Where It Began

BY THE TIME THE BUS DROPS ME OFF ON ESTRADA, I am feeling too much like a person who just crashed a car to drag my backpack home.

It makes you wonder if maybe I wasn’t emotionally ready to go to Winston, not that I thought anybody ever was, and Ponytail Doc, big surprise, missed the boat on my actual condition. Or maybe, like Billy says, my parents really are paying all these happy helpers to do what I say I want them to do without regard to whether it makes sense, such as sending me back to Winston so I can watch Billy paw my favorite Slutmuffin whenever I look up.

Dragging myself and all the books and the notebooks and the Xeroxed readers I need to make up all the work I missed up the hill to home feels like doing some pointless task on a chain gang in a really boring but disturbing movie just before the jailbreak, dragging giant rocks around for no apparent reason with a sadistic sheriff waving his rifle at me to make me keep trudging uphill. And I’m thinking, What is the point of this? What am I even doing there?

And then I get home, into the quiet house, empty except for John, barely there behind the closed door of the den, into my room, and onto the laptop, and there he is, there is his screen name on my screen, and that is the point.

pologuy: u looked hot today

So what were you doing with your hand in Aliza Benitez’s pocket? I so ca

gabs123: forbidden fruit. want some?

pologuy: duh. only look what happened to adam

gabs123: if adam had ur lawyer, he’d still b ru

pologuy: ur lawyer is fine. ag says. just don’t say anything that anyone could use against u. don’t talk to anyone. thought u were going to do ur garbo i vant to be alone don’t talk to me thing today but u were miss popular with the freaks. is this wise miss fruit?

gabs123: strange day. i’m the new patron saint of freaks.

And what were you doing with your hand in Aliza Benitez’s pocket? I am so waiting for an opening on this one. And so trying to get myself to back off and not say anything and not care.

pologuy: u r irresistible to one and all

Okay, sort of an opening.

gabs123: tell that to benitez. i totally understand what ur doing with her and all, but it still somewhat sucks.

pologuy: that must be why they call them slutmuffins. i miss YOU G

Okay, totally worth bringing it up.

gabs123: me too. while u dine with benitez.

pologuy: noticed u dining with baby huey and the stick girls. u got ur own thing going on

gabs123: give me a break! and andie wants to be my little pal. pretty weird.

pologuy: she KNOWS she’s not supposed to bother u. brainless twit. i’ll take care of it. no worries

Brainless twit? Poor Andie. Drama in Cute World.

gabs123: no biggie.

pologuy: i’ll take care of it

gabs123: shit 5:00. gotta go.

pologuy: ?

gabs123: westwood. ponytail. again.

pologuy: have fun. b sure to cross fingers behind back while curling up on couch. wouldn’t mind joining u on couch

gabs123: she doesn’t have a couch. it’s a chair.

pologuy: even better. easier to cross fingers behind chair. just remember not to tell her anything

gabs123: there’s nothing to tell.

XLVIII

THIS TIME PONYTAIL IS WEARING A SKY-BLUE pantsuit with a giant white lace ruffle at her neck. I feel kind of sorry for her, watching her wardrobe deteriorate. It’s a little hard to take anyone all that seriously in an outfit like that, no matter how expensive the designer buttons are, and you can only hope she isn’t pla

She doesn’t have any more cookies, either, so I offer to split my Dottie’s Sweeties cupcake and she says sure. You have to figure that at least she isn’t worried I’m some squirrelly person who might poison her strangely dressed shrink.

“First day back,” she says.

“Yup.”

“Everything okay in the art room? Hands functional?”

“Yup.”

“Any issues with taking in information?”

“Too much information.” I shudder a little with the image of Billy with his hand down Aliza’s back pocket.

“You’re thinking about something specific.”

All this cat and mouse is wearing me down. I just want to get my cheese back to the hole in the floorboards and not be harassed by someone who could make me do a ropes course if she felt like it.

The thing is, after you sit in their offices long enough, and you’re already totally stressed out, it wears you down. As militant as you are about spending hour after hour explaining you don’t have a Problem, it seems as if the time would pass a lot faster if you would just roll over and spill.

I’m sorry, but it does.

Not to mention how hard it is to balance the risk of making her hate me if I tell her any true thing about me versus the risk of making her hate me if I sit there and refuse to tell her anything at all. It’s hard to know, if I do tell her anything, if she’ll turn around and tell someone else in a chain of revelations that could end up with me in girlie youth jail and Billy in actual prison with underage gangbangers and a permanent record somewhere else.

“Okay,” I say. “Here’s the thing. If I tell you about something that someone is doing that might be wrong or like even illegal, do you tell other people about it?” I am staring straight at her. I figure that if she outright lies, I will somehow be able to tell.

“You have some concerns about whether I’ll reveal what you tell me and get someone in trouble.”

Duh.

So we play this inane game back and forth with her not coming out and answering the question and me not coming out and telling her anything. Because I sure as hell am not pla

And then finally she says, “Oh dear, I haven’t told you if you’re safe confiding this thing you’re wanting to talk about, have I? Which is so difficult with these juvenile court situations when you’re feeling stuck here, isn’t it? But let me try. If the illegal thing this person is doing is also illegal for you, for example if he’s selling you drugs, then I almost certainly have to mention it. But say he robbed a bank all on his own and then he told you about it, then no. Does that help?”

Talking to your hapless girlfriend online. Robbing a bank. You can’t help but notice the difference.

So I tell her, just to have something to say and pass the time.

Then I feel worse.

“Maybe I’m just not trusting enough. I don’t know. He said I’m the one. He said I look hot, so you’ve got to think he noticed I’m back. But if he noticed I’m back, what was he doing with his hands all over someone else’s butt?”

“You wanted it to be you,” she says.

Way to state the obvious. This is so not helping.