Whisper to Me(130)

“So you won’t stop me seeing him?”

Another silence.

“If you follow your doctor’s orders,” he said eventually, “if you—”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll see her and Dr. Lewis, and we’ll work it out together, I promise.”

“Yes, yes,” said Dad. “Him too. But fine. If you do all that, then I’m not going to stand in your way.” He made a lame effort at a smile.

“Seriously? You’re … you’re fine with this? With me writing to him?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m fine with it, but I can live with it.” He stood up. “But I would say, Cass …” He looked pained. “I would say it’s not me you need to convince. I don’t know what you did to that boy, but last time I saw him he did not look happy.”

“I know,” I said.

Dad stood there for a moment, awkwardly. Then he let out a long breath. “Oh, **** it,” he said. “If you write to him, tell him I’m sorry too.”

Oh, and, ****, I’m running out of time now, but I’m aware, okay? I’m aware of what my dad said.

It is you I need to convince.

It is you I need to apologize to.

So … Here’s the thing. I’ve learned stuff. I’m no longer the same person I was.

For example: I have learned that some people come into our lives, and then are gone. And that part of the thing, part of life, is to accept that fact, to accept that they’re gone.

But there’s something else too: and that’s realizing that a part of them will never be gone. We think of lives as stopping, suddenly. But they don’t. They are like waves, like ripples, like echoes that continue to resonate from their point of origin, out into the world. There was an Italian scientist named Marconi who said that sound waves, once generated, reverberate through the universe forever. Like, you could stand on Jupiter with a powerful-enough microphone and you’d hear conversations I had with my mom, with Paris.

I mean, he was wrong, sure. But I love the idea. It’s like Echo, but real. Voices outlasting their owners.

And, of course, and more simply, I can just remember those voices, and that keeps them with me. Remember their lives. Remember their words. The time my mom carried me home from the store, just because she said I’d soon be too heavy to do it. The time Paris won that Elmo, with her terrible fishing.

But.

But there are also, of course, people you don’t have to just remember, because they’re still around.

And I guess that’s the other thing I have learned. There are people who come into our lives, and then are gone. But there are also people who come into our lives and who we need to hang on to.

I have lost so many people. Friends, my mom, Paris. But there is one person I lost, and can maybe get back.

You.

I don’t want to let you go. I need you, 100 percent on my side.

But here’s the thing: I’m 100 percent on your side too. I mean, I’m not claiming I’m ever going to be the best girlfriend in the world. But I know you. I knew you the first time I saw you, in your muscles, in your smile. And I think you know me. And I think we could be something special.

And I will never, ever let you down.

Again.

I mean, I’ll never let you down again.

Ahem.

So, more important, I’m also sorry, okay? I need to finish this and hit Send—otherwise you’re not going to have time to read it before Friday—but I’m sorry.

I’m sorry for making you think that I was with someone else, if you ever did believe that, I don’t know. If you didn’t, then I’m sorry for making you think I was a total ***** who wanted to **** with your mind.

I’m sorry for shouting at your dad. I’m sorry for not understanding, about your mom, about the music, about the swimming. Though I hope that even if you do take the swim scholarship, you keep playing music.

It would be a shame if you stopped.

I’m sorry for everything the voice made me do.

And I would like another chance.

Oh.

Oh, I should tell you about the voice too, I mean, hell, maybe even if you forgive me you won’t want to take me back because of the voice, because you don’t want a crazy girlfriend. I would understand that, I would.

But here’s the thing—I’m not crazy.

Something bad happened to me; I saw my mom die, and then when I found the foot on the beach, something went wrong, the needle skipped on the record in my brain—or substitute that with some more relevant modern analogy, I guess—and I started hearing a voice. But it was a coping mechanism. It took my hatred for myself and insulated me from it. Placed it outside myself.

And then, when I learned how to deal with it, how to act toward it, how to give it a schedule, limits, it started to help me.

I’m not crazy. I’m really not. I got hurt; I developed a scar; and now the scar is healing. I see Dr. Rezwari and Dr. Lewis together now, and I’m doing well. Dr. Rezwari has helped me to see that I maybe fixated on Paris a bit, obsessed about her disappearance as a distraction from thinking about my guilt over my mom. I mean, Dwight was right: I hardly even knew her. Which is not to say that I didn’t like her.

I don’t take the risperidone at all anymore. The paroxetine, I still take. Dr. Rezwari was right about antidepressants, as it turns out: they just make everything a little bit easier, for now anyway. The plan is that, at some point, I can slowly ease off them—NOT just stop taking them right away, because both Rezwari and Lewis have helped me to see that dropping my drugs instantly might not have been the best decision I ever made. I mean, I went after a serial killer. I knowingly ate a chocolate bar that could contain nuts; I pretended to be with Dwight, to get rid of you so that I didn’t have to tell you the truth.