I frown as I set down my toast. “Why didn’t you call them on it?”
“Because they already think I’m crazy! I shouldn’t have to make people want to hang out with me. I’m still me.” He shakes his head. “And you know, everybody drinks now and I can’t do that. Doesn’t really go with my meds.”
“Oh.” I hesitate before plowing ahead. “How is all that?”
We haven’t talked much about the pills he takes, though I’ve seen the long plastic organizer he keeps on his dresser, separated into compartments with a different day of the week printed on each square. I can remember only one time he brought up the subject himself, a Sunday afternoon shortly after I’d arrived in Avalon my first semester.
His voice was thin and defeated over the phone as he told me they were changing his meds. That sometimes people have to try a few different combinations before they get it right. And that he wanted to believe them, but he felt like he was crawling out of his skin—that he would never feel better.
For a while, I regularly asked about his treatment each time we talked on the phone, wanting him to know I cared even if I couldn’t be there. He’d answer, though it was always just enough information and nothing extra. But then one day, right around Halloween, he said he didn’t want to talk about it—the bipolar, his meds, nothing. I said okay and bit my tongue so I wouldn’t blurt out that I was worried about him, because if he wasn’t talking to me, who else was left?
So I never brought up the topic again. Until now.
“They’re working. Or at least that’s what everyone tells me.” Lion taps his fingers against the juice glass next to him as he talks. “But I hate feeling dependent on pills. This doesn’t go away, you know.… Doctors say I have to take them for the rest of my life if I want to feel normal.”
“They said that? Normal?” Of course I’m guilty of thinking that word myself, and I’m still not sure which one of the Lionels I’ve seen fits into that category. But I’m not a medical professional, and he’s not my patient. I’m trying to learn how to be around the person I thought I’d figured out so many years ago.
“No, they said, ‘You’ll have to take some form of medication to live life to the best of your abilities,’ or some shit like that,” he says, slipping into a nasal tone.
“Well, you seem…” I look down at my feet. The soles are dirty, from walking barefoot outside and climbing the tree and scuffling around on the tree house floor, and that reminds me of long-ago summers, when Lionel and I could spend all day outside and hours up here, only needing each other’s company. “You seem like you did before…”
“Before I went off the deep end?” he finishes, not giving me time to find the right words. He smiles but his eyes are mirthless, his lips upturned in a plastic half-moon. “That’s the thing. Everyone—Dad, Nadine, Dr. T—keeps saying this seems like the ideal combination, the right dosage, blah blah blah. But that only lasts until I have a bad day or week or month, or until the meds make me too sick to stay on them, or until Dr. T starts worrying about my blood levels. I’m tired of feeling like a fucking guinea pig.”
“Maybe…” I pause, and it’s hard to believe there was ever a time when I said whatever I wanted to Lion without thinking about it beforehand. “Maybe if you start hanging out with everyone again, that will get your mind off it.”
“Right. So they can say stupid shit to my face instead of behind my back? No, thanks.”
“The only ones saying stupid shit are stupid people, like Catie, and—” I clear my throat, try to rework my words, but Lionel latches on to them immediately.
“What is Catie Ransom saying?” He’s trying to sound as if he doesn’t care, as if we all know how offensive and clumsy-mouthed she can be and it doesn’t really matter. But we both know how much more thoughtless words hurt when they come from someone who’s supposed to be your friend.
“Nothing worth repeating.” I touch the tip of my nose ring, where it peeks out between my nostrils. “She—”
“Little, come on.”
I take a deep breath and tack my words onto the exhale. “She said some people think you’re schizophrenic and that’s why you stopped coming around.”
“They think I’m schizophrenic.” He stares at me, shaking his head. “What if I were? Is there a hierarchy to mental illness? And how is what I have any of their business?”
“It’s not. I never told anyone anything, I promise.”
“Fucking typical,” he says, standing up now, as if his agitation is too big to contain. “For someone who acts like they’re so above it all, she sure seems to have something to say about everyone.”
“Listen, fuck Catie. No one’s really saying that. She’s just trying to start shit. But really, there were so many new people there last night, and it wouldn’t be as bad as you think, hanging out with everyone again. If I can come back and do it, you can, too.”
I smile after I say this last part, but Lionel’s eyebrows crease.
“The reasons we haven’t been around them aren’t exactly the same, Little.”
“I know, I’m…” I’m trying to let him know I understand how difficult it can be to integrate back into a group that’s moved on without us, but no matter what I say, it will sound patronizing. I was able to lie and tell people boarding school was my choice, but no one chooses a mental illness. No one will ever give our excuses the same weight.
Lionel starts walking toward the doorway and I want to take everything back, to not ask him about the medicine or bring up our friends or anything else he doesn’t want to discuss. All I’ve wanted since I got back was to sit up in the tree house with him like old times, and now that’s ruined.
None of this would have been an issue, pre–boarding school. We talked about everything, but especially the things that made us hurt.
“Wait a minute.” I stand, too. “I’m sorry. I just—”
He stops and turns, and his blue eyes are full of angry ocean waves as he looks at me. “Maybe Catie Ransom doesn’t matter, but if she’s saying shit like that out loud, other people are thinking it. And it really sucks to know people I haven’t hung out with in a year are trying to guess how crazy I am.”
He’s down the tree before I can stop him and then stalking across the yard, and I wonder how I’ve managed to create a rift between us when I haven’t been back even a week.
then.
I haven’t thought of going shopping with anyone but my mom for my bat mitzvah dress, but when Catie Ransom offers to go with me, I know I have to say yes.