He opened the door. “I’m sorry. I really am.” He stepped out into the hallway. “I’ll leave my new address and phone number
with your mother,” he said before walking slowly out of my sight.
As always, I decided it would be safest to skip dinner and grab something to eat after everyone went to bed. I waited until
I could see the strip between the bottom of the door and the floor turn dark—lights off—and I limped out.
I padded into the kitchen and made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich by the light of the refrigerator. I closed the
fridge and sat at the kitchen table, choosing to eat in the dark. It felt good and secluded that way. Like I had a little
secret. Like I could be alone, away from all the nonsense around me. And that’s what it all was, wasn’t it? Nonsense. After
your classmates get blown away pretty much everything else in the world—even your father bailing on your family—seems
pretty trivial.
I finished my sandwich and was about to get up and leave when I heard a noise in the living room. It sounded like a long,
watery sniff and a small cough. I froze.
I heard the noise again, this time followed by the definite sound of a Kleenex being pulled out of a box.
I crept around the corner and peered into the darkness.
“Hello?” I said softly.
“Go to bed, Valerie, it’s just me,” Mom said from the dark fortress of the couch. Her voice sounded gravelly, her nose stuffy.
I paused. She sniffed again. Again I heard a Kleenex being pulled out of the box. Instead of heading toward the stairs I took
a few steps into the living room and stood behind the recliner. I rested my hands over the top of it.
“Are you okay?” I said.
She didn’t answer. I came around the recliner and started to sit in it, but thought better of it and instead took a few more
steps and folded myself to my knees on the floor a few feet in front of the couch. I could now make our her shadow and see
the white of her robe splitting off her knees, making her skin look super tan against it in the darkness.
“You okay?” I repeated.
There was another long silence and I began to think I should just go to bed like she’d asked. But after awhile she said, “You
got something to eat, then? I told Dr. Hieler that I haven’t seen you eat anything in weeks.”
“I’ve been coming down at night. I’m not anorexic if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I was,” she said, and I could hear tears begin anew in her voice. She sniffed some more and the sound of silent sobbing drifted
in and out of the air around me. She took a deep breath at the end of it. “You’ve gotten so thin and I never see you eat anything.
What was I supposed to think? Dr. Hieler said he thought you were probably doing that, eating when I’m not around.”
Score another for Dr. Hieler. Sometimes I forgot how much he probably stood up for me without my even knowing it. Sometimes
I wondered how many times he brought my mom down off the ceiling about something ludicrous.
“So is Dad gone?” I asked after a while.
I think she nodded because the shadow shifted slightly. “He’s living with her now. It’s for the best.”
“Are you going to miss him?”
She took a deep breath and let it out in a gust. “I already do. But not the guy who I’ve been living with for the past few
years. I miss the guy I said ‘I do’ to. You probably wouldn’t understand.”
I chewed my lip, trying to decide if I wanted to be offended by her brushing me off like that. Trying to decide if I should
argue.
“Well, I kinda do,” I said. “I miss Nick, too. I miss the times we were just like bowling and stuff and we were just happy.
I know you think he was all bad, but he wasn’t. Nick was really sweet and really smart. I miss that.”
She blew her nose. “Yeah, I guess you probably do,” she said, which felt so enormously good I had no words for it. “Do you
remember…” she said, then trailed off. I heard another Kleenex leave the box and another watery sniff. “Do you remember that
summer we went to South Dakota? Remember, we went in Grandpa’s old station wagon and loaded up that giant cooler with sandwiches
and sodas and just took off because your father wanted you and Frankie to see Mount Rushmore?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I remember you took the training potty in the car just in case we had to go on the road. And Frankie ate
crab legs on a buffet somewhere in Nebraska and threw up all over the table.”
Mom chuckled. “And your father wouldn’t rest until we visited that godawful corn palace.”
“And the rock museum. Remember I cried because I thought there was going to be like rock musicians in there and we got there
and it was just all these rocks.”
“And your grandmother, god rest her soul, smoked those disgusting cigarettes the entire way.”
We both chuckled and trailed off into silence again. It was a horrible trip. A wonderful, horrible trip.
Then Mom said, “I never wanted you kids to have divorced parents.”
I thought about it. I shrugged even though I knew she couldn’t see it. “Yeah, I think I’m okay with it. Dad hated being here.
He may not be the best dad in the world, but I don’t think anyone should have to be miserable like that.”
“You already knew,” she said.
“Yeah. I saw Briley a while back at his office. I guessed.”
“Briley,” Mom said, as if she were testing out the name. Did she think it sounded sexier than her own name? More appealing
than Jenny?
“Have you told Frankie?” I asked.
“Your father did,” she said. “Right after he talked to you. I told him I wasn’t going to be the one to break you kids’ hearts.
I thought it was only fair that he had to tell you himself that he’s shacking up with a twenty-year-old girl. I’m not doing
his dirty work for him anymore. I’m tired of being the bad guy.”
“Is Frankie okay?” I asked.
“No. He hasn’t come out of his room, either. And now I’m afraid I’m going to have another child in trouble and I don’t… know…
if… I… can handle it… alone.…” Her voice drowned in a wave of tears so abrupt and soulful they drew tears out of my own eyes
without my even knowing it. Had you been a passerby and heard someone crying like that you would have sworn she’d just lost
everything she ever had. I wondered if she felt as if she had.
“Frankie’s a good kid, Mom,” I said. “He hangs out with good kids. He won’t…”
be like me
was what was about to come out of my mouth, but that embarrassment crept up on me again and instead I said, “… be in any
trouble.”
“I hope not,” she said. “I can barely keep a handle on what’s going on with you most days. I’m just one person. I can’t carry
everyone all the time.”
“You don’t have to carry me anymore,” I said. “I’m okay, Mom, really. Dr. Hieler says I’m making really good progress. And
I’m doing those art classes with Bea. And I’m working on that Student Council project.” And suddenly I felt this overwhelming
need to repair something inside of my mother. Suddenly I was awash with a compassion for her that I might have sworn would
never again exist. Suddenly I wanted to be the one to give her hope, to give her back South Dakota. “In fact, I was wondering
if you would let me go to a sleepover at Jessica Campbell’s house next weekend.” My throat felt tight.
“You mean that blond girl that keeps coming over here?”
“Yeah. She’s Student Council president and on the volleyball team. She’s a good person, I promise. We eat lunch together every
day. We’re friends.”
“Oh, Val,” she said, her voice thick and heavy. “Are you sure you want to do this? I thought you hated those girls.”
My voice raised an octave. “No, really, Mom. She’s the one I jumped in front of. I saved her life. I saved her. And we’re
friends now.”
Again there was a long silence. Mom sniffed a few times and the sound was so clouded I almost felt like I couldn’t breathe.
“Sometimes I forget,” she said, her voice threading out to me in the darkness. “Sometimes I forget that you were also a hero
that day. All I see is the girl who wrote a list of people she wanted dead.”
I resisted the urge to correct her.
I didn’t want those people dead
, I wanted to say.
And you would’ve never even known about that list had Nick not lost it. But Nick lost it, not me! Not me!
“Sometimes I’m so busy seeing you as the enemy who dismantled my family’s life I forget to see that you were the one who stopped
the shooting. You were the one who saved that girl’s life. I’ve never thanked you for that, have I?”
I shook my head, no, even though I knew she couldn’t see me do it. I had a suspicion that she, like me, could feel it in the
air.
“She’s really your friend, then?”
“Yeah. I actually really like her.” This, I discovered with some amount of shock, was the truth.
“Then you should go. You should be with your friend. You should have fun.”
My stomach dropped. I wasn’t sure if I even knew how to have fun with those people. Their idea of fun was so different from
anything I’d ever known.
“So I guess you know my dad left,” I said, studying Dr. Hieler’s bookshelf, my back to him as he took his usual pose in his
chair: leg slung over the side of the chair, right forefinger lazily tracing his bottom lip in contemplation.
“Your mom told me,” he said. “What do you think about that?”
I shrugged, lifted my gaze to study the figurines on top of his bookcase. A porcelain elephant, a Precious Moments doctor
and child, a polished piece of quartz. Gifts from clients. “I already knew about it. I wasn’t too surprised.”
“Sometimes even stuff you expect to happen can still hurt,” he suggested.
“I don’t know. I think I got over Dad a long time ago. I think it hurt back then but now… I don’t know… now it kind of seems
like a relief.”
“I can understand that.”
“Thanks for doing the whole anorexia thing with Mom, by the way,” I said. I abandoned the bookcase and flopped backward on
the couch.
He nodded. “You have to eat, though. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know. I’m eating. I’ve even gained back a few pounds. No big deal. It’s not like I’m trying to lose weight.”
“I believe that. She just worries is all. Sometimes you’ve gotta humor the old people. Let her see you eat something every
now and then. Okay?”
I nodded. “Okay. You’re right.”
He smiled wide, pumped his fist in the air. “Right again! I should do this for a living!”
I chuckled, rolling my eyes. “Oh! I almost forgot. I made you something.”
His eyebrows raised and he leaned forward to take the canvas I had dug out of my backpack.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he said.
He turned the canvas around and studied it. It was the portrait I’d painted in Bea’s studio last Saturday.
“This is incredible,” he said. Then he repeated it, more enthusiastically. “This is really incredible! I had no idea you could
do this.”
I moved behind him and looked over his shoulder at my
Portrait of a Hieler.
Not the guy with the dark brown hair and sympathetic eyes that I saw every Saturday in his office, but the real him as I
saw him: a pool of serenity, a burst of sunlight, a way out of the deep, dark tunnel I lived in.
I nodded. “Yeah, I think I really like painting. I’ve been hanging out with this lady at a studio across the street and she’s
been letting me paint for free. I also started a notebook. I’ve been drawing things as I really see them. Not like what everybody
wants you to see, but what’s really there. It’s been helpful. Although some people think it’s another Hate Book. But whatever.
I just draw them, too.”
He carefully propped the canvas against the lamp on the table next to him. “Can I see the book? Will you bring it next time
you’re in?”
I smiled shyly. “Okay. Yeah. Okay.”
Jessica Campbell’s house smelled like vanilla. It was sparkly clean, just like the minivan that her mom had driven us home
in, and had colors in it that reminded me of commercials. Bright periwinkle blues, viney greens, sunshine yellow that almost
hurt my eyes when I stared at it too long.
We sat at the kitchen table—Jessica, Meghan, Cheri Mansley, McKenzie Smith, and me—eating soft pretzels that her mom had
handmade in anticipation of our coming home from school. She served them up on an oval platter, the Lord’s Prayer hand-painted
on it, along with little Pyrex dishes filled with mustard, barbeque sauce, and melted cheese.
Jessica and Cheri were talking about Doug Hobson getting pantsed in the field house after track practice earlier in the week.
They were laughing and stuffing pretzels into their mouths so carelessly I felt like I was sitting in a movie theater watching
them onscreen. Meghan and McKenzie were studying a magazine article about hairstyles. I sat at the far end of the table silently
nibbling on a pretzel.
Jessica’s mom stood by the sink and beamed at her daughter, laughing along with them every time the girls dissolved into another
funny story, but without intruding on their conversation. I tried not to notice how her smile wavered every so often when
she’d flick a glance at me.
We finished eating, then moved upstairs to Jessica’s bedroom where she turned on some song that I didn’t know. The four of
them got up and danced, talking over the music and making squealing noises I didn’t think my vocal cords were even capable
of making. I sat on the bed and watched them, smiling without trying or even really realizing it. I imagined that, if I had
my notebook with me, I would be able to draw everyone exactly as they looked at that moment. For a change I felt like I was
in reality.
After a while Jessica’s mom knocked on the door and opened it just a crack with that smile pasted over her perfect teeth.
She announced that dinner was ready and we headed down to find homemade pizza on the counter. Three kinds. The crusts perfectly
flaky and brown. The meat perfectly baked. The veggies perfectly soft. A measured and even crust stuffed painstakingly with
garlic butter and cheese. They almost looked too perfect to eat.
I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened to Jessica’s mom if I hadn’t jumped in between Nick and Jessica. If she’d
lost her baby girl. Would she still make perfect pizzas and set bowls of lemons on the kitchen table for decoration and burn
vanilla candles? She didn’t seem like someone who tolerated bullying. Did she know that Jessica used to call me Sister Death?
Was she disappointed in Jessica for treating me that way? Disappointed in herself for raising a daughter who would do that?
And what would she have done if she were my mom? Would it have broken her more to know that her daughter was dead or that
her daughter might have been the shooter?