America - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

E.R. Frank is the author of America, Friction, Wrecked, and Dime. Her first novel, Life Is Funny, won the Teen People Book Club NEXT Award for YA Fiction and was also a top-ten ALA 2001 Quick Pick. In addition to being writer, E.R. Frank is also a clinical social worker and psychotherapist. She works with adults and adolescents and specializes in trauma.

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America

Now

YOU HAVE TO watch what you say here because everything you say means something and somebody’s always telling you what you mean.

“Step off,” I tell this nurse when she tries to get me to eat.

“You mean, thank you for caring,” she says. “You’re welcome.”

“I need a lighter,” I tell her, and she goes. “You mean you want a lighter. Dream on, sweetheart.”

So I take their medicine and walk around in socks the way they make you, and stay real quiet.

*  *  *

“Hello, America,” he goes. “I’m Dr. B.” He holds out his hand, but I play like I don’t even see it. “I’ll be your therapist while you’re here at Ridgeway.” He drops his arm like it’s no big thing and dumps his skinny butt in a chair behind his desk. “You can sit anywhere.” He doesn’t have any tennis balls or messed-up eyeglasses or an attitude like those other ones back at Applegate. He’s just regular. I stay standing. “We’ll meet at this time for forty-five minutes every Tuesday and Thursday.” I keep my back right up on the door. He’s all calm, like it’s cool with him. “Our sessions will be confidential. Are you familiar with the rules of confidentiality?” I don’t bother answering. “Confidentiality means what’s said in this room stays in this room.” He stops a second, looking at me, close. “Except for three things.” Looking at me straight up. “If you tell me that someone is harming you, if you express the intent to harm yourself, or do so, or if you express the intent to harm anyone else, or do so. Those three things don’t stay private between us.”

“That’s it?” I go.

“ ‘That’s it,’ what?” he goes. Not in my face. Just normal.

“That’s all you’ve got, if I say I’m going to off myself?”

“Is that what you’re planning?”

“Huh?”

“Are you planning to kill yourself?”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I know that’s not what you asked.” He’s leaning forward on his elbows, like he’s interested, like he for real even cares.

“It’s no big secret, doc,” I go. “How the hell do you think I got here?”

*  *  *

They try to make me do group.

“Who wants to share with America what the purpose of this group is?” the lady goes.

Nobody bothers, so she picks on some kid all bent over with his arms crossed looking like he’s got nails twisting up his stomach. “Don?” the lady goes, and he squeaks his chair and crosses his arms the other way.

“Supposed to talk or something,” this Don goes. I’m out of here.

“Please sit down, America,” the lady tells me. I head for the door. “America, you are required to participate in group,” the lady goes. I keep walking. “Privileges,” I hear her yelling.

Points, tickets, privileges. You do this, they give you that many. You get that many, they let you out. Let you out where? Some other sorry-ass place. I don’t need this.

*  *  *

I’m not stupid. I know it’s going to get real tiring standing by his door for near to an hour. So I sit this time.

“I guess you’re not in the mood to talk,” Dr. B. goes, after a lot of minutes. I lean my head over the back of the chair and stare up at the ceiling. “I guess you’re not much in the mood to be here, either,” Dr. B. says, all calm.

“You’re some genius,” I go.

*  *  *

A week. Maybe two. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m just slamming my pillow on the floor every night. Sleeping on my back, flat out, with my arms straight down my sides. Like I’m in a coffin.

*  *  *

“It’s hard to know how to begin.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

His ceiling is white stripes and a round light in the middle.

“Just what it says,” he goes. “Sometimes, it’s hard for people to begin their sessions.”

“Ah, man.” My neck aches, bad, but I keep my head hanging over the back of my chair anyway.

“You seem annoyed.”

“Yeah, I’m annoyed. Who wouldn’t be?”

“Maybe that’s part of why it’s hard to start each session.”

“Maybe you’re repeating yourself.”

“Maybe you’re so annoyed to start with, it makes you not want to talk.”

“Whatever.”

“What would it be like if you did talk?”

“I talk, man.”

“Not so much.”

“So?”

“I’m curious about what keeps you from talking.”

“Well, you’re going to have to live with curious a long time, doc.”

*  *  *

You get in line, and you slide your tray, and they hand over your baby carrots and your chicken and your roll, and you sit at some table with a million other dudes, and you eat, and it tastes like your own tongue, and you wish you could just choke to death once and forever right here, right in the middle of nothing.

*  *  *

“Some people believe that depression is anger turned toward the self,” Dr. B. says.

He might not have attitude like those other ones back at Applegate, but he’s got the same old pile of stupid games. Connect Four and checkers. Chess and Monopoly and all that. I grab his Uno cards and knuckle-shuffle them.

“It’s just something to know,” Dr. B. says. “Because usually people who try to kill themselves are depressed, and often they’re depressed because they’re angry.”

I shuffle again and then slap the stack down on his desk.

“People who are able to somehow acknowledge their anger often become less depressed.”

“Cut the deck,” I go, because he’s giving me a headache with all that.

*  *  *

I try not to think about it in the rec room. I watch those guys play Ping-Pong, and I try not to think. About that anger mess. About depressed. Only every time I remember that cement rectangle with a footprint in one corner, I watch Mrs. Harper sending me away, and whenever I see Clark Poignant, it’s when he’s got tubes running all into the backs of his hands, and if I try to picture Liza, I just hear how she said she’d hate me if I ever killed myself, and anytime Brooklyn’s face pops up in my head, I see him stealing those green Magic Markers. And every time I think about baseball, I see Browning.

I watch that Ping-Pong, and I try not to think.

*  *  *

“What would it be like?” Dr. B. goes.

“Huh?”

“Being dead.”

“Huh?”

“You’re interested in being dead. I’m interested in what you think being dead would be like.”

“You’re the doctor, man. You tell me.”

“I don’t know. Different people imagine different things. I’m wondering what you imagine.”
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