afraid she’ll think I’m weird if I do. So instead I pretend I just got a text, and under the pretext of replying, I send one to Sydney.
Hey, saw you rush out of the caf. You okay?
She doesn’t answer right away. I start to think she isn’t going to, so I force myself to join in the fantasy football league discussion and act like I care.
And then my phone vibrates.
Not really.
Anything I can do?
Tell everyone to shut up about Lara? Make the world go away?
I wish I could do that. But I can just see me standing up in the middle of the cafeteria and shouting, “Could you all just shut up about Lara Kelley? And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming …” That would only make people talk about it more — and then they’d be talking about me, too, and how crazy I am.
Wish there was something that I could ACTUALLY do, I text back, before saying, “Are you serious? I can’t believe you played the Bills running back over the Bears last week. You left twenty-five points on your bench.”
As Roger Cohen launches into his reply, Syd texts back.
There’s nothing anyone can do. That’s the worst part of it.
My fingers tighten around my phone. I feel like throwing it at the wall. Someone should be able to do something . I want to do something. But I don’t know what to do or how to do it.
So I just type, Hang in there, Syd, and go back to talking about fantasy football.
T HE ONLY time I’ve been out of the house since they released me from the hospital is to go to see Linda, my therapist, which I have to do every few days until she decides I’m sane enough to reenter society and, more importantly, go back to school. Part of me hopes that’s never. Every time my parents bring up the subject of if I want to go back to Lake Hills or transfer somewhere else it makes me want to take more pills. Like that’s even a possibility. Anything that might resemble a pill is under lock and key in our house. The next time I get my period, I’m going to have to ask Mom’s permission to even take Midol. She’s probably going to ration my use of tampons in case I try to make a noose out of the strings.
The problem is the alternative is staying home, bored out of my head, under Mom’s watchful eye. On the therapist’s advice, I’m not allowed to use the computer or my cell phone “until my emotional state is more stabilized,” so even if someone did care — like, say, if Christian changed his mind after he heard I tried to kill myself — no one can contact me. Mom turns off the router when I have assignments so I can’t get online. The only thing I can use is Microsoft Word. If I need to look anything up online to get my schoolwork done, Mom stands over me, breathing down my neck till I’m done. I’m not sure which of us hates the new arrangement more.
I’ve tried reading, but the words bounce around the page like Dad when he’s had too many cups of coffee. The doctor warned me there might be some neurological effects from the overdose. He said that hopefully they’ll just be temporary, but only time will tell. Great. Imagine if they’re not. That’ll make going back to school even worse. Now everyone will call me Stupid Lardo.
So I’ve been watching a lot of daytime TV, mostly kid programs, because in those, everything has a happy ending. Even though I know that’s a lie, that in reality everything goes downhill once you get to middle school, and things never really get tied up in a neat bow after half an hour in real life, it’s better than watching Maury or Jerry Springer , where the whole point of the show is to see people whose lives are so messed up that they’re willing to find out who is really the father of their baby on national TV. Why would anyone want to find out something that personal in front of an audience? Don’t they ever think about how someday that poor little baby will be a teenager and see his or her screwed-up parents fighting on YouTube?
I’ll take Sesame Street over that
Hey, saw you rush out of the caf. You okay?
She doesn’t answer right away. I start to think she isn’t going to, so I force myself to join in the fantasy football league discussion and act like I care.
And then my phone vibrates.
Not really.
Anything I can do?
Tell everyone to shut up about Lara? Make the world go away?
I wish I could do that. But I can just see me standing up in the middle of the cafeteria and shouting, “Could you all just shut up about Lara Kelley? And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming …” That would only make people talk about it more — and then they’d be talking about me, too, and how crazy I am.
Wish there was something that I could ACTUALLY do, I text back, before saying, “Are you serious? I can’t believe you played the Bills running back over the Bears last week. You left twenty-five points on your bench.”
As Roger Cohen launches into his reply, Syd texts back.
There’s nothing anyone can do. That’s the worst part of it.
My fingers tighten around my phone. I feel like throwing it at the wall. Someone should be able to do something . I want to do something. But I don’t know what to do or how to do it.
So I just type, Hang in there, Syd, and go back to talking about fantasy football.
T HE ONLY time I’ve been out of the house since they released me from the hospital is to go to see Linda, my therapist, which I have to do every few days until she decides I’m sane enough to reenter society and, more importantly, go back to school. Part of me hopes that’s never. Every time my parents bring up the subject of if I want to go back to Lake Hills or transfer somewhere else it makes me want to take more pills. Like that’s even a possibility. Anything that might resemble a pill is under lock and key in our house. The next time I get my period, I’m going to have to ask Mom’s permission to even take Midol. She’s probably going to ration my use of tampons in case I try to make a noose out of the strings.
The problem is the alternative is staying home, bored out of my head, under Mom’s watchful eye. On the therapist’s advice, I’m not allowed to use the computer or my cell phone “until my emotional state is more stabilized,” so even if someone did care — like, say, if Christian changed his mind after he heard I tried to kill myself — no one can contact me. Mom turns off the router when I have assignments so I can’t get online. The only thing I can use is Microsoft Word. If I need to look anything up online to get my schoolwork done, Mom stands over me, breathing down my neck till I’m done. I’m not sure which of us hates the new arrangement more.
I’ve tried reading, but the words bounce around the page like Dad when he’s had too many cups of coffee. The doctor warned me there might be some neurological effects from the overdose. He said that hopefully they’ll just be temporary, but only time will tell. Great. Imagine if they’re not. That’ll make going back to school even worse. Now everyone will call me Stupid Lardo.
So I’ve been watching a lot of daytime TV, mostly kid programs, because in those, everything has a happy ending. Even though I know that’s a lie, that in reality everything goes downhill once you get to middle school, and things never really get tied up in a neat bow after half an hour in real life, it’s better than watching Maury or Jerry Springer , where the whole point of the show is to see people whose lives are so messed up that they’re willing to find out who is really the father of their baby on national TV. Why would anyone want to find out something that personal in front of an audience? Don’t they ever think about how someday that poor little baby will be a teenager and see his or her screwed-up parents fighting on YouTube?
I’ll take Sesame Street over that
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