Underwater(30)

I slam the drawer shut.

I roll over to face the wall.

I try to sleep.

I can’t.

Why does everyone always want to talk?

*

The day that everything happened, I had to talk to so many people. I had to talk to police officers and counselors. At first, we all ended up on the soggy grass of the football field. It was the emergency evacuation center for my school. So many of us were saturated from the pounding rain. Tents were haphazardly erected and umbrellas were handed out. Students huddled in clumps under tents or stood three to an umbrella. Obviously nobody expected a downpour when they thought up my school’s evacuation plan. Everything on the field was chaotic. Tears. Primal screams when bad news came. We all wanted to leave, but it was where we had to wait until we could be released to our parents. They had to check us off on a list. We had to be accounted for.

I borrowed a phone to call my mom and tell her I was okay. She was so relieved to hear my voice. She was standing across the street from my school with a bunch of other parents who were waiting for news. As soon as she heard about students arriving at the emergency room of the hospital where she worked, she’d raced to my school to find me.

At the field, we had to say where we’d been when everything happened. When I said I’d been in English class, I was put into a separate line. The language arts building line. We were the ones who had really seen things. They were going to question us one by one.

It was in this line that I finally found Sage. We crashed into each other and sobbed. She’d talked to Brianna and Chelsea. They’d gotten out okay. I was so glad to hear that, because I hadn’t been able to get ahold of them. So many people left their backpacks when they ran. So many people didn’t have their phones.

After I talked to a police officer on the field and he found out what I saw and where I hid, he wanted me to go to the police station. They needed to talk to me more in depth. It was getting late, so my mom arranged for Ben to go home with a friend from his after-school program so she could drive me downtown.

Once there, I sat at a table in an office and stared at a poster of the schedule for my school’s football team. It was orange and blue and had a picture of Neptune crashing through sea foam. He gripped a trident and stared back at me. We still had four games left in the season.

My mom sat at my side, pushing tissues into my fist and rubbing her knuckles in tiny circles across my back. I was finally dry. But the rain had made the blood spread out on my shirt, resulting in the most morbid-looking tie-dye job ever.

A pretty blond woman, who was tall like a professional basketball player, sat across from me, writing stuff down on a notepad. Kind of like Brenda, but not all the way like Brenda. A digital recorder was set up, too.

I had to give statements.

I had to say where I was sitting.

I had to say where I ran.

I had to say where I hid.

I had to say what I saw.

I didn’t tell them everything.

She wrote my words down and said thank you.

A counselor visited me last. He told me what I was feeling was normal. He said it was okay to feel angry or sad or any of the emotions I had and that right now I might not feel anything at all. He gave me a card with a phone number on it. He said I could call it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. He said someone would always be there to talk to me no matter what. He said I should go home and eat. Then sleep. He said he’d check in with me in a few days. He did. I told him I was fine. It was a lie.

My mom and I picked up Ben on the way home. It was after eight p.m. He’d been asleep already and he stayed that way in the car. I was glad, because I think my appearance would’ve scared him. We would tell him the next morning when my shirt was in the washing machine and my hair was brushed. But that night, my mom carried him to the apartment and put him to bed with his clothes on.

I had a bowl of cereal for dinner. It was hard to keep it down.

I stayed in my mom’s bed that night. I curled into her side. Her flannel nightgown was soft against my face. She cradled me against her like I was small. It felt safe and warm. It was the only way I could sleep.





chapter twenty-one

All weekend, my mom fields phone calls from my grandma about my dad. She wants to know what to do and whom to call and where to be. She wants to know how we can make sure this time is different.

My mom tells her she shouldn’t bother getting her hopes up. My mom says she’s tried a million times. She says she has washed her hands of it. She doesn’t have time for this. She has bigger problems now. I know that bigger problem is me.

And right now, she is worried about me.

I know this because of the way she watches me move through the apartment. She looks up from the stuff she’s stirring in a saucepan to observe me. On Saturday night, she stops reading to Ben midsentence and eyes me as I cross in front of his bed to pull clean pajamas out of my dresser. I haven’t combed my hair since Thursday morning. It’s long and tangled. She wonders, out loud to Ben, why I’m so quiet. She wants to know if I’ve eaten. Or done my homework. Or brushed my teeth.

She is afraid I’ve taken a step back.

She wants Brenda to come.

She wants Brenda to help.

On Sunday, she finally convinces me I need to make an emergency call to Brenda. She picks up right away. I tell her about my dad.

“I’m so sorry, Morgan.” Brenda’s voice is comforting, like an oversize sweatshirt. There’s a part of me that wishes she were here. I want to sit on the steps with her just long enough to feel the sun on my face. And then I’d go inside and shut the door again.