Black Box (15 page)

67

My parents had to fill out some paperwork at the nurses’ station, which meant that Dora and I were in the conference room alone. Dora was wearing a T-shirt over hospital pajamas. The other kids—I had expected them to look familiar but of course they didn’t—were already getting ready for bed.

“You look tired. Actually, you look like crap,” Dora said.

“You look like crap too.”

“Yeah, but I was better-looking to start with.” She pulled her feet up onto her chair and hugged her legs. “You think I’ve ruined everything, don’t you?”

“No. But I don’t understand what happened,” I said. “I thought—”

“The food here is even worse than last time,” Dora said. “It’s incredible what they try to get us to eat.” She put her head on her knees.

I looked out the conference room door; my parents were still standing at the nurses’ station. “When you get home this time,” I said, “maybe we can sleep in the same room the way we used to. We can use my room for a place to hang out and listen to music, and—”

“I’m not going to come home,” Dora mumbled.

“What do you mean?”

She lifted her head and shook out her hair. “I’m too much of a risk. Does that sound familiar?”

“No,” I said.

“Whatever. Don’t worry about it. It’ll be easier for you at school if I’m not around. That was a part of the decision.”

“What decision?” I asked.

My parents seemed to be finishing up. My father was clutching a thick batch of papers.

“You searched my room,” Dora said.

Out in the hall, someone started to cry.

“I didn’t tell them, Dora,” I said. I lowered my voice. “I didn’t tell Mom and Dad.”

“Well, somebody told them.” She sat back and looked at me, then nibbled the tangled ends of her hair. “Have you kissed him yet?”

The day seemed to be speeding up without me, leaving me behind. “You have to come home, Dora,” I said. “Where else would you go?”

“Ask Jimmy.” She almost smiled. “Now you can start to forget all about me. Poof!” She waved her skinny arms in the air. “I’m already gone.”

68

I barely spoke to my parents on the way home. And as soon as I walked in the door I dialed Jimmy’s number and told him I was coming over to talk to him.

“When?” he asked. “Lena? I was just getting ready to—”

“Now,” I said. “I’m coming over right now.”

69

“Wow, that was fast,” Jimmy said when he opened the door.

I put my hands in my pockets—not because I was cold, but because I thought I might have to hit him. “You told my parents about the pills.”

“I had to.” He nodded. “I told my mom.”

I felt as if I’d been robbed. As if someone had broken into my life and ignored all the things that a person should steal—my CD player and my wallet and the silver earrings my parents had given me—and took the only thing that mattered, the thing I didn’t understand could be stolen.

Jimmy touched my arm. “Do you want to come in?”

“They’re going to send her away,” I said. Eighty-two percent water.

“Jimmy, is the door open?” a voice asked.

“Yeah, it’s okay, Mom,” Jimmy said. “I’ll be right back.” He came outside and shut the door behind him. The porch light above us turned his face yellow.

“They’re going to send her to a treatment center. Does that sound familiar?” I took my hands out of my pockets and grabbed his wrists.

“You have to let it go,” Jimmy said. Or maybe he said, “You have to let her go.”

I wasn’t letting anything go. “Am I hurting you?”

“Yes.”

I squeezed even harder. My fingers ached, I was squeezing so hard. Then, under my left middle finger, on Jimmy’s wrist, I felt a line—a series of lines like small seams in his skin. I remembered him warning me about Dora cutting herself.

I turned his arms over. “You don’t have a brother,” I said.

“I do.”

“But he wasn’t at Lorning. You were at Lorning.” I pulled up his sleeve and saw the lines on his forearm; by the yellow light on the porch ceiling I saw dozens of scars crosshatching his skin from his wrist to his elbow.

“All this time.” I let go of his arms. “That’s how you knew about Lorning. And about the doctors and the drugs. And you didn’t tell me.”

“I wanted to,” Jimmy said. “I was—”

But I cut him off. “I told you everything about Dora. And you’ve been making up a story about your brother. You lied to me, Jimmy.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “I guess I did.”

70

I told my parents I didn’t want to talk. There was no reason to sit down for a pointless discussion, because everything was already finished and decided. There was nothing to say.

“Lena, just listen to us for a minute,” my father said. “Lorning isn’t suited to what Dora’s been going through. She needs more time in a different environment.”

I found one of Dora’s empty pill bottles behind the toaster. I picked it up.

“None of us wanted this to happen,” my mother said. “But Marilyn Zenk had some very good recommendations, and your father and I found a place in New Hampshire—”

“I have to clean my room. And I have homework,” I said.

My father pointed out that it was Saturday. “You never do homework on Saturdays.”

“Big project,” I said. I put on my earphones and went up to my room.

Several hours later my mother knocked at my door and said Jimmy was downstairs waiting to see me.

“Busy,” I said.

So he left me a note.
“I an apologiying.”
He’d tried to write it in code.

Even when she asked for me specifically, that night and also the next afternoon, I refused to talk to Dora on the phone.

71

Eighty-eight percent water.

72

“So you’re determined not to talk to her or see her before she leaves,” the Grandma Therapist said. We were meeting on Monday instead of Tuesday. My mother had taken me out of school for an “emergency appointment.” “Do you think you might regret that decision?”

I didn’t answer. The Grandma Therapist was having to talk more than she usually did.

“Your parents aren’t blaming you for what happened,” she said. “But they feel you should have told them about your sister’s behavior. And of course you should have, though it would have been difficult. Lena? Are you with me?”

I had a strange feeling inside my chest. I had to sit still and listen for it.

“Last time you were here,” the Grandma Therapist went on, “we talked about whether you were feeling sad. I wonder if we should leave that aside for a while, because it occurs to me that you’re angry, too. Do you think you’re angry?”

I put a hand on my rib cage. Maybe one of my lungs had deflated.

“You might feel angry at your friend and at his mother.” She tilted her head. “And you might feel angry at your parents. And also at Dora.”

Ninety-one percent water.

“You might feel disappointed as well,” the Grandma Therapist said. “Is it possible you’re disappointed with yourself?”

73

“We want you to go with us,” my mother said. “We feel very strongly that you should come. You’ll only miss two days of school.”

“I already missed half a day today,” I said. “Besides, I have a Spanish test. I have to bring up my A-minus.”

My mother lightly touched a finger to the bridge of her nose. “Lena,” she said. Her eyes were bloodshot. “This is all very hard. And you probably think we’ve been ignoring you. And maybe we have. But you aren’t the only one who’s been suffering.”

“I’m all right,” I said. “You don’t have a reason to worry about me.”

My father said he didn’t want me to sleep at the house alone.

“I’ll stay with the Fentons.” The Fentons lived diagonally behind us; Dora and I babysat their kids.

“But Dora wants to see you,” my mother said.

I told her I’d already talked to Mrs. Fenton. It was all set up. It was too late to cancel.

My mother looked disappointed. “Then come to the hospital with us tonight. You can say goodbye to Dora then.”

I said I’d write her a note.

But I didn’t write one. And I let my parents go to the hospital alone.