section 19

author's note: school is still controlling me, probably will until Sunday. I'll post what I can but I'm not going to stick to a word count. note, this takes place a few sections ago.

weekend after first group meeting

The phone rang at 3:37. I was waiting for the red paint to dry ony my fingernails and listening to Andrew stack and topple blocks over and over again. “One. Two. Three. Four.” He’d count up to twelve and then knock the stack over, only to start the whole process over again. I wasn’t in the same room as him but he had done it so many times before that I didn’t really need to see him to know what he was doing when I heard the counting and the crashing. It drove us all nuts but there was something soothing about it to him, like it was chant for him.

I had been sitting here on my bed for about two and a half hours, mostly thinking about what had happened with Devyn on Thursday. I could have talked to Kayla about it, I even flipped my phone around a few times, opening and closing it to send a text message to her and asking her how I was supposed to feel. I only got as far selecting her phone number though. Kayla was a great best friend as far as best friends went. She was a little harsh and a little abrasive, but that was her. You could go to her for sympathy but you probably wouldn’t get any. Kayla was also far more mature than I was and I wasn’t sure she really worried about things like smoking or drugs or sex like I did. For her it was just another thing to check off, but for me it was something a lot bigger. Something more than just a check mark.

The phone ringing pulled me out of my my mini-meditation. Carefully I rolled over my bed and grabbed for the reciever.

“Cooper Sanitorium,” I answered. Mom hated when I did this, but it wasn’t like it was false advirtising this was practically an insane asylum. At least on most days—the blocks crashed again—like today.

“Uhm,” the voice on the other end was deep but still pretty young, “is Brigitte there?”

“Yes,” I said cheerfully, trying to figure out who the voice belonged to, “Brigitte is a full time resident at Cooper Sanitorium,” I put on my best sectretary voice, “may I ask who is calling for her?”

“This is Lyle… I’m not sure—”

I sat up so quickly I fell off the bed and on to the pile of textbooks that I had placed next to my bed with better intentions than just letting them take up space.

“Lyle, hi, this is Brigitte, yeah. Hi. How are you?” I clamped my hand over my mouth to stop the word vomit from coming up.

“I’m doing good,” I could tell he was smiling. I imagined him sitting on the couch, his arms were resting on his knees, his right hand was holding the cellphone to his ear and left hand was fiddling with the loose thread on the hole in the knee of his jeans.

“So,” I tried to fill the silence with something but couldn’t think of anything to say, “you called…”

“Oh, yeah,” he seemed startled, “I called you. Well, I wanted to ask you if wanted to go the zoo with me tomorrow.”

The zoo? I had smoked my first cigarette three days ago; I couldn’t go to the zoo. Wait. Was this a date? If it was the zoo was better than nothing, and the animals would provide a distraction. If we went to the movies I would have to worry over whether or not I would pay for tickets and food and whether or not I would use the hand rest next to him. The zoo was safer ground… but what was so fun about being safe?

He must have noticed my hesitation. “Yeah, I thought you could bring your brother and I could bring my sister. I thought it would be a fun thing to do.”

Fun thing to do.