Under My Skin (25 page)

It doesn’t matter.

I can’t like—or love—a thief.

Adam

Delightful sunlight pours through the kitchen window. It’s agitating.

I stand at the center island with my hand draped over the bar chair’s back, eyeing the line of pill bottles meant for me. This is my new life. Swallowing pills, fending off rejection, and searching for a cocktail of psych meds that makes everyone but me happy.

Mum watches me take the next dose of methylphenidate. It catches in my throat so I chug some orange juice, forcing the tablets down.

“Thank you, dear. I’m glad you’re following doctor’s orders. It’ll help.” Mum busies herself with making breakfast—eggs and hash.

Dad has left for work already, so it’s just us. I watched him back his car out of the garage and drive down the street from the roof. It was my cue to sneak inside before Mum came in to check on me.

Mum loads my plate with food. “Eat up.”

“I’ve got a whole meal of pills swirling around in my stomach,” I say, dipping my fork into the hash.

“It’s what the doctors prescribe.”

“I’m not sure they’re doing anything. The psych meds, anyway.”

“It takes time.”

“I’d do better without them.”

Mum slams the bottle on the counter. The tablets rattle inside. “You call throwing yourself into a frigid pond better?”

“It was an accident. Why don’t you believe me?” I shake some ketchup on the hash. I don’t have much of an appetite, but pushing the plate away will give Mum more ammunition.

“I would, honey, but you’re smarter than to go out on thin ice.” She attacks her eggs with her fork.

Each stab jabs me in the heart. Poor Mum. She thought she had to worry about me dropping dead before the transplant, now she thinks she has to worry about me killing myself. While I may have given death a lot of brain time, I always feared it too much to act on any fantasies of suicide.

Finally, she sets her fork down. “Why would you want to leave your Dad and me? We’ve given up everything for you and all you’ve done is fight against us.”

“I never asked you to sacrifice anything.”

She lowers her chin. “You’re our son. We’d give our lives for you.”

“Then you should believe me. Not Shaw. Did you see the pharmacy filling her drawer? She’s a pill-pusher. She doesn’t know who we are, nor does she care.”

Mum presses the back of her wrist to her forehead. “Oh, Adam, you need to drop your paranoia about her.”

“I’m not paranoid.”

She sets the dishes in the sink. “I trust Doctor Shaw. She wants to help.”

I lick my lips. They’re dry, cracking. “Guess we’re at an impasse.”

“It’s your stubbornness that worries me. You never used to be that way.”

“Mum.”

She waves a hand. “Go get ready for school.”

I shuffle upstairs. In my room, I dial Darby’s number. Like before, it rings until voicemail picks up. “Darby, it’s Adam. I, um … well I’m floundering here. It’s okay if you don’t want to talk to me. I mean, I’d be gutted, but I’d understand. Either way, I’d appreciate it if you told me. And if you
do
want to talk, give me a ring okay? I just … I need someone to talk to. Someone who’d understand.”

I toss my mobile on the bed and take a shower.

On the drive to school, I check my messages a hundred times. Nothing.

She’s shut me out. I’m in this alone.

* * *

Two days pass, and no word from Darby. I trudge through my days, crestfallen and amped at the same time. My heart races constantly now. So does my head. All day it pounds, as if a jackhammer is chipping into my skull. I’m not sure if it’s from my thrumming heart or my inability to sleep.

Mum thinks I’m slipping further into depression, of course, but I’m too apathetic to care. On the downside, she’s convinced Shaw to double the dose of methylphenidate.

By the end of the week, I throw the pills into the kitchen sink in protest. “I’m done taking these. They make me feel like shit.” Spit launches from my mouth with my words. Rage courses through me, hot and pulsing. I clench my fists.

Mum’s eyes widen. She stumbles away, frightened. I’ve turned into a frothing beast in front of her. “Y-you must t-take them.”

“Even if I can’t breathe or sleep or eat or think?” I rake my fingers through my hair.

“It’s not the medicine. It’s your depression.”

“Is that what Shaw says?” I’m panting against the pressure of Shaw’s demands, meted out by Mum dose by dose. The room is so hot and dry. My eyes are grainy from being awake for so long without the reprieve of sleep.

Mum retreats around the island to put distance between us. “Adam, please.”

My whole body jitters, charged on an unnatural beat created by an unnatural chemical. “I’m
not
taking any more.”

She pours out a fresh dose of the methylphenidate. “You have to. Or Doctor Shaw will hospitalize you.”

Hot tears sting my eyes. “Defend me and tell her no. I’m begging you. If you could feel half of what’s happening inside me right now, you’d flush all those pills down the toilet and curse them to Hell.”

“Take the medicine. We’ll talk to Doctor Shaw about changing the dose at your next appointment.” Fear has planted itself behind her eyes, but her stance is firm. She believes I’m turning into a lunatic because of depression. She believes in Shaw’s dominance. She believes she’s doing this for my good.

“Take them.” She bites her lip.

My freaking out only makes her dig her heels in deeper. And she says I’m the stubborn one.

I could lob them across the room and we can play this game of tablet table tennis until the entire bottle is exhausted and I find myself on a one way trip to the loony bin. “No.”

She pounds her fist on the counter. “
Take them, Adam
.”

My fear of Shaw and the psych ward overrides my fear of the methylphenidate. With a shaky hand, I sprinkle the pills on my tongue. It takes a whole glass of water to make sure they go down.

I plunk the glass in the sink and splay my fingers on the counter. “Satisfied?”

Mum’s lips thin. “Seeing you suffer does not make me happy.”

“Then you shouldn’t force me to do this.”

“It’s the depression talking. Doctor Shaw said it’d make you contrary and resistant to things that can help.” She wipes tears from her cheeks. “I never thought it would warp your mind so thoroughly.”

I grab the drying towel haphazardly thrown on the counter and toss it across the room. “My mind isn’t warped.”

Mum retreats, a painful wince contorting her face. “I barely recognize you.”

She leaves. Her clipped footsteps echo down the hallway.

The bathroom door slams shut.

I lean against the counter. I’ve done it now.

My stomach gurgles with dread as I creep down the hallway. I press my palms against the doorframe. Mum’s soft cries filter through the door.

I’ve ruined everything. Sick Adam or Healthy Adam, it makes no difference—either version is just as destructive.

Maybe Darby is right to avoid me.

Problem is, without her, I’m lost, set adrift to aimlessly wander the choppy seas of life. A life I don’t know how to live. A life my parents and Shaw think I want to throw away. A life I don’t deserve.

I head outside, leaving Mum to her cry. Wind slices through the fabric of my flannel shirt, but I don’t care. It’s oddly comforting, actually. The elements are real and no one can dispute them. Thoughts, on the other hand, are individual, locked inside each person’s brain, hidden in the dark, secret until uttered. Once spoken, a pervasive magic takes over, lulling the listener into their siren’s call. Something evil happens then, when they reach another’s brain: Interpretation—an illusion of its own. The speaker is either believed, or disbelieved, and the speaker has no control over which outcome occurs.

The breeze picks up, rustling the last of the fallen leaves. They skitter along the sidewalk, protesting their loneliness and banishment from their former home. The trees lining the street ignore their former tenants. Rejected castoffs. Forgotten. Crumbling.

I feel the same way, discarded by Darby. Each day that passes finds me withering more and more. I could find nourishment elsewhere, but where should I start looking? Larry from
The Razor’s Edge
thought he’d find satisfaction in a life after the war, but quickly discovered his career and fiancé left him wanting.

He decided to give up the ordinary life in search of a meaningful one. Everyone thought he was nutters whenever he tried explaining. Another victim of misinterpreted words.

Or maybe the original one.

I step off the sidewalk into an unkempt field and trace my way to a hedgerow. I’m in no mood to search for frozen ponds, but I’d rather meander through some woods than the well-worn sidewalk. The idea of it—following the cultivated concrete, the man-made path—is too cliché and my thoughts are diving straight into philosophy.

No, existentialism. Shaw has a book called Existential Therapy. I’d asked her about it one day and she gave me a cursory description that I later filled in with the help of Google and Wikipedia.

Life, death, the pursuit of happiness. It all fell under the same umbrella of humans trying to figure out their existence. Not such an easy task.

So why is everyone expecting me to have a plan so quickly?

It’s unfair, really.

A whisper slithers through the tree branches and tickles my ears.
“Why do you cling to life?”

I halt. Then spin, searching for the voice’s owner.

No one is here but me.

“
You should stop wasting everyone’s time.
”

I spin in a circle, gaze volleying between shadows and light. “Who’s there?”

“
Give up. End it all
.”

I crash through some underbrush. “Show yourself!”

“
Your life is worthless.
”

I’m alone. There’s no devilish taunter hiding in the bushes to torment me.

I answer anyway. “No, it’s not.”

“
End it
.”

Frantic, I start jogging. Branches slap me in the face and I swat at them as if they’re gnats. I slip on some rotting leaves and crash to the ground, landing directly on my chest. Instant fire blossoms in my breastbone, like the day I fell off the treadmill. I roll onto my back, hissing and clutching my arms to my chest.

“
See? You’re pathetic. A waste of space
.”

“No,” I cry. My mind is turning on me. My own words—my thoughts—are an illusion and it’s only now, after being rejecting by Darby, confronted by Mum, and hyped up on Shaw’s medicine that I can see it.

I stare at the patches of blue sky through the naked branches, but all I see is the truth I’ve avoided all along. The truth I didn’t want to see, but that everyone else thought was obvious.

I cover my face with my hands and sob into my palms. I’ve been blind to my own behavior.

“
That’s right. You know what to do.
” The voice hovers near my ear.

“Please, no.”

“
Kill yourself
.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“
You don’t deserve to live. Death will be easier. You won’t suffer anymore
.”

I nod. Maybe the voice is right. I can’t handle this
mess
my life has become. “Okay. Okay.”

I
do
want to die.

Darby

Mom is quiet on the drive home. Fine with me. Our talks don’t go anywhere but to a dead end.

She didn’t even bother checking in with Shaw after our session. Then again, I left the room so fast that she had to jog after me. I tried the car door handle a dozen times before she unlocked it.

In my room, I tear off the c-collar and toss it in the garbage. I’m done with it and with everything else.

I rip the pretty paper Stephanie wrapped my gift in. Like she said, it’s my favorite type of canvas. Stephanie had to be genuine. No one in their right mind would spend so much on someone they wanted to punk.

I set the canvas on my easel. Stephanie’s a puzzle I’ll have to sort out later. Right now, I have something else to solve.

Adam.

He’s not smooth enough to keep a secret from me. The kid practically trips over himself whenever he stammers out a message.

The last one—where he said he needed to talk to me …

I shivered at the sound of his haunted voice. Maybe he finally wanted to come clean.

I sigh. No. He’d sounded scared, not guilty of hiding something.

Shaw said he wasn’t sure if he wanted to live or not. Can you be scared if you were suicidal?

I have to paint this out. Creating lets my mind slip into another state and when I re-emerge the world looks different. Things I couldn’t see before become obvious, simple.

The painting of Adam’s eye sits where I placed it, facing my dresser. I fetch Daniel’s stuffed basketball, tuck it in the crook my arm, and turn the painting over. The swirls and strokes of greens, golds, browns, and blues invite me in and soon I’m drowning in Adam’s stormy iris. Somehow, I’d captured his intense stare along with his wistful, far away, dreamy look.

I set the painting on the dresser, half covering the mirror hanging above it. I study it for a bit longer, then turn to my own eyes, leaning so close to the mirror that I lose track of myself and see only the streaks of blue and silver fleeing my pupil. His eyes are so warm compared to my frozen irises.

We’re opposites. Where he’s safe and cautious, I’m bold and impulsive. While he’s busy thinking over the pros and cons of things, I’m diving in head first.

So why is it I have such trouble deciding whether to love or hate him?

I’ll find the answer to my riddle in here, in the contrast between us.

I swap out two paintings on my wall for Adam’s eye and the mirror. With this set up, I can view my subject—my eye—and my inspiration—Adam’s eye—while using the remaining daylight. I don’t have much time; it’s late afternoon.

In the zone, I mix a palette of colors and dip my brush into the pigment and attack my blank canvas. I’m not concerned about mistakes. I want the strokes to be bold and careless, organic and free flowing.
Alive
.