Blue Rose (A Flowering Novel) (5 page)

8

The teacher was talking about vectors or something, but I was distracted. Jack was absent
that day. He was almost never absent, unless there was some legal crap he had to deal with. For someone who was tortured almost daily at school, he refused to miss a class. He always said that he’d never get the scholarships he needed to get out if he gave in to their bullshit. So his being absent was strange. Stranger was the fact that he hadn’t called or messaged me. We’d been arguing a lot lately, but even when we were mad at each other, he texted me nightly to wish me pleasant dreams. Outside of the meltdown the previous year, there was not one day I didn’t talk to Jack.

Dave hadn’t heard from
him, either. I’d asked between classes, but he figured maybe it was court stuff. Jack never went into detail, but here and there, things came up. Still, when they did, we knew. We didn’t know what exactly, but he’d say something was happening with his dad or the lawyers or whatever. Yet neither of us knew anything.

I tried to focus. When he did come back to school tomorrow, he was going to be pissed that I’d taken shitty notes and I didn’t feel like dealing with that on top of missing him. I copied the equations and theorems from the board, so caught up in them that I didn’t hear the
classroom phone ring.

“Alana?”

I looked up at my name and the teacher said I was needed in the office.

“Should I bring my stuff?” I asked, but she just shrugged. I took it anyway, because even if it was about paperwork, sometimes they took forever. I wondered if my mom had forgotten to pay for something. Even though graduation was still a few months away, they were already asking for money for every little thing. We really didn’t have it, but I thought my mom had been trying to keep up with the bills. I’d worked for a little while at a local restaurant, but quit when my boss asked me to fuck him. Luckily, he had only asked.
So now I had to wait for my mom to take care of everything.

I walked down the hall to the office. Schools are always so strange during class
es, because the halls that are normally loud and full of life become eerie within a few minutes of the bell ringing. Someone will walk by here and there, but mostly it’s this dead haze, this nearly paused reality where you can hear all the classes happening behind the doors, but time and life seem suspended.

Inside the office were the principal, the guidance director, the school resource officer, and my mom. My mother was crying and
she wouldn’t look at me. No one would look at me. I didn’t understand. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I wondered if she had found my stash of booze in my closet, but would she really call the school? No one could be dead; my mother and I were the only ones in my family left, so if she was here…

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Miss Reardon, there’s been an incident, and we wanted you to hear it here before it got out around the school.” The resource officer was the only one who would even make eye contact. He spoke matter-of-factly but nothing felt matter-of-fact.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Mr. Connelly’s grandmother contacted us this afternoon. She specifically requested that we speak to you. He’s in the hospital now.”

“Jack?” I
still didn’t understand. The way they were looking at me, my mom’s heaving sobs, Jack’s absence… I knew what they all meant theoretically, but Jack was okay. He had to be okay. Anything else would be unfair.

The guidance counselor came over to where I was standing, and
then she shut the door. She led me by the arm to a comfy leather chair by the window. I’d never been called down to the office but I got the impression that the chair wasn’t normally used. The hard-looking wooden ones by the principal’s desk were likely more common for students. She knelt beside me and took my hand.

“Has Jack ever spoken to you about being depressed?” she asked.

I looked at the other adults and they were staring at me with anticipation. “Well, yeah, I mean… obviously. People like us are generally depressed.”

My mom looked up and there was a sharp intake of breath. “Alana, why haven’t you told me?”

“Told you what?”

The guidance counselor brought my attention back to her. “Honey, have you ever thought about harming yourself?”

I thought about the small box of razor blades I kept with my alcohol, the way they felt as I dug into the flesh of my thighs at night, the little white scars that now laced up and down along my legs. They wouldn’t understand. You didn’t die from bleeding a little, and I needed to bleed. I needed to cut, to feel something, to know that the pain was possible, to let it do to my body what it did to my mind.

“No,” I answered.

“No thoughts of suicide?” she repeated.

“No. Why?”

It was all starting to make a little too much sense and I felt the air drain from my lungs. Not Jack. There was only Jack. I had survived so much. I had even survived him hating me, losing our friendship, and although we were better now, it wasn’t ever going to be fixed fully. But he was still alive. He was present. There was the world and then there was the world without Jack – and I couldn’t live in the latter.

“Please. Please tell me he’s okay. Please tell me this is a mistake,” I begged.

I tried to stand, to run from the room, to go back to math class where Jack would be sitting, because this was a joke. It was some kind of twisted game. Jack was fine.

My mom stopped me, pulling me into her arms, and it was too much. I let the tears come and I heard them talking about getting me to the hospital, about a rope, about Jack’s body hanging in the closet. They were saying things like “intensive care,” “possible brain damage,” “lack of oxygen,” but those weren’t real words. Those weren’t words that had anything to do with Jack.

They helped me out to the parking lot, to my mom’s car, and we went to the hospital. His grandmother was there with him. At some point, I managed to text Dave and he met us there after school got out. There was no word on Jack, but I knew then. I knew that even if he made it out alive, something died within him when he made that choice. I knew there was a part of him that would forever be unreachable for me from now forward. I knew it, and I cried for the boy I loved.

9

I ask Lily to walk out with me and give Jack a hug, but he’s doing his thing where he’s turning off his feelings. I know I scared him, reminding him of how hard he falls when he gives in to hope, but I’m worried. And I’m worried Lily is going to have no idea what’s coming to her. If there is any chance for them, she needs to be prepared to expect nothing.

We don’t talk in the elevator. It’s awkward for us both. I don’t know how to communicate with women. Most of them hate me on sight. I used to think something was wrong with me, but as I got older and enough of their boyfriends stared at my ass – and the more daring ones grabbed it – I realized that they hated the fact that I’m pretty. As if I wanted their nasty, skeevy boyfriends. Although I guess in Lily’s case, I do. But Jack isn’t skeevy – and he isn’t her boyfriend. 

I stand with her in the lobby and neither of us knows what to say. Finally, I speak.
“It was fun. We should do it again sometime.”

She turns a shade of salmon that seems unnatural on a person and her eyes dart around the lobby, taking in the guy working at the desk and the two sitting in chairs by the window. They clearly don’t know one another and are waiting for different friends or family members, because they ignore each other like it would be a crime to socialize. People are so strangely afraid of opening up to one another, but I guess we all have stories that explain why.

Lily seems worried someone will know what we did, that they’ll judge her, and I try not to laugh. She’s in college. No one here cares. I’m sure they’ve done it, and if they haven’t, I doubt very much that they would argue about being with two girls at the same time. Hell, if we announced it, Jack would probably win a medal.

“I’d really like that,”
she finally replies, her eyes focused intently on the tiled floor.

“Have Jack be in touch.”

“I don’t know if we’re…”

She wants me to confirm what they are, to say that she’s his girlfriend, but I don’t know what they are. I know Jack doesn’t have girlfriends, and I know he has no idea how much he has already fallen for her. I
also know that Lily doesn’t have a clue about Jack or his past. I can see it in her innocence. There’s no way that she knows what he’s been through and can still look this naïve. I’m not going to be the one to tell her, but I’m also not going to placate her and pretend Jack is going to buy her roses and ride off into the sunset with her on a frigging unicorn.

“Listen, Lily, I am all for having a good time. And you were
definitely
a good time. But Jack’s fucked up. Don’t fall in love with him.”

“I’m not,”
she argues, but she’s wrong. I saw it between them and, even if they don’t know it, they are both screwed. Of course, as always, I’m the one left out, but I’m the only one who gets it. I try to warn her, but she’s already too far gone.

After I say goodbye, I walk to my car, thinking about what’s going to happen if this ends poorly. Jack has managed to last several years without another incident, but he does it by feeling nothing. He does it by denying what he wants – and needs – more than anything else. He manages by pretending he doesn’t need to be loved as desperately as the rest of us.

If it falls apart, I’m going to be the one who has to fix it. It’s so hard to be strong for him, when I’m weak on the inside, but he pretends and so do I. Sometimes, it’s the only way to survive.

****

I have another appointment with Melinda the following week. She senses it immediately.

“Something’s happened,” she says.

“I... I’ve always loved Jack.”

“The one you told me about during the intake?”

“Yeah. And like I said, I knew he was falling for this other girl. Well, this weekend, he called me. And he wanted me to… for lack of better phrasing, have a threesome with them.”

“How did you feel about that?”

“I mean… it isn’t the first time,” I explain.

“Right. But it was different this time.”

“Yeah. I mean, Jack wasn’t different. It’s always the same with Jack. And Lily… well, she was really good. As far as the physical stuff goes. I enjoyed it. I trust Jack. I always enjoy it with him, even if I sometimes feel bad after.”

“Okay, but you’re unhappy now,” she points out.

“It’s just… the two of them together. When we’ve been with other people in the past, it was equal, or more often, it was all about me and Jack and the other person was the extra body. This time, seeing the way they looked at one another, especially when he was fucking her… I could have evaporated and it would have been a while before they noticed.”

“You’re jealous?”
she asks.

I shake my head. “No. I want him to be happy. She’s good for him. Probably too good and he’ll probably freak out, but I hope not… I want this for him. He’s… well, he’s everything. I will never be able to heal him and I want him to heal. I
wish
it was me, but I see what we do to each other. It just… it fucking hurts, Melinda. It hurts so badly I wish I was dead.”

She puts down her pen and paper. “Are you saying
that-”

I cut her off. “No. I’m not suicidal. I told you; I don’t feel enough to want to die, but I wish I was dead. I wish I’d died a long time ago, with
Jerry. I wish he’d killed me, because I’ve done nothing but die slowly since. The pills don’t work, you know… They don’t make it have not happened.”

She sighs. “No one said they could.”

“I know. It’s just… Jack. He’s always been the only thing that mattered.” I start to cry and she hands me a box of tissues. I feel like an idiot, crying, blowing my nose in front of her, but I can’t stop it. I’ve always kept it in, never talking about it. Even with my other therapists. Maybe it’s Melinda or maybe it’s just that Jack was never in love before.
He’s in love
, I think, and the crying gets worse.

“Alana, tell me about him. Tell me about Jack.”

I’m not ready, though, so instead, I tell her about my stepdad.