Chapter 60
ST. AUGGIE’S I AM
Why do you think you were crying in class?” Dr. Marcuse asks me.
I’m sitting in her office across from a funky green felt wall hanging. It’s a thousand shades of green, like a forest, and I love looking at it. It’s funny—I don’t like the fact that Ms. Kellerman sent me here, but I don’t mind actually being here. “I was crying because I was sad,” I tell Dr. Marcuse. “Because my best friend nearly died.”
Dr. Marcuse takes off her glasses and polishes them with a handkerchief. I love that she has a handkerchief. It’s so old-fashioned and elegant. “Can you think of a more appropriate response?”
“Not really.”
“Neither can I,” Dr. Marcuse says, perching her glasses back on her nose. “Do you have any idea how the school administration expected you to react? What they would consider appropriate?”
“Increased study time, maybe?”
Dr. Marcuse laughs softly, like a cat’s purr. “No doubt that was their hope.”
“Sometimes I just feel like I’m going to be sad forever,” I say. “Like my blue period is going to turn into my blue life, and I’ll just be a loser who cries nonstop and feels sorry for herself.”
“How much do you believe that? One hundred percent?”
“Thirty, maybe. Thirty-five? Thirty-three. No. Twenty-eight.” I can’t quite come up with the perfect number, but it’s in that range.
“So—less than half. You don’t really believe it, in other words. A small part of you thinks it, but you don’t really believe it.”
“Yeah.”
“Is there anything that makes you happy now?”
“Well, Katie’s okay,” I say.
“Yes, that’s good.”
I think a moment. “And I have my other friends. And Marjorie—she’s been really sweet to me. I’m starting to see how we could be…” I shrug, unsure what to say. Friends? Foster relatives? “We could really get along.”
Dr. Marcuse nods. “Good.”
I think about Morris the Dog. And Laurence, and all the books at the library. And all those happy things make me start to feel a little bit better.
I can even imagine a day when I’m just happy and nothing else.
I’m not there yet. The hospital and Mrs. Morris and my mom and everything—it’s all still too raw. But someday.
“You have a right to be sad, Maggie. You’re fine. Sadness is not a mental illness.”
I look back up at the leafy wall hanging. The forest. Even trees go though sad times. But then they burst back to life. That will be me, I tell myself.
That will be me.
