“You feel better, though, don’t you,” she says.
“If by ‘better’ you mean my makeup is a mess and my sides hurt, sure.”
“That should be a thing,” she says. “Tickle therapy.”
“It has to be a thing, right?” I ask. “In this big, weird world?”
I look it up on my phone. Sure enough, it exists. There are even “tickle spas” where you can pay people to tickle you with feathers in a dark room with incense. Well, I’ll be jiggered.
“Maybe I should become a professional tickler,” I say. “Maybe that’s what I’ll do after high school’s over.”
“You’re going to do great things,” Marisol says with a serious brown stare behind her red frames.
“Tickling people?”
“I’m serious. You say you don’t see anything in your future,” she says, pointing to my composition book on the ground. “I see so many amazing things for you.”
The smile on my face disappears. Easy for her to say. Her life’s shining ahead of her, filled with scholarships and school acceptances and new cities to explore. She’s spending Thanksgiving weekend in Chicago to check out the university there with her mom. Soon she’ll have a million new best friends. I’ll be . . . superfluous.
Usually, this is where I would think of killing myself. I don’t matter, the world will go on without me, yada yada. But instead, I focus on my breath.
“JoJo?” Marisol asks. “You with me?”
I nod.
“Promise me something,” she says. “You’re doing better, and I’m proud of you for getting through that suicide attempt.”
“Don’t say it so loud.”
“Nobody can hear us. And you don’t need to be ashamed.”
I roll my eyes, because really? Anyone in my position would be ashamed after pulling a stunt like I did.
“I know holidays are hard,” she goes on, “and I’m worried about you as they come up. I was reading that suicide attempts happen at an especially high rate this time of year.”
“You’re so good at cheering me up.” I feel a pang, knowing she’s been researching this, spending however many worried hours online.
Marisol pulls my book toward her, uncaps a pen. “Let me write down something for you.” She opens it up and, in her big, bubbly eight-year-old-girl penmanship, jots down a local phone number I don’t recognize.
“This is the number for the local crisis hotline,” she says. “They’re available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”
“How do you know it by heart?” I ask.
“Well, the last four digits spell HELP. Also I almost volunteered there this school year, for community service. But ended up going for the tutoring gig instead.”
We have a community service requirement at school. Last year I did shifts at the local library. It was so boring that time itself stopped while I was shelving books. I haven’t even started on my requirement for this year. I look at the number she wrote down in purple pen and imagine all the people who call it every day. All the bizarre crap the hotline operators must listen to.
Must be fascinating, actually.
“Thanks,” I tell Marisol.
The bell rings.
“Walk you to PE?” she asks, standing up.
Indoor PE: the bane of my existence. The stench of vinyl mats and sweatpants no one washes. The weight machines that resemble medieval torture devices.
“Lucky me, I have a counseling appointment,” I tell her.
“With who?”
“Hooker.”
Hooker is the chillest of guidance counselors at our school, responsible for students with surnames starting with M through Z, with an unfortunate last name himself. To make matters worse, his first name is Richard. I’ve heard him referred to as “Rich Hooker” and of course “Dick Hook” by those who both hate and love him. He wears sandals and burns sage in his office, has old posters from hippie concerts all over his wall. He kind of reminds me of an even more extreme version of my dad. Due to my nosediving grades, I’ve unfortunately had enough sessions with him in the last year to get to know him all too well.
“Have fun,” Marisol says, hugging me. “My Secret Obsession’s on later. Watch and text?”
“I wouldn’t rather observe some weirdo make out with a finger puppet with anyone else,” I tell her.
I go through the halls toward the admin building, feeling pretty good, actually. The sun is shining so bright I have to put on my cat-eyes. I can do this, I think. I can do this life thing.
Then I see Madison walking toward me, her damn perfect box-red hair up on top of her head. She’s model-tall and dresses like some kind of stylish mom with her fringy scarves and long skirts.
“Hi,” she says, smiling.
“Hi,” I say.
When she utters that syllable it seems long, bouncy, uplifting. When I say it, it sounds like I threw a brick at her head.
I don’t slow down. Keep walking, girl. But I am an elevator now, heading fast for the basement. My smile disappears and I keep reliving that dumb nothing and everything of a moment. I wonder if Jonah still talks to her, if she’s the reason for the space—STOP IT, BRAIN. Brains ruin everything.
I head inside the admin building and concentrate on my breath as I sit in a chair in the waiting area. A photocopier whirs and squeals, repeating a mechanical cry for help. The air stinks like ink. There’s an almost-empty water cooler, a wall covered in class photos from over the years that all look, from here, depressingly alike. A secretary keeps coughing into a tissue behind the desk. I remember I forgot to take my medication today.
“Journey Smith!” Hooker says when he opens the door, showing off the Grand Canyon gap between his top front teeth. “My favorite Journey!”
This guy’s like four Red Bulls deep, all the time. I’m already exhausted just looking at him.
“I’m sure you’ve counseled a lot of Journeys,” I say.
“That’s the joke!”
I sit on a cushioned chair. On his wall hangs a giant framed pic of a stick figure with the words Life is the dancer, and you are the dance.
Hooker takes a seat at his desk, where he has one of those mini sand gardens, a couple cacti, and pic of him and I assume his wife person standing in front of a waterfall with big hiking backpacks on. He also has a hacky sack, which he picks up and starts squeezing as he leans back in his chair and swivels, studying me.
I’m sure this session is about my grades, the amount of school I missed, how I should be thinking about some sad college somewhere that takes sad sacks like me. There’s no way he knows that I tried to kill myself. But somehow it’s like he does.
I shift in my chair.
“So, wow, you’ve had a lot of absences recently,” he begins. “I’m a bit concerned you’re falling behind.”
“I had mono.”
“Ugh, the worst.”
“Pretty much.”
“Even before that, though, your midterm grades were . . . in need of some mojo.”
“Yep, I suck” is all I can think to say.
“Hey, come on—you don’t believe that.”
“Just stating the obvious. They don’t call all-stars into the guidance counselor office multiple times a semester.”