Sean Griswold's Head (20 page)

But you know what? Maybe it's not a bad idea for me to take the help that is available, to not be the idiot who won't drink the water being handed to them. I should probably go suck up to Ms. Callahan and see what advice she has about all this crap I have going on now. At least her form of therapy is a lot more forgiving to my butt.

I'm sitting outside Ms. Callahan's office the next morning before she's even there. There's that bad coffee and paper smell that dominates school offices. The secretary keeps glancing at me, then the clock, then the counselor's door. Finally she asks, “What time was your appointment, dear?”

“Oh, I don't really have one. I just need to talk.”

“Ms. Callahan is always the last one here.” She cocks her head to the side. “You might want to get to class.”

I grip the sides of the brown upholstered chair, prepared to stage a sit-in if I have to. “It's kind of an emergency.”

“Do you want me to have someone come and get you out of class?”

“I want to sit right here in this chair until my guidance counselor walks through that door.”

The secretary shrugs and turns on her radio station again. Michael Bolton this time. Save me, Ms. Callahan.

Three minutes before the morning bell, Ms. Callahan breezes in wearing what can only be described as a muumuu. I don't know if I've ever seen a muumuu before, but I'm pretty sure this fits the description. Big, shapeless dress in a print screaming, “Hey, is the
dress
big and shapeless or is it just
me
?”

Ms. Callahan is halfway to her office before she even notices I'm there. “We don't have an appointment, do we?”

“No, but … do you have a minute?”

“I have three,” she says with the slightest edge in her voice.

“I'll take it.” I follow her into her office, where she heaves a large grocery bag onto her desk. A few cans of cat chow, the gourmet kind, roll onto the floor.

“Oh, Mr. Nippers won't be happy!” She sighs.

“Who?”

“Mr. Nippers. My cat. He hates dented cans.”

Mr. Nippers. Riiiiight. She sweeps the cans back into the bag, plops into her swivel chair, and looks up at the ceiling. “All right, Payton. What can I do for you?”

“Okay. Look. I never gave you a fair shot. I never gave any of this a fair shot. I'm sorry for that, and I'm sorry for the fight with Jac. I'm all alone now and I could really use some help.”

Ms. Callahan busies herself shuffling papers around her desk. She's looking down and she starts sniffing. Crap. Please don't start crying. I do not need to deal with another emotional person. I'm emotioned out.

She nods toward the seat in front of her desk and I take it. She clears her throat a few nasty phlegmy times before looking me square in the eye and saying, “Let's figure this out.”

TWENTY-SIX

It's pretty easy to like Ms. Callahan once I decide I don't hate her. That, and it's kind of hard to dislike someone when all they do is sit there and listen to me lament about life's perils for sixty minutes, even when she said she only had three and even though she gets five calls on the intercom while I'm talking. And when I'm telling her everything, she never says, “Start talking to your dad or open yourself up to Sean.” Not all problems are that cut and dry. Mine's more cut, wash, rinse, repeat.

When I'm done, she gently recommends self-explorATION as a cure for my alienATION, which is personally one too many -
ations
for me, but I let it go.

“But don't you think I've done enough self-exploration? Can't I do some team searching or something?”

“With whom? You've severed ties with those you love.”

“Well, what if I fix that?”

“Is that what you want?” she asks.

“I don't want to make things better. I just want them to
be
better. I want the problems that caused all my messed-up relationships to just be gone so everything can be right again.”

“Well, sorry, but that's not going to happen. Think about it for a moment. I'm going to get some coffee.” She leaves and returns with two mugs. She passes me mine—purple with cartoon hands clasped and printed with the prayer, “Lord, please help me accept what I can't change and change what I can't accept.”

I set it down on her desk without taking a sip.

“Start small,” she says. “What do you think is the easiest fix?”

“Well, making up with Jac maybe, although I wouldn't call it easy …”

“But easiest.”

“Probably. Yeah.”

“Try talking to her. See where it goes. Things can't get any worse than how they are, right?”

I nod noncommittally. If there is one thing I've learned in the last few months, things can
always
get worse.

I think about it for two days and finally decide to just do it. Talk to Jac again. So maybe she hates me, maybe I'll confirm my suspicion that she blabbed to Sean and then hate her, but at least we're moving in a new direction. I'm being proactive. Or something.

I already know one thing that'll help, and I hide it in my locker the next day. Unfortunately for me, I have no idea where Jac is. Now that we've switched our hallway routes, I don't know which way she gets to class. I try to hang by her locker, but this short Hispanic kid comes up and opens it. I start to ask why he is breaking into my friend's locker when I see a bunch of anime pictures hanging inside. Jac locker swapped.

Bio is shot because we're in the small theater listening to a guest lecture by some nuclear physicist who discovered a rare bug (or maybe a sickness? A virus? A computer virus? Obviously I'm alert). Can't be that important of a scientist if a high school is on her lecture circuit.

I'm yanked from my vegetative state when I overhear the skater kid, Dexter, talking to one of his shaggy-haired buddies about prank ideas. At first, it's annoying chatter, but then I think of an idea of how I can use the Dextmeister to my advantage.

“You guys want pranks?” I lean in between them. We're in the farthest backseats of the theater, close to the door where I hoped to corner Jac after the bell.

“You think you can pull a prank?”

“No. I think you can.”

Dexter shrugs. “What is it?”

“Fire alarm.”

His buddy snickers. “That's original. Maybe we'll put a tack on teacher's chair too.”

“Yeah, or stick ABC gum in her hair.”

I lean back, my hands behind my head. “Suit yourselves. I mean, we do have the most anal hall monitors ever, and the alarms are now encased in glass and displayed in highly visible areas. You'd have to be Tom Cruise in
Mission: Impossible
to make it happen, which is why we've never had a bogus fire drill, like,
ever
. But, you're right. It's elementary school stuff. Stick to Ex-lax in the brownies. Or whatever you guys put in there.”

Dexter eyes me suspiciously. “How do you know all that?”

“You're looking at the leader of the school safety council two semesters running.”

“Impressive.” They giggle. Like little girls. Doubt they do that around their skating friends. They'd be kicked off the half pipe. Whatever that is.

“Fine. I'm just the only one who knows the hall monitors' schedules and where the cameras are and which alarm to pull. But if you're not interested—”

“What's in it for you?” Dexter asks.

“Um …” I blink a few times. “Pure fun?”

They stare at me expectantly.

“Look, I could use a little rule-breaking in my life. Just do it and I swear upon my brother's life I won't tell a soul.”

The boys study each other for a moment.

“Dude, should we?” Dexter asks.

“It'd be killer.”

“We would reign.”

“So, it's on?” I interrupt before they grow some brain cells and realize the likelihood of a girl like me blindly aiding their master plans is slim to zilch.

They do that thing with their fingers that Trent always does when he's head banging. I think it means love or maybe it's the devil. Either way they are grinning.

“Prank or die.”

The guys pull it off without a hitch during fifth period. Well, there was the hitch where they got caught, but that wasn't on me. I told them the perfect setup, but after Dexter rang the bell his friend called him a glory hog and they started to brawl. The hall monitor found them right as the fire truck arrived, and both guys kept fighting over who pulled the alarm.

My plan: during my time on the school safety committee, I'd designed a seamless exit route for the entire school. I'd also figured out how to have Jac and me close together no matter what period it happened. We had a safety spot on every side of the school.

When the alarm goes off, I rush to my locker, grab Jac's surprise, and hurry to our spot. I stand under the large dogwood tree adjacent to the portables, which is on a hill so I can overlook the chaos and devastation should a true disaster occur.

The only glitch is Jac and the question—will she show? I watch as the entire school pours out of the doors, laughing and gossiping, unaware of the petrified girl under the tree. I search in vain for Jac's golden hair, and when the principal blows the horn signaling it's time to get back to class, I almost kneel down and cry.

“It was an inferno in there,” someone says behind me.

“That's the coward that left us to die.” I answer automatically and turn around to see Jac. It's our safety phrase, derived from the
Seinfeld
when George pushes the women, children, and clown out of the way at a birthday party to escape the threat of fire. He's yelling at an EMT and the whole crowd comes up to confront him. Maybe you had to be there. But regardless, it is the phrase I made Jac memorize when devising our safety route. She'd argued we could just look at each other to see if we were okay, but the quote tests the mental capabilities and—

“Have I ever told you how stupid that safety phrase is?” Jac plops down onto the ground and twists off a piece of grass.

“I told you. Physical confirmation of our well-being isn't enough. We need …” I trail off, realizing we are now talking, an event that has not happened in over a month. I ease down next to her on the grass and watch as the last of the students disappear into the school.

“I'm surprised you haven't let Sean in on the code,” she says with a flip of her hair. “Isn't
Seinfeld
part of your love language or something?”

“Please don't talk about Sean,” I say.

“Why not?”

“We aren't talking.”

Her eyes widen. “You aren't talking? I thought you were sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I—”

“No. And I can't talk to you about it right now.”

“Would you get over that stupid valentine already? It got you the boy, right? Move on.”

The anger is bubbling up again and I keep it down by focusing on the tree trunk, dissecting the nicks in the bark, searching for a Virgin Mary or Sean's head, but all I see are expressionless lines. Someone carved X.T. AND H.B. forever in the bark, then crossed it out and wrote “Xavier is a tool.” H.B. has moved on, and I want to do the same. “I'm not talking about the valentine. You clued him in on the PFEs. Why'd you do that, Jac? Sure, we're in a fight and it's THE fight, the one that busts up friendships. We said awful things and you totally hate me now. Fine. But couldn't you have just hated me in silence? Did you have to ruin our friendship
and
my relationship with Sean?”

The focus on the tree has given me the strength to lay it on the line, and the last shot of adrenaline gives me the courage to look at Jac. I flinch. Her eyes are bright with fire.

“I can't believe you,” she says softly.

“Me? You can't believe ME?”

The fire in her eyes is suddenly extinguished by her tears. “I can't believe that you for one second would believe I would
ever
tell Sean about your journal! All I've done is try to help you with him. I mean, except for during that cell quiz thing, but even then he was all about you.”

“Jac, I saw how you looked at me when we ran into each other in front of biology class. Like you seriously wanted to destroy me. You hate me now, admit it.”

“I don't hate you!”

“You could have fooled me.”

“No. First off, you haven't exactly been sending warm fuzzies my way either.”

“Well, sorry if I haven't been feeling warm and fuzzy—”

“Stop. My turn. You know, you can be so self-centered. Maybe it's not all about you. Maybe I'm dealing with this too. All of it. Maybe I'm mad at myself for not seeing what you needed. I'm not like you. I don't make spreadsheets on my friend's steps for self-improvement.”

“It wasn't a spreadsheet,” I argue. But she's right. We aren't alike, at least not in that sense. But it's always worked for us before.

She yanks some more grass. “Well, I'm a horrible friend. Sorry I don't know my computer programs.”

“I didn't come here to fight,” I say. “Let's not waste my carefully orchestrated fire alarm.”

“Oh, like Ms. Safety Committee had anything to do with the fire alarm.”

A smile spreads across my face. “Wanna bet?”

“You didn't.”

“Well, Skater Dexter was in on the plan. I've been trying to find a way to talk to you and … this was it. I had to get you to talk to me.”

Jac jumps up and does a dance right there under the tree, the beads in her braids clinking together. She's laughing so hard that the gyrations are spastic, a thrust here, then a giggle. And she's crying. I watch in awe.

“You wild child! A fire alarm. I love it! That is the sweetest thing anyone has ever done! A whole school outside in my honor. I can't believe you'd risk that for me. No one I … no one in my life has ever … Thank you.” She stops dancing for an instant. “You're my best friend. And I didn't tell, Payton. Swear it.”