The Girls of No Return (35 page)

Gia stepped lightly into the circle. She sat herself next to a shy Fourteen who blushed and shifted her chair to give her more room. “Thank you,” she said to the Fourteen, to the room in general.

“All right,” said Amanda. “Let's start again.”

We chanted together. Some of the girls held hands while we said the incantation. Others, like me, looked at the floor.

Amanda began the session by asking us to close our eyes. “Picture the best moment of your life. Try to remember what that felt like. Where were you? What were you doing? What made it the best?”

Nothing came to me, at first. I squinted my eyes shut tight. I thought,
My best moment
. I pictured the letters of each word, watching them dance in front of my eyes: red, yellow, orange, blue.
B-E-S-T
. I opened my eyes again and looked around. Everyone else, apparently, could conjure up fantastic memories at will. They all had their eyes closed. Some girls were smiling, and one even covered her mouth with her hand as she giggled at a particularly wonderful moment. A half smile played across Boone's face, and Gia looked like she was either napping or recalling something peaceful and serene. I looked around the circle until I got to Amanda. She raised her eyebrows at me; I quickly closed my eyes.

Images started developing slowly in my mind, like old Polaroid photos. The view of my bedroom at home from where I usually sat, my back against the door. Saying good-bye to my dad and Terri in Hindman. The look on my mother's face, right before she left. The morning after I got to Alice Marshall, when I looked in the mirror for the first time and saw what they had done to my hair. I could see my face perfectly, how my mouth had hung open like a trout's as my eyes filled with tears. No one else had seen me at that moment; I had been alone in the Bathhouse.

I shook my head, tried again. Amanda had said
happy
memories.

Dinnertime in the Mess Hall. I could almost hear the ambient sounds of chattering girls, the clatter of silverware. I tried to place the memory, because all I saw were the faces of my cabinmates around the table. Jules, laughing. Boone with the look she got right after she told a funny story, chin lowered, a “Believe me if you dare” look in her eyes.

Another picture floated in, covering up the dinner scene like a drop cloth. Gia's back, turned to me, as she riffled through her dresser drawer for something. This was a memory I could place. I watched the scene in my mind as she turned around with the T-shirt. Her smile was genuine.
It'll look better on you
, she said in my memory.
Take it.

I tried to talk to her. As though stepping through a sheet of water, I entered the memory.
What happened between us?
I asked.
Can we get it back?

She reached over and laid the T-shirt in my open arms. She smiled at me still, her head nodding slightly, and opened her mouth to speak.

“All right, open your eyes now.” Amanda spoke softly, but her voice was jarring nonetheless.

I snapped my eyes open with the alacrity of a window blind. The other girls were stretching, yawning, glancing around themselves hesitantly.

Amanda leaned forward in her seat. She took a sip of coffee and placed the cup on the ground. “Did everyone think of some happy times?”

Happy times. Were we in preschool? Nevertheless, some girls nodded. Someone, I don't know who, said, “I thought about prom.”

“That's great,” said Amanda. “We'll share those memories in a moment. But first, I want to ask: Did anyone have a hard time remembering the good times? Did anyone find themselves remembering tougher moments?”

This time, no one wanted to nod. Oh, we'd get to the Happy Times soon enough. But first: Addressing Our Mistakes. I should have known Amanda would do something like this. No matter that she was right; I'd had to slog through the bad memories to get to the good. And from the certainty in Amanda's voice, I guessed that other girls had too.

Amanda looked around the circle, waiting for someone to speak up. There was a long silence. I looked at my lap, which is why I didn't see her raise her hand. I only heard Amanda say, “Yes?”

“I'd like to share.”

I looked up so quickly that my neck twitched. Gia sounded nonchalant, though maybe a little nervous. She had her hands clasped on her lap, and she looked at Amanda as she talked. “I was just remembering something I'd done right before I came here.” She glanced down at her lap. “It's silly, really.”

Amanda sat quietly. She nodded encouragement. I don't think she noticed the electrical current that had swept around the circle as soon as Gia spoke. Her Thing. It was what we had all been waiting for since the moment she'd arrived. Every single one of us.

Gia took a deep breath. “The first thing you should know is that my mother's not dead.” She spoke quietly, and half of the room leaned forward in their seats.

I knew it
, I thought, but then she went on.

“She's not dead, but I don't know where she is.” She looked down at her hands. “It'd be so easy to say it doesn't matter. To say, maybe, that an eight-year-old can't know her mother that well anyway, and that kids heal — they're resilient. But I did know her.”

Wait.
I shook my head as she kept talking. This was sounding familiar. No. Not this.

“But it was like she was reminding herself that I was still there. Still a burden, still the one wrong thing in her life that she couldn't get away from.”

Gia had told me she had a photographic memory, but I had sometimes wondered if she was exaggerating so that she could embellish the letters that she received from her admirers, repeat them back to me as she would have liked them to be written, not exactly as they were. Now I saw that, regardless of whether or not she had remembered those letters accurately, she really was able to quote something word for word. And there was nothing I could do but sit there as she told everyone my Thing.

“— that other person in the room right here, right now, every single day, breathing in my ear, looking past me, telling me good-bye.”

The room was silent. Even Amanda looked like she was listening to something strange and beautiful, a far cry from the everyday complaints and regrets of Circle Share. I knew it wasn't what Gia was saying, but the fact that
she
was saying it, and that made me feel even worse.

She went on, repeating everything I'd written in my journal. All of it. “My dad isn't a bad person. I can say now without smirking that he really has tried. But there's only so much one person can do with a kid who acts out, doesn't want to play well with others, hates any new woman you bring home. I don't blame him for remarrying. I don't blame Terri either.”

I watched as Gia looked around the room after she said Terri's name, worried, perhaps, that she'd given herself away. But no one had noticed. They were too enthralled.

Reassured, she kept going. “The fact is, I had no one. I was no one. So, when I saw the nail on my dad's workbench in the garage, I decided to see what it felt like to inflict the pain myself, to be in charge of how and when I hurt.”

There were some nods, a few sighs of agreement.

“And I liked it. I liked the way the nail (or razor, or knife — I'm an equal opportunity cutter)” — she paused for the light patter of laughter — “pierced my skin. I liked the way it looked clean for the briefest moment before beading up, and the way I felt so calm after I cut myself, like I could just float away from all the crap in my life for a few sweet minutes. It was such a relief.

“I used my forearm the first time, and the second, but I cut too deeply and Terri noticed.” This time she didn't even blink when she said the name. “Three stitches and an emergency family session later, I'd learned to be more discreet. From then on, I stuck to places no one would see. I was my own art project. And I felt like an artist too. Sometimes, looking at the lines on my hips, I could imagine that they were red roses, that they were beautiful.”

There was a strange sound coming from somewhere in the circle. I looked around, caught a few glances thrown my way, glanced down. My chair was rattling back and forth on its legs, the movement caused by my shaking body. Boone stared hard at me, her eyes a pair of question marks. I sat on my hands, closed my eyes, willed myself to stop. Gia must have noticed too, because she spoke a bit more quickly.

“Like all secrets, I couldn't keep mine forever. I wasn't trying to kill myself, but I cut too deeply into my side one day, and I fainted. When we got back from the emergency room, my dad and Terri practically babysat me. And when the stitches came out and the scars started to heal, they began talking about moving me to a
different environment
, one where I'd be
less inclined to harm myself
. That's how I ended up here.”

She paused, smiling, and then leaned forward. “But for a couple of years, I owned myself. I decided when, I decided what, I decided if I'd had enough. And I know this sounds wrong now, but I've never felt so healthy. I was in control of my body. It was mine to cultivate or destroy.” She looked at Amanda, let out a long breath. “There. That's all I wanted to say.”

Amanda swallowed heavily. “Thank you for sharing, Gia,” she finally managed. “I wonder if you'd like to talk about how it felt when your mother left. Can you tell us more about your relationship with her?”

Gia answered her, but the air around me had taken on a fuzzy quality so that everything was indistinct, barely audible. I had never
spoken
about my Thing. It was my secret story, and I had protected and nurtured it like a wounded animal. I felt as though Gia had ripped off my clothes in front of everyone there and spun me around, asking everyone to look,
look
at what I had done to myself.

But it wasn't just that. It was the way she told it. She was comfortable, speaking easily. She took my story and made it hers. She might as well have stolen my name. Grief flooded my body, my face, but I couldn't move. My arms and legs were useless bricks.

I could feel Boone's gaze from across the circle. She was putting it all together from my expression. I didn't make eye contact.
Do not cry
, I told myself.
Do. Not. Cry
. But that was all it took. As soon as I thought the word, one tear escaped and rolled down my cheek. It was followed by another, and then another. I didn't make a sound. I didn't wipe the tears away because I felt that even lifting one hand might draw attention to me. Surprisingly, no one noticed. No one but Boone. She moved her head back and forth, looking between me and Gia, and I could see the realization spread across her face. I sat there, my face burning, crying silently as Amanda asked Gia question after question. And Gia had answers for them all.

“I don't know,” she was saying, “I guess that's just how it is when your mother abandons you. I mean, think about how little she must have loved me to just leave like that, you know? I must have done something terribly wrong. Or, rather, I just wasn't right enough to keep her.” She looked toward me indifferently.

“Oh no, I don't think — Lida, are you okay?” Amanda had finally noticed, and was looking at me with concern. “Do you —”

Boone interrupted her. “Hey, Gia, that's a pretty sad story.” She wasn't even pretending to sound sincere. She leaned forward, resting her forearms on her knees. “I've got a few questions, though, if you don't mind.”

“Of course not.”

“First, I'd just like to know: Are you even capable of telling the truth?”

Everyone had turned to look when Amanda addressed me, but no one was watching me now.

“Boone —” Amanda started to interrupt, but Gia held her hand in the air to silence her.
I've got this one
, her hand said.

She shifted so that she sat even taller in her chair. “I don't need to lie. And I think it's odd that you'd choose this moment to attack me, Boone.” Murmurs of agreement. “Can't you just respect the fact that I've shared something that is, actually, quite painful to relate?” She cast her eyes down at her lap.

“She's right, Boone. I think —”

But Boone cut Amanda off again. “Okay. Sure. My apologies. But just one more thing, then. Where specifically were you, again? I mean, where was that hospital that your dad and
Terri
” — she paused, looking around meaningfully — “took you to?”

“Out near my home. Kind of downtown.” Gia smiled.

“What town?” If Boone had leaned farther any more, she would have fallen out of her chair.

“I'd rather not go into the specifics.”

“Of course not,” said Boone. “But then again, you've just really opened up to us. You've shared a lot. I don't know why you wouldn't divulge such a trivial fact at this point. It would be . . . suspect.” She paused for emphasis. “So tell me: What. Town. Are. You. Talking. About?”

I'd seen Boone look at girls this way before, but never with the same steel and flint in her eyes. She held Gia's gaze.

Gia's smile faltered. She bit her cheek to cover it up. “Des Moines?” she said finally. Her voice lifted up at the end of the last word, so that she sounded like she was asking Boone's permission.

Des Moines? Iowa? Was that where she was from? Or was she still lying? Some of the other girls exchanged questioning glances.

“Des Moines,” said Boone. “How odd. I think I speak for all of us when I say we thought you were from somewhere more . . .
interesting
than that.”

“Now —” began Amanda, but Gia cut her off.

“You don't have to be
from
somewhere interesting to
be
interesting,” she said evenly. She rested her hands carefully on her knees. “Though in your case, I suppose it would help.”

A murmur rippled over the circle. We might as well have been the bystanders around a boxing ring. I brushed at the tears that were drying on my cheeks, tamping down my urge to get up and run.