The Last Time We Say Goodbye
Page 9

He coughed. “I think you’ve been through something really hard, and medication might make it a little easier.”
“I see. Have you ever read the book Brave New World?” I asked.
He blinked a few times. “No. I don’t think so.”
“It’s about this society in the future where they have a drug called soma that makes everybody feel happy,” I explained. “It’s supposed to fix everything. You’re not content at work? No problem. You take soma, and nothing bothers you. Your mom dies? Take some soma, and everything will feel hunky-dory.”
“Alexis,” Dave said. “I’m trying to help you. What you’re talking about with this hole sounds like a classic description of a panic attack—”
“But here’s the thing,” I pushed on. “That futuristic society where everybody is drugged to be happy, all the time, no matter what happens, it’s horrible—monstrous, even—it’s like the end of humanity. Because we are supposed to feel things, Dave. My brother died, and I’m supposed to feel it.”
I stopped myself, suddenly out of breath. I wanted to say more. I wanted to scream about how Ty had taken antidepressants too, had been taking them for more than two years up until his death, and a fat lot of good it did him. I wanted to tell Dave my ironic little secret: that I know I’m supposed to feel this pain for my brother—sorrow, grief, whatever you want to call it—that I even want to feel it, but I don’t. Outside of those moments with the hole, I don’t feel anything at all.
I don’t need drugs to numb the pain.
“I understand,” Dave said.
“God, when did therapists become pushers?” I said, still worked up.
Dave smiled, like he thought my insult was humorous, and then went straight to placating me. “All right, Alexis, all right. No drugs.” And that’s when he suggested the diary thing.
Writing as an alternative to Xanax.
“I wrote in the journal this week,” I report to him now.
He looks uncharacteristically surprised. “What did you write about?”
I shrug. “Stuff.”
He waits for me to say more, and when I don’t, he just comes out and says, “Okay. This week I’d like to talk about your friends.”
“I don’t have friends right now” is what slips out.
He raises his eyebrows. “You don’t have friends?”
Whoops. “I mean, yes, I have friends, but . . .”
“Have they stopped being your friends?” he asks. “Sometimes people don’t know how to respond to something like—”
“No,” I backpedal. “No, they’re great. It’s just that . . . I think I stopped being theirs.”
Dave makes a thoughtful little noise like this is a therapist’s gold mine. “Why?”
I take a minute to think about it. Well, in Jill’s case it’s because she was suffocating me with sympathy. When Ty first died, she was there every time I turned around, her eyes worried and bloodshot with crying. “Are you okay?” she’d ask, over and over and over.
No, moron, I’d think. I am not okay. My brother’s dead.
But I’d suck it up and say, “Yeah, I’m okay,” which after a few days gave way to a weak nod, and then she’d say something like “Let me know if you need anything” or “I’m here if you want to talk.” Which, after a while, I figured out was what she really wanted me to do. She wanted me to talk about Ty. About his death. About my feelings about his death. And suddenly I got the distinct feeling that she wanted me to cry, so that she could be my shoulder to cry on. She wanted me to break down so that she could build me back up, so she could be my stellar bestie who got me through the worst.
I know I’m probably being unfair. I love Beaker. I do. I’ve known her since sixth grade, when we were the nerdiest nerds in the gifted and talented class. We’ve had a hundred sleepovers and many a long, serious conversation into the wee hours of the morning about the meaning of life and the likelihood of aliens on other planets and the stupidity of boys. But this thing with Ty isn’t just another serious conversation. It’s my whole wrecked, messed-up life. It’s me.
She can’t fix me.
I was getting sick of watching her try. So I just, like, backed away slowly.
I say all of this to Dave, and he nods. “What about your other friends? Your boyfriend?”
“We broke up a few weeks ago,” I say. New topic: “I also have this friend Eleanor, but it’s simpler with her, in a way. She’s been avoiding me, while trying to seem like she’s not avoiding me, of course. I don’t think she’s looked me in the eye since it happened. But that’s okay. I get it. Like you said, some people don’t know how to respond.”
“So you don’t have any friends right now?”
“Well, I see my old friends at school, eat lunch with them, and we have classes together. But I don’t really feel like doing anything extracurricular, and I need to be home for my mom. So I guess, no. I don’t. Not at the moment.”
“That’s sad, Lex,” he says.
That’s my middle name these days. Alexis Sad Riggs.
“You don’t have to go through this by yourself,” Dave says. “Try to let people in. That’s the only way they can help you.”
I can’t be helped, I think. There is no magic spell that will bring Ty back. There’s nothing anybody can do.