Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets (19 page)

She seems to be calming down. I feel like being honest and nice has helped. A connection’s been made between us that may not mean much, but it might help get her off Derek’s lawn.

“Fuck you, you faggot!”

She turns away and yells that her fiancé will tear Derek apart.

“I’ll tell him you’ve been stalking me, Derek! I’ll show him the messages you send me! I’ll go to the police first!”

I can’t see Derek in the window or anything, but I bet he’s cringing, worried, maybe laughing, maybe holding his hands over his sisters’ ears.

I trot up to Sally and tell her a bold lie.

“There are other pictures. And text messages that Derek has kept.”

She looks at me. Some kind of sanity pours over her face.

“You won’t prove anything about Derek that he can’t disprove,” I say calmly. “Just take off. He’s not going to call the cops unless you come back to his house. His mom works for the township. It’s not going to go well for you.”

I’m using a voice I’ve never been aware I possessed. An adult voice. One that promises and threatens and has the power to do those things.

Sally gets in her Hummer (owned by her fiancé, of course) and leaves.

Derek comes out and thanks me.

“Are we even?” I ask.

“I think so.” He looks pale and wounded. “What did you tell her?”

“That you had dirty text messages and pictures.”

“How did you know?” He looks embarrassed.

“I just assumed that’s what you kids do these days.”

Derek tells me not to tell anyone else.

“Are all the pretty ones crazy?” I ask.

“Everyone’s crazy,” he mutters.

I take this a little personally.

“I take it you two have completely broken up?” I ask.

“Apparently I’m very hard to let go of.”

“But you’re so undesirable.”

“According to who?” he asks.

“The Internet told me.”

I HELPED DEREK
, for once. This fact rings through my head all weekend. I helped my friend who’s always helping me. I helped the guy I always assume needs no one. My fatherless friend whose life has been messy recently because of me. (Well, because of his own crazy choice for romance, too, but also because of me.)

Dr. Bird says I’ve made a big step in my ability to connect to the outside world.

“Really?” I ask her.

She nods and says I am a passive person discovering active tendencies.

“What do you mean?”

Dr. Bird says sometimes you have to move from a wire with no birds to one with lots of birds.

I tell her that bird metaphors are not her normal method, and she blinks at me.

“I wonder what action you will take next?” she asks, and then attacks the crook of her wing.

I answer that I cannot answer.

Dr. Bird seems dissatisfied with this.

It’s Monday morning. My meeting with Miss Tebler dominates my thoughts. To prepare, I read some Whitman and drink a caffeinated iced beverage from Wawa in a seven-second gulp. I skip homeroom and first period to sit and think about what to ask her even though we’ve never met and I have no idea what she’s going to tell me.

When I walk into the administrative suite, Mrs. Berry waves me over with an anxious hand motion.

“She’s in her office. I told her you were coming in.”

“What do I say? She knows why I’m here, right?”

“Just go in.” Mrs. Berry makes herself look busy as a couple of nameless administration-y people walk by. “Go!”

I knock on the door frame of Tebler’s office. She looks up at me but does not smile. She’s younger than I expected. Almost like she’s just graduated from high school, but as I sit down I see degrees from universities.

“What can I help you with today?” she asks. Exactly the question I fear.

Despite my calm morning of bursting confidence, my mind begins to numb. I feel like one wrong question will seal her mouth shut.

“Mrs. Berry thought you might be willing to talk to me about my sister. Jorie.”

“But Mrs. Berry also knows,” Miss Tebler says, “that I cannot talk about another student with you. Not even about your sister.” She folds her hands on her desk and waits for me to ask another question.

“I have been trying to figure some things out,” I avoid eye contact. “I talked to the vice principal and he said some things that didn’t line up with what Jorie told me and what some other people said.”

“Like I said—”

“Can I tell you what
I
know? And maybe you can help me? Just to
help
me?
Like, so you wouldn’t be betraying confidence or anything?”

“That might be the best way to proceed.” She shifts in her old-school-looking leather chair and opens her hands.

I relax slightly.

I say that my home life lacks the warm, sitcom-y feeling that television promised me for years. I say it’s cartoonish and grim. Since I don’t want her to declare the meeting over due to lack of scholastic relevance, I say that my schoolwork has suffered over the past year because of the chaos in my house.

“Can you tell me what the problem is in the house? Or who?” she asks.

“My dad is a problem. And my mom is a problem. And my sister is a problem because she doesn’t act the way my parents think she should act.”

Miss Tebler nods but does not take notes. I think about what Dr. Dora might say or do. I think about Dr. Bird. Then Beth, Derek, and Jorie.

“I am also a problem, Miss Tebler. I should be honest. But I want to rectify everything.”

I keep things general: how I failed to help Jorie when she needed it, how I made things worse by not taking blame for things I did wrong. I finish by saying that I am doing my best to get Jorie returned to school and welcomed back home in an effort to try to reset the world.

“It might not work,” Miss Tebler says. “You say you want things back to the way they were, but things were apparently not very good.”

“Things are worse now.”

I tell her about Jorie, her friends, her lack of car, furniture, cell phone, joy.

I tell her about my anxieties, my therapy, my need to hug trees.

I feel like my life has become a string of desperate confessions.

“But none of this is really what matters,” I finally say. “Because everyone has problems, right? I want to fix something. I want to know
why
Jorie’s life got dismantled.”

“I’m afraid you have to ask Jorie.”

“Miss Tebler, everyone has a different piece of a story and none of the pieces thread together. Or maybe they do and you’re the final thread.”

Her hands have reclasped.

“James.” Miss Tebler looks over at her bookshelf, as if that will help her condescend to me better. “You need to understand. You think that there’s a grand explanation for what’s happened with Jorie. But there’s not a big story. I assure you that even I don’t know what Jorie has been through. She didn’t tell me any secrets.”

We look at each other. Right now I don’t know who can be called an enemy and who can be called a friend.

“Do you know why she attacked Gina?”

Miss Tebler says nothing.

“Did you know that I found a box of blades in her closet that she used to cut herself?” My voice rises.

“James, please.” It’s hard to tell if Tebler knew about Jorie’s mutilations.

“How about this: Did you know that my mother broke plastic mixing spoons on my sister’s back? Multiple times? That’s how hard she hit her. You know that when my sister went upstairs to stare at the welts on her back, I got my sister’s butterscotch pudding?”

This upsets me, but it also seems to crack Miss Tebler’s armor. There’s a protracted silence. I feel my heart pounding in my veins and arteries and muscles and bones.

“James, I wish I could say that I knew how bad things were at home. But I was never
sure.
Jorie came in here to
talk,
but she often never
said
things. If she had told me about abuse or showed me her arms, I would have had no choice but to act. I had hunches, but I could not act on a hunch. It’s too dangerous for Jorie and the school and me and you and your parents.”

Miss Tebler’s pale face convinces me of some kind of honesty, but I’m mad. I’m simply, precisely, acutely, agonizingly
fucking
mad.

“Miss Tebler. This is BULLSHIT!” My eyes burn, my fists clench. I breathe and picture Dr. Bird, who says, “Keep coo, keep coo.”

“James, your sister is no longer at this school. It might be that she’s better off.”

I recall Gina saying the same thing.

My mind pieces things together in a logical fashion. Mrs. Yao pulls Jorie away from an argument in the library and then confronts her in one of the study rooms about her grades. Gina is in the library that day, though she lied to me about being there. Mrs. Yao makes the mistake of asking about Jorie’s cut-up arms. Jorie freaks out and throws the laptop or knocks it down or whatever. Enough that it needs to be replaced or repaired. Perhaps this is why VanO knows about the laptop? Mrs. Yao claims she dropped it, though, so there’s no reason for anyone to think my sister intentionally destroyed a five-hundred-dollar crap laptop that was out of date four years ago. Then, the next morning Jorie—
for no discernible reason
—attacks Gina. Gina goes to the hospital; Jorie gets expelled. Jorie gets dragged down the staircase and thrown out of our house.

I recall Derek’s Rule Number One of Teenage Happiness:
Less detail makes for an easier lie.
Right now all these details signal a very difficult, unhappy lie. But what’s the lie? And why was it created?

“Mrs. Berry told me Gina was in the library the day Mrs. Yao found my sister arguing with a couple of kids. Do you know what Jorie was arguing about? Or if Gina was part of it?”

“James, I saw Jorie for about five minutes the day she was expelled. Nothing she said will confirm your belief that a big plot is at work here.”

“Jorie told me she saw Gina the next day and just lost it.”

“Why isn’t that enough for you?” Miss Tebler asks.

“What’s the purpose of beating someone up unless they’ve pissed you off somehow?”

“You assume that your sister had reason on her side, but what if she was ruled by emotion that day?”

Suddenly, everyone’s channeling Dr. Bird and Whitman.

I LOOK ALL OVER
the school for Gina. I skip classes hoping that she skips classes and we’ll have a great, alone-in-the- middle-of-the-hallway showdown.

No luck.

Toward the end of the day I realize I’m essentially stalking one of the most attractive girls in school. Again. I’m probably not alone in this secret desire to run into her, though I don’t go so far as to hang out near bathrooms and the girls’ locker room. (Odd how many guys seem to be doing this. Perhaps I should report them?) At least I can claim a more noble goal than simply getting a glance of her nearly perfect form.

It’s also strange how many girls at my school seem to look like her from afar—something about hair and height and the confidence people walk with creates a very Gina-like impression. I keep getting tricked. Perhaps my desire to confront her is causing me to confuse her with anyone broadcasting an attractive aura. I start to feel tired and then get distracted by how tired other people look in the hallways. How quickly the laughter-brightness leaves people’s faces, allowing lost, sad droopiness to regain control of the muscles.

I’ve got to
focus.

As I pass by the senior lounge, which connects to the cafeteria, I hear Gina’s laugh. A distinct, semi-infectious sound, it reminds me of all the nights she hung out at our house back when I was little. She and Jorie would cackle endlessly about nonsense. Now when I hear it, I stop short. I have a moment to consider what I want to say, what I should say, and whether I should just keep going.

The old me would choose to hide. The new me pokes my head into the senior lounge.

“Gina,” I say, thinking commanding thoughts. “I want to ask you something.”

She doesn’t get up, roll her eyes, sigh, or make a joke. Nothing. She just looks at me.

“Out in the hallway maybe?” I move my body into the doorway.

“Are you gonna try to beat us all up too?” one of Gina’s beautiful minions says.

A witty comeback seems like a good idea, but I am focused on my mental health, my sister, and the truth.

“Go away, James Whitman.” Gina remains lounging in the booth with her friends.

“Is this The Cutter’s brother?” one girl asks.

“Who?” I’m confused.

“Your sister,” Gina quickly explains by pointing at her tiny scar. “We call her The Cutter because of the fight.”

Her friends laugh. I realize her friends can help me.

“Oh. Well, I came here to ask you about the library.”

“It’s down the hall,” Gina dismisses. “Keep walking.”

“Do you remember that whole thing with my sister and Mrs. Yao?”

“No.” Gina sits up. Her eyes seem to glow unnaturally. “What are you talking about?”

“You saw Jorie throw a laptop at Mrs. Yao in the library the day before she pummeled you, right?”

“Did your sister throw a laptop?” Gina asks as if she doesn’t know what I think I know she knows I know she knows I know.

I wait.

And I wait and wait and wait and—

“Of course she did!” one of Gina’s friends says. “Gina
totally saw
her do it!”

“Shut up, Anne!” Gina barks.

“Wasn’t that the day you got into the argument with Darryl and Jenny-Wenny about the shitty weed you sold them?” Anne carries on, somehow enjoying the torment of her beautiful overlord.

“For fuck’s sake!” Gina yells.

“Wait, so what did my sister have to do with that?” I ask the helpful Anne.

“Your sister started the whole argument with one of her sarcastic little comments,” Anne says. “Caused a whole . . . ruckus. Then Gina overhears your sister tell Mrs. Yao—”

“GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!” Gina roars, in a manner unbefitting a future movie star.

The way Gina looks at me and then her friends—the way they look at her—this all seems so small and childish.

My mind fits together explanations. I know why Jorie got expelled for a fight that was no worse than the dozen others that have happened in the school’s recent years: she probably tried to squeal on Gina for dealing drugs, but the principal, wanting to protect the school’s reputation, didn’t believe her. Jorie said
Gina just looked so happy
and it ticked her off. She beats up Gina and the principal expels Jorie and might have even called an unnecessary ambulance to make the fight seem worse!