A couple of minutes later I had my tray of ravioli and garlic bread, a sad iceberg salad with two croutons, and a carton of milk. When I got to Luca at the register, he shook his head. “I saw that.”
I handed him the bill plus eight of the quarters. He shifted on his stool, the sleeves of his green school jacket swishing against his sides while he rang me up. “If you don’t have money,” he said, “you should get your parents to fill out the form online so you can get free lunch. How many times I gotta tell you?”
I stared at the peeling yellow school logo over his heart. Half of a lion’s mane, a third of its face. “Okay.”
“‘Okay,’” he said, imitating me. “You say ‘okay,’ then you’ll be back here hustling quarters in line tomorrow, these poor little freshmen.” He wasn’t talking loud but not quiet, either, and I imagined Katy hearing every word.
“Those are my sister’s friends,” I said, and decided that’s what I’d tell Mr. Bergstrom if it came up. “I’m going to pay him back.”
“You always had money in the fall. What happened?”
“I saved from my job last summer. That’s all gone.” Since January.
His hands hovered around the register drawer for a second. Then he said, “Here’s your change.”
“But—” I was sure I’d given him three dollars exactly.
“Here’s your change, Gem,” he said again, putting four quarters in my palm.
“Thank you.”
He waved me away, and I took my ravioli to a quiet corner to eat.
“Is that supposed to be me?”
Mr. Bergstrom had gotten a new whiteboard. He’d drawn a stick figure, falling. I knew it was falling from the way the stick arms and stick legs pointed slightly upward, like gravity was pulling on its stick middle.
“I’m not a great artist but, yes, it’s meant to represent you. Here . . .” Bergstrom added some strands of hair that flew up, then capped his dry-erase marker and sat back down. “Is it at least close? Is this how you feel?”
“I don’t know.” In the way that she was alone, maybe, but even falling she looked more free than I felt. I got up and held my hand out for the marker. I drew a box around the falling girl. That didn’t look right, either. “This is dumb.” I picked up the eraser and wiped it all away.
“Maybe.” He smiled. He had a good smile and a good face, and a way of looking right at me without making me feel like I was being studied in some lab. He was way better than old Mr. Skaarsgard, the school psychologist he’d replaced at the beginning of the school year. Skaarsgard would always furrow his white eyebrows at me and make me feel like nothing I said made sense. Maybe it didn’t, but at least Mr. Bergstrom tried.
Normally I saw him a couple of times a week, not always on the same days, sometimes after school and sometimes during it, depending what was going on. I know it was a lot. Some kids at school could go a whole semester, even all of high school, without seeing him once. But right at the beginning of freshman year I sort of had this incident in pre-algebra, and my teacher referred me and then I was on the permanent rotation, first with Skaarsgard, now Bergstrom.
“What’s the box?” he asked. “That’s what it was, right?”
I shrugged.
“You feel . . .” He trailed off and I knew I was supposed to complete the sentence.
“I mean, you can’t put me on there with nothing else,” I said, pointing at the blank whiteboard. “You have to draw Dixie and my mom, and our apartment and school.”
“Earlier, you said you felt alone.”
“I do.” My hands curled up on my knees, my nails pressed into my palms. This office was always hot and small. I shook my head, not knowing how to explain feeling alone but also trapped in the middle of people and places that didn’t let me move or breathe.
Mr. Bergstrom had plain brown eyes, a little bit small for his face, but I could almost always see sympathy in them, like now. “It’s okay, Gem,” he said. “I know it’s hard to put into words.”
I opened my hands and took a breath.
“Do you want to update me on things with your mom?” he asked.
“They’re fine.”
“Fine? Last time we talked you seemed pretty worried about her. And Dixie.”
Sometimes, at our appointments, I’d tell him a lot, and it felt good in the moment, finally saying the things I’d had stuck in my head all that week. But then I’d be in bed those nights, and a smothering kind of panic would settle on me that I’d said too much. Like I’d given away something I needed and couldn’t get back.
“You said not to worry, so I stopped.”
“Well. I think I said it wasn’t your job to worry about your mom, it’s her job to worry about you. But I know it’s not that simple. Especially with Dixie.” He smiled again. “And I know you didn’t just stop worrying, Gem.”
I looked at the clock. “I have to go to detention. My bus was late this morning.”
He nodded. “Okay.” He wheeled his chair back. “We’re not scheduled again until next week, but come say hi anytime.” That’s how he always ended our meetings. Come say hi anytime. I liked knowing I could.
By the time I got home, it was twilight. Detention had made me miss my bus connection, so I’d walked, the chill and damp of Seattle a force I pressed against with every step. It was March, and things would get better and lighter soon, just not yet. Having to walk meant I missed my afternoon cigarette, too, on my bench in my park. The smoking time, which no one but me knew about, was when I didn’t feel the cage or the box or whatever it was. It made space for me and my thoughts. Without it I felt like part of me was left behind, trying to catch up.
The security gate at the front of our apartment building stood ajar despite the signs all over the entryway reminding residents in capital letters to MAKE SURE the gate stayed LOCKED SECURELY because there had been CRIMINAL INCIDENTS. The dark corridor between the gate and our stairwell always scared me, especially when the gate was left open.
I pulled it closed behind me, then checked the lock. Then I checked the lock again and told myself I could stop checking. But halfway down the corridor I went back to check it again. Then, grasping the pepper spray on my key chain, I went up the three flights of stairs—past all the handwriten notes old Mrs. Wu left everywhere about noise, garbage, pets, smoking—and into our apartment.
Dixie was home. She had the TV on and a sandwich in one hand, her phone in the other, homework all over the floor where she sat. She’d changed clothes since I’d seen her at school that morning—from jeans and a hoodie to shorts over tights and a green V-neck T-shirt that showed a lot. I had on baggy jeans and a plain blue sweater that would have hidden everything if there’d been anything to hide. As usual, she looked like the older sister.
She looked up. “I heard you stole money from some freshman today.”
Dixie had ways of knowing nearly everything that happened to me at school.
“Borrowed money,” I clarified.
“Why’d you have to tell them I was your sister?”
“You are my sister.”
“Thanks for embarrassing me.”