Chapter 40 Jessa
JESSA
We are back on the road, Bird driving now, insisting on it after she wrapped my hand up. Once we got off the sidewalk, she opened the passenger-side door, helped me in, and then quietly drove us to an Eckerd’s.
“Don’t leave,” she told me, a serious look on her face. I’m going nowhere.
When she comes back with peroxide, antibiotic cream, gauze, a roll of medical tape, and, somewhat inexplicably, a road atlas, I just sit in the car with the door open, feet on the crumbling asphalt, slick with melted snow, her outside the car bending toward my palm, pulling away the now very red and sticky towel.
I look, almost vomit, and have to look away.
“Shit, Jessa, this is kind of deep, I think.”
“Can we just patch it up for now?” I’m still crying, thin rivulets of tears sliding down my face. She looks up at me with concern, and my heart trips a happy beat before reality comes back in and pain and grief all show up for the party.
“This is gonna hurt,” she says, and pours the peroxide over my hand.
The pain is fiery, and I feel lightheaded for a second as the whole palm foams up.
I stomp my foot, not allowing myself to vocalize this.
She quickly swipes the blood from around the wound with gauze pads, then gently cradles the hand as she grabs another stack, already primed with antibiotic cream, and lays them on top of the angry thick slice in my palm.
She grabs the gauze and starts wrapping it tightly, but not so much it makes my fingers numb. Then she tapes it down, gently kisses the bandage, and helps me back in the car, then buckles my seat belt for me. Closes the door and sits in the driver’s seat.
“Now, I need to know why you’re hurt and who in the fuck did this to you so I can kill them.”
I open my mouth to say something, but the crying just starts again. I manage to choke out the word “Mack” and she nods, understanding, putting her hand on my okay left one, squeezing tight.
“Is she all right? I mean, is she safe?”
I nod. “She’s at the hospital.” She waits for me to explain, but I can’t.
“Do you want me to take you there, or…?”
I shake my head.
She looks around my dirty, bloodstained car, like she’s trying to think of somewhere to go. “Wanna get out of here? Like… away?” she asks.
I nod again. She knows what I need.
“Will you come to Boston with me?”
I crack a small smile, let out a small laugh. “Sure, let’s go to Boston.” Because why not drive the five hours to Boston, tonight of all nights? I will do anything with Bird, because she’s the only thing making sense to me right now.
“Okay. But I’m driving,” she says. I’m glad because all of a sudden I feel exhausted, like somehow every last bit of my energy was spent walking toward her in the street and once she let me back into her arms, the last of me sputtered out.
The pain is a come-and-go throbbing, keeping time with my heartbeat.
I let the rhythm reverberate in me, a tangible sensation keeping me present, keeping me here with her.
At first I don’t know what to say, but then I remember I already found the words; I’ve spent the past month curating the right ways to apologize, and the fifteenth iteration of Bird’s I’m Sorry mix puts it all together.
I slide the CD from the sleeve I put it in, ready to drop in her locker after winter break.
Nirvana hits it right on the head with “All Apologies.” We listen through a couple of more tracks—Evanescence’s new one, “Forgive Me,” and the classic “Always on My Mind” by Willie Nelson.
“You were,” I say.
“Hmm?” Bird exits her own reverie.
“Always on my mind. This whole time apart, you’ve never left my brain for even a second.”
She nods. I can tell there’s something she wants to say, but she’s holding it in. She’s acting like we’re okay, but I’m afraid this time something has changed that won’t go back, that somehow I’ve put a crack in the windshield and as soon as it gets cold, the whole thing will shatter.
I place my good hand over her free hand and look at her, this amazing person who has never asked me to be different, has never asked me to hide, has only encouraged me into so much good, and a mix of hope and some kind of self-blame builds up inside me.
The CD is good, but it isn’t enough. I need to give her something of mine.
Let the ice burn away and be honest with her.
“I should never have done the thing with the zines,” I admit. “It was wrong.”
She nods and I see tears again. I want to kiss them away, but right now is the time for careful distance.
“I should have told you about my idea,” I continue. “Let you find a better way to approach the rumors, and think more about all of it.”
“Jessa.” She’s finally talking. “It wasn’t that you needed to tell me.
It’s just, you were so focused on this idea that you have to protect me that you ended up hurting people.
I know a lot about this. And I know hurting other people hurts you, too.
I mean, your words and actions matter more than you think.
That’s what has been so frustrating for me—it’s like you didn’t even realize that. ”
There it is. Truth from Bird. It burns. I swallow my arguments, because they don’t help and they certainly will drive her further away.
I’m not Loner Jessa forgotten by the school populace, I’m not operating in a void, I have people who listen to me and who I care about, and I can hurt them.
I guess I never even considered that because I was always so concerned about people hurting me.
“But,” Bird adds, “I made choices too. Not telling you, not trusting you. I know that hurt you. And for that I am incredibly sorry.”
Damn, she’s so good at this. She opens up and lets me in without fear. The least I can do is try to do the same.
“I think I understand why you didn’t. You had to keep her confidence. And it would have been impossible to get me not to tell Dade. And I’m sorry for cutting you off while I figured that out. I should have talked more and not gone into my head.”
She nods again, eyes laser-focused on the road. “That was really hard. The part where you cut me off, I mean.”
“Yeah, it was. You know, before I heard about the rumors and stuff and made all these very bad choices, I was going to give you this CD and apologize. I don’t know if old Jessa could have done that, but you taught me to think at least a little bit.”
She smiles, and it’s like Christmas finally showed up for all the joy in me.
“Want to know what I think?”
I do.
“I think you try to protect me and Dade and others because in a lot of ways you can’t really protect Mack—you can’t protect her from her sickness.”
It hits like a truck. And I think I’m gonna cry but then I start laughing, this weird, alien noise that’s choking and wild and loud, and Bird isn’t laughing but is waiting to hear what’s going on. I calm myself down.
“You know, I think I managed to protect her tonight.”
I realize now that she’s pulled to the side of the road. Her palm is against my back, right where my shoulders meet, making slow, gentle circles.
“What happened tonight, Jessa?”
“She… she tried it again. She tried, and I grabbed the knife. I wasn’t thinking, I just… I couldn’t see all her blood again.”
“So you gave your own?”
She gets quiet and so do I. Thoughts swirl in my head so fast I can’t keep track of them, and everything feels as though it’s some dream or hallucination and soon I’ll snap out of it and this insane night will have never happened.
“I think I’m a coward, Bird.” I look down at my hand, the bandage starting to pink up. I’m gonna need more gauze. Maybe stitches.
“I think you’re a badass. You certainly had to be brave to grab that knife.”
I shake my head, blue hair swinging like a curtain. “More like stupid.”
“Jessa, you saved her life. You protected her when it really mattered.”
I did, but inside I feel like I just hit the pause button. Sooner or later, someone will hit play, maybe even Mack herself, and the tape will run out to the end. “I’m fucking terrified.”
“Of your sister hurting herself?”
“No, of me.” I’m picking at my nail polish again, and little flecks fly off. They’ll stick to the vinyl car interior, like glitter but black and dull.
“Why?”
“What’s in her, it just kind of took over one day. She used to be herself, and now she’s sometimes still in there, but most of the time it’s the crazy highs that lead to fights, or depression—which is even worse. Which leads to things like tonight.”
“But you aren’t like that.”
“But I could be. We have the same genes, the same source. There’s no test, but one day I could just go crazy, it could be a train barreling toward me and I am the inevitable tracks.”
“But you still aren’t her.” Bird’s words are firm, and I can feel her belief in me, something so precious to me. Someone who believes I can be good and better.
“Bird, my kind of luck isn’t the kind where I don’t get it. My kind of luck is I do get it and I’m just as bad or worse.”
“But you are different. You aren’t her. Look, since I’ve met you, you’re more… aware, responsible. You take bad things and approach them looking for a solution. If you got sick, Jessa, I know you would work until you could get well.”
“Stabilized.”
“Stabilized.”
“Meaning I could capsize at any point. I will never be better if I get sick. I’ll just be stable. Who would want that? Who would want me?”
“I would,” she says, and puts her hand over my thigh. “I would be happy to live that life with you. And if the boat tips… well, I’ll be there with life preservers and the coast guard and flares and everything we need to get you back to shore.”
I put my good hand over Bird’s, soft skin against my fingertips.
She flips it and we interlace fingers, hers squeezing mine in encouragement.
For all that has happened, for all the crazy crap I’ve pulled even without being bipolar yet, she still believes in me, she still wants me.
Maybe still loves me. I clear the tears in my throat.
“Bird, I think that’s the kindest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
She pulls my hand up to hers, kisses the back of it, and says, “People need to say nicer things to you. I plan on making that happen a lot more.”
She sets my hand back down to check the directions she scribbled on a piece of notebook paper.
I hear the opening chords of “Fade into You” play, and she looks up and smiles at me, and I smile back, knowing exactly what we’re both remembering right now.
Alone in our ghost town, just the two of us, sharing our bodies and souls.
“My favorite song,” she says. “Turn it up.”