Now What?

That's a good question. I have no idea how to answer it. It's like after everyone figured out that the world is flat…I mean…round. "Cool! We've got this information…what do we do with it now?"

As fate would have it, Hyku W=QU=GURW agiqws yo R rgw cwet rgweqou.

Sorry. Typo. I'm at the school library, and the computer is huge. What I'm trying to say is OHlyku W=QU=GsURW agiqws yo R rgrw cwueti rgweqou.

You know what, I'm gonna get this chapter done at home.

✎✎✎

The next morning, my limbs wouldn't cooperate with me. Tiny Person squeezed a lemon inside my chest, seeping it throughout the rest of my body as he rubbed the "L-word" in my big, ugly face.

What had Willie called it? A crush, that's right. Like orange soda.

Julia texted me first thing: she couldn't take me to therapy. School project. Ed was on a family visit to Tokyo. AND yippie ki-yay, my parents were going to be home all week while Peterson apologized to orphans in Kansas. Even better? Mom was at the beauty parlor.

Dad was home.

Yeah.

Let me set this dysfunctional scene. I'm in the passenger's seat. He's driving. I've got this big secret that I have no intention to tell anyone. Dad knows if he talks about his work, I will check out eternally. But he works in politics. He's not used to silence, so he chooses to start a conversation.

"So, therapy's been going well for you then?"

I heaved a tank of oxygen. "Yeah."

"Well…that's good."

Obligation drowned me to respond. Why? That stupid feeling in my chest was tearing my life apart shred by shred. It had taken over the role meant for my broken tiny person. I couldn't ignore this obligation.

At least not right now. Once I had to talk to Julia? Yeah, I could malfunction all I wanted.

My brain clung onto a subject when I glanced at my watch.

"Dad?" He glanced my way, eyes wide, then jerked them back to the road. I took that as a sign to keep going. "Have you heard from…Kyle…lately?"

His lips sucked into his mouth. "He made it back to campus."

I slouched. Why wouldn't he?

The car stopped. "Thanks," I said. "Um, I can find a ride home."

He nodded.

With one more glance at his president's frown, I let the door close and walked towards the school. When did we reverse roles? I was supposed to be the screw-up avoiding conversation.

"Hey, Ben!"

Wait a second. I wasn't in the therapy. Who…?

Pink frizz drowned my sight. Somehow, I remembered what name it belonged to. "Hey…Valerie," I gulped.

She curled her lips and closed a locker. "Here to see Julia?"

"Um. No, I've got-"

"That's right. Therapy."

"Uh-huh."

Her hair bounced like a slinky. I waited for her to open her mouth again, but she stuck to the Joker grin. The only explanation I had? She knew about my soda secret.

Valerie waved again. "Well, I'll see you later, Ben. Maybe we'll all go on another road trip sometime!"

I have only one description appropriate for her facial expression: a big, smiling emoji with jellybean-pink cheeks.

"Yeah, haha," I muttered. "That would be…interesting."

I dodged any other familiar faces until I found the therapy room. Guess who was there?

Yup.

Everybody.

"Glad you could join us, Ben," Dr. White said. His expression was harder than usual, more like a brick than a panda bear. I glanced at the clock to find the minute-hand down by the six.

Oops.

At least the hour hand was by the right number.

"Um…" Their eyes plopped onto me. Including those green ones. "S-sorry, got stuck......(more emphasizing this pause).........(emphasizing)...talking."

I think I sucked all the breathable air out of the room. What was it again? Right, oxygen.

Stuart jumped. "You were talking? About what? The nuclear bomb hiding in your basement?"

"Shut up."

"Austin, I'm telling you-"

"No."

"But-"

"You really need to get a girlfriend."

"Yeah…"

Austin crossed his arms. Stuart slouched until his head was dangling on his desk. I looked over to find Willie and Kim on opposite ends of the room, and in the desk by the front window…emeralds.

I could be mature about this and sit down. Or I could express myself and sit as close to her as possible. OR…I could sit in the opposite corner of the room like the pathetic little wimp I am.

That seems wise!

Dr. White clapped his hands together. "As I was saying, we've been doing a lot with exploring our deepest fears, and now you've also had a chance to do some personal belief searching. We still need to figure out what we're doing for our end-of-the-year activity, with quite a few of you graduating, but I do have one more project I think we should do if you're all comfortable."

You know when everybody makes eye contact in silence?

"Alright, perfect." He clapped again. (I swear Dr. White is in the wrong profession. He should be teaching "If You're Happy and You Know It" to preschoolers.) "We've had a lot of sessions with our groups trying to determine our worst fears. Here's what I want you to do. Each of you write down your worst fear. Then…" He went over to Julia and held his hand out. She pulled a baseball cap off her head and tossed it to him. When did she get that? It looked familiar. "Put it in this hat. We'll draw them one at a time, and you can try to guess whose it is. This should be very easy for all of you."

I blinked as my vision blacked. The piece of paper was sitting in front of me. My hand wavered with the pen. I could copy off what Stuart said about me. My "fear of relationships."

My chest lurched.

I didn't know it then, but he was wrong. This wasn't some fear of commitment. It was a fear of what could come from any actions that I have to take responsibility for. A fear that pushed me away from relationships, interactions, beliefs, growth, a life.

I stole a breath of oxygen (look at me being all author-y) and printed out the word. We dropped our names.

Honestly, I don't feel up to describing this whole thing with a lot of details and stuff. It wasn't exciting. There weren't any huge surprises or anything like that. Everybody at this point is pretty open about themselves, (except for me, and apparently Julia) so it wasn't that big of a deal.

Me: The Unknown.

Julia: Change.

Austin: Depression.

Stuart: People.

Willie: Silence.

Kim: Being Alone.

My stomach plummeted as Dr. White dismissed the room. It all went by so quick. I'd rushed through my time here like the last lap of a NASCAR race. Now, we were in sight of the finish line. I wanted to crash so I'd never get there.

Why had I treated my time like dust in a vacuum cleaner?

Feeling stuff sucks.

I blinked. Julia's emerald eyes. Tiny person drowned my ears with a ba-boom. Her hands flew all over the place like she was swatting away flies.

"...So yeah if you wanted one we've gotta head over there anyway, that would be fine."

"Sure."

I didn't know what I had agreed to until I was in a car with Julia and her dad and he reared the wheel towards my house. He and my parents had a meeting set up to talk about next year. They'd decided doing this at our house would be a productive use of everyone's time.

It wasn't.

My heart wasn't prepared for the nightmare ahead.

I let them in the house. Dad greeted them like British Royalty, suit and tie. Doctor White told me my presence wasn't necessary, so I crept up the stairs and snatched my book.

Romeo won Juliet over with a snap of his fingers, so I thought a backward reread was a good idea. Forwards would've been a better call, because I treated it like an instruction manual. Instead of crush to love to death, I went from suicide to love to Crush soda. I should've known a story about an eighteen-year-old prince winning over a thirteen-year-old maiden in the fourteenth century was not a self-help book.

"Is this…Canadian punk-rock?"

Julia White is in your room, Tiny Person said.

Julia White is in my general vicinity, I thought.

My stomach plummeted to the depths of down-under. When I glanced over, Julia was running her hands through my CD collection. Simple Plan. Pointed Sticks. The Devils of Greenland. Helicopters.

"Yeah," I managed.

"And you…listen to it?"

"Yeah."

She licked her lips. "I need to hear this."

Julia could have asked me to tie myself to the railroad tracks and I would've listened.

I clicked the volume down from its usual setting of all-the-way up. It had been a while since my last music timber tantrum, so I fidgeted with the buttons trying to figure out what the fish sticks I was doing. Julia flipped through CDs beside me, reading each title under a shaky laugh.

"My Life Suks, No C; I Want What I Want," she read. "Hmm…Don't Mess with Stress. Catchy."

She couldn't resist but shove me aside and put in the one that said Fish. Two tracks later, she fisted that pause button like the sky was falling on our heads.

"Why are they so angry?" she giggled. "That was…something else. Are these all yours?"

She was contagious. "Actually…" I snorted. "They're Kyle's."

I waited for a response, but she was just looking at me now.

"What?"

"Nothing. It's just...I don't think I've ever heard you laugh before. It's nice. Just…different."

How do you respond to that?

I snapped my mouth shut and stared at my bookshelf. Those characters all got to laugh on a regular basis, and when they didn't the sidekick would do it for them. When I looked at Julia again, she was touching everything in sight, acting like she owned the place. My place. Too bad I was too mesmerized to care. Those emeralds are freaking dynamite.

She picked up the book behind the stack of books under the paper airplane. (I realize I have created a confusing image here.)

"Not a Bestseller. Catchy."

My cheeks were burning kettle pots.

She flipped a few pages. When her eyes showed the full pupil, she set it back on the desk. She glanced at me until her focus found something else. The wide book on the top shelf, a slip hanging out the pages.

"What's this?"

In my recent studies of human interaction, when something asks a question, they expect an answer. However, Julia didn't wait for a response. She opened the book and drew her fingers along each note on the cover, every word scribbled into each page. I tried to hide my face behind my Shakespearian tragedy.

"Ben…when did you start reading my dad's book?"

"I didn't." I was caught. I needed to sound casual. What does casual sound like? What is casual? "That's the copy Dr. White gave out."

"Then how come you're using the library receipt as a bookmark?" Something sparked in her eyes. "You're not missing anything. You really don't need to read it."

"I know. Your grandparents told me to read the religious pages." I laughed. I should've kept laughing, but I had to open my big mouth. "But…"

She firmed every muscle in her body. "But what?"

That day at the library. I kept seeing her that day at the library.

Great. Now I had to talk to her and make words appear in a logical order with coherent pronunciation. "He talked about praying. I don't…get it."

She sighed with a smile. I hoped she would tell me how stupid I was, like that one southern Baptist Kyle had that fistfight with. Her thin lips pierced together until there was no pink left. "It's just fulfilling. You're talking to someone you know will always be there to listen."

I scratched my head. "How do you know you're not just talking to yourself?"

Was this rude? It was such an unusual feeling, hoping my words didn't have a negative effect on the environment.

"Faith. I guess." She had to think about it. "And love."

"What is love?"

Tiny Person thwacked me. The words were supposed to be a thought in my head, like my "ceiling fall on me" wishes. Somewhere along the way I must've said them out loud. To JULIA.

Well, the sky is falling and I'm a little chicken.

"I don't know." Come on ceiling. Fall! "If you really love someone, you'd be willing to give up your life for them."

"Like Romeo?"

I cringed.

Stop saying stuff out loud! This was such an unfamiliar problem. I was turning into Stuart. Stuart!

"Nah, that was a toxic relationship if there ever was one," she snorted. "But maybe I should read the book first."

She lifted her frown, relief in her eyes at my expression. A voice from down below echoed into a small part of my left ear; Dr. White followed by Dad. What were they saying about me now?

My cheeks lifted to my eyes. I had an idea. "Grab that bag of candy and take your shoes off."

"What?"

I pulled my socks up. "Trust me."

"Ben, put your shoes back on."

"No."

She stared at Romeo and Juliet, the binding like a prune. Then she shrugged, grabbed the chewy caramels off my lava lamp, and followed me out the door. Without her shoes, she'd shrunk three inches on me. Is that why girls wear shoes? So six-foot-something pasta noodles like me didn't have to feel like the Great Pyramid of Giza?

I tiptoed down the first two stairs.

"BEN!" Julia whisper-yelled, "What are you doing!?"

I shushed her, my ear pressed against the wall. The mumbles became clearer. Dr. White announced my astounding progress, but his voice was different than the therapy room, more like a nervous robot.

I taught Julia an important lesson in eavesdropping that day: it pays off. She showed me how to channel my inner emotions to laugh about a parent's concerns about nothing.

It was great.

The truth is, I hardly heard a word of the conversation downstairs between Bill Wood, Stephanie Wood, and Richard White. My attention was divided elsewhere as we sat on the stairwell.

And it wasn't going anywhere.