Don't Say A Word

Chapter 6

“ARE YOU SURE THAT’S ENOUGH underwear?” Mrs. Reed asked.

Graham looked up from his packing and glared at his mother. “Mom,” he said, “I think I know how much underwear is enough. I have like fourteen pairs. But you know the funny thing? They have Targets in Palmetto. I can buy more underwear if I get desperate.”

Mrs. Reed sat on the edge of the bed. “Go easy on me, Graham Cracker,” she said softly. “This is the first time I’m sending my child off to college. I want to make sure I do it right.”

Graham instantly regretted being snarky to his mother. “I know,” he said. “It’s my first time going away to college, too, and my first time away from home for more than a couple of days. We’re all gonna have to adjust some. But it will be okay. We’re all in a good place now. And I have a cellular phone now, so I can call you whenever I want to, and you’ll know that I can reach someone if there’s an emergency.”

“Well, at least there’s that.” Mrs. Reed smiled. “I remember when cellular phones came out. We called them car phones. I was in college when my father first got one. We were all so excited. He drove a few blocks away and called the house phone. My mother answered, and we all passed the phone around. Then he came home and took us all out in the car so we could call our friends.” She laughed. “And now people have them in their pockets. And text messaging! Maybe I’ll get one soon. I’m still getting used to using a tablet.”

Graham smiled. “I’m glad my computer’s still relevant,” he said. “It would be awful if we had to buy a new one.” He closed the box he was working on and opened his trunk. “I have to decide what I’m bringing with me besides clothes and school supplies.”

He looked around his room, his eyes falling on a family picture that had been taken five years earlier on a family trip to Disney World. He glanced at his mother. She smiled and nodded. Graham grabbed the frame, wrapped it in newspaper, and put it on the bottom of his trunk.

“I wonder if he wonders where I’m going to school.”

Mrs. Reed shrugged. “Maybe he still talks to his parents,” she said, “but I doubt it. It’s not like he left because we stopped loving each other. At least that’s what he said. And I know he loves you and Kaya very much.” She looked down. “I think if he was going to reach out to anyone, it would be you two. It makes me sad that he never knew about what Kaya went through this year. I know he would have wanted to help her if he could. And then I’d want to be able to tell him how great she’s doing now. Not one word about hearing voices, or anything strange for six months. The medication really works, Graham. I think we got the miracle we had been hoping for.”

Graham nodded. “It really has been a relief. There was a while when I was really worried about her future, but now she seems to be back to her old self again. I mean, I’m guessing she is. She’s always up there in her room with her friends, giggling. I’m guessing they’re talking about the boys they like and probably making up new dance steps. I just wish that Cat would stop looking at me like I’m her favorite dessert or something.”

Mrs. Reed laughed. “She has a schoolgirl crush. I used to have them all the time. I thought I was being so discrete, but I must have been awful around the boys I liked, exaggerating smiles and singling them out when I walked by them standing with their friends. I probably embarrassed them. I’m glad I didn’t meet your father until after college. Any earlier, and I probably would have scared him off!”

She appeared to realize what she had said and put her hand to her mouth. “I guess it just took a few extra years for that to happen.”

Graham grimaced. Sometimes things would be going along so well and then something would happen to remind them of what they had lost.

“It’s been a year,” he said. “We’re doing great, Mom.” He reached over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Did you mention something about baking cookies to bring with me tomorrow? I think that would make the transition much easier for me.” He gave his mother a grin.

Mrs. Reed laughed. “Yes, I did mention making some pecan coconut double chocolate chip cookies for you,” she said. “But I think I might need some help. Wanna take a break from packing for a minute?”

Graham nodded, pushed the cover of the trunk closed, and got up to follow his mother to the kitchen.

It was their last dinner together. Mrs. Reed made hamburgers out of ground beef and onion soup mix and placed them in buns—Graham’s favorite meal. He loaded his up with lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions, ketchup, and mustard before taking his first bite. Ketchup squirted out the side of the burger and ran down his hands. Everyone laughed. That’s what happened every time. Kaya spent some time arranging avocado strips on her burger patty and then writing her initials in ketchup on the bun. She put it all together and ate her burger happily. Graham had mixed feelings. It was wonderful to be eating a meal with his family, and having such an enjoyable time, but it would be the last time until Thanksgiving, and on the holiday, things would be hectic.

He watched his mother take small bites from her burger and wipe her mouth compulsively with her napkin after each one. She caught him watching and smiled as she chewed.

“I’m gonna go to Cat’s house for an hour or so after dinner if that’s okay,” Kaya said after taking her last bite. “It will be our last chance to see each other before school starts and I have cheerleading practice.” She looked at Graham. “I won’t be long, I promise. We just need to talk about some things. Girls stuff, you know. When I get home, we can hang out if you want.”

Graham nodded. “That’s fine. Just please tell me that the girl stuff isn’t about Cat wanting to go out with me.”

Kaya laughed. “Graham, yeah, she liked you for a few months, but she knows you’re going away. Now she’s hoping to get the attention of someone closer to our age who isn’t going to college. I think you’re safe. At least for now. We’ll see how things are by Christmas.”

“Okay,” Graham said. “When you get back, we can grab some of the cookies Mom and I made earlier and you can help me finish packing. I feel like I’m forgetting a ton of stuff, but I have no idea what.”

“I don’t know what kinds of things boys need for college,” Kaya said. She giggled. “Condoms?”

“Kaya!” Mrs. Reed exclaimed, but then she laughed too. “Well, I guess you’re not wrong. Better safe than sorry.”

Graham felt his face get hot. He hadn’t told his family that Gina Simpson was also going to State. He might go ahead and get the condoms, just in case. “Just go to Cat’s house already.”

After Kaya left, Graham and his mother sat at the table, talking about what Graham should expect at college.

“I remember how tempting it was to just sleep through class if I’d had a late night,” Mrs. Reed said. “But you’re on a scholarship, Graham. You’ll need to take things seriously. If you lose the scholarship, we won’t be able to pay for you to go to State. You’ll have to transfer to community college, and that won’t be challenging for you at all.”

Graham gave his mother a reassuring smile. “Mom, I’ve always taken school seriously,” he said. “I’m not gonna stop now. If I do decide to engage in drinking and debauchery, I’ll save it all for the weekends. Plus, I don’t like to stay up late. I like the mornings much better.”

Mrs. Reed laughed. “You’re really gonna have to find other morning people when you get there,” she said. “There may have been morning people in my dorm, but I never met them. I was too busy sleeping and staying up late!”

Graham smiled. “Is there anything you want me to do to help you out before we go tomorrow? This is your last chance.”

Mrs. Reed thought about it. “Garbage day is Tuesday this week because of Labor Day,” she said. “I can bring out the cans on Monday night, but would you mind collecting the garbage and putting it outside so all I have to do is drag it out?”

Graham nodded. “That’s easy enough. I thought you’d probably ask me to go out and clean out the gutters before it gets dark out or something. So the kitchen, both bathrooms, and the bedrooms?”

Mrs. Reed nodded. “Kaya may have already emptied her wastebasket,” she said. “She usually takes care of it herself. But why don’t you check it anyway? That way she doesn’t have to worry about it when we get home from Palmetto. Thanks so much for offering to help me out, Graham. I’m really gonna miss having another set of responsible hands around here. It was much easier . . .” She trailed off.

Graham sighed. “I know.” He looked at the floor. “I’m still mad at him for not even acknowledging my graduation. A card would have been nice.”

Mrs. Reed nodded. “I just hope he’s okay,” she said quietly. “I can sit here and be mad at him for not contacting us, but what if it’s because something’s wrong?” She leaned closer. “I have to admit, Graham, that ever since things started happening with Kaya this year, I’ve wondered if maybe something wasn’t going on with your father, you know, mental-health wise.”

Graham raised his brows. “Really?” he asked. “That never even occurred to me.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Reed said. “There’s a strong genetic component to mental illness. I learned a lot about it in the support group I went to back in February. A lot of the families have multiple members with mental health issues. Your father leaving was a shock to all of us. No one thought that anything was wrong at all. But suddenly, there it was. But when I look back, I wonder if there were signs.”

“Can you think of any?” Graham asked.

Mrs. Reed stared at the wall. “The only thing I can think of is that sometimes he got really quiet, just out of the blue. I’d ask him if everything was okay, and he’d just smile and say everything was fine, he was just thinking about something at work, or something like that. Do you think it’s possible he might have heard voices, too?”

Graham shook his head. “I have no idea. We didn’t know that Kaya was hearing them until she said something. I guess anything’s possible.”

Mrs. Reed sighed deeply. “I guess it’s food for thought.” She smiled. “Go do the garbage,” she said. “I’ll take care of the dishes.”

Graham went to the kitchen to get a garbage bag. He started by emptying the bathroom trash, and then moving on to the bedrooms. He would save the kitchen trash for last. He made his way to Kaya’s room and opened the door. He felt strange walking into her room when she wasn’t there. It felt like he was invading her private sanctum. He looked around. Everything looked neat and orderly, and the bed was made. The only signs that the room was inhabited by a teenage girl were the pajamas strewn over the bed and CDs sprawled out on the desk. There were also shoes that looked to have been kicked haphazardly around the floor at the end of the day. He found her wastebasket under her desk. He reached for it, dumped the contents into the bag, and put it back down when something caught his eye at the bottom, something colorful. He looked closer, and then reached down to pluck it up with his fingers. He brought it closer to his face. It was a capsule, some sort of medication. Kaya only took one medication, the antipsychotic she had been on for six months to help suppress the voices. A thought struck him.

He put the capsule down on the desk and looked into the garbage bag. He couldn’t see anything on top, so he started to rifle through the contents. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for. A capsule. Then another. And another. By the time he was done searching, he had found five capsules. Almost a week’s worth of medication. He put them in his pocket.

Graham sat on Kaya’s bed, a feeling of despair coming over him. Every day, Mrs. Reed gave Kaya her medication at breakfast time, watching her put the capsule in her mouth and take a drink of orange juice. But somehow, all of these pills were in Kaya’s garbage. Somehow, Kaya was not swallowing the capsules. She must have been spitting them out and throwing them away later. Maybe that was the reason that Kaya had been emptying her own garbage, so that her mother and brother wouldn’t see the evidence in the trash. He wondered how long she had been doing that. Kaya seemed to be doing so well for the past six months. She never talked about hearing voices anymore, and she seemed happy. So maybe this was a recent thing, maybe just this week. If that was the case, Graham worried that the voices would slowly creep back into Kaya’s daily life, and she would become distressed again. But if it had been longer than a week, at least a month, or more, that would mean that even without the medication, Kaya was doing all right. In a way, Graham hoped that was the case. He would be so happy if the voices had somehow gone away on their own and Kaya didn’t need to take the medication, especially with him leaving for college. He wouldn’t be there to keep an eye on her all the time, or to watch cheerleading practice to make sure she was safe. For now, he had to go find the medication bottle, to confirm that these capsules were indeed the antipsychotic medication. He wanted to count them, to make sure that these weren’t just some extra pills that Kaya had somehow come upon and thrown away. He had to be sure, before he confronted her. Because he was going to confront her as soon as she came home. He couldn’t leave the next day without knowing what was going on.

After he put out the garbage, Graham left his mother in the living room watching the news on TV and went into the kitchen. He quietly took Kaya’s medication out of the cabinet and opened it. He looked inside. His heart fell. It was the same medication he had found in the wastebasket. He looked at the date on the bottle and calculated how many pills should be left and then poured the remainder in his hand. He counted them. There were exactly as many capsules as there should be. That confirmed it for him. Kaya had been tossing her medications on a daily basis. He put the capsules back in the bottle and then stowed them in their place in the cabinet. Then he went back out to the living room to watch TV with his mother.

Kaya came home forty-five minutes later. She was in a good mood. “Cat has a crush on Steve Winsor,” she told her mother and brother. “She has our old middle school yearbook, and she drew a big heart around his picture! It’s a really bad picture. His eyes are half closed.” She laughed and sat down next to her mother.

Mrs. Reed laughed. “That’s so cute,” she said. Her eyes twinkled. “What about you? Do you have a crush?”

Kaya blushed. “I don’t know if I have a crush,” she said softly. “But there is this boy . . .”

“I knew it!” Mrs. Reed said with a smile. “What’s his name?”

“Jeffrey Cohen,” Kaya said. Then she closed her eyes and lifted her shoulders as if bracing herself for the reaction.

“Jeff Cohen!” Mrs. Reed exclaimed. “Oh my goodness! Kaya! You’ve known him since kindergarten! I remember you telling me how gross he was! This is great! I’ll have to call Betsy and let her know you have a crush on her son!”

Kaya sobered quickly. “No!” she insisted. “You are not to say a word to his mother! Mom! I think he might be interested in me, at least in being friends. Don’t ruin this for me! I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. I forgot who I was talking to for a second.”

She stood.

“Graham, I’m going upstairs to soak my head in a bucket of cold water so I never forget that I can’t tell Mom any secrets, ever. Come up and bring those cookies you promised.”

She turned and started to skip toward the stairs, humming.

Graham waited a bit before getting up. He was starting to wonder if he should even say anything to Kaya about what he found. She was in such a good mood. He didn’t want to ruin it, especially the night before he left home. But he also needed to know if his sister was all right. He did a quick cost benefit analysis in his head and then stood. He would see how things played out before deciding what to do. He went into the kitchen and positioned several cookies on a plate, poured two glasses of milk, and put everything on a tray that his parents had gotten as a wedding gift twenty years earlier. Then he started for the stairs.

Kaya was lying on her bed, music playing from her stereo, a book held in position above her head. Graham rapped on her door softly.

“Ky, I’m ready to finish my packing.”

Kaya jumped up quickly, put her book on her nightstand, and turned up the music so it could be heard in Graham’s room next door.

“What CDs are you bringing?” she asked as they entered his room. She grabbed a cookie and took a large bite.

Graham rifled through his collection. “I think I’ll take Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, No Doubt, Beastie Boys, 311 . . . Do you ever listen to your Foo Fighters CD? Maybe I can borrow it from you.”

Kaya shrugged. “You can take it. I actually have two copies. Someone gave me the second one for my fourteenth birthday.” She plopped down on Graham’s bed. “Your room already looks so empty.”

Graham looked around. “I feel so unprepared,” he admitted. “I have no idea what it will be like, being away from here. I’m a little nervous.”

Kaya looked shocked. “You always seem so sure of yourself. I would think you’d be on top of it. I think it would be really fun to have my own dorm room and be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want.”

“You’d probably have to still have a routine,” Graham said. “Just because Mom’s not around doesn’t mean I can just go nuts, and not do what I have to. I still have to be responsible. You will, too, when you go away.” He cleared his throat. “Like, Mom won’t be there to give you your pills every day. You’ll have to remember to take them yourself.”

Kaya looked at her lap, her face draining of blood. “Well, that won’t be a problem for me,” she said. She adjusted the cuff on her jeans. “I’m pretty responsible and stuff.”

Graham stared at her until she looked up and noticed.

“What?” she asked defensively.

“I emptied your trash today,” he said. “Mom asked me to.”

Kaya’s face became even more pale. “Oh,” she said. “Thanks. I was gonna get to it when we got back on Sunday. You saved me the trouble.”

Graham squinted at her. “Kaya . . .” he started.Kaya snorted. “Okay, fine. So you saw something. Why don’t you just ask what you want to ask already instead of playing games with me?”

Graham nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. “I found a capsule. And when I looked, I found five more of them.” He reached into his pocket and showed her the contents. “Kaya, what have you been doing?”

Kaya sighed. “I put the meds under my tongue when Mom gives them to me,” she said. “I take a drink, and then when she turns away, I spit them into my hand.”

Graham nodded slowly. “That’s what I thought,” he said. “How long?”

Kaya shrugged. “Five months?”

Graham gasped. “Five months! That’s almost the whole time she’s been giving them to you! Kaya! You can’t just do things like that!”

“Why not?” Kaya asked defiantly. “I mean, I’ve been fine, right? I haven’t had my medication for five months, and nothing’s happened. Doesn’t that tell you anything? I don’t need it! I’m fine without it! But Mom’s so adamant about me taking it. I couldn’t just tell her that I didn’t want to take it anymore. And besides, it didn’t do anything.”

“What do you mean?” Graham asked, worried about what the answer would reveal.

Kaya shrugged again. “Bailey still hummed in class every day. People still said weird things. Sometimes I heard people saying things, and their lips weren’t moving. So yeah. Nothing. But you know what? I’ve learned to deal with it. It doesn’t bother me anymore. It’s just not a problem! Graham, please don’t say anything to Mom. I promise you, if it starts to become a problem, I’ll just start swallowing the pills again, and Mom won’t ever know the difference. I don’t want to take the pills. They made me feel weird. Sometimes, my hands and feet felt strange. I can’t even describe it. But it stopped as soon as I stopped taking them. I can’t go back on them!”

Graham felt trapped. Kaya was putting him in a horrible position. Their mother and the doctor knew what was best for Kaya, but Kaya knew her own body, her own mind. And he was her brother. He couldn’t betray her. Finally, he nodded.

“Fine,” he said. “But you have to promise me that you’ll talk to me on the phone every week and be honest about how things are going. I mean really honest. If I feel that you’re not being honest, I’ll tell Mom. And you have to listen to me. If I think things are getting worse based on what you tell me, I’m gonna tell you to start taking the meds again. Do we have a deal?”

Kaya thought about it for a moment and then nodded. She stuck out her hand. “Deal,” she said. They shook hands firmly. “Let’s talk about something else now, okay? I have a few more ideas about what CDs you need to bring that won’t make you look like a total loser to the other guys on your floor. ” She sorted through his collection. “No boy bands. Good. So you take Bush, Green Day, Matchbox Twenty . . . oh, man! When did you get this Savage Garden CD? You need to leave this for me!”