Broken (4 page)

“You have English next, right?” Nessa burbles as we three walk down the steps together.

Thanks to her and Celina, we
do
feel together. As if we’ve always been together, were meant to be together.

I’m glad Celina is carrying my bag because I’m giddy again and would have dropped it for sure.

“You’ll love Mrs. Gentry, she’s the best,” Nessa continues as if I’d answered. “We just started
The
Glass
Menagerie,
Tennessee Williams. It’s so cool, all despair and desperation. My dad, he just loves old Tennessee Williams. Any of those suicidal poets and playwrights and novelists, they all turn him on, big time.”

“Kinda like Mr. Thorne? Talk about your psychic vampires, thriving on our pain.” I hope it’s the right thing to say. I don’t want to risk breaking the spell surrounding us.

They both stop. I swallow, sending the spinning giddy feeling plummeting from my head down to my toes. I’ve screwed up.

But then they exchange a glance, smile in unison, and laugh.

“You catch on fast,” Nessa says in approval. She links our arms together. “Don’t worry. We’ll protect you from old Thorny.”

Us against the world. Feels good. I’ve never had anyone on my side before except my mom and dad. I decide to push things a step farther. “Can I ask, what was all that between you and Jordan?”

Celina’s eyes tighten as she meets my gaze and shakes her head. Nessa grabs my arm tighter and hustles me through the door of a classroom as if she didn’t hear me. Maybe it’s for the best.

Nessa releases me and heads for her desk. Celina leans close and whispers, “I’ll tell you later.”

Mystery, intrigue, drama—and I haven’t even had my first official class yet. High school is so much more fun than the hospital.

My first high school class. It isn’t what I expect. Oh, the kids lined up in rows of chair-desks, some sleeping, some whispering, some taking notes, some texting—even though phones aren’t allowed in school—teacher at the blackboard, that’s all just like it is on TV.

But TV doesn’t show the really cool stuff. The ideas and discussion and way that, even if you’re too shy to raise your hand, you can still feel good when you know the answer. I’d read
The
Glass
Menagerie
a few years ago and remember enough that I know most of the answers to Mrs. Gentry’s questions.

Celina and Nessa surprise me. Nessa doesn’t say a word the entire class. Instead, she’s focused on writing in her notebook and I don’t think it has anything to do with Tennessee Williams. Her forehead is creased and her lips are tugged down in a frown.

And Celina? She’s suddenly all sparkly, raising her hand, shouting out answers when the discussion gets going, even challenging Mrs. Gentry, debating the brother’s motives in bringing the Gentleman Caller home to meet his sister.

Me? I just watch, mesmerized, too chicken to risk raising my hand or answering anything.

Then Mrs. Gentry winds down the debate and says, “Tennessee Williams calls
The
Glass
Menagerie
a memory play. He purposely gives directions for the set to be minimalistic, the same with the costumes. He even uses the unreliability of memory as an excuse for the suggestion that everything in the play is wrong. So the assignment this week is for you to each keep a memory journal. Write down your memories, going back as far as you can. Then try to verify them by interviewing primary sources. Who are primary sources?”

“People who actually witnessed an event,” Celina answers.

“Right. Now, memories are tricky things, especially ones from when you’re young. To help you, I want you all to close your eyes. That’s right, close them. Now breathe deep, in and out. Send your mind back. Past junior high, past first grade, what’s the first thing you can remember?”

She drones on and on, helping us to relax and visualize our pasts. Her voice is calm and soothing. I sneak my eyes open a crack. The boy beside me has fallen asleep with soft snores. Everyone else is relaxed, heads nodding in time to Mrs. Gentry’s voice.

Not me. I’m panicking. Heart thrumming like a hummingbird in a cage, palms sweaty, fingers curled into numb, dead claws. Even my mouth has gone dead. I can’t feel my lips or face. A knot tightens my throat, and I can’t swallow.

My eyes pop open wide, searching for an escape. Mrs. Gentry is walking up and down the rows and her back is to me. Everyone else still has their eyes closed. No one sees me. No one can save me.

Blackness curls like smoke over my vision. I’m trapped.

The bell rings. Everyone else pops out of their chairs, animated after their restful trips down memory lane, while I sit there working hard to remember how to breathe, trying to swim free of the tsunami of panic that has swamped me.

“Scarlet, are you okay?” Mrs. Gentry asks. “It wasn’t too much for you, first day here and all?”

I hide my shaking hands by clenching them around the handle of my backpack. As I work my mouth, my face feels like a pincushion, prickling needles stabbing my skin where it’s gone numb. “No, Mrs. Gentry.
The
Glass
Menagerie
is one of my favorite plays. Great discussion.”

My feet are still frozen solid, unfeeling blocks of ice, but somehow I drag them across the room and to the door where Celina and Nessa wait.

“Suck up,” Nessa says in a stage whisper. I’m mortified, but she’s smiling, and I decide she’s just teasing. My mom is the only person who teases me and I never know for sure when she’s doing it either. “My dad doesn’t believe in memory regression, but that was still kinda cool. So, what did you remember?”

I duck my head, hoping she’ll keep talking before she realizes I haven’t answered. Now that my panic is over, I’m ashamed. Why don’t I have any memories? Why can’t I for once just be normal?

“What’s next on your schedule?” Celina asks, saving me.

Hordes of kids stampede around us, making me feel breathless and claustrophobic, but neither of them seems to mind at all, recklessly swerving through the herd as we head down the hallway. “Trig.”

“Ugh, another brainiac. Have fun. We have chemistry.” Nessa waves and they’re swallowed by the crowd, a wall of broad-shouldered, very tall guys wearing Smithfield Wildcat letterman jackets blocking them from my view. Suddenly I feel like a gazelle alone on the Serengeti, facing a pride of lions. I pull Phil close to my side and scurry to the math wing.

Trigonometry is easy. Not just because I’d already covered the material in cyberschool over the summer before I went back into the hospital, but because numbers don’t lie. They don’t need interpretation.

I make it through the class on autopilot, filling my notebook not with proofs or formulas but with a backward accounting of my life, trying to come up with a real memory. All I can produce is a chronology of hospital stays, medical procedures, and anonymous doctors’ faces.

Taking a different tactic, I try focusing on holidays, but there aren’t many I can actually account for. Holidays and summers are prime times for my Set Backs. Funny, I never noticed it before. Must be the stress.

Then I try gifts. The tee I’m wearing came from my dad—he actually saw Kurt Cobain in concert, way back in 1991. And my denim jacket, I stole it from him, but he doesn’t mind. He lets me get away with so much more than Mom.

I let my eyes drift shut, finally a memory. It’s only from last year, but it’s a start. Dad wearing his denim jacket, raking leaves. I’m watching him through my window. He piles them as high as his head, waves to me, holds his nose, runs like hell, and does a cannonball into them. I laugh and tap on the window, pleading for more. He rakes them all over again until Mom comes out and asks him why he isn’t finished yet and did he expect her to do everything around there?

I love both my mom and dad, but sometimes I’m not so sure they love each other. Maybe that’s why Dad doesn’t seem to mind being away so much—he’s a sales rep for Academic Supplies and travels from one school district to another; that’s how he met my stepmom. My real mother died when I was just a few days old, so I guess by the time I was three, he was pretty tired trying to take care of me all on his own. And who better to take care of a sick kid than a nurse, so that worked out great for everyone.

Nowadays with the economy and layoffs, he’s having to cover more territory than ever and is gone most of the time. He says he doesn’t mind, since it makes sure my health insurance is covered, and anyway, he hates coming home to an empty house when I’m in the hospital.

When I was little, he used to come visit me in the hospital, but I’d always have a Set Back during his visits—my mom said the excitement was too much for me. Dad hates hospitals, so I think he was relieved when she finally asked him to stop coming.

No one asked me.

And that’s it. My only halfway normal memory. I try and try but can’t remember anything important from when I was young—certainly nothing as far back as Mrs. Gentry wants us to go. Every time I close my eyes and concentrate on the past, my throat chokes up and my heart stampedes into overdrive.

I wonder if I
am
crazy. Not for the first time. Maybe one of those Near Misses rotted my brain and now it’s all Swiss-cheesed like the pictures you see of the brains of people with Alzheimer’s or drug addicts. But then why can I remember everything else? Books I read years ago, things like algebra and geometry, even history—although I admit, I get fuzzy on some of the presidents like Taft and Harding and whatshisname, McKinley.

It’s my own life that’s a blur.

Homeroom is next. Fifteen minutes of boring announcements over the intercom and TV screens. The only one that sounds at all interesting is that there’s a pep rally scheduled for Thursday, last period. Sounds like fun to me. The rest of the kids groan as if mandatory peppiness and school spirit is too much to ask—some kind of cruel and unusual punishment.

I’m excited and answer with a perky “here” when the teacher calls my name, but everyone else just grunts or makes a monosyllabic acknowledgment. Terminal boredom.

I don’t feel sorry for them. Not at all. They have no idea what boredom really is—not until you’ve spent years of your life drifting between hospital rooms and your house, barely ever going out in public. If they only knew, they’d be as excited by the prospect of being in school as I am.

The fifteen minutes is over and we’re all sprung. I meet up with Nessa and Celina outside the cafeteria. First lunch is pretty much mostly sophomores, Nessa informs me. “But some of the other cool kids eat now as well, so it’s not too bad.”

Celina rolls her eyes and reminds Nessa, “We
are
sophomores.”

I’m not paying too much attention. I’m starving. Usually I’m never hungry, so I see this as a good thing. Mom would probably argue otherwise, shove some reflux meds down me, and order me to rest until the rumbles in my stomach subside.

They lead me into the cafeteria and it’s like walking into a Category Five hurricane. The sounds are overwhelming—add to them the smells of chili mac, French fries, corn syrup served a dozen ways from Friday, plus body odor, not to mention the bustle of a hundred kids pushing their way through the lines, jockeying for table space, and establishing their social hierarchy.

It almost makes me long for the comparative quiet of my hospital room (although hospitals are actually very noisy and never peaceful—so much for a “healing” environment). Once I get past the initial shockwave, it’s kind of fascinating.

“What’s Jordan doing here?” I ask, spotting him sitting alone at the end of a table near the windows. Prime real estate, but since he’s a junior here at the sophomore lunch period, I guess he’s top of the food chain.

“Poor guy,” Celina says.

“It’s all our fault,” Nessa adds. “He might just as well be wearing scarlet letters.”

I realize that everyone ignores Jordan, and they’ve left space around him. Space enough for three at least.

“It’s because of the peer support?”

“Yep. Thorne has single-handedly destroyed all of our social lives and condemned us to the freak table. And where we go, Jordan goes as well.”

“Couldn’t he ask to mentor another group?”

They exchange glances. “You don’t get it, do you?” Nessa grabs a tray, hands it to me, then gets her own. “Mentoring us is Jordan’s punishment.”

“Punishment? For what?”

Suddenly Nessa is preoccupied, trying to decide between the spongy brown slop that’s labeled green beans and the green mess that’s meant to be dill carrots. I can’t eat any of this—no way am I going to even try to be adventurous with my diet and risk getting sick on my first day. All I get is a bottle of V8. Liquid vitamins, yummy.

Celina and I pass Nessa. While we’re waiting to pay, Celina finally fills me in. “Nessa’s sister, Yvonne, killed herself last year. Jumped off the gym roof.”

That explained what I’d seen earlier—the eruption of emotions, anger and I wasn’t sure what else tangled together, when Nessa lashed out at Jordan. “Why is Jordan being Nessa’s peer mentor a punishment?”

“Jordan was dating Yvonne last year. Before she—” She fills in the blank with a sad look and a shrug.

“So everyone blames him? That’s not fair—I mean, did she leave a note or something saying he was the reason why she killed herself?” I can’t imagine Jordan doing anything to hurt someone that badly. Suddenly I find myself judging Nessa’s sister as unstable, crazy, and I know nothing about her.

Celina shakes her head, leading me through the maze of tables, sidestepping a puddle of unidentifiable brown and yellow mush. “No note. In fact, Nessa’s still convinced Yvonne didn’t kill herself. Sometimes she even talks like someone might have killed her—”

“No. Really?” My voice jumps and people are looking. Celina throws me a glare that says quiet down, so I do. “Why would anyone—”

“They wouldn’t. But it makes her feel better.”

Denial. That I understand.

Kinda like a girl with a busted heart trying to come to school and act normal.

“Jordan actually volunteered to mentor Nessa,” Celina continues. “He thought since the two of them knew Vonnie better than anyone, maybe he could get through to her, help her. But sometimes all she does is lash out. He figures it’s better she hurt him than herself.”

Wow. Makes me appreciate Jordan all the more. And wonder at Celina’s relationship with him—it was her he looked to when Nessa lost it this morning during the counseling session.

We pass a table of girls who all look like college students. My main impression is pearls, perfect posture, and portrait-ready painted faces.

“Divas,” Celina whispers. “The popular girls. They run everything.” She looks over her shoulder and I realize she’s not whispering because this is some kind of secret but because she doesn’t want Nessa to hear. “Nessa’s sister was the only sophomore Diva last year and Nessa was a shoo-in to join them this year. Until…”

Nessa catches up to us, one finger caressing her Pandora necklace as we walk past the Divas. They studiously ignore us as if we’re less than dirt beneath their fingernails. I never thought the act of ignoring someone could be so very dramatic.

Drama Queens. Like the diabetic I had to room with back when I was thirteen—that was the Year of Nothing Good.

Deena was her name and she could make her blood sugar bottom out, sending her into seizures and a coma, or she’d make it rocket so high she’d be barfing and in danger of her brain swelling. She did it to manipulate her parents, who’d finally had her admitted when they couldn’t control her tantrums anymore. The doctors told them to stop visiting because they were “reinforcing Deena’s borderline personality.”

That’s doctor-talk for “this chick is so damn crazy, if she was stable we’d send her to psych, and you’re just as crazy and are only making things worse.”

My mom loved Deena. Have to admit, Deena, like every other Drama Queen I’ve ever met, had something compelling about her. Charisma, I guess you’d call it. Some kind of energy field that grabbed you and sucked you into her whirlwind and made you care more about her than yourself.

Mom watched over Deena even more closely than she did me. Alerting the nurses when her sugar went bonkers, holding her hair back when she vomited, teaching her how to adjust her insulin and take control of her diabetes.

The doctors and nurses all said if it wasn’t for Mom (“the patience of a saint!”), Deena probably would have died or been admitted to a long-term psych facility.

Mom saved her. They all said.

Back then, at thirteen, during the Year of Nothing Good, I hated Mom. So I rolled my eyes, shrugged, and ignored them. Just like I’d ignored Deena.

Who knew it’d turn out that the Deenas of the world ruled high school?