When Duckie and I were little, there was a poem we used to say whenever the other was lying. Liar, liar, pants on fire, hang them on a telephone wire. Duckie’s child voice filled my head with that song as I sat there in the doc’s office, wishing I were anywhere but there, wishing that people would stop asking me questions or at least not be so damn troubled by the truth that I couldn’t tell them. With Duckie’s singsong voice filling my head, getting louder and louder with every refrain, my even temperament broke for a moment and I knocked the game board over, sending playing pieces and cards and rainbow-colored money all over the floor. The doc looked mildly surprised, but not as shocked as I’d hoped. I scooted forward in my seat and gave him the hardest glare I could muster. “I swallow the pills they prescribed me at Kingsdale, don’t I? I came here to see you and play goddamn Monopoly. I’m answering every stupid question you ask of me. What do you want, a legally binding contract swearing I don’t have those thoughts sometimes? Because I can’t give you that. And expecting me to is about the dumbest thing I can imagine.”
He sat forward too, mirroring my posture, but not my tone. His was calm and even. “This isn’t like some list where you can check things off, Brooke. Therapy is a process. It takes time. I want to help you.”
“Then move the hands on the clock forward about thirty minutes.” I held his gaze, daring him to speak again, to say one more stupid shrink thing. A long silence hung between us before he finally broke it.
He looked disappointed. Not in me, but in his seeming inability to make me grasp his checklist bullshit. “You seem aggravated.”
What I wanted to say was And you seem like a nosy asshole with a framed diploma on the wall. But what I said instead was “Check your clock, doc. I think our time is up.”
I stood and hurried out of the office as fast as I could, slamming the door behind me. As I passed his receptionist’s desk, she opened her mouth to ask me about arranging my next appointment, but I cut her off with a curt “No.”
When I stepped outside, I was relieved to see that Duckie was still sitting in the Beast, ankles crossed and feet on the dashboard, listing to some Concrete Blonde. He jumped when I opened the passenger-side door and got inside. Then he turned the volume down and said, “How’d it go?”
“Fine.”
He paused, as if debating whether or not to challenge my lie. Then he turned the key and the Beast’s engine roared to life. I stared at my feet the entire drive, not talking, just waiting to be home. And when Duckie pulled into my driveway, I got out without saying good-bye. He didn’t say anything either. Maybe he knew better.
The house was quiet but for the stomping of my feet on the stairs as I made my way to my room. The only thing I could think to do was to fold some more goddamn cranes, but as I was walking into my room, my dad was walking out holding a bucket full of random dad stuff in one hand and a power drill in the other. “Fixed your closet. Clean up that mess now. And for the love of all hell, use a step stool next time, would ya?”
“Yeah, Dad. Sorry. Thanks.”
It had occurred to me when I was about thirteen that my dad never really said “I love you.” Not with words. He’d say it by fixing stuff that was broken and teaching me how I could do cool stuff like build small rockets that we’d set off in the backyard or blow up those little green army men by duct-taping them to firecrackers. He might not have said he loved me—not many times, at least. But stuff like him repairing my broken closet was about as good it got.
It took me over an hour to put all my clothes back on hangers and organize my closet. As I was sliding my hamper back into place, I noticed something sticking out of the thin space between the wall and the floor trim. It was shiny and metal, and when I realized what it was, my heart jumped inside my chest.
It was the razor I’d hidden there. Mom and Dad must have missed it during their sweep of the house.
I sat there for a moment, staring at its edge, thinking about the doc and what a dick he’d been.
Then I slowly closed my closet doors, leaving the razor where it was for the moment, sat down at my desk, and folded some goddamn origami cranes. Maybe I was hoping to find some quiet, some calm. But instead there was just anger and bitterness boiling up inside of me. At my parents for turning my house into another inpatient facility. At Dr. Daniels for thinking he knew so much. At Joy for succeeding where I’d failed. But mostly at myself for being naïve enough to think I could take away all my pain in a single night. With a single step. Into a single body of water.
Other people seemed to think that most suicidal people had just one reason to feel the way they did—a distinct, clear moment in time that they could point to and say, Aha! That’s when it happened. That’s when I decided I wanted to die. But it wasn’t like that for me. It was like being slowly chased by this shadowy thing that refused to go away. There was no rhyme. There was no reason. There was no childhood trauma or sexual assault to blame it all on, no substance-abusing parents or relentless bullying experiences. There was just me. With my fucked-up brain. And some old man who’d decided that I didn’t deserve any kind of release.
I hung the new cranes over my bed next to the old ones. They waved at one another with their tiny little paper wings, already friends.
Tears rolled down the sides of my face, soaking my hair. I watched the cranes until sleep finally came. And just as I was slipping into unconsciousness, I couldn’t help but thank the cranes for understanding that though I was crying, I had no idea why—and the night for bringing me at least a small taste of the darkness that I so richly craved.
CHAPTER SIX
After school the next day, I was standing outside, waiting for Duckie, watching all the cars and buses pull out of the parking lot. Tucker had asked him to help out with moving some of the stage supplies from the auditorium to the shop class, so naturally, Duckie had said yes. I was perfectly content to wait on the sidewalk near the Beast while they spent a little time together. Duckie needed to make a move—and if he wasn’t going to, I was hopeful that Tucker might.
From behind me came a familiar voice: Derek’s. “I heard something about you. I’m not sure if it’s true or not, and I don’t believe in listening to rumors.”
My heart skipped a beat, and the new cranes that I’d folded that day began whispering excitedly inside my backpack. I told them to hush. “Oh yeah? What did you hear?”
He withdrew a pack of smokes from his inside jacket pocket and popped an unlit cigarette into his mouth. As he pulled a Zippo lighter from his front jeans pocket, he said, “I heard you tried to drown yourself.”
I shrank inside myself for a moment. The cranes in my backpack went silent.
He sucked in, drawing the toxic fumes deep into his lungs. For a second, he closed his eyes. The look on his face was a frozen moment of pure bliss. Strange how someone who was slowly poisoning himself could look so happy about it. But then, maybe that was the point.
Derek locked eyes with me. There was no judgment in his expression, no mockery. Merely curiosity. “True? Or not true?”
I didn’t respond right away, but I did immediately wonder who’d told him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to respond at all, really. I didn’t owe him anything, this boy who had found his way into my life somehow. Not a damn thing. But after counting three of my heartbeats, I heard myself say, “True.”