Every Last Word

“It must be Wednesday!” Colleen chirps when I open the door. She walks around to my side of the counter and gives me a bottle of water. “It’s been a crazy day around here. Sue had an emergency at the hospital this morning, and we’ve been running behind schedule ever since.”

It’s funny. Sometimes I forget that Shrink-Sue has other patients, let alone patients who require her to drop everything and come to a hospital for them. I’m glad I don’t need her that much.

“Get comfortable,” Colleen says.

I stick in my earbuds, and instead of choosing my usual waiting room playlist, I turn on Song for You. Leaning against the wall, I mentally bring myself back to the school corridor, happy to have a few quiet moments to think about what happened with AJ this afternoon. He was so nervous, and so cute, and so close to me. As music fills my ears, chills travel through my body, and I realize I’m brushing my thumb back and forth across my arm, exactly the way he did.

Something catches my eye, and I see Colleen waving from behind her desk. I give a tug on the cord, and my earbuds fall into my lap. “She’s ready for you.”

I shuffle into Sue’s office. She doesn’t waste any time getting down to business. “So, fill me in on your week.”

As I stretch my putty, I give her the basics. Everything with my family is good. School’s fine. The poetry’s going well, getting better, still therapeutic. We get to the inevitable conversation about the Crazy Eights, but surprisingly, there isn’t much to tell. Things have been fairly drama free.

“How are things with Caroline?” she asks, and today, I don’t smile like I normally do. Instead, I feel my blood pressure spike.

“I’ve been thinking about her a lot this week. I’m feeling really guilty, you know?” I picture her the way the Eights would see her: frayed flannels and weird T-shirts, blemished skin and stringy hair. “She’s my friend. I shouldn’t be keeping her a secret.”

“Does she mind that you haven’t introduced her to the Eights?”

I shake my head. “No. I asked her earlier this week. She told me she has no interest in meeting them.”

“What would they say if you told them about her?”

I squeeze my putty hard. “They’d feel threatened. You know how they are about other girls. It’s a loyalty thing.”

Sue writes something down in her portfolio. “Then maybe you shouldn’t tell them?”

“Is that okay?”

“It sounds like it’s okay with Caroline. Is it okay with you?”

“I guess so.” My heart starts racing again. “Actually, I don’t feel like talking about this today.”

She considers me for a moment, and then returns to her portfolio, flipping pages back to review her notes from earlier sessions. “How’s your swimming going?”

“I’ve been going to the pool six days a week since school started. I’m still swimming with the team, but I’m also starting to swim by myself at night. It feels great. I feel great.”

This is going to be an easy session. Sue’s had a busy day. She’s behind schedule. Let’s wrap it up so I can get to the pool.

I’m trying to decide what to say next, when Sue closes her portfolio, rests her elbows on her knees, and locks her eyes on mine. “Why do you look so tired?” she asks.

“What?”

“How have you been sleeping?”

Sue doesn’t move. I’m pretty sure she’s not even blinking. I consider cracking a joke, or coming up with an excuse, but after a long pause, I decide to tell her the truth. “I stopped taking my sleep meds,” I whisper.

“When?”

I blow out a breath. I know the exact date. It was the week Caroline first introduced me to Poet’s Corner. I couldn’t get AJ’s song out of my head, and at some point, an obsession with his words turned into an obsession with my own. “Over two months ago.”

She lets out a heavy sigh. I can’t see what she’s writing, but knowing she’s documenting my failure makes me feel even worse.

“You can’t get by with four to five hours of sleep each night, Sam.”

I’ve been doing exactly that for the last couple of months, and I’m fine. I’m not failing my classes or anything. Well, I might be failing Trigonometry, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the amount of sleep I’ve been getting. That’s entirely about me sucking at trigonometry.

“What are you working on that late at night?”

I tuck my feet underneath me and recline into the chair, staring up at the ceiling. “Poetry,” I say, which is true, but not entirely. Sometimes I’m writing. Sometimes I’m reading other people’s poems on the Internet. Sometimes I’m listening to music and looking up lyrics, but that counts as a form of poetry, doesn’t it?

“Can’t you do that during the day?”

I shake my head hard. “No time.” But it’s more than that. It’s not that I don’t have the time, it’s that the time’s not right. Even when I’m writing during my swim, or in the theater with Caroline, it’s dark and quiet. I need it dark and quiet. I need to write at night, where no one can see me.

“Sam,” she says strictly, and I smash my putty between my fingers. “Have you stopped taking your other medication?”

“No. I wouldn’t do that, Sue.”

I remember how I used to be before we found the right meds. I used to fixate on something—it could be anything—something one of my teachers said, or something one of the Eights said, or something I heard on the news. I knew the thoughts were irrational, but one thought led to another, and to another, and once the spiral started, I couldn’t control it.

It was horrible. I’d yell at my parents. Throw tantrums like a six-year-old. I was tired all the time, because trying to function while you’re trying to ignore all those swirling thoughts is physically and mentally draining. I’m still myself on the meds, but they help me control the thought spirals. I wouldn’t go back to a life without them.

“This matters to you, doesn’t it?” I must look confused, because Sue adds, “The poetry.”

“Yeah. More than I expected it to.”

It’s not only the writing I crave; it’s everything that goes along with it. It’s the look of anticipation on people’s faces when I step up on that stage. It’s the way Caroline tells me I’m getting better with every new poem, that I’m finding my voice. It’s the way I can construct verses during a one-hundred-meter fly.

It’s everyone downstairs, too. How invested I now feel in their lives. How my heart aches when Emily tells us that her mom is getting worse, not better. How Sydney’s poems always put me in a good mood. How Chelsea hits me right in the feels with her pieces about her ex-boyfriend. It’s the way Poet’s Corner is changing my life, exactly like Caroline said it would.

More than ever before, I feel compelled to tell Sue about that room. I feel guilty about not telling her. And, aside from Mom, she’s the only one who would truly understand how walking into that room feels like diving into the pool; how the paper on the walls gives me such an overwhelming sense of peace.

But I can’t break my promise.

Sue must see something in my expression, because hers softens and she starts tapping her mechanical pencil against her knee like she does when she’s thinking.

“What if we compromise?” she asks. “I have another sleep medication I’d like you to try. It’s fairly new. It’s fast-acting and has a short half-life, so it’ll be out of your system quickly. You could write until midnight, then take it, and you’ll get at least seven hours of sleep. You can write, and also give your brain and body the rest they need. What do you think?”

I like the idea of writing when I need to. Mostly, I like doing it with Sue’s permission. “Sure,” I say.

She hunches over and scratches out a prescription. “Take this every night at midnight or earlier.” She hands it to me. “Now, I have something important to say.”

Uh-oh. Here it comes.

“Things are going really well for you right now, Sam. That’s because you’re making some positive changes in your life, but it’s also because we’ve found a treatment plan that’s working. Weekly talk therapy, medication to help you sleep, and medication to keep invasive thoughts from turning into anxiety attacks. You are not allowed to modify this combination on your own.”

“Okay.”

“In the future, you talk to me before you stop taking any of your meds. Are we clear?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” She sits up straight and crosses her legs. “Now, is there anything else you’d like to tell me?” She folds her hands in her lap and waits. I sneak another peek at the clock. Crap. How could I still have thirty minutes left in this session?

I fall back against the chair and close my eyes. “AJ,” I say matter-of-factly.

“The one you and Kaitlyn used to tease.”

I nod.

“How long has this been going on?”

I do the math in my head. It’s been more than two months since Caroline first led me down those stairs and introduced me to him. A month since he let me back into Poet’s Corner. A week since he invited me to his house and declared us “friends.”

“For me? A couple of months. For him…there’s nothing ‘going on’ because, as with all my other crushes, this one’s completely one-sided.”

“Why do you say that?” she asks.

“We’re friends.” I think about the way he touched my arm in the hallway today, and I feel the corners of my mouth turn up against my will. “But I like him. He’s nice to me. The whole thing feels…normal.”

“How does it feel normal?” she asks softly, using the tone of her voice to get me to tell her more.

I want to tell her everything.

I stretch my putty in my hands, trying to decide where to begin. Finally, I stop searching for the right thing to say—the thing I think Sue wants to hear—and instead I just start talking in that scary, filterless way. “I don’t think I’m obsessed with him. I mean, okay…I might be kind of fixated on his ex-girlfriend, Devon. I started looking her up last week, and it was pretty bad at first. But I’m starting to get it under control.” I tell Sue about Caroline’s baseball trick. Sue writes it down.

“But so many things feel better lately. I’m not spending half my evening wondering if I’m going to pick the wrong thing to wear the next day. During class, I’m not worrying that I might say something at lunch that will piss off one of my friends so they all gang up against me and ignore me for three days straight. For the first time in a long time, I don’t care what they think. And it’s not because of this guy or the writing or Caroline, or, I don’t know, maybe it is. Maybe it’s about all those things.”

I’m getting all fired up now and I can’t sit still, so I leave my chair and walk over to the window overlooking the parking lot.

“All I know is that I feel good about myself for the first time in ages. I might still be obsessing, but I’m obsessing about poetry and words. I’m swimming almost every day, and my body feels strong and my mind is so clear. And I like this really nice guy who might not think of me as more than a friend, but at least he’s not a jerk like Kurt, or completely unattainable like Brandon.”

She drops her portfolio on her seat and walks over to join me at the window.

“I’m not obsessing about my friends turning on me or kicking me out of their little club. I no longer care if they do.”

It feels freeing to say the words out loud, and as I do, it occurs to me how true they are: I care more about what AJ and Caroline and the rest of the people in Poet’s Corner think of me. If they kicked me out or stopped talking to me, I’d be devastated, but, of course, they’d never do that in the first place. I feel safe with them.

“And maybe it’s obsession. Maybe it’s not ‘normal’ at all. But I feel good when I’m with them.”

“I can tell.”

And without revealing the secret room underneath the school theater, I spend the rest of the session telling her about AJ, Caroline, Sydney, Cameron, Abigail, Jessica, Emily, and Chelsea. My eight new friends.