Charm & Strange (19 page)

“Let me do that,” I say.

“I’m just filling out the parts I can.”

“What does it ask?”

“It asks why you’re here, okay? Like the sign-in sheet, only there’s more room and more questions. Hey, are you allergic to any medications?”

I sit up. “What did you put?”

“Well, if you don’t tell me, I’m going to put ‘Don’t know.’”

“No. What did you put for why we’re here?”

“I put that you’re really stressed. That you’re, uh, having a hard time.”

I snatch the clipboard and look. He’s written “mental breakdown” in the Reason for Visit section, and under a list of psychiatric symptoms he’s checked boxes for suicidal ideation, homicidal ideation, active hallucinations, delusional thinking, disordered thoughts, agitation, and history of trauma.

“This is all wrong,” I mumble, but my hands shake too much and the clipboard falls.

“I’ll write,” Jordan says, bending to pick it up. “You tell me what to put.”

I nod.

She squints at the paper. Scrawls down the date. “What’s your middle name, Win?”

I stand and begin to pace.

Lex says, “His middle name is Winston. His first name … it’s Andrew.”

“Andrew Winston Winters,” Jordan says, and when Lex tells her I’m from Charlottesville, I know she’s put the pieces together. It’s been almost six years, but people still know my name. It’s hard to forget. When it happened, the whole thing was all over the news: television, magazines, social media, all of it, highlighted as a failure of our culture, a symptom of a larger disease. Everyone, over and over again, asking the same question, the one I’d never, ever answered: Why? Why would three
children
have a suicide pact?

And why would one back out and let the other two die?

Lex clears his throat. “You know, you’re going to have to call your parents.”

*   *   *

Hours later, my name gets called.

I tell the ER nurse who interviews me that I have a wolf inside of me and I can’t get him to come out. She smiles and nods and listens to my heart. Then she takes my blood and my blood pressure, makes me piss in a cup. She also gives me an ice pack for my hurt eye and has a tech sit with me. There’s more waiting. A doctor comes in next. He asks even more questions. I do my best to answer them. I try explaining about the wolf and how I don’t
want
to hurt anyone even though I might not be able to help it, but after a certain point, my vocal cords won’t make words.

Only howls.

I want ice for all my wounds.

The doctor’s voice turns solemn. He explains that he’s going to admit me into the hospital’s adolescent psych unit for evaluation. I nod when he asks if I understand. Then I’m allowed to say good-byes and thank-yous to Jordan and Lex. They both look exhausted, as if they wish they’d never agreed to come, and relieved that they finally get to go. They promise to call soon. And to not tell anyone at school what’s happened, to keep this all a secret, although of course that’s impossible. I’m pretty sure the hospital’s already talked to the school, and people will probably notice when I don’t show up in class for forever, since no one will tell me how long I’ll be here.

They leave.

I’m taken upstairs, where there are more doctors. They give me a shot of something. I don’t know what it is, the shot, but I do know that it’s meant to make me more tame and less likely to bite. I don’t want it, of course, but it’s not a choice.

It’s never a choice.

I bare my teeth but hold still. I watch the needle slide into my skin. I feel pain, then nothing. My limbs weaken, but when I’m finally led to my room and given a chance to lie down, my heart beats too quickly and my eyes won’t close.

I want ice for all my wounds.

From my spot by the window and through the sinking haze of my mind, I try making sense of my surroundings. There’s only one bed, so I guess I won’t have a roommate. I don’t know why that is. There were other kids out in the hall, I saw them, but I can’t speculate if my isolation is a good sign or a bad one. Whatever it is, being here, alone, is in sharp contrast with that first day at boarding school years earlier, when a fourteen-year-old Lex burst into our dorm room. He had streaks of blond in his dark hair and arms full of drum equipment. He ran his mouth from the moment he laid eyes on me, babbling on about his girl-on-girl porn collection, his death-metal tendencies. The force of his exuberance overwhelmed me, especially his insistence on discussing masturbation habits in order to avoid any awkward moments. A good idea in theory, perhaps, but personally, I thought having the conversation was far more awkward than anything else that might happen and told him so.

“I just like to put things out there,” he said happily. “I mean, we’re roommates. That’s almost like being brothers. So no secrets, okay?”

I hesitated. Everything about me was a secret. “Okay.”

He grinned. “You can tell me anything.”

It’s not long before a guy in a hospital staff uniform comes to check on me. He doesn’t knock; he just comes right in. He records my vital signs. He leans down to look at me.

“How are you doing?” he asks.

I don’t answer. I can’t move my mouth. I can’t lift my head.

“Are you having a panic attack?”

Am I?

“You’re hyperventilating,” he explains. “You need to breathe slowly.”

I can’t do that either.

He flips through my chart. “I can see if you can have something else to help you sleep. Like Xanax or Ativan. Do you want me to do that?”

Still, I can’t talk, but he must see something in my eyes. Horror. Despair.

His voice softens. He puts the chart down. “Got it. No Xanax for now. Just try and breathe, okay? I’m going to stay with you.”

chapter

thirty-eight

the wolf

I am not new to therapy.

I know the questions they will ask.

I know the answers I can give.

I know the diagnosis I will receive and the medications they will put me on.

None of it will fix me.

The day Keith, Siobhan, and I decided to die did not give me PTSD. Seeing their ruined bodies pulled from the river was consequence, not truth. Reaction, not trauma. That’s what everyone forgets.

The pact between us was never the problem.

It was the answer.

“Tell me about your wolf,” the doctor says. He sits across from me and presses his fingers together to form a tiny steeple.

“He’s stuck,” I say.

“Where?”

“Inside of me.”

“What does that feel like?”

“What do you mean?”

“What does it feel like to have a wolf stuck inside of you?”

“Oh. It makes me feel broken. Like I’m broken. I mean, I’m sixteen. I’m old enough. I should be changing. That’s how nature works.”

“What does your wolf look like?”

“How should I know?”

“You’ve never seen it?”

“No. But I…” My mind flicks back to what I saw in the meadow on the way up here. A young wolf that glowed like honey. “I had a vision of what my sister would have looked like. She was beautiful. A brown wolf. Very nimble and graceful. Maybe mine would be similar.”

“You think?”

“It makes sense.”

“By vision, do you mean you saw something that other people could not see?”

“I suppose,” I say.

“Your sister’s dead.”

“Yes.”

“Your brother, too.”

“Yes.”

“But they had wolves inside of them?”

“Yes. We all did. But they never changed. Keith was fourteen when he died. Siobhan was only seven. She was…”

“She was what?”

“Good. She was a good girl.”

“How did they die?”

“They jumped off a bridge. A train trestle. Back in Charlottesville.”

“I see.”

“They didn’t want to change,” I say.

“And you?”

“I did. I do.”

“You wanted to live,” he says.

“You say that like it’s a good thing. A virtue.”

“What is it really?”

I think about this. “Selfish.”

“Wanting to live is selfish.”

“Yes. Siobhan and Keith, they knew what we were. What the future held for us. And we all made a pact not to become … that. To never grow up and hurt anyone. But I wasn’t strong enough. I’m weak. And so I lived.”

The doctor’s lips part, but we both know he doesn’t have the right words.

“Your mother,” he says finally. “Does she have a wolf inside of her?”

“Oh, she must. She married one. She let us be raised by one.”

“I’ve spoken to her, you know. She tells me she suffers from depression. She has for a long time. She blames herself for what happened.”

“She shouldn’t. It wasn’t her fault.”

“Whose fault was it?”

I don’t answer.

“Was it Keith’s?”

I still don’t answer, but I’m not surprised by the question. It’s what people usually think. That Keith was sick and persuasive. That Siobhan and I were naïve and corruptible. They’re wrong, of course, but that’s no one’s business but mine.

“Your parents separated soon after,” he says.

I stare at my feet. That’s when the hive inside of me heats up. It fills my ears with its caustic drone and beads my upper lip with sweat.

“Yes,” I manage. “But what happened, that wasn’t the only reason they split up.”

“What was the other reason?”

“My father got sued by a former student. He lost his job. It humiliated him.”

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. I don’t see him. If I did, I’d…”

“You’d what?”

Every part of me trembles. I shake my head.

The doctor leans forward. His chair squeaks. “Tell me about your father’s wolf.”

“I’d like to lie down,” I whisper. “I’m tired.”

“You haven’t been eating.”

“They won’t let me run. I need to run.”

“You have a history of starving yourself,” he says gently.

I lift my head. I meet his gaze. “I have a history that I don’t like to talk about.”

chapter

thirty-nine

relativity

They don’t tell me who it is. They just say I have a visitor.

I know it’s not anyone from school. They’re all in class right now. Third period; I’m missing French. Besides, they’d call ahead first. It can’t be my mother, either. It’s been only a week since she left, and she’s not due back again until November. Her last visit didn’t go that well. There’s so much that stands between us. I’m too angry. She’s too grim. And no, she’s not the one I’m mad at, but she’s the one that’s
here
. We’re trying, I guess, and we’ll keep trying, but I don’t know. Maybe I’ll always be that child writhing on the floor, begging to be held.

Maybe she’ll always be that mother who can’t bear to pick me up.

It’s a mystery, then, whoever it is that’s come to see me. There aren’t a lot of other people who have been in my life. Especially after. That is by design, of course, so I think about before. There’s Phoebe. And Lee. Soren Nichols, even. And Anna. There’s always Anna. I don’t think she’d ever come to see me, though. Not because she doesn’t think of me fondly, although that may have changed, but because I remind her of the bad parts of herself. Her guilt. I understand that.

Avoidance is something I will always understand.

I rise from my bed. I run my fingers through my hair and look down at my clothes. I’ve got jeans on and a striped rugby shirt. My mom brought new clothes for me when she came, and Mr. Byles brought old ones from school when he came, too.

I walk down the hall. I am apprehensive but not afraid. I step into the waiting room and I see her. It’s been years, of course, but I recognize her immediately. She’s fulfilled the golden promise of her youth. The long red hair. The legs. The fire in her eyes.

“Charlie,” I say.

She looks up. She is not happy to see me. But she hugs me. Her breasts press against my chest and it embarrasses me to feel aroused, that queasy stirring of instability. Charlie is a beautiful young woman. Keith would be her age now. She is twenty.

It seems foolish to ask why she came, because the fact of the matter is she did. But I have to know. I take a deep breath.

“We can sit in the garden,” I say. She nods. There is an atrium in the center of the hospital, and above us the sky is clear. We sit among lush clusters of ferns and snaking vines. The trickling of water down a copper fountain reminds me to go slowly.

“My mother said you were here,” she tells me. “I’m at UVM. Just down the road. Funny, huh?”

Well, no, being in a psychiatric ward, even voluntarily, isn’t really funny. But I push my lips into a smile.

“I wouldn’t have recognized you,” she says. “You’re very handsome now. Like all grown up.”

“Thank you.”

“Your brother was more handsome.”

“I know,” I say.

She digs around in her purse. It takes a while for her to find what she’s looking for. I sit and say nothing, although I feel restless.

“Here!” She shoves something at me. It’s a photograph from that summer. Me, ten years old, sitting cross-legged on our grandfather’s boat. The blue lake stretches to the horizon beyond. I have a crooked smile and my eyes are squinting. My hair is lighter. Anna’s feet are behind me. Ten pink toes, like worms. Or wishes.

I smile again.

“I think you threw up about five minutes after I took this picture,” she says.

“Yeah, I did.”

“Keith was so mad.”

“Yeah.”

“You still get sick on boats?”

“I don’t go on boats.”

She frowns and plays with her hair. “He was really mad at me that day, though. Keith.”

“You said that. I remember.”

“I’ve felt guilty about it ever since … what happened to him.”

“Why? What happened, it had nothing to do with you. Trust me.”

Her warm hand squeezes mine. She smells like citrus and sugar. “He told me, Drew. About your dad and the abuse. How he drugged you and did … other stuff, those terrible things. Keith told me when we were in New Hampshire. The first night there. It was—it was after you cut yourself at Gram’s. You remember that?”

I am numb. I understand her words and I should feel something, but I don’t.

She
knew
.