Authors: Susan Vaught
“You did great.” Dad was standing in my doorway, toobig smile blazing.
I pulled the memory book out of my teeth and tried to smile back, but I froze. Seeing him there, framed by that familiar wood facing, cedar against the white walls, it felt all wrong.
No way that door was mine. Even though I could remember how the room should look inside, with trophies and posters from pee-wee baseball all the way through high school golf … one bed, blue spread … a rug with a big knit football—no. No! It wasn’t my room. It was
his
. It was J.B.’s.
My breath came short and sharp. My body didn’t want to move. Maybe if I went in there, J.B. would be waiting on that bed, holding the gun. He might kill us, and this time, he’d do it right.
“Need help?” Dad sounded like a therapist. His whopper smile faltered, and I imagined the hospital van swooping down to pick me up and cart me straight back to the brick buildings and the OT and the big yellow banner.
Up and forward. Up and forward
.
I slowed down my breathing and paid attention to everything around me, just like I had learned from the shrink at Carter. Familiar smells. Perfume, from my parents’ room. And aftershave. And leather, like footballs and golf bags and everything but socks. I didn’t think they made leather socks, at least not for regular people. Leather and footballs and aftershave with no socks. My room. J.B.’s room. He wouldn’t be waiting. J.B. was dead. Socks. The gun was gone, except for my dreams and the scar from its bullet
on my right temple. Socks. The gun was gone. I wobbled down the hall using the wall until I was almost nose to nose with Dad.
“Welcome home,” he said as he grabbed me into a hug. The floor creaked like it would break and drop us all the way back downstairs.
Dad’s voice seemed strained, but the hug felt real enough. I hugged him back with my good arm, taking care not to whack him with the memory book. My bad arm was sort of crushed between us. I nearly lost my balance when he turned me loose, but he let me use his shoulder until I got steady.
Still giving me that bizarre over-smile, he moved aside and I stepped into ghost-boy’s lair.
The first thing I noticed was the bedspread. It was green, not blue. There was no J.B. ghost-boy wearing socks and no gun. Just a green bedspread. It should have been blue. Blue, not green. Why was it green?
Dad must have seen where I was looking because he said, “Old bedspread was a waste. We had to chuck it. Sorry about this one. I tried to get your mother to buy something psychedelic, but she wouldn’t go for it. Do you like this one? Is it okay?”
“Yeah. Sure.” I wondered why Dad was so jacked up about a bedspread. I wanted him to relax, to quit with the freaky smile. Socks.
“We even got you a new mattress. But the rug, the football rug beside the bed, that was clean. You folded it and set it on the dresser, so it wasn’t—um, messy.” He scrubbed his hand across his beard stubble. “I’m sorry. I guess I shouldn’t be talking about that right now. It’s your welcome-home day.”
Air faded from my lungs as if sucked by some beep-click-hissss machine gone insane. The rug on the dresser. I didn’t know that. No one had mentioned that before, ever, I was sure of it. Why would I—no! Why would J.B. do a thing like that? I mean, if he planned to die, why’d he care about some stupid rug?
Because Mama Rush got it for us
, whispered that Before voice, from way down in my mind.
Oh, God. Socks and footballs.
J.B. was real. He was upstairs and he was talking to me. The sweat came back double under my shirt, and I got so cold my teeth started to chatter. There was a ghost in my room, and it was going to kill me again, I just knew it.
Dad put his arm around my waist and I jumped. “Jersey, are you okay? If this upsets you, you don’t have to stay in here.” He was talking so fast. “We can move you to the guest room. I guess we should have asked. I’m really sorry we didn’t think—”
“No. I’m fine. Fine socks.” Except a ghost just whispered in my head, and that ghost, he used to be me, and he was going to kill me right next time, and I wanted my dad to shut up more than anything and go back downstairs and leave me alone. I felt like if I told him that, he’d break into twenty pieces.
Jersey Hatch
, J.B. called in a mean, mocking tone.
Why’d you do it? Why’d you shoot yourself?
I looked to my left and right really fast, but I didn’t see any ghosts. Great. J.B. was in my brain. I’d brought the ghost with me in my head.
Why’d you do it?
he taunted as my teeth clicked together.
Of course, the answer to that question was the million-dollar
prize, the whole contest give-away, the biggest of the big sock enchiladas. Why, exactly, did I put my father’s gun against my head and pull the trigger?
It was a robbery, maybe. Or an accident. Maybe I had a car wreck.
Bright sun through the window made me blink to be sure the scene was real, since “real” often turned left when I chased it. My life After reminded me of a bad geography video. North African deserts and stuff, with all the wind. I saw or heard something, finally got a fix on it, but siroccos blew sand across the landscape until everything got hidden again. Buried under two tons of yellow white dunes.
Yellow white spots flashed in the eye that didn’t work anymore. Ghost spots, ghost sand. Just brief pictures in the dunes, like the ghost pictures on the wall downstairs and in the ghost in my head that had come upstairs to kill me. Pictures of sand dunes danced in my brain. Yellow mountains. Ripples and blowing clouds. God, first the house and socks, now sand dunes. I’d probably be thinking about sand for a month. The therapists told me it would be harder to think in the real world. That I’d have to try harder. Sand. I didn’t believe them. Sand. I wished I had.
“Would you like me to stay, or would you like some time to yourself?” Dad let go of my waist and stepped away from me. He looked like he wanted to snatch me up and hug me all over again.
“Uh—well.” My stomach heaved. Why did he want me to pick? Why was he acting so weird? “Sand. Some time to myself would probably be good.”
I braced myself and stood still as a sand dune with no wind blowing.
To my great relief, Dad didn’t touch me or fall apart. He just nodded and backed away until he reached the steps. It sounded like he ran down, I swear. For a full minute, I just stood there feeling like the man was scared I had a guillotine in my closet or something. Like I was the king of France waiting to chop off his head the first time he said something wrong. King Jersey. I snorted. What a joke. Sand dunes didn’t have crowns. Sand dunes didn’t have guillotines. Were there any sand dunes in France?
My bad leg and arm started to ache, along with my head. Scar to scar, like always, the pain stabbed like knives, then spears. I lurched to the green-that-should-have-been-blue bedspread and sit on the edge.
When the headaches came, the pain was awful at the start. The worst would pass if I relaxed. It would fade into a dull pounding and finish in a few hours and leave my head and neck sore. Nothing helped the headaches, and pain medicine made me fall and vomit, so that was out.
God, my stomach hurt as bad as my head.
I bent forward and held the memory book against my chest.
This is where you did it
, whispered J.B.
My teeth clamped together.
Want to write that in your stupid white book so the wind doesn’t blow it off your stupid yellow sand dunes? Go ahead and lie down. You probably fell sideways with your head on the pillow, since it’s to your left. Don’t you think that’s how you fell?
“Shut up,” I mumbled. It was all I could do not to hit that pillow headfirst.
What was I doing here? Why had I come back to this
place? I should have stayed at Carter. No way was I ready for this.
Lie down in the sand, King Jersey
. The voice in my head was mine, but not mine. I blinked hard. The headaches always blurred my vision. Usually, I didn’t notice not being able to see out of one eye. Only sometimes, when I turned my head and saw something I didn’t know had been there. But now I noticed, since my good eye was blurring. The sun was going down, I could tell—but the light, it was still so bright. Like hammers against my eye. It made the dust bright. Dust and sand, sand and dust.
My fingers tingle as I lift the gun to my mouth…
.
I had folded the rug first. The rug Mama Rush gave me. I put it on the dresser so it wouldn’t get messy—
“Stop it,” I said out loud, whacking my forehead with the memory book once, twice. The pain echoed between the scars. Those weren’t my memories. The dust and tingling fingers, those were from a dream. The rug being folded, Dad had told me that a few minutes ago. I was filling in holes again, making dreams real and turning words into pictures.
“Up and forward.” I lowered the memory book and held it tight against me. For a while, I rocked back and forth, feeling the football rug move back and forth under my sneakers. “Up and forward, up and forward, lucky proud king moron who could have had a duck. Socks and sand, sand and socks.”
It was like a chant. I sang it to myself until the sharper pains got better and the toothache-throb started at my right temple. That I could stand—except I was so tired. I felt like I’d run home from Carter. Ignoring the whispers in
my broken brain, I kicked off my shoes and let myself lie down, head on the pillow. My feet stayed on the floor because I didn’t have the energy to move them.
When the pain let up enough, I opened up the memory book and stared at the To-Do List, letting the gray light show me my goals one more time.
1. See Mama Rush and give her all the presents I made her
.
2. Talk to Todd and find out why he hates me
.
3. Pass the adaptive driver’s evaluation
.
4. Make decent grades
.
5. Take the ACT
.
6. Get a girlfriend
.
I repeated them three times, until I at least remembered the first one without looking.
See Mama Rush
. That was easy enough. She was right next door. All I had to do was knock and ask. If Todd answered, I might take care of the second one, too. Creak, creak, the floor was creaking. I could talk to Todd and ask—
“Jersey!”
Mom’s shocked gasp made me slam the book and sit straight up.
My head hurt so sharply I thought it would explode.
She was standing in my doorway like an ice statue, pale white, both hands against the side of her head. Sand and socks. Socks and sand.
“Mom?” I felt dizzy, and I really wanted to throw up. What was wrong with her?
Slowly, she seemed to come back to herself and thaw a
little. The hands came down. “I—I—,” she started, but she didn’t finish. Her lowered hands shook as she twitched her head from side to side once. “Nothing. Sorry I disturbed you. Do you want the light on?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got a headache right now. Sand.”
“Okay.” And she was gone. Poof. The wind blew her away. The sand wind melted the ice. Socks on the sand wind.
Frowning, I eased myself back down to my pillow. Numbers. Mom was good at numbers. Numbers—the list. I had been trying to remember the list without looking. Making plans for crossing off numbers. I had been trying to get started. Lucky proud king ducks in the sand. At least I didn’t hear the ghost-voice. J.B. had gone to sleep or died or whatever. Maybe the headache killed him before he could kill me.
My eyelids closed against the pound-pound-pound of my scars, my teeth, my eyeballs. My good arm draped across my stomach. Getting started with my list should be easy enough. I’d use what I learned at Carter. Eyeballs. Envision, then implement. Up and forward. Imagine what I would do, then do it.
Eyeballs. Sand and socks.
I was mentally chanting about the sand eyeballs and socks, mentally heading back down the steps and next door to see Mama Rush, when I fell hard, hard, hard asleep.
I have this dream where both legs work and both arms work and I don’t have any scars on the outside. I’m sitting on the edge of my bed in dress blues holding a pistol. Sunlight brightens the dust and sand in my room and darkens all the places where I’ve nicked the walls and doors. The football rug, the one Mama Rush gave me when I made the team my freshman year, is folded neatly on my dresser so it won’t get messy. I give it one last look before I turn back to what I’m doing. My fingers tingle as I lift the gun to my mouth. It tastes oily and dusty all at once as I close my lips on cold gunmetal
—
but I can’t. Not in the mouth. I’m shaking, but I lift the barrel to the side of my head. The tip digs into my skin. I’m thinking nothing but how that feels, and that my hand’s shaking, and that my room has so much dust and sand in places I didn’t even know. Then I’m squeezing the trigger and looking at the dust and sand and feeling my hand shake and thinking nothing and
there’s noise and fire and pain and I’m falling, falling, my broken head smashing into my pillow …
.
Dad made oatmeal for breakfast, which struck me weird because Dad was a cold cereal sort of guy, or at least he had been Before.
“Everything changes,” he said when I asked, then talked about reading articles on nutrition and how nutrition really helps people not be depressed and stuff. Dad was worried I’d get depressed now that I was out of the hospital, because of pressure. Too much pressure. Depressed. Dad reading articles. That was another weird thing, because Dad usually read articles in his law enforcement journals to help him out at work, not articles about food. A probation officer, my dad. Cold cereal, long hours, lots of worrying about all his “other kids.” Now he was staying home to look after me, I supposed. He offered to take me to the movies. Everything changes.
Mom, who used to get up before dawn, run a bunch of miles, and keep her blond hair tight and pulled back and her clothes perfect even on the weekend, she was still in bed.