For the next few days, I was a girl without a boyfriend. Although I never planned to cut Jonah and his family out of my life, I felt that we could all use a little break from one another. I didn’t have anything to say to them, and I doubted they wanted to talk to me. I’d sensed that Mrs. Golden was becoming increasingly embarrassed by her son’s illness and that every time I showed up on 11 West, she blamed herself for the hours that I spent with him.
So I took her unspoken advice and stayed away for a little while. I went to school as usual, hung out with Kris, played with Katie, and banged away at my keyboard.
My classmates at Fallstaff finally stopped making fun of Jonah. It was a relief to me at first, until I realized that the only reason they’d stopped talking about him was that they’d forgotten he existed. That hurt worse than the teasing, and if it hadn’t been too crazy, I might even have wished them to start up again, if only to remind me of him. The empty chair in front of me was quickly becoming the only sign that Jonah had once walked the halls of Fallstaff High.
One morning after history, Ms. Lowry asked me to stay after class. After everyone filed out, she waved me into a seat beside her desk and then settled at the corner of her table.
With characteristic bluntness, she came right to the point. “April, I wanted to ask you how Jonah is doing,” she said. “I tried calling his home to speak to his parents, but no one answered.”
I shrugged and looked away. “He’s pretty much the same. The doctor keeps talking about progress, but I don’t see any. I don’t really understand what’s going on—”
“You don’t know anything about schizophrenia?”
Her question took me by surprise. We’d never spoken about his diagnosis before, and I was shocked that she’d bring it up so confidently, as if it were a well-known fact. Until then, when anyone had asked me, I’d insisted that Jonah had been hospitalized for severe depression.
“My uncle had schizophrenia,” she explained after an awkward silence. “So when Jonah started having those symptoms—that unusual outburst in class, the homework assignment—I recognized the signs. That’s why I was worried about him.”
It was strangely comforting to hear that. She wasn’t pitying me or judging Jonah. That was the reaction I’d gotten from everyone—my classmates, my mom, and even Jonah’s parents. Ms. Lowry seemed to really care about what I was feeling and how I was reacting to my boyfriend’s pain. She actually wanted to hear how I was doing.
“I don’t understand anything that’s going on,” I told her. “I can see that Jonah is hearing voices, of course; everyone can see that. It’s so strange for me, knowing that they could be talking to him about me and I can’t hear what they’re saying! And yet everyone seems to be brushing it off and telling him to ignore them! Like the voices are an itch that he just has to remember not to scratch.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “That sounds familiar. The medicines don’t always control the voices.”
“The medicines aren’t doing anything for him!” I exclaimed. “They dull him down a little, make him less edgy, but he isn’t himself. And the anger, the outbursts, they happen anyway. The last time I saw him, he needed to be drugged; he was almost violent. That isn’t progress, no matter what his doctor says. I’m scared she’ll raise his doses again and he’ll turn into a drugged-up zombie. But I can’t say anything to Dr. Hermann. It’s not like I can understand this stuff.”
“Why do you think you can’t understand it?”
I stared at her for a moment and then looked away, embarrassed. The question had never occurred to me before. “I haven’t gone to medical school,” I answered lamely. “There are so many medicines. I can’t even pronounce some of their names.”
“Don’t you think you ought to try though?” she suggested. “Pick out a book about mental illness and do some reading. You don’t have to get a degree in psychiatry or anything. Just educate yourself, so when Jonah reacts to a medication, you’ll be able to ask intelligent questions. You may even be able to help him. April, you’re a smart girl. You don’t have to be powerless.”
I didn’t know what to say. I realized that she was right, but for some reason, I didn’t want to follow her advice. Maybe I was afraid that reading about Jonah’s illness would make me more depressed and frightened about the future; I wasn’t sure what I would find in the large red textbooks that I’d seen in Dr. Hermann’s office, but since they were linked to the mental ward, I didn’t want to touch them.
“Dr. Hermann won’t listen to me anyway,” I protested weakly. “I’m only in high school.”
“So what?” Ms. Lowry replied. “You can still read, can’t you? Look words up in the dictionary? Give it a try. Why do you think I gave your class that assignment in the beginning of the year? It’s because I learned from my own experience in the hospital that nothing is more terrifying than ignorance.”
I’d actually forgotten all about her “medical history” assignment. I’d been barely keeping up with my daily homework; long-term projects had been completely neglected. But as I listened to her, an idea started to form slowly in my mind. And from it, a strange hope began to grow.
“I guess it can’t hurt,” I told her cautiously. “I’ll think about it.”
I could see that she was dissatisfied with my answer, but at that moment, it didn’t matter to me. My plan was only half formed, and I wasn’t ready to share it with anyone. But I was sick of Jonah’s helplessness, and worse, I was sick of my own. And since Jonah wasn’t able to speak for himself, I would have to find a way to do it for him.