“Keep your voice down.”
“I just … I’m worried.”
She worried a lot.
“What do you want to do? She’s on the medication. She goes to therapy.”
“It’s not enough.”
My dad laughed, but not in a nice way. “So, what? More drugs?”
“Maybe. Or … you know what Dr. Ring said.”
“You want to send her away.”
“It’s a six-month program. Maybe a year. She needs intensive—”
“You want to put her in a padded room. My little girl.”
“Our little girl—” my mom said.
“No, you’ve obviously decided she isn’t yours anymore.”
“How dare you say that to me. After all I have been through.”
“And Sara and I are so sorry you’ve had to suffer.”
The silence made my head hurt.
“I can’t do this with you,” my mom said. “I can’t.”
“So don’t,” he replied. “Let me worry about Sara.”
“Sara is sick, and you won’t even admit it.”
“We are all sick, Michelle. We just have different diseases.”
My mother stormed off, my father slammed a door, and the gargoyle brooded. I am the gargoyle, in case you forgot. I went to bed after a while. I tried to sleep, but I am good at thinking and bad at sleeping. I gave up and wandered downstairs. Mom had gone to bed, but Dad was usually up late. He was a municipal waste specialist and woke up very early, but he always had a nap when he got home and then had trouble sleeping later. The TV was on.
I walked down the hall in silence. Sneaking was easy in my house. We had shag carpet the color of skin that my dad said was “perfectly serviceable,” though my mom kept accidentally spilling red wine on it.
I found Dad in the living room. He was asleep. There were empty beer bottles on the carpet and his hand was curled up beside them like a dead spider.
“Oh, Daddy,” I said, sighing.
I threw a blanket over him, grabbed his phone, and set an alarm for four thirty a.m. My dad looked younger when he was asleep. He was somewhere else now. I hoped it was a happy place.
I sat down next to him and watched a whole documentary about blue whales. I love whales and everything in the sea. The whales were gathered near Hawaii and singing beautifully. The narrator said they usually swim alone, but that sometimes they get together and hang out.
“We don’t know what they’re saying,” I said as my dad snored, “but I bet it’s something very wise. Maybe they are saying, ‘It would be nice to swim together forever. But we all must be going. You see, we must swim alone. We are too big. It has been lovely to have some friends, even if it was only for a little while.’ ”
I fell asleep on his legs and woke up the next morning tucked into my bed.
NOTE
If you ask a blue whale what she thinks about—if you sing whale, of course—you might be surprised. Most people would guess it was about krill, or ocean currents, or maybe if she was due for some air. But it could also be about her baby who swam off two years ago and whether he found a girlfriend. Or that dolphins are silly. Or maybe that the stars look beautiful tonight, even from underwater. We can’t ask her, so we all just kind of assume it’s the krill.
Do me a favor, even if it is just for this story: Assume it’s the stars.
CHAPTER 2 TALKATIVE TUESDAYS
The next day I was sitting in class. Well, my class. It’s a yellow room with some ugly artwork and motivational posters plastered on the wall that say things like YOU ARE A STAR! and HANG IN THERE! That one had a kitten hanging onto a power line. It probably should have said ANIMAL CRUELTY SELLS POSTERS! I call my class the Crazy Box, but Ms. Hugger doesn’t like that name.
“Sara, are you paying attention?” Ms. Hugger asked.
Ms. Hugger liked me sometimes. She had a boyfriend named Sven and she was going for the all-time teaching record of one year with Sara Malvern. There should have been a plaque.
I looked up from my notebook. “Partially.”
I only talk to four people: my mom sometimes, my dad always, Ms. Hugger sometimes, and my current psychiatrist, Dr. Ring, on Tuesday nights. I hadn’t talked to anyone else for three years, six months, and eleven days. It was a Tuesday, so it was going to be a very talkative day.
“Can I have your full attention?”
I considered that. I was drawing a picture of myself standing on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, which probably wasn’t critical.
“Yes,” I said, putting my pen down.
“Thank you.” She turned back to the board. “Now, if you carry the six—”
“Can I put my head down?”
Sometimes I do that during the day. I don’t sleep or anything. Not usually. I just let the world go quiet.
“We’re almost done—” she said.
“The answer is forty-six,” I murmured, making a nest with my arms.
I heard her drawing out the problem and mouthing out the answers as I put my head down. Then she sighed and sat down at her desk. She doesn’t like when I jump ahead of her, but I do it a lot. My brain solves things easily. It remembers everything. Well, except how to behave.
“What are you thinking about?” Ms. Hugger asked.
I tried to pick out one thing. “That it would be nice to be in normal class sometimes.”
She was quiet for a moment. “We can try that again one day—”
“No,” I said. “Strike that. It would be nice to be a normal student sometimes.”
Ms. Hugger walked over with a pillow. She always has one ready.
“In ten minutes we should get back to work.”
“Okay.”
She crouched down next to me and spoke softly. “Are you about to start a Game?”
I had my eyes open, but they were full of sweater. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Which one?”
I thought about that. I could feel the tightness in my chest, like a bubble being blown up and stretching out just below my lungs, pushing everything out … the air and the calm and Sara.
“False Alarm, I think,” I whispered.
It was the Game that meant panic attack.
“What do you call a fish without an eye?” she asked, squeezing my arm.
I tried to think. “What?”
“Fsh.”
I smiled into my sweater. She gave me a pat on the back and went to her desk. I had avoided a panic attack, and that was nice. But I wasn’t stupid. Normal kids didn’t have to put their heads down in class. They didn’t need Ms. Hugger to tell them jokes. And so I hugged the pillow and rocked back and forth for a little while, letting my hair fall over my eyes like someone had pulled the curtains shut. The other kids in school had a name for me. Psycho Sara.
They weren’t wrong.
* * *
A boy sat down across from me. He was new to Dr. Ring’s office.
His black hair was curly and sprinkled with blond highlights that had almost grown out. His skin was dark, even darker under his eyes. It looked like he had been crying recently. He glanced up at me, and I turned back to my magazine. Dr. Ring said I shouldn’t stare at people. It makes them uncomfortable. But the boy turned back to his cell phone, so I snuck another look.