the med people called my parents (called a “consultation,” of course, so it could cost more) and suggested some stuff I’d never heard of.
Well, when they did that, my mother, who never met a subject she couldn’t research to death, said she wanted to think about it, and called back later that day to say, sorry, she didn’t want her daughter on antipsychotics, thank you. I definitely wasn’t crazy about taking something like that either (ha!), but the next day I had my first session with Laurie, and by the end of it I was willing to take anything to get away from her and her questions. I told her that the med people had suggested some drugs and I’d go ahead and take them and skip out on therapy.
“Hmmmm,” she’d said, clicking her damn pen, and that was the end of that. No drugs for me, just lots of talking. If I’d known things would have ended up like this, I would have stayed on the vomit pills.
171
“Did any of the things that have happened to you at school have to do with Julia?”
She knew they did.
“No,” I said, and we sat in silence after that. I wanted to get my notebook out and write to Julia but I knew she’d be all over that and I didn’t want her ruining it with her questions.
When forty-seven of our fifty minutes were up, she said, “About the notebook you carry. Is it a journal?”
I ignored her, because I knew better than to say, “No, it’s letters to Julia.” The amount of pen clicking that would produce—it made my head hurt just thinking about it.
“Amy, before you go, let’s talk about choices for just a second.”
Too bad I knew she wasn’t going to be asking me if I wanted to choose to stop seeing her.
“Have you been to Julia’s grave since the funeral?” she said in a totally mild voice, like she was asking about the weather or something. I looked at her then, and I . . .
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to. The only thing that would have come out would have been a scream.
172
“Maybe you should think about going sometime, or consider why you haven’t,” she said, and then told me she’d see me next week.
How did she know I haven’t been? How?
173
130 days
J,
Laurie wants me to come see you, but I—even at the funeral, I couldn’t look at you. Everyone else did, filed by in a snaking line, the church loud with tears and footsteps. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stand up, couldn’t join the line. You were lying in a shiny wooden box, and it was so wrong that you were there that I couldn’t move. I just sat there, staring. I wish I hadn’t been able to breathe.
But I was, and I did, and I rode in silence in the back of my parents’ car to the cemetery. I had to leave when they put—when that shiny box was lowered into the ground. I went and sat on the back of the car. I stared at the sun until my eyes hurt, till everything was a bright, painful blur.
174
Your mother left before the service was over. I know because I could still hear the minister’s voice off in the distance. Off where you were. Your mother was crying, leaning against a woman I knew was your aunt Ellen (she looked just like you described her, right down to the mole on her neck). When she saw me, she stopped crying.
She stopped crying and looked at me. She didn’t tell me I shouldn’t have come. She didn’t have to. She didn’t tell me it was all my fault. She didn’t have to do that either.
She just looked at me. I wish she had done something—
said something, anything. But she didn’t. She just looked at me, and then she turned away.
I haven’t been to see you because I can’t. I just can’t but . . .
But Laurie knew, J. She knows how weak I am.
175
S I X T E E N
I CLOSED MY NOTEBOOK and ignored Mom’s glances at it. I knew she wouldn’t ask what I was writing.
And she didn’t. Instead, all the way home I had to answer questions about school. Ever since I fi xed Julia’s locker, I get questions from her and Dad all the time.
So I talked.
I said, “Yes, classes are fi ne.”
I said, “Yes, I’m trying to make friends.” (I don’t know how to. I should have tried at Pinewood, maybe. But I couldn’t. I didn’t deserve to, and besides, without Julia, without alcohol, I was shrunken, silent, back to being that little kid who knew the right words would never come.)
All the way home it was like that, question after question, and I knew that when Mom and I went inside there 176
would be praise over me doing my homework and putting my dishes in the sink after dinner and maybe even a
