39. MAKE A WISH.
MAKE A WISH.
“Tell me about your favorite memory of your mother,” Dr. Garrison suggested, and I remained silent with my gaze trained on my dirty sneakers.
Without being able to stop myself, my mind wandered back in time, less than a year from the end.
It was sometime in the spring; the air was warm and the wind soft.
The sun had set into a golden hue in the sky, illuminating the world around us with a false blanket of security.
It was the last time I remember feeling safe, and it was also the last day I saw my mother’s genuine smile.
Her dark hair blew in the breeze, and she had this easy look about her that made me believe that everything was going to be okay from there on out.
My father had been gone for a couple of months.
He was on another binger and we both genuinely started to believe he wouldn’t come back or at the very least hoped he‘d died.
It was a terrible thing to think, but it was true, and we thought it.
I prayed for death to take him, but god wouldn’t listen. Mama told me the man upstairs had bigger plans than revenge. I didn’t see it as revenge. I only wanted to be free. I prayed for freedom.
For a moment, I got a glimpse of it, but in truth, my freedom came at a cost I wish I could’ve taken back .
“Where’d you go there?” Dr. Garrison asked, pushing his glasses up his nose.
I let out a long sigh, swiping my palms over my jeans. “A meadow.”
A knowing look lit up his face. “The one with all the wild dandelions?”
I nodded.
He wrote something down and said, “Go on.”
“Love was there, too,” I recalled. My mother and I watched her run through the field, ears flapping and the dandelion wisps flying through the air in her path. “The field next to it belonged to Mr. Ledger. He didn’t mind us being there.”
“That was nice of him.”
I picked at the skin beside my thumbnail. “We had a picnic. Mama made us sandwiches. Love got one, too.” My mind sinks back to that day unwillingly, an aching tenderness spreading through me. “I made a wish.”
“What did you wish for?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
While a part of me had long since let go of the fact it may never come true, the bigger part of me was still a hopeless fool. “Or else it won’t come true.”
“Ah, of course.” He smiled. “Is there a specific reason it’s your favorite memory?”
I shrugged. “It was the last good one.”
Noticing that I did not wish to discuss it further, he changed topics. “Theresa showed me some of your art. You are very talented.”
I bristled under both the breach of privacy and the compliment. “She had no right.”
“Was it supposed to be a secret?”
No. I don’t know. “It’s private, but I suppose that doesn’t matter when I’m property of the state.”
He frowned in disapproval, but I didn’t give a fuck. It was the truth, and I was quickly becoming impatient with these sessions. I wasn’t idiotic enough to know that they were a choice. If I missed too many, it’d be marked on my file.
After that, he wasn’t able to get much out of me. He’d already ruined the half-decent mood I’d woken up with that day.
A few hours later, I sat at the desk in the bedroom I shared with two ten-year-old boys. I was sketching until the memory faded once again into the background where I preferred it.
Abigail barged into the room, her feet thumping against the floor with each step she took. I knew it was her before she spoke only because everyone else kept their distance from me if they could help it.
“You need a haircut,” she stated, plopping onto my neatly made bed and propping up her sneakers on the edge of the desk.
I tossed her an exasperated look. “I already told you I’m not letting you cut it.”
She crossed her arms with a pouty look on her face. “That’s so mean.”
“No,” I said slowly. “What’s mean is your dirty shoe print on my new sketches.”
Her eyes flicked to where I was talking about and she winced, lifting them immediately. “Sorry!”
I shrugged because it didn’t bother me that much. For the next several minutes, I felt her staring at the side of my face. It was clear she had something else on her mind besides my shaggy hair .
It was at least another ten minutes before she let out a big breath and finally blurted, “I heard a rumor.”
My eyes darted to her before focusing back on my drawing. “Didn’t take you to be one for gossip,” I said tightly.
A beat of silence. “Was that a joke?” I shrugged again, and she laughed. “Anyway, I set them all straight.”
I tensed and my hand stilled. I turned, giving her my full attention. “Set who straight?” I asked. “About what?”
Her brows drew together as she observed my face. “People at school. Dalia went around telling everyone that you’re fucked in the head. The bitch is just mad you wouldn’t sleep with her.”
My heart dropped to my stomach. Dalia went down on me in the parking lot during lunch period and I couldn’t get it up for anything.
It was mortifying, but I had a lot on my mind.
She got mad and threw my bookbag at me, which caused a bag of the pills I held onto as a keepsake to fall onto the ground.
That of course led her to look through my bag and find my prescribed medications; not in my name. So, while she wasn’t far off with telling people I was fucked in the head, it still sucked.
“She said you had bags of pills,” Abigail went on. “It was fucked up. I mean, we’re depressed sometimes, but we’re not fucked in the head, are we?” There was something about her question that told me she was worried that was how people saw her—the same way they saw me.
It was the fear in her eyes that made me say, “Nah. No more than the rest of them.”
I didn’t have the guts to tell her about the bag of pills Dalia was talking about. The bag I kept just in case it ever became too much.
As I watched Abigail's relieved smile wash over her face, I knew I could take on a lot more weight before my legs gave out. She made me want to keep swimming because no matter how many times I shut down her talk about the future, a part of me was starting to see it, too.
THE ONLY CLASS I enjoyed at school was art—go figure. The truth was, I struggled with all my subjects and if it wasn’t for Abigail, I would have flunked out. She tutored me, or rather did the work for me since I couldn’t care less about what it would mean if I did.
I was an idiot to think Dalia’s stunt would pass over quickly.
It had been three weeks since then and she took it upon herself to corner Abigail at the lockers and insinuate things about us.
Since I was against hitting girls, I punched the first asshole I laid eyes on that was laughing at Abigail’s discomfort.
Unfortunately for me, his two friends jumped in, and as Abby and I sat outside the principal’s office even breathing hurt.
Across from us were the three pricks that’d walk away clean with one phone call from their parents.
I, on the other hand—well, judging by the look on Abigail’s face as she held an ice pack to my left eye, I was toast. She was as worried as I knew I should have been.
I couldn’t muster any emotion inside of me. It’s like I’d stepped outside of my body. I was in pain, but that was all I felt; nothing above the physical. Maybe I was finally at my last straw and the rumor was true—I was very well fucked in the head.
Who the fuck else daydreams about their death? Romanticize it even? It was sick and twisted. Everything inside of me was rotten. I focused on the girl next to me and her version of the future. I held onto it as best I could with bruised knuckles, but I felt myself slipping away, nonetheless.
I closed my eyes, leaned my head against the wall, and waited for it to pass. It didn’t. Not this time.
“I need to see Dr. Garrison,” I muttered.
“Hm?” Abigail hummed, coming out of her thoughts.
“I’m losing it, Abs,” I admitted quietly, my knee bouncing like mad.
She lowered the ice pack. “Losing what?” she asked, holding onto my bicep as if she half-expected me to run.
“My mind,” I croaked.
“Shh,” she soothed, wrapping both of her arms around mine and resting her head on my shoulder. “Don’t say that. You’re okay.”
I didn’t have it in me to tell her she didn’t know that for sure. If she could see inside my mind, she’d see how scrambled it was. “I gotta get out of here.” I stood, and she stumbled after me.
“Mr. Havord, where do you think you’re going?” the secretary asked.
I ignored her and Abigail calling after me as I walked out of the office and down the hall to exit the building through the large double doors.
“Where are you going?” Abigail yelled out from where she stood in the doorway.
I tossed her a glance over my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” was all I could get myself to say. What else was there?
There was only one place I knew would welcome me—or rather the cash in my pocket.
Everyone called him Mad Dog. Only a few people knew his real name.
I took it as he preferred it that way given his profession.
I wasn’t an addict by any means. Unlike my father, I always knew when to stop.
I also knew when I shouldn’t go near certain shit, but I was feeling more off than usual.
I’d needed something stronger than painkillers or weed to take the edge off this time.
My brain was on fucking fire and my reality was drifting further and further from me.
I was twelve and thirteen again, getting touched in places I didn’t want to be and feeling things that I despised with every fiber left of my wretched soul.
My skin crawled as I walked up the steps of a colonial-style house with missing shutters.
A few guys sitting in lawn chairs in the yard lifted their chins in silent greeting.
I returned it before stepping through the already-opened door.