Chapter 7
My throat was dry and I wished I’d pulled my Stanley from my backpack before the class started, but didn’t want to do it now. Not when it was my turn.
“I’m Megan. I’m undeclared and a freshman.
” From the corner of my eye, I saw Logan’s head jerk my way.
I didn’t look directly at him, but saw his feet shuffle, and he took his hands from his lap and put them on the arms of his chair, palms down, fingers spread.
I studied the hand nearest me. The chairs were close enough that if I wanted to, I could reach out and touch him.
The memory of that hand beside my face on his bed just five nights ago flashed through my brain.
He’d pushed up the sleeves of his hoodie, and the hair on his forearms was brown, in a shade darker than that on his head.
The clean scent of soap and detergent was subtle on him, and I guessed he’d probably just gotten done with hockey practice and a subsequent shower. It was like walking into a laundry room just after you’d finished a few loads, with the smell of fabric softener and detergent lingering in the air.
I was still staring at his hand, sensing him staring at me, when Marlo prodded, “And who did you lose, Megan?”
Right, we were still on me.
Brushing away thoughts of rolling in freshly laundered sheets with Logan Fields, I pulled myself back to the task at hand—baring my grief for my classmates.
“My mom. Car accident.”
“I’m sorry,” Marlo said. “And when was the accident?”
I knew the exact date, of course, but when I was about to mention it, I realized it was only a few days away from the first anniversary.
Not news to me, but with all the drama at home leading up to my leaving, then settling in at Bribury, and the whirlwind of social and academic activities the past week (not to mention almost hooking up with the boy who was mere inches away from me), I hadn’t processed it.
Or remembered.
And then I felt like shit.
“Megan?” Marlo said gently, shaking me out of the calendar dancing before my eyes.
“Sorry. It was just about a year ago. A year ago this coming week, actually,” I said. “On the fifteenth.”
“Okay,” Marlo said. It looked like she was about to move on to Logan, but something in the way I sat back in my chair had her gaze returning to me. “Would you like to add more?”
The words shockingly spilled out of me, as if I’d been bottling them up, though I knew I hadn’t.
I’d walked into this meeting room with no thoughts prepared at all.
“I said I was a freshman, and that’s true.
But I actually started at Bribury last year and then got word about my mom and went back home to Nebraska.
I had planned to come back, after the funeral, but then my younger siblings were still adjusting, and my dad was kind of a mess, and I’d already missed over a month of classes, so I stayed home for the year. ”
Logan’s hand next to me clenched, and I hoped what I’d said hadn’t triggered something about his own journey. He stopped looking at me, and I risked a glance at him. He was staring at his feet, and his brow was furrowed, like he was just now figuring something out.
He had been devastatingly hot the other night, when he was in fun party/possible hookup mode. But seeing him in a more sedated and thoughtful state, the hotness factor ratcheted up by a thousand.
Was it wrong to think he was majorly sexy in this setting?
Maybe. But he definitely was.
Marlo nodded at my verbal spill, which I thought was over, but she made no move to shift her attention onto Logan, and I found myself continuing.
“So, I don’t even know if I should be in this study.
If you want people”—I waved my hand toward Paige and Bailey—“who are… I don’t know…
fresher in their grief? But it was a bargaining chip to use with my father to come back this year, so… ”
“A few things there to address,” Marlo said. “First, a year is still… I won’t use your term of fresh, but for the purposes of this study, it easily falls in the parameters. Second, oftentimes mourning is harder in the second year, for many reasons. And we’ll get into that as the semester unfolds.”
Harder in the second year? Shit.
“And lastly, Megan brings up a point I’d like to ask you all about.
You all signed up for this study. And I’m assuming motivation was mixed with wanting the credits and also wanting help with your own grief.
But can I ask for a show of hands on who of you are in this study for a reason like Megan?
In that you’re placating someone, or it was a condition of some sort? ”
My hand went up—I’d already outed myself anyway.
Slowly, Logan raised his hand, only bending it at the elbow still resting on his chair, not high in the air.
The guy closest to Marlo raised his, as did Paige.
“I wouldn’t say condition, but strongly encouraged,” she said.
Then she looked at me with understanding. “By my parents.”
We did a weird nod at each other over well-meaning, but probably a bit meddling, parents. Or parent, in my case. Singular. A bond we felt but did not want to have.
Logan’s hand up led Marlo to move from me and onto him. “And you? Give us the same details, but if you’d be willing to share why you’re here, that’d be great.”
I actually heard him swallow. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who should keep my water bottle close during this class.
“I’m Logan. Sophomore. Accounting major, or will be. Probably. Still working that out,” he said. There were some soft noises of “I hear that” camaraderie.
“And who did you lose, Logan?” Marlo asked.
“My older brother died over the summer. He had leukemia when we were kids. And we thought he’d beaten it. He had beaten it.”
Marlo waited. We all waited. We obviously knew how the story ended, but it needed to be said.
“And then it came back,” he said softly. I wondered if Marlo and the others on that side of our small configuration could even hear him, he was so quiet.
“It came back,” Marlo echoed a little louder.
Logan nodded and leaned forward, placing his elbows on his thighs and dangling his hands between his spread legs. “Yeah. Last fall. He played hockey here too, but had to leave to get treatment. We’re from Minnesota, so he went home because we’re not too far from the Mayo Clinic.”
“But the treatment didn’t work this time,” Marlo said, and Logan only shook his head, not looking up. “If I remember correctly, the recurrence rate of some forms of leukemia is somewhere around…”
“Fifteen to twenty percent for ALL, which is what he had,” Logan finished while Marlo nodded. “Seemed like good odds at the time. But no.”
“And, Logan, you raised your hand when I asked about being encouraged to take this class, do—”
Logan’s snort interrupted Marlo. “Sorry. Yeah. Encouraged isn’t exactly what I’d call it. A stipulation by my coach. Take this class, or some other counseling-type thing, or sit on the bench this season.”
“And so you’re here.”
A shrug, and then he sat back up and looked at Marlo. “At least I get credits for this option.”
“And you get to play… hockey, was it?”
“Yeah.”
“You said your brother played here too?”
“Yeah.”
“But not together at the same time?”
He let out a long sigh, rubbing his hands down his sweats and then placing them back on the arms of the chair and leaning back.
“That was the plan. We were on the high school team together. And travel clubs. He was a junior when I was a freshman. And that’s what we thought would happen here. Two years of playing together. But…”
Marlo waited, but Logan was done.
I didn’t blame him. I didn’t blame any of us for sharing—or not sharing—any part of what we were going through. And yet we’d all signed up for this study.
Or had our coach/parent/whomever sign us up.
“Thanks for sharing, Logan. And you are?” she said, turning her attention to the boy sitting kitty-corner to Logan, forming the side of our U with the other guy who had raised his hand when asked about encouragement/coercion to take this class.
“I’m Dustin. A junior. Fine Arts major.”
“That’s interesting. What type of art are you interested in, Dustin?”
“I’m a painter. Or I want to be,” he said. “Working on it.”
“And who did you lose?” Marlo asked.
“My father. Heart attack. In late May. Two days before I was coming home from here for the summer.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “And you’re here for yourself, Dustin? No one set it as a condition?”
He chuckled and looked to Logan. “I’m hardly the team sports type who’s going to have a domineering coach.”
He certainly didn’t look like the team sports type. Definitely the struggling artist type. Starving artist, really, given how wispy thin he was. He had some height on him, but he looked like he stayed up nights painting and smoking cigarettes, contemplating great works of art.
His jeans were of the painted-on variety, though not out-and-out skinny jeans. He wore black Chucks on his large feet, and a lavender cardigan that had paint smears along the cuffs over a tee shirt for a band I’d never heard of, but guessed was retro cool.
Much like Paige, his was not a look I could pull off, nor would I want to, but I found I liked it on him.
“So, here just on your own, then?” Marlo prodded. Gently, like she knew there was more to the story with Dustin.
“Yeah. For me. I realized there were some unresolved things that would never be resolved now that he’s passed and maybe I could, I don’t know, work through them here.”
“I’m glad you identified that. Great self-awareness. Would you like to say more—”
“I was going to come out to him as soon as I got home. And now I’ll never have the chance,” Dustin said, words coming quicker now, like they had with me—bottled up and the cork had been sprung.
“I thought he’d be cool with it. I even thought he probably already knew, or suspected at least, but I was still really nervous to have that discussion with him. And my mom. But especially him.”
“Sure,” Marlo said. “And now it’s unknown to you how he would have responded. And that’s important to you.” There was a tiny bit of questioning in her voice, but mostly statement. Because, sure, that would make Dustin wonder for the rest of his life.
My mom and I had fought like crazy my whole senior year of high school.
Typical mother/daughter bullshit that she called part of the “pulling-away process,” which was natural and good.
Of course, there was deep guilt on my part about it now, but I would never have the kind of guessing that Dustin would about his father’s feelings toward him.
My mom loved me fiercely, unconditionally, and with her whole body. She was my sounding board, sometimes my worst critic, but always my biggest champion.
And now she was gone.
“Well, at least I know that my coming out didn’t kill him, so there’s that,” Dustin said. Gallows humor that we all needed, making us laugh.
“Silver linings wherever we can get them,” Marlo said. She turned to the only one left of us who hadn’t spoken. “And you?”
“I’m Connor. Senior. Communications. I’m on the lacrosse team, and my coach must have gotten together with the hockey coach, because it was the same ultimatum.” He nodded toward Logan, who nodded back. “I knew your brother, man. We were in the same dorm as freshmen. Mrs. was a good dude.”
“Yeah, thanks, man,” Logan said.
Logan’s brother’s nickname was Mrs. I tried to think of other Beatles’ lyrics and nothing came to me.
And then a flash of the cookie aisle in the grocery store and me as a kid begging my mom to buy me a bag of Pepperidge Farm Milanos that were right next to the bags of Mrs. Fields cookies. That had to be it.
Not the time to laugh at the originality of that and Straw(berry) for him, but I quietly appreciated the cleverness.
“I remember when he left school last year. Sucks.”
“Yeah.”
Connor had the same type of bigness that Logan had, but his coloring was much more on the fair side.
He had an almost surfer-dude look about him—longer, sun-streaked dirty-blond hair, baggy shorts (but also shower shoes and white sweat socks), and a long-sleeve tee that was Carolina blue with the UNC logo on it.
I always thought of lacrosse players as East Coast preppies, but Connor had a much more laid-back Cali vibe.
My thinking of hockey players had been off too, so what did I know? Nebraska football and that was about it, it seemed.
“And who did you lose, Connor?” Marlo asked.
“My two best buddies from home. Car accident over the summer. Brutal. Small town, you know. Everybody was a wreck. Their parents just lost it.”
“And were you home for the summer? When it happened?”
Connor nodded, cleared his throat. “I was. I was in the car. Back seat. That saved me.”
No “oof” from Marlo, but we all mentally felt it.
“And that brings with it many other challenges besides the basics of grief, if one could call it that. Of course, there’s no ABCs with grief. Each case, each emotion, is different,” she said.
“I don’t know. I just know I’m here. They’re not. All I want to do is get on the field. Have to wait for spring for the season to start, but at least I can lift and train with the guys now. As long as I attend this class.”
Marlo nodded and moved over to a table against the wall that held her briefcase, two small stacks of papers, and six clipboards.
“Like I said, everybody has their reasons for being here. I’m just really appreciative that you are.
” She took one of the stacks of paper, and handed it to Paige to take one and pass it on.
I saw it was the assessment she’d mentioned earlier.
When I passed the rest on to Logan, his fingers came close to mine, but didn’t touch.
Same with the clipboards when they came our way.
“This is going to take a while for you to fill out. I asked for comfortable chairs, as opposed to desks or chairs and tables, so you’ll have to write using the clipboards. Let me know if you need a pen.”
Everyone dug in their backpacks, pulling out pens. I took the opportunity to pull out my Stanley. Paige and Dustin also pulled out water bottles. Logan pulled a Gatorade out. Bailey put her jacket on as if all the baring of souls had made her cold.
“Okay. Let’s get started.”
We all got comfortable and prepared to assess our pain.