“Well, it doesn’t make sense, for one thing,” he says.
“What doesn’t?”
“Talk therapy. You told me it’s an illness. Would you give a cancer patient medicine and then ask them to tell you about their mother?”
Laudner laughs. “Perhaps I would. Is it strange for a doctor to ask a patient personal questions?”
“It’s a little strange. I mean, how is talking about what’s happening between a cancer patient and his absent mom going to help him get better?”
This makes Laudner sit up taller and stare at Aaron, as if waiting for more. No. No more, Aaron thinks. This is exhausting and too much. He imagines the faces Laudner must make when he has sex with his husband/wife/partner/self. This gives Aaron a boner.
When Aaron doesn’t say anything, Laudner says, “Well, I don’t know. It’s not a terrible question. How do you think it might help? And can you see any differences between cancer and depression? What differences might exist there?”
Aaron scratches his knee through his jeans and yawns. Too many questions. It’s beginning to feel like Aaron’s the kid in that old karate movie, Laudner is his wise sensei, and Aaron has to answer endless riddles.
It’s exhausting.
At Marie France’s suggestion, Winnie brings Britt to their appointment. Britt sits on the floor, legs splayed like an M.
“So, Britt. I’ve heard so much about you,” Marie France says, her voice warm and honeyed.
Britt stares at her. For Winnie, the difference in Britt is beyond stark. Two weeks ago, Marie France would have gotten a hug.
“I hear you like to dance?”
A shrug.
Marie France crosses and uncrosses her legs. “I understand that your family has had some really bad news.”
Britt picks at the hardwood floor with a fingernail.
“Do you want to talk about that?”
Not even a shrug this time. Winnie looks to Marie France, whose return look says, I got this. It’s okay.
“Britt, do you like to draw?”
A nod without looking up.
“Would you like to draw?”
A half shrug, half nod.
Marie France grabs a sketch pad and some magic markers out of her drawer. She places them on the floor in front of Britt. “Do you want to go to the table or stay there?”
“Here is okay.”
Marie France goes back to her desk, and the two adults watch Britt sit there with a red marker in her hand, staring at a piece of blank paper.
Tillie went away, Britt thinks. She didn’t leave me a note saying goodbye, or anything.
That means she didn’t love me.
Why do people say they love you if they don’t? Why do people go away without saying goodbye?
The lady with the nice black skirt wants me to draw. I don’t want to but I will, anyway.
I draw a house. It’s square and red. I scribble in the paint. I put clouds above it in gray, and some green grass below.
“What do you have there?” the lady asks.
“A house.”
“And who lives in that house?”
It’s just a drawing, Britt wants to tell her. No one lives there. I just want to take a nap.
“Me and my dad,” Britt answers. She thinks of her daddy, who is on a business trip. He was away last night and probably will be again tonight.
She looks up and the lady and her mom are looking at each other. Mom is wiping her eyes. Again.
“Mom, also,” Britt says, hoping she’ll stop crying. She hates when her mom cries. She cried when she told Britt what Tillie did and Britt didn’t like it at all. Her dad didn’t cry and that was good. Britt just wanted to play pretend. Like pretend it was before Tillie did suicide, and when her mom wasn’t so sad all the time.
Her mom doesn’t stop crying, though. Britt is sorry about her drawing. She thought it was too small for three people. She didn’t know the rules.
Amir’s mother is horrified that her son’s been suspended. Utterly horrified to the point that she barely spoke to him all weekend.
The one thing she did say: “How could you put everything in jeopardy?”
He tried to explain but nope. She wasn’t having it.
He spent most of the weekend in his bedroom, lying in bed, because his mom took away his phone, his laptop, everything. No TV privileges.
“I want you to really think about whether this is the kind of man you want to be,” she said on Monday morning, before going off to show an apartment on East End Avenue.
Now he sits in the living room, in the dark, knowing that the TV is off-limits, and the funny thing is, he’s glad she’s taken things away.
She should take away more.
Molly braves turning on her phone for the first time in three days, and it’s worse than she expected.
Forty-three messages. Forty-one of them death threats or in that general arena. Two of them from Gretchen.
What’s up, ho? reads one.
The other: Fine, be that way. Everybody here hates you by the way
Somehow, this hurts even more than the threats, which she mostly doesn’t read. Well, she reads some of them. Glances over to see if any names come up. Only one. Sammi Petrowski, who is an Emma, which is what Gretchen, Isabella, and she always have called the B girls who would run each other over to be A, because they’re all named Emma. Sammi has always been sort of a shark, on the perimeter of their posse, circling around, waiting for blood.
Sammi’s text reads, well this is awkward … what do you say to a murderer? Sorry not sorry
Molly feels a squeezing on her heart, like the air is being taken from her chest. Her head feels dizzy. Dizzy and cold, because now it’s bald.
She texts Gretchen.
She waits. For the bubbles to form so she’ll know a response is coming. No bubbles.
Then some. Her heart lurches.
Then they disappear, and Molly stares and stares, waiting for them to come back. Because they need to. Because without Gretchen she has no one left.
In the afternoon, Aaron sits in his room with his computer open to GarageBand. He’s riffing on the synth, thinking about how groups like Vicetone aren’t shiny, in the same way he isn’t shiny. They just make great beats.
He could be like that, maybe?
He tries an ’80s synth beat and speeds up the RPM until it sounds almost hypnotically fast, and an idea comes to him. With “Walking Alone,” he went slow to match the lyrics. What about a somber high-energy song? He’d started that “In My Corner” thing. Maybe it needs to be fully written and made into a celebration?
He smiles. Yes. This is the kind of über-random, crazy idea that makes people famous.
He grabs his notebook, keeping the sped-up beat on to inspire him. His pen stays motionless on the paper for quite some time, and he laughs. Yeah, not so easy to write a dance dirge.
He rereads it, and unlike the other day, when he thought it sucked, this time it lights him up a bit and he feels a warmth pass through his chest and perk up his shoulders. That’s the chorus, he realizes. He needs a verse. A couple verses. And maybe a bridge.
A shiver passes through his rib cage. He finds the melody so easily he has to wonder if it’s something someone else came up with, but he can’t think of what it is. It’s just … not half bad.