In Sight of Stars(3)

“We need to start somewhere,” she says.

*

Sarah is singing and crawling toward me on her knees.

Her voice is breathy and sweet.

“Every cloud must have a silver lining…”

It’s a hallucination, I think, but it seems real. Her eyes are warm and welcoming. I wedge my hand under my thigh so I don’t reach out to her.

“Tell me your dreams, babe,” she whispers.

I shake my head and a crow lands on the back of Dr. Alvarez’s chair, turns a beady eye on me. It pivots, and I blink as it makes its way, talons tapping, impossibly up the wall.

I focus on Sarah’s voice instead.

“Wait until the sun shines through

Smile, my honey dear

While I kiss away each tear…”

She moves slowly, her dark hair falling over her big blue eyes.

“Or else I'll be melancholy too.”

I squirm as she gets closer, hoping I don’t lose it. Sometimes, all I have to do is look at her. She slides her lips up my leg, her wide eyes watching, her tongue tracing the front of my jeans.

I close my eyes, and she stops and sits back.

“What the fuck, Klee? Are you crying?”

I shake my head, but she disappears anyway.

*

“Klee, you need to try to talk. I didn’t want to push you yesterday during intake. Not while your mother was here.”

Jesus. Yesterday? I was here with my mother yesterday.

The memory barrels in.

“Klee?”

She calls me Klee again, the wrong way. Like everyone else does when they meet me. It’s Klee with a long-a sound. A Swiss name, after the painter.

Clay, as in “play,” “say,” and “day.”

The mantra my mother taught me swims through my brain. More bubbles pop and fizz.

I ball my fists so I’ll leave my ear alone.

Dr. Alvarez reaches into the drawer of the side table next to her and says, “Here, this might help.” She rummages, before tossing a small purple stress ball to me. My hands move to catch it, but my reflexes are off. It bounces off my knuckles into my lap.

“It could be the sedatives,” she says, watching me. “Or the painkillers. Those can really make you feel out of it. I’ll talk to Dr. Ram. Your dose may be too high. There’s a lot of trial and error at this point. It’s common to take a few days to get adjusted.”

I don’t often take much more than Advil. I pick up the ball and squeeze it. It’s a sales freebie advertising some pharmaceutical company or drug. Sand on the inside, stretched purple rubber on the outside, like a balloon. Stamped-on white letters read, Rimmovin 5 (zopiclone 5 mg) and below that, smaller, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”—Sigmund Freud.

I must laugh a little because she says, “If you like it, keep it. I have plenty more.”

I squeeze the ball harder and focus my brain.

Art class, I finally say again. I met Sarah there.

*

The crow crawls down the wall, hopping onto the table in Tarantoli’s brightly-lit room, inches from Sarah’s bent head.

She works across from me. Her hair spills onto her paper like a shiny black waterfall, and her hand moves the charcoal in tight gray lines.

Her drawing is of a girl on a bed looking out a window. Girl in Repose, she’s named it.

Our drawing titles are written on a strip of masking tape on the table between us. Tarantoli makes us title our work so she can refer to them.

“The title was pretentious,” the crow says. “She must have read one like it somewhere, called it that because she wanted to impress you.”

I wave my hand to shoo the bird.

Sarah looks up at me and smiles.

Her drawing is decent, but safe.

“You can’t be an artist and be safe,” I say.

She wrinkles her nose at her paper, like she’s considering. I can’t take my eyes off of her.

She’s the first thing I’ve been interested in at Northhollow.

“Because she’s beautiful,” the crow says, but that’s not the only reason. There’s something different about her. Open. Light. She stands out. You can tell she doesn’t give a shit about anything.

I stare at her hair, then at her hand, then I reach out and trace the strands with my charcoal.

“Hey! What the fuck, Alden?” Her eyes search mine, then dart back to my marks on her paper. “What the hell is your deal?”

I yank my hand back, burnt, but it’s too late, several kids have jerked their heads around. And, I’m already an alien for showing up here for senior year.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

Tarantoli makes her way across the room. “Is there a problem here?”

There’s a pause, then Sarah shakes her head. She leans in, retracing my lines, making them stand out darker on her paper.

“No, actually,” she says, “it’s better this way. We’re good.”

It’s Sarah who says we are good.

*

“Can you tell me more?”

I shake my head. My mouth is dry, my words, thick and hard like concrete. The crow caws from somewhere I can’t see.

The man’s straw hat hangs motionless on the back of Dr. Alvarez’s door.

She narrows her eyes and studies me, then presses the silver clamp at the top of her clipboard and slides out a sheet of paper. A form of some sort, flimsy, piss yellow. She turns it over, squints, scanning it. I can’t make out what it says.