyberspace.

I look down at what she gave me in place of my photo album: a blue canvas book with
Journal

embossed in silver italics across the front. Willa handed over her diary? She doesn’t strike me as the diary-writing type. It could be considered rude to read this right in front of her window—she could be watching—but I still flip it open to the first page. Another surprise: instead of Willa’s drunk-toddler scrawl, the page lines are fill ed with very neat cursive. The flyleaf says:
This book belongs to T. Kirk. If found,

please return to…
This could be interesting.

Willa: May 8 to 12

Monday

I get called down to the main office just before lunch. I trudge over to the administration office and present my pink slip of summons to the secretary.

“They’re waiting for you. Third door on the left.” She points down the hall , past the principal’s office where other administrative offices are kept. I head to the third door and find
S. Neil – Guidance

Counselor
written on the nameplate. I bet this has something to do with the courses I requested for next year—or rather, didn’t request. The registration form is still buried in my locker somewhere. I sort of forgot it in the midst of…stuff.

I knock and Mr. Neil calls me in. I step around the door to find that I’m not the only guest in this crowded little office. Frank is waiting for me too, and the top of Mr. Neil’s desk is covered in brochures for counseling programs in our area.

“Have a seat, Wilhelmina.” Mr. Neil gestures to the only vacant chair in the room. I don’t bother to correct him about my name. This will all be over faster if I don’t give attitude. Just let them shepherd me into whatever youth group will best satisfy their anxiety, bullshit my way through the system, and come out the other side having lost only a few hours in therapy and gained some freedom.

“How are you feeling today, Wilhelmina?” I know the trick he’s using. It’s the same one that police use to negotiate with hostage takers and people threatening suicide—cal the person by his or her name as much as possible to show that complete attention is focused on the person and his or her issues. I hate it.

“Hungry.”

Mr. Neil chuckles at my little ‘joke.’ “I meant emotional y. How are you coping with school?”

“It’s alright.” I glance at Frank out of the corner of my eye. He doesn’t look happy. Did he expect me to walk in here and pour my soul out to a guy who looks like he should be breaking eggs on the floor of the Quick Stop?

“Have you made friends since moving here?”

“Yep.”

“Good friends?”

“Very good.” They treat me like any other girl, and Jem and I are giving acquaintanceship another try.

That’s about as good as can be expected on all fronts, given the circumstances.

“Your guardian and I were having a discussion before you came in.” Does he think I’m so stupid I can’t figure that out? “We think you could benefit from participating in some form of counseling, given your history.”

Given my history. I wonder how much Frank told him. He must be here on his lunch break—he probably wants to wrap this up quickly so he can get back to the hospital.

“And how long will I have to behave myself before everyone stops looking at me like I’m a problem to be fixed?”

They stare at me.

“I’ve been off meds for over a year. I’ve been behaving for six months. Does this pigeonhole have an exit?”

“No one is suggesting that you need to be fixed,” Mr. Neil says gently. “Counseling isn’t a punishment.

We wouldn’t suggest it unless we thought it would help you.”

I hate the way he uses ‘we,’ like he cared about me before my case was brought to his attention, or like he’ll care after I leave this office. It makes Frank, my parents and the school seem like a united front that I can’t possibly stand up to by myself.

“Whatever you want.”

Because the reality is that I can’t stand up to them alone.

*

By the time I get to the cafeteria, the lunch line has died down. I grab something to eat and head for the usual table, which is crowded and noisy. There’s only one chair left available, between Joe Moore and Jem, who has graciously decided to sit here again. There’s a hierarchy to the seating arrangement.

The only person willing to sit next to Jem is Hannah. Joe got the adjacent seat because he isn’t popular enough to merit a better place in the pecking order.

“Where were you?” Jem asks. Hannah leans forward to look past him and asks me if everything is okay.

“Just a problem with my electives.”

Hannah asks what I’m taking next year. It would be great if I had an actual answer.

“Uh…Art, and…Physics.”

Jem blurts out: “But you suck at both.”

“Dude.”

“I’ve seen your stick figures. They look like shit.”

“I bet you’d be really good at abstract art,” Hannah says in an attempt to smooth over Jem’s jackassery. I’m not that fussed. This is just normal Jem.

“I can finger paint.” I flip the bird at Jem and he casually steals the juice box off my tray.

“The art teacher’s ridiculously mel ow, anyway,” he says as he unwraps the straw. “You’ve got to
try
to fail that class. You’re boned for Physics, though.”

“Some of us actually study for our classes.”

Jem gives me a look of obvious condescension. “Willa, you’re a woman; you can’t do math.”

I snatch the juice box back and leave him with the straw. Hannah looks like she might be genuinely offended.

“No secret what you’re taking next year—the same courses you’ll fail this year.” I hold the juice box out of reach as he makes another grab for it.