It Looks Like This (27 page)

He says, You think it’s going to be hard catching up in Ferguson’s?

I say, I guess.

I’m kind of distracted though. Victor was out yesterday, and I haven’t seen him yet today. But if he’s here today, he’s in my Biology class.

Tristan and Fuller were here yesterday, but they both ignored me the whole day. I didn’t mind.

Ronald says, Cool.

It takes me a second before I realize his response doesn’t really make sense. I glance over, and he seems kind of distracted too. He’s looking around, but not at me. Like he’s expecting something. He’s been doing this a bit lately.

While still looking at him, I say, But she told me after class yesterday that she’ll let me do the tests I missed as homework.

Ronald says, Yeah.

We pass a couple older kids in the hall and Ronald clenches his books tightly. He relaxes his grip when they’re past us.

He says, Okay, well, good luck.

I was still watching him so I hadn’t noticed that we arrived at my class. My heart kind of skips a beat, which makes me feel a little dumb.

I’m not afraid of running into Victor. I just really don’t want to see him.

But Victor’s not there.

His lab stool stays empty the whole period.

Fuller sits next to it. He never looks over at me.

I relax a bit and go back to thinking about nothing.

Jared acts like I haven’t been gone. At lunch he talks the same as he always did, and there are a couple times while I’m eating that I almost forget I was even away.

I catch Ronald sneaking looks at me, his mom’s crease in his forehead. He tries to act natural if I look his way, but I still see it.

I look over at Tristan and Fuller eating by themselves at their usual table.

I say, Is Victor Price sick?

Ronald raises his eyebrows.

He says, Dude, you don’t know?

I look at him.

Jared takes a sip of his Arizona Green Tea and says, Victor was suspended indefinitely.

I put my sandwich down.

Jared says, The school board had an emergency meeting last week after the accident. The YouTube video Victor posted was a large part of it. He took it down pretty soon, but of course everyone had already seen it.

Jared unwraps his Kit Kat and flattens the wrapper, creasing it neatly. He breaks the chocolate into the four long sticks, then takes his knife and chops each stick into five square-sized pieces, arranging them in a grid on top of the wrapper. He takes the corner square and pops it into his mouth.

He says, The board voted on a new zero-tolerance bullying policy, effective immediately. There were a couple news stories about it.

I just stare at Jared, who alternates Kit Kat pieces with sips of tea. I don’t know what to say, so I look at Ronald.

He has a bit of a smile on his face. I look up and see the faint cut above his eye.

I tell all this to the counselor.

We’re supposed to meet a couple times a week, just a few minutes before school starts. Her name is Miss Dobbs-Shannon, hyphenated like that. She’s kind of young, has long straight hair, barely reddish but mostly brown. She’s all right.

The counselor was Principal Huston’s idea. That’s the main principal, not the assistant principal, Mr. Whitman, who’s kind of an idiot.

Mrs. Huston called me into the office my first day back. I was in Art again, and it was the same office aid girl who came and got me when I called Mr. Kilgore a dick.

Mr. Kilgore just stared at her when she knocked and walked in, dressed in loose clothes again, glossy lipstick, hair dyed red this time, and told him she had a referral to bring me to Mrs. Huston’s office.

Then he sort of threw a hand into the air and said, Knock yourself out.

On the way there she asked me, You call someone else a dick?

Principal Huston’s a large woman with bushy black hair and a carefully pressed black pantsuit. I’d never been in her office before. She got right to the point: she talked to my parents and thought it’d be a good idea for me to meet with a school counselor for a little bit because of the incident.

That’s the word she used, incident. Like Jesse from camp.

She said my parents agreed and I was to start the next day.

I said, Which parent did you talk to?

I just sort of blurted it out and for a second I thought it probably sounded rude.

But she said, Your mother.

So Wednesday morning I tell Miss Dobbs-Shannon that school’s not so bad.

She says, What about the rest?

I say, The rest?

She says, Home, your weekends, hobbies, anything else you do aside from school.

I think about this.

I say, I guess it’s fine.

She says, Fine?

I say, Yeah.

She says, Does everything feel normal?

I say, No.

She says, Are you sleeping?

I don’t say anything.

She says, Is that a no?

I say, I’m sleeping a bit.

She says, But not enough?

I say, No.

She leans back in her chair and studies me a bit. She does that sometimes. Usually it means there’s something she’s going to say that’s important and she’s thinking about how to word it.

She says, Michael, you went to a conversion-therapy camp for two weeks. When you get back, you immediately find out Sean has died, and right away you come back to school. And you’ve only been back a couple of days.

I look at the ground. Blank hard no-color carpet, cheap stuff they fill schools and offices with.

She says, You’ve been through a whole, whole lot in a very short amount of time. And everything’s “fine”?

I breathe out through my teeth and lean back.

I say, This is stupid.

Miss Dobbs-Shannon doesn’t react to that. She looks at me a bit and then says, Maybe you’re still numb, Michael. Maybe that’s why school isn’t so bad.

I don’t say anything.

Maybe I am numb.

I spend a lot of time at Ronald’s house.

It’s not really on the way home from school, but I just take the bus with him and we hang out for a couple hours, mostly just eating snacks and watching TV.

His mom comes home and always smiles when she sees me. There’s something behind that smile, a kind of searching look. The first day I came over, she smiled at me and asked,

How are you doing?

but low, almost under her breath, not like a regular greeting but like she really wanted to know.

Ronald said, Mom.

In a kind of warning tone. She just smiled at me again and walked off into her bedroom to change.

Sometimes Jared comes over too.

He still acts like everything’s normal but that’s just Jared. Nothing really fazes him.

The only time he said anything about what happened the last month, besides telling me about Victor getting suspended, was at lunch in the first week. Not on the first day but maybe like Wednesday.

I’d just sat down and he was already there. Ronald was still in line getting Salisbury steak.

Jared says, Do you have to repeat the year?

I look up, blinking. It takes me a second before I figure out what he’s saying.

I say, No. Mrs. Huston says I can do most of the makeup work during the year, but I’ll probably have to come for a bit of summer school because the district has some rule about attendance.

Jared says, Oh. That’s dumb.

I don’t say anything, just nod. I’m going into myself again. I can feel my mind drifting off, thinking about nothing.

Jared takes another bite of his sandwich and says, Did you want it to work? At the camp?

I’m already pretty deep in my own head and Jared’s voice sounds far away, not important, but some part of me registers his words, and the question is so unexpected it draws me back, like waking from a dream because someone calls your name.

I look at him hard and for the first time he seems very alert and attentive, even though he’s not quite looking at me. He’s stopped chewing.

I say, Yeah. I did.

Jared chews again, slowly.

I say, I really did.

Jared chews. Pauses. Swallows.

He says, I don’t think that kind of thing ever works. So don’t sweat it.

I just look at him and watch the alertness sort of fade away until he’s back to his usual unfazed self.

That was the only time he brought it up.

Miss Dobbs-Shannon says, You look tired again, Michael.

I say, Can you call me Mike?

She says, Of course, Mike. I’m sorry. You look tired.

I say, I have to wake up early for these sessions.

She says, You haven’t been sleeping anyway.

I stare at the table.

She says, There’s something you haven’t been telling me.

I stare at the table.

She leans back in her chair and looks at me.

She says, When you’re ready.

Dad doesn’t speak much.

It’s not like before, right after New Year’s when he seemed too angry to know what to say.

This time it’s more sad. Deflated. Like at the funeral, after Mom said what she said.

When Mom or Toby says something to him, he just mumbles without meeting their eyes. Or sometimes he doesn’t respond at all.

I don’t say anything to him. But sometimes I watch him.

Mom speaks for both of them now. Just everyday stuff, like Time for dinner or Can you turn the TV down a bit? or How’s everything at school?

It’s strange having her suddenly in charge, but she picks it up as if she’s been doing it forever, and after a few days I sometimes forget it’s different now.

But Mom still shoots Dad a glance every now and then, reading his face, looking for signs of his old self.

I don’t really know if I want his old self to come back.

I feel a bit relieved when Mom looks away, disappointed.

I still pick Toby up after school.

I open the door to the side entrance because it’s closer to the choir room, and I hear her voice from a distance. She’s up ahead, talking to someone out of view around the corner. I can only see her pink backpack.

This is about two weeks after I’m back at school.

I’m about to call out to her when I hear her say,

I’d rather have him as my brother than you. I feel bad for Casey.

Another girl says, Hey! Leave me out of this.

I keep walking toward them, a bit faster now.

There’s a laugh and then a third voice, a boy, says, You mean, your sister. At least Casey has a real brother.

The girl who must be Casey says, Colin, let’s just goooo.

Colin says, Fine. ’Bye, Toby, say hi to your sister for us. And you look stupid in that backpack, by the way.

Toby says, You don’t even need the backpack to look stupid.

I get to the corner a few seconds later, right as Toby turns around.

She says, Hi, Mike!

A little too brightly. She smiles like nothing’s wrong. I stare past her at Colin and Casey, who are almost at the end of the next hall.

We’re crossing the bridge over the creek that separates our neighborhood from the school.

I ask Toby who those kids were.

She doesn’t want to say.

I ask again.

She hesitates for a few seconds, kind of swinging her backpack side to side while she walks. Then she tells me. Casey is another girl in choir. Colin’s her brother who’s in eighth grade who comes to pick her up sometimes.

We take a left after the bridge.

There’s a sinking feeling in my stomach suddenly. It never occurred to me that everything that’s happened in the last month could’ve affected Toby too. That kids at her school could be bothering her.

I wait for a few moments, then I ask how she’s been since New Year’s.

She doesn’t hesitate this time. She says, I’m fine, Mike.

Firm and quick, but not annoyed.

I don’t say anything. I’m thinking about Colin.

Miss Dobbs-Shannon says, Your teacher says you haven’t really been paying attention in class.

I look up. The corners of my eyes are really dry, and I can almost feel them creak as I try to keep them open.

I say, Which one?

She says, Miss Rayner.

English.

I think back on what we’ve been studying in English the last couple weeks and realize I can’t really remember much of it.

She says, What do you think about when your mind drifts in class?

I say, Nothing.

She says, Mike —

I say, No, I mean I think about nothing. Like I just let my mind go blank.

Miss Dobbs-Shannon raises her eyebrows just a bit. She looks at me that way a moment and then says, in a quieter voice,

People often do that as a way of avoiding other thoughts.

I don’t say anything.

She says, It’s understandable that you don’t want to think about the accident.

I don’t say anything.

She says, But escapism is just a means of putting off the inevitable. At some point, as painful as it will be, you will have to allow yourself to think about Sean’s death in order —

I say, It’s not the death.

Miss Dobbs-Shannon pauses.

She says, I’m sorry?

I say, It’s not the death I don’t want to think about. I mean I don’t, but that’s not just it.

She says, Then what is it?

It’s a couple days after New Year’s. Last month.

I’m at my computer desk, thinking about Dad’s question.

You want to change, don’t you?

Sean’s message is in front of me. He wants to see me and he can get out of the house and be at my window and all I have to do is tell him to come and he will.

But Dad’s question is there, bigger than Sean’s note, bigger than Sean.

And then I read the last line again:

im sorry i pushed you.

And I make myself think about this and forget the rest. I think about the actual push, about falling on the sand. I think about the last taste of wine leaving my mouth dry. I think about standing there without a shirt on and looking dumb.

I make myself think only about this, over and over again, while I type out a message to Sean.

Miss Dobbs-Shannon doesn’t speak at first. I know she’s waiting for me, but I’m not speaking either.

Finally she says, What did your message say?