Beast(5)

“A value?”

“When did the way you look become important?”

“I guess the sixth grade.”

“And when did you begin puberty?”

“Ten or eleven,” I say. “Like, fourth grade.”

“That must’ve been fun.” He jots it down.

“Hmph.” No, it was not.

“How’s your self-esteem?”

If I’m honest, it’s in the toilet. If I’m doubly honest, I’ve been depressed for four years and counting. “Not the best.”

“On a scale of one to ten, ten being the highest, how significant does the way you look factor into your daily life?” Dr. Jensen asks. “In regards to mood, extracurricular activities, social life, and so on.”

Eleven. I’d give anything to be a hundred pounds lighter and a foot shorter. To be normal. That’s all I want, to be normal. “I don’t know, maybe a seven,” I lie.

“Uh-huh,” the doctor says with a sniff. “Ever had a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Would you like to?”

“Yes.”

“And why do you think you’ve not had one yet?” he asks.

Twist the knife already. “You know a face only a mother could love?” I point at my mug shot.

“It’s not so bad,” he says. “If anything, you look rugged.”

More like Cro-Magnon, but whatever.

Dr. Jensen’s pen scratches across a new sheet of paper. “What’s school like?”

“Fine.”

“How’s home life?”

“Fine.”

“Mom? Dad? Siblings?”

“Mom’s great. A bit pushy. No siblings. Dad died when I was three.”

He rests the pen a moment. “Sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay,” I say. I know it should bother me more, but it doesn’t. He died when I was so young, all I knew of my father was that he was a very sick man. As far back as I can remember, everyone enforced the idea that for him to die was a good thing. I never knew it any other way.

The pen goes back to work and more notes are made. “Would you say your new haircut was a contributing factor to your broken leg?” he asks with technical precision.

“Um…”

“Why the pause?”

“How did you know I got a new haircut?”

He smiles to himself. “Summer’s over, brand-new back-to-school haircut. Looks like you wore a hat too.”

“Oh. Well, ah…” I try to laugh. “See, they made this new dress code at school and now we can’t have long hair and we can’t wear hats. They banned hats.”

“When did they ban hats?”

“Today.” Now the pen scribbles furiously. “But, I mean, it’s a coincidence.”

“And today you fell off the roof and broke your leg at”—he flips the pages—“around three-thirty in the afternoon.”

“I’m fine.”

“You have two spiral fractures and titanium rods and pins holding your leg together. That’s not exactly fine,” he says. “Do you have a history of self-harm?”

“What? No! I don’t ‘self-harm.’ Are you serious?”

“Dylan, you fell off the roof the day they banned hats.” He raises an eyebrow.

“Because I’d rather be known as Guy on Crutches than a freak show!”

“There it is.” Dr. Jensen’s eyes flick back to the clipboard and he almost writes a book on the last piece of paper. “I think there’s someone you should talk to. I’ll get in touch with her. Her name is Dr. Burns. She’s the codirector of psychology and she runs a wonderful outpatient group therapy program for troubled adolescents here at the hospital.”

“Wait, I’m not—Dr. Jensen, I’m not troubled,” I say from my hospital bed.

Patting my arm as he strolls out of the room, he smiles. “I’ll have a word with your mother.”

“No, don’t—” He disappears and I’m alone in the room. “Shitshitshitshitshit.”

I spend a minute looking for an escape route before Mom shoots through the door like a bullet. Dr. Jensen trails behind. “Oh, Dylan!” she cries, rushing over.

“No, Mom, no. It’s not what you think! I’m fine.”

“You did this on purpose?” Her hands flutter over me, smoothing and brushing all the loose bits.

“Sort of,” I confess. “But not in the bad, crazy way. It was an accident.”

“I knew you weren’t up there looking for a football!” She looms over me. I never felt dumber. “Well, whatever that therapist recommends we’ll do, because you’re not running up to the roof every time life gets tough. You could have landed on your neck and died!”

She says it like that’s a bad thing. “I only meant to sprain my ankle.”

“Is it your father?” Mom says, laying a hand three times smaller than mine on her chest. She’s the polar opposite of me. If I’m a Minotaur lurking in a labyrinth, my brown eyes burning red in the shadows, then Mom is a doe lightly munching dandelion greens in a field, blinking her big brown eyes so frigging much, the hunters become vegetarians. I don’t get it. I almost want a maternity test. “Do you miss him that much? Do you want to be with him in heaven?” She jumps straight to blaming my dead dad because that’s her go-to when things go wrong with me. “Is that what this is?”