Uncertainty (2 page)

It wasn't a class I looked forward to anymore. I was happy when the sub slapped the final packet in front of me, because it meant I would never have to come into this room again.

When I stopped seeing visions, I didn't know what to expect. The little girls' bodies were discovered, then Jenna's, and a door slammed down on the supernatural world I'd been peering into. I was left with nothing but a heap of unanswered questions.

At the time, it had all seemed so real. Now the whole experience had fractured into distant, hollow memories. I had shakily settled on the entire thing being a product of my stressed out mind. Wishful thinking.

It didn't help that I had been on medication since the week after Jenna's funeral. The school kept insisting I see a therapist, so Claire dragged me to exactly one appointment with a pricey psychiatrist in a private office.

The appointment was scheduled for the first week of December, the ground powdered with snow. We walked into the lobby of the mental health center, between two leafy potted palms flanking the doors. Rock salt was ground into the black runner leading to the registration desk.

Claire clutched her purse to her ribcage the entire time. It wouldn't have surprised me if she'd scheduled the appointment under a pseudonym. After checking in, we sat in the waiting area, beneath a giant flatscreen advertising different mood-altering drugs.

To Claire, mental illness had always been a sign of weakness, a silent shame that one should keep to themselves. She would have rather swept Jenna away, like all the dirt in the house she eradicated.

Her face read shame beneath the layers of carefully-applied foundation and wrinkle filler. She looked like she'd like nothing better than to leave me there, abandon me as a lost cause. I felt just as bad, because it was my broken brain that made her feel that way.

The doctor's name sounded Norwegian, and I mangled it every time I tried to pronounce it. In my head, I referred to her as Dr. N. A pouf of gray-blonde hair sprouted from her scalp, and doll-sized glasses perched on her nasal bridge.

"How about you start by sharing how you feel right now?" Dr. N asked me after I'd answered her polite inquiries about school and home with "fine" and "fine".

"I don't feel anything," I said bluntly. Not completely true. But I couldn't pick out one specific feeling from the vast soup that my emotions had become.

"Just tell her," Claire insisted, still using her purse like a shield. "That's why we're here."

She patted my hand, a gesture that belonged to someone else's mom.

"I am telling her," I insisted.

"This is a safe place, Ariel," Dr. N interjected.

I crossed my arms over my chest. I didn't feel safe. I felt ganged up on.

The cramped office smelled of menthol and the strong, almost sour bowl of potpourri on her desk. Puzzle boxes and coloring books were crammed into a row of oak bookcases, looking somehow ominous among the medical textbooks.

Claire looked at me expectantly with bloodshot eyes. She sighed as though I were disappointing her. She was full of heavy sighs, erupting like gasps of steam letting pressure off of a volcano.

"Let's try this instead, Ariel," Dr. N said. "Describe the chain of events that brought you here. Your mom says you like reading. So tell me a story, Ariel."

Her speech was accompanied by constant hand gestures. If she said my name one more time, I was gonna scream. Leaning back in her overstuffed chair, she waited for me to speak.

I looked up, trying to gather my thoughts. The ceiling was smudged with yellow stains. I wondered if Dr. N smoked behind closed doors, maybe hid an ashtray out on the window ledge. I wanted her to be flawed.

"My best friend Jenna was murdered," I began, taking care to keep my voice steady. I swallowed the marble-hard lump in my throat. "My teacher is the one that killed her. He almost shot me, too."

Dr. N's expression didn't change. I wondered if she actually heard what I was saying. She was master of the dispassionate response.

"And the boy I had a...thing for, used me and dumped me for his rich girlfriend, who is also my enemy." I stared at the ceiling again. Definitely nicotine stains, concentrated above her wing-back chair. "If you can have mortal enemies as a Sophomore."

Both Dr. N and Claire were silent. Talking about those things made me feel intensely raw and vulnerable, and I wanted to stuff all the words back in to the secret place where my thoughts were stored.

"So my life sucks. If I can be so blunt." Bitterness soaked my voice. "But I'm still going. I have not missed a day of school, other than when said enemy broke my nose. I've kept my grades up, so I don't know why Claire is complaining. And being here is not going to help me."

Neither woman said a word in response. Both of them looked away from me, as though I were too messed up to see straight on. Claire sniffled like she was holding back tears. She never cried, and the fact that she might start then deeply disturbed me.

"Can I go now?" I asked quietly.

"Ariel!" Claire barked. I jumped, guilt cutting me down to size. "What's wrong with you? The doctor is trying to help you. You need help. We all do."

She ran her hand through her hair, which was starting to come undone from her careful up-do. Another sigh erupted from within her. Another burst of steam.

"It's fine, Claire," Dr. N said, raising a lined palm. Claire pinched her lips together, creases forming around her mouth that leached her lipstick.

"I don't like to talk about myself," I said. "It's not like I'm unburdening my mind or however it's supposed to feel. I just feel like I'm betraying myself."

Dr. N readjusted the world's smallest glasses. A prescription pad had appeared in her hands. "I think you need a little help. There's no shame in that, like your mom was saying. I'm going to write a prescription for a benzodiazepine. It's a safe medication that will lessen your stress and help you cope."

The prescription tore off. She handed it to Claire, whose head was bobbing like a dashboard ornament on a bumpy road. I still couldn't shake the paranoid feeling that they were conspiring against me.

"And then maybe after you adjust, we can work on why you feel like so much of an outsider," Dr. N said.

But there was no after. We never went back to the mental health center. Claire always came up with a justifiable excuse. She updated Dr. N via phone progress reports, in which she talked in melodramatic tones and used phrases like "firm recovery." That's how my pills kept magically getting refilled.

The matter had been dealt with. And all of these months later, in her mind, things were just fine.

Autopilot was my way of getting through home life. Not much different than at school. When I came home from my finals, I helped Hugh prepare dinner. After we'd eaten, the TV on to make up for lack of conversation, I cleaned up the dishes.

Ten minutes later, I stood in the downstairs bathroom, with one of the little white benzo pills in my palm. The exhaust fan in the ceiling buzzed noisily.

I hated the way the meds made me feel, like half of my brain was asleep. Unbeknownst to Claire, I'd been slowly lowering the dosage every week for the last few months, from three pills at the start to the half pill I took daily now.

Slowly, I'd begun to come out of the walking slumber I'd been living in. It was like popping a bubble that had been around my head: colors were brighter than I remembered them, sounds sharper. And the feelings that I had forgotten how to feel came rushing back, sometimes too fast for comfort.

The sparkling, commercial clean mirror reflected my face back at me. Deep shadows aged my hazel eyes, the black hair I'd kept up on dying a disheveled, shapeless mass. Blue veins crisscrossed beneath my translucent skin. Not my prettiest look.

Tipping my palm towards the toilet, I tried to pretend I wasn't doing it on purpose. The tiny tablet plopped on the water and dissolved. I met my eyes in the mirror, my reflection a silent accomplice.

"Oops," I whispered.

I picked up the orange prescription bottle and, before I could change my mind, shook out the remaining pills, flushing them away. Capping the bottle, I slid it into my pajama pocket, and shut off the light. I clicked the bathroom door shut and waited for my body chemistry to realize something was amiss.

CHAPTER 2

MY SLEEP THAT
night was plagued by shifting, restless dreams. When I woke up in the morning, my neck was stiff, like I'd slept on a mattress stuffed with rocks. I had to drag my tired body through school.

Classes were just a formality now that were were done with finals. Still, we had to go through the motions. God forbid they not squeeze every ounce out of us they could, even though it meant crossword puzzles and movies all day.

An office attendant appeared at the door during English. Ms. Fellows, the teacher, didn't stand or acknowledge her, too busy playing mahjong on her computer. The attendant had to shout across the room.

"Ariel Donovan!" She seemed irritated, clutching a stack of manila folders. "I need Ariel to come down to the office."

I winced. What now?

"Ariel, go," Ms. Fellows commanded, only briefly glancing up.

Leaving my books behind, I stood and followed the attendant. On the way out the door, I glanced back. Henry's head was lowered above paperclips he was bending on his desk. But he was watching me. I could see his cautious eyes through his bangs.

The attendant was already halfway down the hall, and I rushed to catch up. She was a short, nondescript woman in a bright red vest. Her heels clicked steadily as I followed her.

"Let's go," she said, sounding more like she was talking to herself than to me.

The last time I'd been taken down to the office, it was to find out about Jenna. I wasn't thrilled by the prospect of returning. Even the sight of the front desk reminded me of that dreadful day, when I'd burst into tears and didn't stop until the wake.

"Did anything bad happen?" I blurted out, unable to contain myself. Not knowing was the worst, and I'd spent enough of my life not knowing things. A curious burning feeling crept along the back of my neck and arms.

"What?" she asked, frowning and cradling the folders closer. "No, nothing bad. You kids and your morbid fantasies. This is just a formality. Principal McPherson needs to tie up some loose ends before the school year finishes out."

I wondered if this woman knew how to use her smiling muscles. My shoulders relaxed, just as I realized they were tensed. No one was hurt. No one had died.

But then what could possibly involve me? I'd tried to fly under the radar as much as I could, only answering questions when I was called on, never raising a fuss.

Once we reached administration, she ushered me into McPherson's office and shut the door. McPherson didn't look up from behind his desk, the bald spot on the crown of his head gleaming. For once, his hideous retro jacket was off, slung on the chair back.

"Have a seat, Miss Donovan," he said apathetically, waving his hand like he was shooing a fly. I did as I was told, sitting back to await whatever fate he had in store for me.

The office was ultra-organized, neat white labels sorting all the shelves. Each office supply had a place, including paperclips and white-out. Garish paintings of zombie-like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln hung facing each other on opposite walls. An enormous brass eagle spread its wings on the bookshelf.

McPherson scooped up a stack of papers, tapped them straight, and set them over by a gargantuan shredder in the corner. I thought of a great Senior prank: coming in and switching all the labels. I filed it away for a couple years.

"Looks like you've redecorated since my last visit," I observed.

He grunted. "I didn't do the decorating. They hired somebody."

"I was gonna say, it looks a bit...overstated for someone who prefers simplicity."

He cocked one bushy, gray-streaked eyebrow. I wondered if I'd given too much away. Theo and I had gone snooping after him a while back, when we thought he was up to no good. But he'd never let on whether or not he'd discovered that.

"Wait, who's they?" I asked.

He ignored my question, rolling the top desk drawer open and pulling out a computer printout. He slid the paper towards me.

"What's this?" I asked.

"Incident report."

"For what incident?"

"For the accident that happened in PE class last November," McPherson said matter-of-factly.

He slid a ballpoint pen out of his shirt pocket, and clicked the point out, setting it on top of the official-looking form.

"You mean when Lainey broke my nose with a tennis ball?" I asked sarcastically. "I thought we had forgotten all about it."

"Yes, that. Accidentally," he reiterated. He was being very careful to keep saying that.

I scoffed loudly. But he remained passive, lacing his fingers together over his ample stomach.

"The school certainly took its sweet time getting around to it," I said, gripping the form. I didn't know what game McPherson was up to, but his intentions weren't innocent. "Should I be filling this out without my parents present?"