I stopped there. I was sure that he would have been very thorough.
It will be as if I’d never existed, he’d promised me.
I felt the smooth wooden floor beneath my knees, and then the palms of my hands, and then it was pressed against the skin of my cheek. I hoped that I was fainting, but, to my disappointment, I didn’t lose consciousness. The waves of pain that had only lapped at me before now reared high up and washed over my head, pulling me under.
I did not resurface.
OCTOBER
NOVEMBER
DECEMBER
JANUARY
4. WAKING UP
TIME PASSES. EVEN WHEN IT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE. EVEN when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me.
CHARLIE’S FIST CAME DOWN ON THE TABLE. “THAT’S IT, Bella! I’m sending you home.”
I looked up from my cereal, which I was pondering rather than eating, and stared at Charlie in shock. I hadn’t been following the conversation—actually, I hadn’t been aware that we were having a conversation—and I wasn’t sure what he meant.
“I am home,” I mumbled, confused.
“I’m sending you to Renée, to Jacksonville,” he clarified.
Charlie watched with exasperation as I slowly grasped the meaning of his words.
“What did I do?” I felt my face crumple. It was so unfair. My behavior had been above reproach for the past four months. After that first week, which neither of us ever mentioned, I hadn’t missed a day of school or work. My grades were perfect. I never broke curfew—I never went anywhere from which to break curfew in the first place. I only very rarely served leftovers.
Charlie was scowling.
“You didn’t do anything. That’s the problem. You never do anything.”
“You want me to get into trouble?” I wondered, my eyebrows pulling together in mystification. I made an effort to pay attention. It wasn’t easy. I was so used to tuning everything out, my ears felt stopped up.
“Trouble would be better than this...this moping around all the time!”
That stung a bit. I’d been careful to avoid all forms of moroseness, moping included.
“I am not moping around.”
“Wrong word,” he grudgingly conceded. “Moping would be better—that would be doing something. You’re just...lifeless, Bella. I think that’s the word I want.”
This accusation struck home. I sighed and tried to put some animation into my response.
“I’m sorry, Dad.” My apology sounded a little flat, even to me. I’d thought I’d been fooling him. Keeping Charlie from suffering was the whole point of all this effort. How depressing to think that the effort had been wasted.
“I don’t want you to apologize.”
I sighed. “Then tell me what you do want me to do.”
“Bella,” he hesitated, scrutinizing my reaction to his next words. “Honey, you’re not the first person to go through this kind of thing, you know.”
“I know that.” My accompanying grimace was limp and unimpressive.
“Listen, honey. I think that—that maybe you need some help.”
“Help?”
He paused, searching for the words again. “When your mother left,” he began, frowning, “and took you with her.” He inhaled deeply. “Well, that was a really bad time for me.”
“I know, Dad,” I mumbled.
“But I handled it,” he pointed out. “Honey, you’re not handling it. I waited, I hoped it would get better.” He stared at me and I looked down quickly. “I think we both know it’s not getting better.”
“I’m fine.”
He ignored me. “Maybe, well, maybe if you talked to someone about it. A professional.”
“You want me to see a shrink?” My voice was a shade sharper as I realized what he was getting at.
“Maybe it would help.”
“And maybe it wouldn’t help one little bit.”
I didn’t know much about psychoanalysis, but I was pretty sure that it didn’t work unless the subject was relatively honest. Sure, I could tell the truth—if I wanted to spend the rest of my life in a padded cell.
He examined my obstinate expression, and switched to another line of attack.
“It’s beyond me, Bella. Maybe your mother—”
“Look,” I said in a flat voice. “I’ll go out tonight, if you want. I’ll call Jess or Angela.”
“That’s not what I want,” he argued, frustrated. “I don’t think I can live through seeing you try harder. I’ve never seen anyone trying so hard. It hurts to watch.”