Mrs Grady could be the Grim Reaper the way she looms at the front of the class, tall and dark in her black blazer and slacks, her hair drawn back.
‘Justice is meted out differently all over the world,’ she says. ‘We have prisons, although some may argue the merit of rehabilitation. Some prisons have education programs. Some countries still have the death penalty. And some still carry out an eye-for-an-eye justice – punishing the offender similarly to how they’ve offended. We also have public demonstrations, such as floggings. Does anybody think there’s a better method?’
I try to hold onto her words, like each is a life buoy bobbing in the ocean. Usually, she’s telling us to read from the exercise book and then quizzing us. Now, her question fires imaginations in the classroom.
‘Hard labour,’ Jake jokes.
‘Community-minded hard labour,’ Deanne says.
‘Screw that,’ Ethan says. ‘Punishment.’
I can’t find my way into the conversation that ensues. Each voice speaking is like shearing metal. When somebody says something funny and everybody laughs, it’s broken glass tumbling around in my ears. I see myself leaping to my feet and shouting, ‘Shut up! Shut up!’ Of course, I don’t – and I won’t – but the image leaps into my mind all the same.
Faces are alien around me. Samantha looks at me, eyes big and round. I see her earnestness, how she wears her emotions openly. Gabriella catches my glance and smiles, and maybe I imagine it or want it to be there, but I see that twinkling and softness in her eyes. Even Riley’s face is intent.
‘One thousand words,’ Mrs Grady wraps up the discussion, ‘on how you would shape our legal system, given the opportunity.’
Needless thoughts invade my head – observations of tiny things; extrapolations of what those tiny things mean; a response to how I feel about those things; then the image of me jumping up on my table and screaming until I’ve got no breath left. The urge goads me.
The next period, I have an Open Room – a class where I’m allowed to do my own homework or work on an Open Room project. Almost everybody does nothing in their Open Rooms (which is why they brought in Open Room projects). I get permission to go to the library.
Ash watches me pack my bags. ‘Everything okay?’ he asks.
‘Sure. Why?’
‘You’ve been quiet today.’
‘Didn’t sleep so good.’
Ash can tell there’s more but doesn’t push it. Riley’s oblivious to us, already working on his legal essay.
At the library, I go over to the catalogue and look at all the little drawers. What is this? Fear? Is that what I look for? I check and find titles. Lots of them are novels. I write down the nonfiction titles and their reference numbers and go check them on the shelves. Unfortunately, fear relates in lots of different ways to everyday life, ranging from politics to phobias to…and that’s when I find it: to psychology.
The books in the psychology section are fat, dreary, lonely hardcovers that are stuck together. Flicking through them doesn’t teach me much and I’m too impatient to read them thoroughly, but at least I identify what’s going on: anxiety. Giving this thing a name reassures me. If it has a name, then others have dealt with it. If others have dealt with it, then I can, too. It’s not some bizarre new condition that they won’t know how to treat and which’ll be named after me when I die.
I keep flicking through books, reading passages but unable to make much sense of the clinical language. Another book identifies what happened to me as a ‘panic attack’ – being struck by sudden, debilitating anxiety. Here’s something else with a name. Panic attack. That fits. As I read about them, I grow worried that another one will hit. What if one hits in the classroom? What would I do? How would the other kids look at me?
The preferred treatment is counselling. I can’t go to Counsellor Hoffs with this – there’s no way I’d be able to hide that from Ash and Riley, even if I could hide it from the other kids. I have no idea where I’d find a psychiatrist or psychologist, or how I’d afford either. Medication is also mentioned. Various books stress antidepressants must be taken for at least eighteen months before a condition stabilises.
Exercise is advocated as good treatment for anxiety – even just a walk. Another recommendation is meditation and the book details a progressive muscle relaxation exercise. This seems the only doable thing right now. You tense your feet, count to five, and when you relax, imagine the tension pouring out. You work your way up the body – calves, thighs, buttocks, stomach, and on and on you go.
A hand closes on my shoulder. It’s Ethan May, holding a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. He looks at all the books I’ve drawn from the shelves and sat on the floor around me in various piles like I’m building Lego towers. I’m suddenly self-conscious that my secret is going to be out. Which fifteen-year-old would be reading stuff like this?
‘Whatcha reading?’ he asks.
‘Was doing research for an Open Room project.’
‘Ah, okay. I’m turning sixteen – not for a while. Like three months. August.’
‘My birthday’s in August,’ I say.
‘Mine’s end of August – last day of winter.’ Like that’s so cool. Like they decided winter should come to an end once Ethan was born. ‘I’m telling everybody way in advance because I want you to block the date out,’ he says. ‘It’s gonna be big. Huge. I’m inviting everybody.’
‘Oh. Cool.’
‘So, I’ll see you there, right?’
‘Where?’
‘Still tossing up between home and the soccer club. I got a job there part-time cleaning up and stuff, but I have access to their social club.’
‘What if somebody trashes the place?’
‘Yeah, yeah. Good point. Better dealing with Mum and Dad. Okay. Home, then. Thanks.’
Ethan leaves me to go to the counter to borrow his novel. And although he’s never been anything but nice to me (and he was even sympathetic when my girlfriend Mary Hatchet dumped me for him), I resent him. I resent him because he doesn’t have to deal with this. That his grand concerns are being fit for sport, planning parties and being popular. I resent everybody in the library – kids borrowing books, flicking through magazines or sitting around chatting.
They’re oblivious.
And I resent them and envy them for it.