Nothing that prepared us in any way for the horrors of raising a teenager.
—written with black Sharpie in my mom’s large, loopy cursive on Dittmar’s printout.
My senior year went on.
Without Noel.
Without Noel.
I worked at the zoo.
I did a lot of homework.
I swam after school.
Without Noel.
I sent away for college applications.
I walked Polka-dot.
I went to therapy.
Without Noel.
Doing all these things, I cried a lot.
My dad cried a lot too.
My mom butterflied a lamb, stuffed it with rosemary and garlic and invited people over for dinner.
The headmaster made me write a formal apology note to Dittmar promising never to disrupt his class again. During CAP Workshop, my Noel radar was in such a massive frenzy, I felt like I was going to have a panic attack every time I went—but I managed not to by taking off my glasses and letting the whole room blur, then singing retro metal songs in my head, ignoring everything Dittmar or anyone else said.
(
I still knew where he was, and my heart bounded every time he spoke, but Noel was just a soft outline of himself, not real Noel with his mouth in a thin line, making jokes with hateful, hateful Ariel Olivieri. I didn’t feel guilt over his knee, which was still heavily wrapped, or guilt over wakeboarding with Gideon. At least, I didn’t feel those things until I put my glasses back on and stopped singing in my head.
Mom brought an
I dared to suggest that this was a deeply inconsiderate and even cruel thing to do when one of the people you lived with had been a vegetarian for three years, and in response, Mom filled out Dittmar’s parent questionnaire with the most obnoxious things she could think of to write and shoved it in my backpack. And as a performance artist, she writes obnoxious things
I found it at school during Calc. At first I thought, Ag, I have to turn this sheet of full-on madness in to Dittmar and he’s going to think I’m even more insane than he already does. It’s really going to hurt my chances in terms of getting any actual advice from him for my college applications—plus he’ll show it to the other teachers and they’ll all think I come from a completely certifiable family, and that’s even without knowing that we found my dad this morning sitting in the shower stall wearing only his underwear and staring blankly at the tiles.
But then I thought: I don’t have to give this paper to Dittmar.
I can tell him my parents keep not filling it out. Eventually, he’ll forget about it.
I know better now than to throw any kind of incriminating document in the school trash can, so I ripped the questionnaire into tiny, tiny shreds and flushed it down the toilet.
“It was liberating,” I told Doctor Z later. “Like I said, I’m not letting this badness in my life. I’m flushing it down with all the poo.”
The upside-down picture wasn’t on her desk anymore. I was grateful because it was seriously distracting. Likewise, Doctor Z wasn’t wearing an orange poncho or patchwork skirt or anything else so incredibly crafty and horrific that it detracted from my ability to have a therapeutic experience.
“My mother did this nasty thing,” I went on, “but I didn’t have to let it in. I mean, I have enough things in there tainting my brain. I don’t need that.”
“Good.”
“I also didn’t have to give the questionnaire to Dittmar. Even though he told us to turn it in. Sometimes, it’s just better to ignore what you’re supposed to do and do what’s best for
Doctor Z nodded. Then she asked: “What else do you think is tainting your brain?”
“Oh,” I said. “Just my dad’s depression, missing my dead grandma, our carnivorous household, Meghan always off with Finn, Nora always off with Kim and Cricket, Hutch in Paris, total isolation, mental illness, people who are cruel to animals, the question of whether to grow out my bangs, college applications, guilt over Noel, guilt over Gideon, major heartbreak and self-loathing. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Well,” Doctor Z said, crossing her legs, “can you flush any of
“How could I flush it?”
“You tell me.”
“These are not the kinds of things you can flush.”
