“You started it. You wrote your name.”
He had. He’d sat at his stupid desk in homeroom the other day and stared at the stupid paper with its litany of ten stupid questions and he hadn’t been able to make his hand move. He’d had to concentrate to write his name, and the letters had come out too sharp and aggressive to be his.
“I thought I was supposed to.”
“Tobias, you clearly began the quiz. And then you clearly didn’t answer the questions. Why not?”
“Because you already know what I’m going to be when I grow up.” Grow up, he thought, and mentally rolled his eyes. Like he wouldn’t be eighteen in a matter of weeks. Like this—all of this, school, quizzes, meetings—weren’t merely a stopgap between him and decades of practicing medicine.
“The quiz isn’t about what you’re going to be. The quiz is about what you want to be.”
“I know that,” he snapped, and now she was looking at him with a line of concern between her bushy eyebrows. He shouldn’t have snapped at her, but really. All this for a useless quiz. As if the world weren’t set in stone. “Look, I’ll fill it out now.”
“You’re willfully misunderstanding me,” she said calmly. “And we both know it.”
“We’re starting on Nixon’s gastrointestinal tract tomorrow in Anatomy and Physiology,” he said, and she blinked. He thought she probably remembered the name he’d given to the dead cat he was dissecting in his science class because they’d talked about his anxiety attack after that first day of the unit a few weeks ago, as well as his desire to never, ever cut up a once-living thing again. But maybe not. He wouldn’t want to think about it anymore if he didn’t want to. He’d thought that naming it after a bad guy might help, a little bit of gallows humor, but it really hadn’t. He had nightmares about that damn cat.
She came around the desk to sit in the chair next to his, leaning forward and pressing one hand awkwardly on the arm of his chair, like she wanted to reach out to him but the standards and practices of engaging with teenagers in a school forum wouldn’t allow her to. Or maybe she didn’t actually want to touch him but thought it seemed therapeutic to seem like she did. Or maybe—
“Tobias. It’s okay if you don’t want to be a doctor.”
He jolted to his feet. “I have to go.”
“Wait—”
“No, I forgot that I have a, a, um, a thing?” Why wouldn’t his backpack move? He yanked and the whole chair skidded, because the strap of his bag was caught on the leg. What had he been talking about? He searched for anything he could possibly be... “Drama Club.”
“You’re in Drama Club now?” she asked, frowning.
He yanked on his bag again. “It’s an interview. Um, a tryout, I mean.”
“Tobias, as your guidance counselor, I would prefer—”
“I feel guided.” He pushed on the chair so it tipped and the strap came loose. He stumbled toward the door, only realizing he was walking backward when he bumped into the door and the knob tried to take out one of his kidneys. The left kidney was located slightly superior to the right, his brain announced helpfully, and he nodded. He was—nothing in his head made sense.
“Gotta go.” Tobias fumbled his way out of the office.
She followed him past the iron-haired secretary typing at the desk, who looked up at him as he blew past her, rustling a couple of papers in his wake. “Sorry,” he said.
“Tobias,” Mrs. Marry called. “Come back. We need to discuss this.”
“Gonna be late.” He finally escaped, his shoes and breathing loud in the echoing hallway as he hurried toward the rear exit of the school where the buses were. He’d made it in time; the first one was only now pulling out. He jogged to catch up to his, thinking only about getting home so he could study and read and do all the things he was supposed to be doing, and he could—
Mrs. Marry was going to drag him back into her office tomorrow, he realized.
She might even call his house.
His stomachache got worse.
* * *
He wasn’t the first one home. All of his siblings were already here: he could hear Ruby’s violin wafting down from the second floor, and Mirlande in the kitchen walking Guy through some terms he would need for a class presentation, because Guy’s mastery of English pronunciation, though very good after nine years in the US, didn’t quite extend to words with multiple Rs in them. Darlin was complaining in Kreyòl about America giving him too many states to memorize, and Marie was humming in the background, probably listening to her iPod even though that was against the rules.
Normally, Tobias would join them. As the oldest, it was his responsibility to keep everyone else on task—to make Guy double-check his geometry problems, to tell Marie to put her music away, to ensure that Ruby did something academic in addition to practicing her Mozart. He never had to do much to keep Mirlande working hard—she was only two years younger, and very much like him, devoted to her studies. They would eat papayas and drink limonade and work until their parents got home, at which point homework would be checked and dinner begun. Tobias hesitated in the hallway out of sight, just listening, then went upstairs instead.
He unloaded his backpack, putting everything away neatly, getting out what he would need for the next day. He used the handheld dustbuster to clean out the trash from the bottom of the pockets. When that didn’t help, he walked around the room, looking into every nook and cranny for any signs of chaos. There was no thought involved in these organizational routines, only habit, only order. He’d taken comfort in it before: his books on their shelves alphabetized by author, his shirts grouped by color in
