Chapter 1 #5
He considers my request for a long while. Finally, and with a shrug, he decides to hand me his headphones. When I slip them on, I can smell cedar and sleepy cotton pillowcases.
“Playing kinda blind, but here goes,” he says.
He plays, and just like I guessed, he really is very good.
We hear the raised voice as soon as we turn down the hallway to our classroom. A man’s voice—obviously upset—on speakerphone. Inside, Ms. Waters is sitting at the big desk, staring down at her phone. Her arms are wrapped around her waist. She looks like she’s been crying.
“This is out of control,” the man says. “We agreed on a budget.”
“Her fiancé,” Preethi whisper-shouts to the rest of us.
“Honey, I know but—” Ms. Waters begins.
The fiancé cuts her off. “Look, I can’t do this right now. I have to—”
Then Gray is suddenly pushing his way into the classroom. He grabs Ms. Waters’s phone from the desk. “What the hell is your problem?”
“Gray, what are you doing?” Ms. Waters reaches for her phone.
“Who’s Gray? Am I on speaker?” the fiancé asks.
“Why are you talking to her like that?” Gray demands.
“Gray—” says Ms. Waters, trying again to take the phone.
But Gray just keeps going. “You keep this up, you’re gonna drive her away.”
“Who are you?” asks the fiancé.
“I’m a patient of your wife-to-be. She’s great. She’s trying to help us. She deserves better than your shit.”
“I have no idea—”
Gray grits his teeth. “You are absolutely driving her away, Dad.”
“What the hell?” says the fiancé.
For the briefest of seconds, I think maybe Ms. Waters’s fiancé really is Gray’s dad. But then I understand. Something about the argument reminds Gray of the way his parents fought. Of the way his dad treated his mom.
By now Gray has come back to himself. He looks confused and embarrassed at the same time. More than embarrassed. Mortified. He hands the phone to Ms. Waters, who tells her fiancé she’ll call him back later.
We all shuffle to our seats, and a solemn kind of quiet descends on us.
Ms. Waters flips through the pages of activities on her clipboard for longer than she probably needs to.
I’m guessing she’s giving Gray some time to recover.
Maybe she needs some time herself to figure out how to move us on from his outburst. All of us take furtive glances at Gray. He keeps his eyes firmly cast downward.
Maybe it’s because I feel guilty for pushing him so hard before. Or maybe it’s because, out of all of us, he’s the one who has shown us—intentionally or not—the deepest and rawest parts of himself. Anyway. I don’t want him to feel alone.
I take a couple of deep breaths before I begin.
“My parents used to really love each other. No one could make my mom giggle like she was a little kid the way my dad could. They used to kiss. On the lips. In public. They were married for almost twenty years. They promised to love each other forever. Now my dad is in the Bahamas. With his new girlfriend.” I can feel tears threatening to fall again, but I refuse to let them.
I look at Ms. Waters. “You asked me earlier whether I still believed in love. My answer is that I don’t.
You’re divorced. You know that love doesn’t last. It can just vanish one day like it was never there in the first place. ”
Instead of saying anything, Ms. Waters simply waits. Somehow she knows I’m not at the end of all I want to say. She knows that the fact that I don’t believe in love anymore is not my true problem.
I force my next words out. “I don’t believe in love anymore. But I want to. I want to go back to being the person I was when I did believe. I just don’t know how.”
Our collective quiet shifts, takes on a more expectant quality. We want Ms. Waters to have the answers. We want her to be able to fix us, even though she says we don’t need fixing.
Gray’s the one to break the silence. “I’m afraid I’m turning into my dad. One minute I’m fine, and the next I’m—” He cuts himself off, but I know his next word would’ve been “angry.”
The energy in the room shifts again. Something about Gray’s admission, his vulnerability, makes everyone else feel safe and brave, too.
“I’m on my phone all the time,” says Joey. He pantomimes scrolling. “It’s easier than dealing with . . . everything.”
“It used to be okay for me not to be okay, but now it’s not. My parents need me to be fine,” Preethi adds.
“It turns out I have emotions,” Lilliam says, looking at her nails with a rueful half smile. “I preferred it when I didn’t know.”
We all smile at that.
“You guys want to know why my parents sent me here?” Joey asks.
Preethi is the first to nod, eager.
Lilliam and I exchange an aren’t-they-so-cute look.
Joey laughs. “Promise not to hate me after, though,” he says, looking at Preethi.
She furrows her brow and nods again, but slower this time.
Joey rubs his hand down his face, embarrassed by whatever he’s going to say but still willing to say it. He sucks in a deep breath. On the exhale he says: “I cheated at school.”
“That’s not so terrible,” Preethi says.
“I didn’t just cheat on one test. I cheated on every test,” he clarifies.
“I used AI for everything. For a whole semester. School found out after a while. The worst part was my parents were loving my grades. It was the only thing they didn’t fight about.
” He looks down at his feet. “Anyway, school said they wouldn’t kick me out if I agreed to go to therapy, so here I am. ”
Lilliam and I both watch Preethi, waiting to see how she’ll react. It takes a few seconds, but she reaches out and squeezes his shoulder. Lilliam and I exchange another look. Phew.
“I shoplifted,” Lilliam suddenly says.
A laugh bursts out of me before I can stop it. “Sorry,” I say.
She smiles and waves me off. “Trust me, I know it’s ridiculous.”
“What’d you steal?” Joey asks.
“Ten thousand dollars’ worth of wallets and jewelry.” She makes crazy-eyes at the memory, like, What can I say?
Gray slaps his forehead. “Ten thousand dollars?”
“It’s not much, considering it was from Saks,” she says with another grin. “There’s a picture of me in cuffs and Chanel.”
“No way,” says Joey.
Preethi just stares open-mouthed.
“Safe Harbor was not my parents’ first choice, but the Farm was full.” She glances at Ms. Waters. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Ms. Waters says, somewhat bemused.
Lilliam points a finger at me. “You go next, Isabel.”
Ms. Waters gives me a look: You don’t have to do this if you don’t want.
But something in me wants to tell them. “I still can’t believe that I did this,” I sigh.
“After they told me they were getting divorced, the thing I kept thinking about is: When did everything go wrong? They used to be so happy,” I say.
“They used to have this light in their eyes. I sort of got obsessed with figuring out the exact moment when the light left.” I dread saying the next part, but I know I can’t not.
“They’re both big analog photography people.
They print photos and put them into albums. I went through all our old pictures to study our faces through the years.
Eventually I realized it was easier to compare if I cut out all of our faces and put them on a timeline.
I started with my parents’ wedding photos. ”
Even Gray gasps.
“I went through everything with a pair of scissors. Later Mom told me that she didn’t have the negatives. So, oh well.”
“Oh my God,” says Lilliam.
“But why?” Preethi wails.
“I honestly don’t know,” I say, shaking my head. “At the end of it all, I came to the very scientific conclusion that the light left my parents’ eyes when I was nine.”
“I get it,” Gray says. “I took apart my bike once to figure out how it worked. Every last piece. This is that.”
“Huh,” I say.
He smiles suspiciously. “Huh what?”
I almost say, You might be right. Instead, I say, “Shut up and tell us yours already.”
“Mine’s dumbest of all,” he says. “I kicked a pole.”
I glance at his foot. “And did that?”
“I kicked it six times. With my ankle bone.”
“Jesus Christ!” Preethi yells.
“It worked,” Gray says. “I broke it pretty well. Well enough to get my mom to let me stay at her new place some of the time.” His face is unguarded in a way it hasn’t been all day.
I think back to my sketch of the two Grays fighting.
I can’t help hoping that this version—the one brave enough to be vulnerable—wins.
“I’m sorry I pushed you to tell us about your parents before,” I say.
“Just don’t do it again,” he says, seesawing back to being as prickly as ever.
“Jesus Christ, I was just trying to help you.”
“I don’t need any help!” he snaps.
“Guys, come on,” says Lilliam.
Joey starts laughing. “Mom and Dad are fighting,” he says.
“You guys getting divorced?” Preethi asks, smiling.
“Neither of you are rich enough to take custody of me,” Lilliam says.
Gray starts laughing. I can’t help staring. He’s kind of beautiful when he laughs. I imagine his timeline of photos, little Gray, happy Gray, sad and confused Gray, angry Gray. Hopefully one day he’ll be happy Gray again.
Ms. Waters’s phone alarm beeps. “Our time is almost up,” she says as she dismisses it. She rubs her fingertips back and forth across her forehead, like she’s trying to make up her mind about something. Finally she nods, having come to a decision.