Counting Backwards (20 page)

He shakes his head. “I don’t make keys anymore. I learned my lesson with you. As if the time I spent on the first floor wasn’t enough.”

“They put you in a time-out?” That doesn’t seem fair. It’s not like
he
tried to escape.

“Of course they did. You didn’t think they’d let me get away with it, did you?”

I take a step back, because there is real anger behind his words. I watch him walk away, heading for the shed. I never wished for him to be punished like that. I feel pretty rotten about it—the whole thing. When he comes back out, I try again.

“Listen, A.J., for what it’s worth, I told McKenzie it was a bad idea. But with her, it’s like talking to a wall. She’s going to do what she’s going to do.”

He chuckles without any humor and says, “They found you a good one. She sounds just like you.”

“I’m not . . .” I trail off, because I can’t find the words to finish.

He gestures at the space between us. “You know, I just wish . . .” He shakes his head and won’t look at me. “I wish it didn’t have to be so damn hard.”

He walks away before I can say anything else. I watch him climb the hill. He doesn’t look back.

It rains for the next few days. The drip, Tabitha calls it, when it rains all day long, just enough to keep you inside. It’s good for my seeds, at least. Maybe on the other side of this rain, there will be a rainbow and the promise of some new shoots in the garden.

I walk into Dr. Deb’s office that week, and she throws me yet another curveball.

“I’d like your permission to have your father join us today.”

I glance around her office, wondering where he could be hiding. “Um, okay.”

She punches her computer keyboard, then angles the monitor so that we both can see it. “Welcome, Mr. Truwell.”

I’m face-to-face with my dad. I try my best to smile. To my surprise, he smiles back.

“Hi, Taylor,” he says.

“Hi, Dad.”

“You look well.”

I nod my head. “I feel . . . well.”

“Dr. Deb sent me pictures of the garden you and A.J. have been working on. It looks promising. How is that going?”

I think back to my most recent encounter with A.J. That part of it, not so good, but the rest, not too bad.

“I planted my first seeds.”

“Already?” he asks. “It’s still cold up there, isn’t it?”

“It’s getting warmer. And look, it’s raining today. So maybe they’ll sprout soon.”

“That’s wonderful,” he says. “Your grandmother would be proud.”

I stop and feel the weight of his words. I haven’t done anything to make my grandmother proud in a long time.

“How’s school going?” he asks.

At last, a subject I don’t have to fake. “I’m making up the work I missed. And I built a bookshelf for one of my teachers. He’s got this awesome collection of biographies. He lent me one about Chief Osceola. It’s pretty good, actually.”

My dad smiles. “This is good, Taylor. I’m pleased to see you’re really trying.”

I nod, but for some reason his praise makes me uncomfortable instead of proud.

He asks me a few more questions about school, and our conversation ends pleasantly enough. I realize as I’m
walking out of Dr. Deb’s office that the real me could never have done that—talk to my dad without arguing—but the fake me could. How sad is that?

When the rain
stops, I go back to the garden to find my first new shoots poking through the ground. I’m so excited I want to jump up and shout it out loud, but instead I go around and collect stones, then pile them up at the head of one row as a dedication to my grandmother.

I spend that day turning my compost with a pitchfork. In the middle of the heap, the compost is steamy and warm, and I remember A.J.’s words,
Got to let it cook
. Below that, I’m amazed to find that it’s turned to rich black compost. I check on his worm bin and feed them some scraps from the kitchen. As I’m replacing the lid, a black racer slithers by. I recall my grandmother’s story of Rabbit, who outwitted Snake by challenging him to prove his length by tying himself in a knot. When Snake did, Rabbit ran away.

It’s been happening a lot lately. Stories and songs I thought were lost forever keep popping back into my mind. Maybe they needed the right setting to come back to me. Maybe they’ve been there all along.

That night there’s a frost warning on TV, and I worry about my baby plants. After school the next day I rush down
to the garden to check on them and see, to my surprise, that someone has covered my rows with burlap sacks.

A.J.

I uncover the rows and see the shoots still green and standing. They’ve weathered the cold, because of his care and attention. Looking down at the new seedlings, I start to feel really bad about the way I’ve treated him. I don’t want to fight with him anymore.

“Thanks for doing that,” I tell him, folding the sacks and putting them back in the shed.

“I wanted to give you—I mean, the plants—a fighting chance.”

“Well . . . I appreciate it.”

He nods and stares at me a moment longer. I suddenly miss our friendship. And how we could tell each other anything. But too much has happened between us.

Even if I knew the words to fix it, I don’t know how to say them.

That week in
therapy Dr. Deb begins our session by telling me we’re going to focus on my anxiety issues.

“What anxiety issues?”

She doesn’t answer but instead hands me a legal pad and pen. “I’d like you to list your fears on this piece of paper.”

“I don’t have any,” I say, and try to give it back. She holds up her hand to stop me.

“Maybe you’re afraid to list them,” she says. “That’s Fear number one.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I say. Is Dr. Deb calling me a chicken? She motions to the pad in front of me. “Fine.” I grip the pen tighter. “I’ll do it.”

I put the pen to the paper and stare at the page until the lines blur. Finally I begin writing, listing every fear I can think of—flying, falling, dying, drowning, along with some I’ve picked up from Charlotte, such as dropping a toothbrush on the bathroom floor, and one of McKenzie’s—flying monkeys.

When I’m finished, I hand it back to Dr. Deb.

“Well, Taylor,” she says with a wry smile. “I think you’ve listed every fear on here except your own.”

The real me can’t help but scowl at her.

“I’m giving you until our next session to come up with
your
list,” she says. “After all, you want to be rehabilitated, don’t you?”

I glare at her without answering, but she only smiles.

After my session I carry the legal pad wherever I go. I want to just do it and get it over with, but every time I try to write something down, I can’t. My fears are sleeping vipers. If I wake them, they might attack, and then I’ll be worse off than before.

I’m down in the garden the next day with my baby shoots, which are sadly turning yellow with brown, crumbly tips—I think the cold may have affected them in spite of A.J.’s blankets. I heard somewhere that talking to plants helps them grow, so instead of working on Dr. Deb’s assignment, I sit down in the middle of a row and sing one of my grandmother’s songs, a chant that her mother taught her—a prayer of safety for when the men left the village to go hunting. That song reminds me of another and another. I’ve forgotten some of the words, but the melodies are there, in my bones. The singing warms my chest and helps me breathe, and the more I do it, the clearer her voice becomes in my mind—deep like a river, rich like soil, soulful and real. It’s as if she’s sitting there beside me.

I stop when I see A.J. approaching.

“Hey,” he calls to me.

“Hey, yourself.”

He goes about his business of spreading compost over his rows and I watch him, pen in hand, blank page in front of me.

“What are you working on?” he asks.

“Oh, nothing. Just some assignment.”

“For school?”

“No. Therapy.”

“Ah,” he says, and drops it. There’s a kind of unwritten rule at Sunny Meadows that you don’t discuss therapy. It’s
the one thing that doesn’t get talked about. I think about something A.J. said to me in the beginning, how he’d be the same person out there as he is in here. A.J. believes in therapy and in being rehabilitated. But maybe he has to, because he’s been here for so long.

“Is therapy ever . . . hard for you?” I ask him.

He sets down his shovel and looks over at me. “Nearly every time.”

“Do you think it’s worth it?” He looks uncertain. I try again. “I mean, do you think you’re getting better?”

“I hope so.”

I believe him. That he wants to be better. But do
I
? I glance down at the paper. What is stopping me? It’s not A.J. or my father or Dr. Deb. I can’t even blame my mother for this one. It’s me. I am the only one keeping me from getting better.

I begin to write, a small trickle at first, then a wide, gushing stream. There’s so many I have to turn the page over and write on the back. It’s overwhelming, how many fears I have.

A drip on the page smears the ink, and I realize I’m crying.

“Here.” I glance up to see A.J. offering me one of his sweat rags. “It’s clean. Mostly.”

I wipe my eyes with it and catch a whiff of his scent. It reminds me of his hugs—so warm and comforting. I could use one of those hugs right now, but I’ve been such a bitch to him, over and over.

“Thanks,” I say, and hand it back to him.

“Keep it. I’ve got more.”

Later that night in my dorm room, I sleep with his rag pressed against my pillow. His pine-needle scent reminds me of home.

That week I
come down with a cold that keeps me in my dorm room for the next few days. This means I don’t have to go to school or therapy or the garden, where I know my plants have shriveled up and died. I don’t have to face Dr. Deb or A.J. or my own mounting flaws. The fear list sits on my desk, taunting me. I’ve already mentally added another one.

Fear Number 37: Showing this list to someone else.

The advantage to being dorm-bound is that I’ve had a lot of time for schoolwork, and I’ve been able to hang out more with McKenzie. We’re in the common area going over her geometry homework when the phone rings, surprising both of us. For a second we just stare at each other, not knowing what to do.

“I better answer it,” she says. I watch her puzzled expression as she picks up the phone, then says to me, “It’s for you. Some girl named Margo?”

Margo. After all this time she hasn’t forgotten about me. Will she be mad at me for not calling?

“Margo?” I say into the telephone.

“Taylor, oh my God. Why haven’t you called me?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’ve just been . . . busy.”

And I have been busy, but the real reason is that I was afraid she might not want to talk to me. She’s on the outside now, living life, while I’m still in here.

“That hurts my feelings, T,” she says. “I should be your first priority.”

I smile. I can almost see her pouting in front of me right now.

“How are you, Margo? Where—are you?”

“I’m fairly fabulous. I’m living with my aunt in Manhattan. I can stand in the middle of my bedroom and touch the opposite walls. My wardrobe has been utterly decimated, but that’s not even the worst of it.”

“What’s wrong?” What could possibly be worse for Margo than having to downsize her wardrobe?

She sighs dramatically. “I had to dye my hair brown.”

I smile at that. “But Margo, you’re a natural blonde.”

“I know, I know, but I got this part in a play. I’m supposed to be the smart, bookish type, and apparently, blondes can’t read.”

“Wow, Margo, that’s awesome. You’re really doing it.”

“Yes, I am. But I miss you. And Victor.”

“How
is
Victor?”

“He’s fabulous. He’s coming to visit me this summer, and
I can hardly wait. It’s strange, all the new people I meet . . . it’s like they don’t really
know
me. I never thought I’d say this, but sometimes, I even miss the Latina Queens.”

I laugh at that. “You must be feeling pretty sentimental.”

“I guess I am.” She giggles, and it’s like wind chimes in the breeze. Hearing her voice on the phone, I realize just how much I’ve missed her. I should have called her a long time ago.

“But tell me about you, T. How are you doing?”

“Much better. I had a rough couple of months.”

“A.J. told me about it.”

A.J.? I didn’t know they talked. But she did give him that note to give to me, with her numbers on it.

“Do you guys talk . . . a lot?”

“Enough. We have something in common now.”

“What’s that?”

“You, silly.”

“Oh. Right.” I don’t know to feel about it.

“He’s so different than I thought, T. And when he talks about you . . . he really cares.”

I suddenly feel like I’m on the outside. What exactly do they talk about? It seems like any story he’d tell about me would be a bad one.

“So what else is new in Sunny Meadows?” she asks. “How are the Latina Queens?”

I tell her about how they’re not a gang anymore, how
Brandi and I made up, sort of. How Charlotte and I have become friends.

“And get this, they made me a peer mentor.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Her name is McKenzie.” I glance over at her; she’s sticking her tongue out at me. “We’re a lot alike.”

I ask Margo what’s going on in her life, and she tells me about her play director, who’s an insane egomaniac, and the stage manager, who throws tantrums whenever Margo doesn’t put something back exactly where she found it. And her costar, who’s a worse kleptomaniac than she is. “He’s a
guy
, Taylor, and he’s stealing my makeup. I swear I’m on my fifth tube of mascara. I think I’m going to have to sabotage him with Krazy Glue. Then at least I’ll have proof of it.”

She gets me laughing like I haven’t in a while. Our conversation isn’t nearly long enough, but I have to let her go because there are other girls waiting for their turn with the phone.

“Listen, T,” she says as we’re saying our good-byes. “I know you and A.J. still have some things to work out. But maybe you guys could give it another chance.”