The Weight of Zero (32 page)

Michael would almost seem like his old self this Saturday night—warm and affectionate—if not for the current of weirdness between us. There's no trace of the angry, humiliated boy who couldn't connect on a punch, or the boy who blew off his girlfriend on Wednesday. He doesn't bring up the movie and neither do I. But that weirdness is affecting our timing with each other and we've fallen out of rhythm.

Lorraine and Tony are dragging Nonny out to dinner, but they left pizza warming in the oven for Michael and me. Anthony is also a no-show, out to dinner with his landscaping buddies to celebrate the almost end of their season.

The house is silent after the departure of the three elder Pitoscias. In the kitchen, Michael shuts off the oven. “You ready to eat?” he asks.

I shrug. We have the entire house to ourselves. I just want to be with him. I need him to pull me close, put his warm hands on me, tell me I'm beautiful and that he's liked me since freshman year, and kiss me. Like Wednesday at school. Like last weekend in the basement. But I also don't want that. Because it's not right anymore.

I guess I don't have to worry, though, because he doesn't walk toward me and take my hands. We don't sneak off to his bedroom to undress one another. Instead he turns around and slides oven mitts onto his hands. “I'm starving,” he says, and pulls the baking trays with their bubbling-hot pizza slices out of the oven.

“Mangia!”
he announces proudly.

He kissed me once tonight. Inside Lorraine's Subaru before he walked me to my front door. One time.

Once.

Huge opportunities had appeared like open sets of double doors, beckoning Michael to touch me, but he ignored them. After his parents and Nonny had left, he parked his long, lean body at the kitchen table and worked his way through both trays of pizza. When the clan returned, Michael suggested playing Taboo with everyone. When Anthony arrived home at ten, even he seemed surprised to see us playing a stupid game with his parents. I saw him exchange a look with Michael. It was like Anthony was embarrassed or something, and he had scurried upstairs muttering an excuse. But the worst was when Taboo ended and we still had an hour to spare before my eleven o'clock curfew.

Lorraine, my boyfriend's mother, suggested we play foosball in the promised land of the basement. Michael said no.
No.
He wanted us to watch a movie on the Tuskegee Airmen for our project. Sure, he pulled me close under the blanket on the sofa in the TV room and kissed my forehead and cheek, but that was it.

I was silent as Michael drove me home, all doubt about his intent erased. I thought about what would happen next. How the texts would lessen, how he would start being busy on weekends and then, finally, maybe after Christmas because he's good and sensitive and wouldn't want to dampen my holiday vibe, he would come by in the white Subaru, red-necked and red-faced, and explain that he really likes me but he's just not ready for a serious girlfriend. And can we still be friends? And I will nod numbly and wonder at precisely what point he deleted the holiday talent-show video of freshman me from his phone. In school, he will stroll out of history class with only a slight glance my way, leaving me to fend off Farricelli alone, exposing me to the taunts of Riley's crew, who will see that I am once again unguarded and pounce.

“You okay, Cath?” Michael had asked after pulling into my driveway.

“Yeah,” I said. “How about you? Everything okay?”

He broke eye contact then and looked at a spot above me. “Yes.”

I began tugging on the cold door handle. I needed to get out.

“Wait,” he said, his hand on my arm. “You sure you're okay?”

I turned and looked straight into his face, at those beautiful brown eyes and lips and the awful, angry red scar that will permanently mar the sweet smoothness of his chin. My hand instantly went to it and my index finger softly traced the raised line.

“I'm just so tired,” I said.
Of my life,
I added in my head. “That's all.”

The clock on Grandma's dresser reads 1:36 a.m. It's been exactly two hours and twenty-one minutes since Michael dropped me off.

The amber prescription bottles on Grandma's carpet gleam subtly. I just took an inventory of the troops. All this time, I've blindly recruited and have no real idea of the troops' strength. I still don't really. Who the fuck knows if seven Lexapro of unknown dosage combined with a motley assortment of a few Celexa, Abilify, Paxil, Zoloft and Lamictal will be sufficient. And I'm not even sure about the Tylenol. I think swallowing a whole bottle is more likely to kill only my liver.

I'm finally starting to get tired. I lie on my side and rest my head on my left arm. The back of my snowflake earring pierces the soft skin behind my ear and I take it out. Then the other one. I sit up, the silver snowflakes barely glinting in my palm. They seem lightweight and dull now. I can't wear these anymore. I push down hard on the Lexapro cap and twist to open the bottle. Tilting my hand, I let the earrings fall inside. I close the bottle, tuck everything inside their Capezio shoe box home and pack it away under Grandma's bed.

It's reckless to keep them here, especially since I've agreed to a cleanout of this room. But maybe it's symmetry I'm going for. Grandma basically died in this room. It feels right in some way that my partners in death should stay here too.

Instinctively, my fingers straighten the ruffled eyelet bed skirt. I remember buying this with Grandma at Target a month before she died. I don't want to think about her now. She'd be disgusted with me. I also avoid all eye contact with the impaled mega-Jesus over Grandma's bed for the same reason. But neither Grandma nor Jesus can stop me from climbing onto this bed and pulling the yellow afghan over me. Fatigue laps at me with dark soft waves, but I can't fall asleep yet. I need to check my phone for any texts from Kristal.

She had texted me a few times earlier tonight saying she was having a good time. Then a great time. And then she'd-better-freaking-get-into-this-school time because it was beyond amazing, and the people were so cool, and smart, and hipster-y but not in the “clichéd hipster way.” Her last text was to say that they were leaving a party and headed back to the dorms. She said she'd text me all about it once she was in bed. And I waited because I wanted to hear, but also because I wanted to tell her about Michael and how he didn't like me anymore.

But she never texted.

I text her now: “You ok???”

There's no choo in response. I imagine her happily asleep in a single bed, and opposite her, another girl in a twin bed, in a room inside an old stone building that was converted into a dormitory, surrounded by other sleeping college kids who will all get up in a few hours and trudge to the cafeteria to relate last night's events. And like the thousands of other Sunday-morning kids in the hundreds of noisy college cafeterias that hum with conversation and utensil clatter, they will eat and laugh and be normal. This is where Kristal will be.

And where I won't. Ever.

I click on Notes and find my D-day List. Zero tells me to delete the entire thing. I do.

There are three things about the step-down program that are different from the IOP: we meet two days a week instead of five, two hours instead of three, and we are assigned to Group Room B, a space that reeks of new carpeting and whatever carcinogenic gases are being emitted by the pleather sofas. On Wednesday, our first day, most of us walked straight past the offices and restrooms in the familiar route to Room Three. Vanessa had to redirect everyone but Tommy.

“You want Chipotle or Panera?” Kristal whispers to me as the last minutes of group wind down. It's Friday, and despite witnessing last week's near collision, Mom is still allowing Kristal to drive me home after group.

“You choose,” I say softly, “I like both.” I want Kristal to decide because I don't want to put any food pressure on her.

“Chipotle,” she says, and gives me a quick grin.

These dinner plans have buoyed me the entire uneasy week. Things are very awkward with Michael. I am quiet with him and I think that unnerves him, because he is fumbling again, stuttering and flushed. He holds my hand at school, though, and surprisingly, the clasp is still warm and sure, as if to power through what our minds cannot.

After school today he texted, “Can we get together on Sunday?” and added the death-knell sentence: “We need to talk.” I haven't responded yet. I'm not ready for him to officially leave me yet. I plan on talking to Kristal about it over dinner. I know she'll help me.

The interior of Kristal's car is immaculate. It looks and smells brand-new. “Give me one sec,” Kristal says. She's texting the girl she stayed with at Vassar about some freshman guy she met: Eli from Greenwich, who she says is funny and who I know is gorgeous—Kristal had sent me a couple of pictures of him on Sunday.

“Fuck,” Kristal says. “She thinks he has a girlfriend.” Kristal stares at her phone and I can see the frustration etched on her face. “Like there could be anything happening with me, a
high schooler.
Plus, I'm not even gonna get in.” She makes a big show of clicking off her phone and zipping it into her bag. “There's a Fro-Zone in Cranbury, right?” she asks with false brightness. “Should we hit that for dessert? Or maybe just get coffee and doughnuts?”

I'm sensing a binge-eating episode coming on. “I don't know,” I say. “Why don't we see what we feel like after dinner?”

The atmosphere inside the Volkswagen instantly sparks as Kristal catches on. “Jesus Christ, Cat! Not you! Please tell me you're not watching every goddamned thing I put in my mouth! Are you gonna become a bathroom Nazi like my mother?”

“No,” I say softly. “It's just that…”

Do I tell her what I know?

“What?” Kristal demands. “It's just what, Miss PTSD?”

I shake her insult off and take a deep breath. “I know that you're still doing it. I heard you in the bathroom when I slept over.” Kristal's silence roars at me, so I continue, “I'm not passing judgment. You're my best friend. I want to help you.”

“Well, isn't that nice?” Kristal's voice stings with its sarcasm. “Maybe you and your boyfriend can join forces, sell bulimia ribbons, host a 5K for me? It's so fucking easy being Catherine Pulaski, isn't it?”

This is it. My open door. I can tell her now. I want to tell her. “No. Not at all,” I say. I am starting to overheat. “And I…I don't have PTSD. Or maybe I do, but I was never officially diagnosed with that. I have…”

Oh my God. Can I allow these words to leave my lips? Publicize
this
pain? Riley's reaction to my bipolar confession flashes through my head. No, no, no. Don't think about that. Kristal's different. She'll be okay with it.

Kristal asks, “What? You have what?” She's still angry.

“I'm bipolar.” The words are out now. I cannot take them back. My heart slams against my ribs as I study Kristal's face. At first, there's no change of expression; she watches me, steely-eyed.

But then she slowly shakes her head and turns to stare out the windshield, and I know my secret is sinking in. She seems stunned.

I continue, “I was diagnosed after my grandmother died. They think her death was a stressor that might have triggered it.”

Kristal doesn't say anything for at least a minute. There's no air in here. Then she asks in a strangely flat tone, “You have manic depression, right? That's another name for it?”

I nod, my body temperature flaming as the realization slams me in the gut. This confession was a big, big no, the hugest fucking mistake.

“So you have depressions and then the opposite, right?” she says in that robot voice. Without waiting for an answer, she asks, “Have you tried to kill yourself?”

It doesn't matter now. “Yes,” I say. “Last year. In September. I swallowed lithium and Prozac. My mom found me.”

Kristal turns to me and I can see the glistening streaks on her cheeks. She is crying. “All this fucking time I have spilled my guts to you, telling you everything.
Everything.
Including the greatest humiliation of my life. The deepest, darkest, rawest part of my life. And you couldn't confide in me? Ever? Not just that you're bipolar, but that you
attempted suicide
? That's kind of major shit, Cat! And you couldn't tell
me
? Not one, not
one
fucking thing? I'm an idiot. I thought we were best friends. Jesus, now I don't even know if we're friends at all!” She slams the steering wheel with her fists.

“I am so sorry,” I say, guilt and remorse racing through me in equal parts, jacking up my heart rate a millionfold. “I was afraid to tell you because my other friends couldn't handle it. They left. It's like…I don't know. I still can't believe that this is my life now. It's like someone turned everything upside down and told me to walk on the ceiling, that I'd get used to it. But everybody else still uses the floor. And I thought if I didn't tell anyone else, they wouldn't see me up there.”

“You know what?” Kristal says, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “We all fucking feel like that. I keep telling you, Cat, as much as you want to believe you're special that way, you're not.” She rests her head on the leather headrest and looks up through the moonroof. “I'm just going to drop you off at home. I don't want to do dinner”—her voice catches on the word “dinner”—“with you anymore.”

Her rejection pours over me like boiling wax, scalding me stiff. I cannot cry. “I'll get my own ride.” I fumble with the car door and have to wait for her to unlock it before I can escape. Woodenly, I step onto the sidewalk in front of St. Anne's as she peels away into the night.