A Really Awesome Mess (26 page)

“Yup,” she said with a shrug. “You’re the beautiful star, the one Mom and Dad flew halfway around the world to get because she’s so special. I’m just … whatever came out, you know? You were actually chosen.”

“Now Joss,” my mother said softly. “We would’ve flown around the world and picked you, too. We wanted both of you, and we’ll always love both of you equally.”

Brittany was grinning from ear to ear now. I could tell how much she liked her job on most days, but this must have felt like a banner moment to her because she was practically floating on air. “I want to point something out here, mostly to you girls,” Brittany said. “But it’s a lesson everyone can benefit from. When we don’t directly ask for clarification, we tend to fill in the gaps with negative thoughts. These eventually become rooted in our minds as truths, and then everyone gets stuck in a cycle of misunderstanding and miscommunication.”

“We love you, Emmy,” my mom assured me. “We’re a family. All four of us. It’s not three against one. It never was.”

“I love you guys, too,” I whispered.

“From here on out,” Brittany said. “Remember to check out anything you’re unsure about with each other, rather than just filling in the blanks with negative assumptions that most likely are false. Okay?”

We all nodded, and the session was over.

My parents hugged me and told me they’d bring me dinner later. I was exhausted. I just wanted to lie down for a while. I needed time to process everything that had gone down today.

Except when I got to my room, Jenny’s whole family was crammed in there, packing up her stuff. Jenny started jumping up and down when she saw me, then dragged me into the least-crowded corner. “So you guys really did it, huh?”

I nodded, and she scooped me into a bear hug. “How can I ever repay you?” she asked.

Ever since we’d left the truck stop parking lot, all I’d been thinking about was how much I wished I could talk to Justin. But that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. Unless …

“Maybe you guys could figure out a way for Justin and me to communicate without the staff finding out?”

She gave me a huge smile and another hug. “Consider it done.”

THE ALL-DAY THERAPY SESH WENT JUST ABOUT AS WELL AS I
could have hoped. Mostly because it didn’t take all day.

My psychopharmacologist was going to stop by to make sure my meds were doing what they were supposed to do. And I had to journal. I got irrationally annoyed by the use of that word as a verb, but oh well. And in light of what they actually believed was responsible decision-making around my sexual activities, I didn’t have to do the SR group anymore.

I was stoked to not have to hear about all the SR guys’ emissions anymore, but otherwise, the whole thing was kind of a bust as far as I was concerned. There was no breakthrough or anything. I knew Mom and Patrick loved me. I knew Dad was a tool, and I guess I sort of knew that him being a tool
wasn’t because he was so disappointed at having me for a son. Not a hundred percent sure about that one, actually, but Mom assured me that he was a tool before I was born.

“So why’d you marry him, Mom? I mean, I’m glad you did and everything, because of the whole me existing part, but still.”

Mom smiled. “Yeah, well, that’s something I get to work out with my own therapist, kiddo.”

And then it pretty much wrapped up, just a couple of hours in. Max said, “Well, I think it’s clear that Justin and his dad have some things they need to work on together, and with him not here, we’ve probably gotten about as far as we can today.”

That was true, of course, though I kind of doubted Dad and I were ever going to work on our things together. I suspected we’d just spend the rest of our lives trying and failing to pretend like we didn’t have things to work on. Awesome!

It didn’t really matter anyway. Having some big conversation with Dad wasn’t going to make me better. This was the part that made me sad. I was just defective, and I didn’t know if I could ever be fixed. Though Max assured me that we could get that little voice to stop whispering “nobody wants you” in my ear all the time. It hadn’t happened yet, but that would actually be a pretty big improvement.

The next day after breakfast, Mom and Patrick and the twins said their tearful good-byes—well, it was actually only tearful for Mom. Okay, and me, too. I sat down to journal. I
had to show Max that I’d been doing it, but I didn’t have to share anything with him unless I wanted to, so I felt like I could write about what had actually happened over the last few days.

PROS

Freed Willy. Most, and possibly only worthwhile thing I’ve ever done. Felt good
.

Made friends
.

Emmy
.

Realized I think nobody wants me
.

CONS

Friends leaving
.

Dad’s a tool
.

Emmy is off-limits
.

Realizing my “core issue” didn’t actually make it go away
.

Ugh. Writing it down made it hurt worse. Awesome idea, genius therapist. And then it was time to say good-bye to all my friends.

The girls were allowed to come into the lobby of our wing since it was such a special occasion. So Jenny came in and gave me a big hug. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for saving him. That was a great thing you did.” I pulled away and saw that she was crying. Without even thinking about it, I reached out and wiped a tear away with my thumb.

“You’re a nice guy,” Jenny said. “I get why she likes you. Oh crap. I almost forgot. One last handshake.”

I looked at her for a second. “One last handshake? Are you serious? I mean, who the hell does that? We’ve already hugged, but we should shake hands—”

She gritted her teeth and whispered, “Just shake my damn hand, okay?”

I reached my hand out, and Jenny grasped it with her right hand and then grabbed the other side of my hand with her left hand. And pressed a folded-up piece of paper into it. Idiot. It was a note from Emmy. And I was too stupid to write anything to give to Tracy or Chip to give to her. Oh well.

And then it was Diana’s turn, and she came up and threw her arms around me and whispered fiercely in my ear. “You know what my favorite Harry Potter book is?”

“Um. No.”

“
Goblet of Fire
. Got it?
Goblet of Fire
. It’s the fourth one.”

“Yyyeah. Okay.” “Say it back to me.”

“
Goblet of Fire
.”

She released me and ran out the door, tossing a hurried “see ya!” over her shoulder as she went. Weird.

And then Chip came over. It was always awkward with a guy—were we gonna shake hands or hug? He held his hand up to clasp mine, and when I hit him with the high five, he pulled me in for a manly, shoulder-to-shoulder hug, accompanied by a couple of slaps on the back. He also pressed something into my
hand. It was a small piece of hard plastic.

“Left my netbook with the powers that be so you can use it when you get to level three,” he said out loud, and then whispered, “That’s a flash drive full of porn. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. And don’t ask where I hid it when I got here.”

Well, that was a touching, if kind of weird and gross gesture. A couple of gigs of porn from Chip was like a diamond from anybody else in how precious it was to the giver, so I tried to take it in that spirit. And let’s be honest—it was gonna get some use no matter how much it skeeved me out.

Tracy came over and gave me a real hug. “Alright, man. We’ll talk when you get out. If not sooner.”

“You gonna write me? I don’t see you as much of a letter writer.”

“Nah, I just … you just never know what’s gonna happen, you know?”

“I guess,” I said, but I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

“Take care,” Tracy said. “And thanks for … you know.”

“No problem,” I said. He was thanking me for taking the fall for everybody else. I felt like I was in a gangster movie or something. It was actually pretty awesome. “Trace,” I said as he started to walk away.

“Yeah?” he said.

“I just—you’re a really cool guy. Probably the coolest guy
I’ve ever met. So maybe you don’t have to be anybody else?” As soon as it was out of my mouth, I felt stupid. This was not the kind of thing guys said to each other.

But he took it well. He broke into a big grin and said, “Thanks, man. But you know, old habits die hard. Stay the hell away from the medicine cabinet, will you?”

“Yeah,” I said. I watched him walk through the glass door and across the lawn to join his parents. They all climbed into an SUV and drove out of the parking lot. I watched until I couldn’t see any of the dust they kicked up floating in the air anymore. And then I went up to my room to cry.

It was just about dinnertime, but I didn’t feel like eating. I’d have to go eventually because skipping meals was not allowed, but I was gonna take a minute to try to pull myself together and make myself go. It wasn’t like the Assland food was so awesome to begin with, but with everybody gone except Emmy, who might as well have been gone for all I was going to get to see her, it was going to be intolerable.

Thinking of Emmy reminded me that I had a note from her in my pocket. I quickly unfolded it, expecting to find it packed with words. But all it said was this:

I’m sad

And I miss everybody

But you most of all

And I’m proud of you

And I’m proud of myself

And I think about you

And that makes me happy

I really wanted to kiss this girl. Right now. But with all our trustworthy intermediaries gone, I didn’t even know how to get a message to her. I read the poem again. And again. And I was still sad, but this made me happier.

A girl. Wrote me. A poem. A
poem
! Ha! I may have been defective and screwed up, and maybe it took a girl who was just as crazy as me to actually like me, but I didn’t care. I thought about her. And that made me happy.

Of course, I did end up going down to the cafeteria before somebody came up to make me go, and then I’d have to have an emergency session to explain my self-destructive behavior. The hell with that. It was much easier to choke down some food. The buzz I got from the poem didn’t last too long. The staff filled the transition day—the day after everybody leaves but before everybody else arrives—with a field trip for a supposedly fun activity that actually sucked: The nauseating, nut-busting horror of the high ropes course, which was not a metaphor for anything and which did not inspire me to want to do anything except puke and maybe soak my harness-cramped nuts in ice water for a couple of hours.

Who thought of this crap?

The only bright spot happened when I was standing up on the top of a telephone pole, and I was in the nut-buster harness, and I was supposed to jump off and trust the yutzes on the ground to pull the rope attached to the harness hard enough that I only got a hard shot to the family jewels instead of splatting on the ground. I looked across the course, and there, inching her way across two ropes that hung between towers, was Emmy. She looked up at me, and I threw up the heavy metal “I Love You.” She threw it right back, then quickly grabbed the rope before she toppled off it. I jumped off the pole and was rewarded by testicular pain and forty minutes of processing the experience and what it meant in terms of my life. I told them it meant that I was willing to take risks and trust people because that was what they wanted to hear, but all I could think was, “This was the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of, and you should have told me to wear a cup.”

The new roommate arrived the next day, and I got to be the sullen kid sulking on his bed when the new kid arrived.

His name was Josh, and he was on the smallish side, with curly brown hair and freckles. “What you in for?” I said.

“Suicidal ideation,” he said.

“Make an attempt?” I asked.

“Nah. I just wrote a novel in the form of a series of interconnected short stories in which teenagers commit suicide. Therapist told my mom he thought I might try it. I wouldn’t,
but it got me out of the hellhole where I went to school and away from my stepdad.”

“Well. Welcome,” I said. And that was pretty much it for a while. I sat with the kid at meals, but it was hard to feel like I was connected with him, when all I could think is how he wasn’t like Tracy or even Chip.

I’d started to get sad again. The note was now five days old. The heavy metal sign atop the horrible ropes course was four days old. And I had nothing to look forward to until the end of the semester.

Food didn’t taste like anything, and every morning it got harder to get out of bed. What the hell was the point, anyway?

Max told me I could expect a difficult few weeks while they adjusted my meds but to just remember how far I’d come and all the good times I’d had since I’d gotten here, and that if I had fun once it means I could have fun again.

Maybe.

I mean, I knew he was right. But I was scared. I could feel myself at the top of the slide again, and I knew I’d gotten off the chute and found a ladder last time, but I wasn’t sure I was gonna be able to do it again. What if I started going down and I never found my way up again?