Greg has just asked a question, and we’re all sitting in the circle in silence, looking at our shoes as if they’ll save us from having to answer him, as if shoelaces can come up with something brilliant to say. “Open your hearts, open your minds,” Greg says. “We are all here to listen.” His voice is a soft pulse, the bass of a faint heartbeat, a patient on the table about to flatline. “Someone get us started. Break the ice,” he says.
He lifts an imaginary hammer over his head, and then brings it down as if to shatter the invisible layer of ice over the group. “I’m sure you’ve all thought about the assignment from last group so you’ve done the hard part—you’ve fished those feelings out of the water. Now you just have to show us what you’ve caught.”
But none of us seem willing to speak tonight. I can feel the reluctance in the room. It hovers around our ankles like a low fog rolling in. Throw me a bone! Mrs. Sharp says during live chats in biology when our class grows silent like this. She begs like a hungry little puppy for our words, for someone to raise their virtual hand and discuss the functions of the various parts of the cell—the nucleus, cytoplasm, the mitochondria.
I’m not a teacher’s pet, but I feel sorry for Greg. I wish someone would answer him because I certainly won’t. It’s not that I’m a bad student; it’s just that I’m a bad follower. I’m not compelled to do what someone says just for the sake of obeying authority. Question authority! My mother has a magnet on the refrigerator that says that.
A girl finally raises her hand. It’s her first night here, and Greg appears excited that she’s already participating. She’s looks about my age but shorter than me. She has dark hair and bangs that fall to her eyelashes. Sometimes she pushes her bangs to the side with her fingers, parting a thin curtain so she can see, and other times, she smooths them down, tries to pull the shade over her eyes.
Greg’s eyes brighten—the whites of his eyes actually become whiter—and he turns to her. “Yes! Thank you, Clarisse! Welcome! And thank you for sharing!” So much appreciation, and she only raised her hand. I half want her to be teasing him, half hope to hear her ask if she can go to the restroom, to watch Greg’s eyes turn less white, less sparkling. Sclera. That’s what you call the white part of the eye. If an eye were an egg, the sclera would be the egg white, the pupil the yolk, the unborn chicken baby.
“I feel pissed off,” Clarisse says. Thwack. The sound of a bone being thrown against the wall.
“Okay,” Greg says. “Now that’s a start. Can you tell us more about that?”
Clarisse shifts her weight in her chair, uncrosses her legs, and crosses them again. She’s wearing black jeans and green Chuck Taylors. If my mother saw her shoelaces, she might rip them out and soak them in bleach, and toss them over the shower curtain to dry. “I don’t know,” she says. “Like, I’m just pissed off that I have to deal with any of this.”
“They are your feelings. So somewhere inside, there is a reason why you feel them,” Greg says. “Take your time.” He looks at her and then looks around the circle at the rest of us. “Can anyone here relate to what Clarisse is talking about?” he asks. The word about lingers in the air for what seems like a long time. We are silent again. So silent for so long that I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve imagined Greg’s question.
I clear my throat, and the whole room turns to look at me. They think this is a signal that I have something to say. Is it? Does my body want me to say something, even though my mind wants me to keep quiet? And how much time has passed? It feels like forever, but that’s impossible. There is no forever. I look around for a clock or a wristwatch on someone’s arm but find no traces of time anywhere.
“What do you feel?” Greg asks. He’s looking around the room, and I’m afraid every set of eyes in the room is boring into me. I feel naked and invisible all at once. I know this question too well. I ask myself all the time, but I never answer. It’s not about the answer.
I look at Clarisse, and she’s sweeping her bangs out of her eyes. She’s wearing blue eye shadow, a pale shimmery shade of crystal blue, like Key West water. A wave of words tumbles around inside me, breaking and foaming, and I try to pretend that I’m not in this room, in this circle of children with missing parents, missing pieces of jigsaw puzzles that leave small patches of nothing where there should be sky, or a kitten’s nose, or the center of a sunflower.
The waves of words crash fast and steady, an ocean rushing through the canals and trenches of my brain. I feel like a rotten apple from a rotten tree. I feel like a little pebble of evil broken off from a big rock of evil. My father is evil. How can he not be? How can you just walk into a building and kill people, just walk right up to people and shoot them in the face without some evil in you? I feel like my insides are decayed. My insides are cavities full of bile and the thickest, darkest oil. I feel like I hate my father. He was evil before he went to jail, and now he’s rotting even more. He’s there right now, decomposing, rowing toward death. What do I feel? What do I feel? What do I feel? I feel they should just kill him already.
“Okay, let’s take a quick break,” Greg says, interrupting my panic, the cold sensation filling my lungs. “Let’s reconvene in ten minutes for wrap-up. Maybe some of you will want to share after a nice sugar rush.” A lump is rising in my throat, that half-sick feeling of fear you get after watching a horror movie at night when you’re all alone in the house and you’re sure that every sound, each creak and settle of the house, each rap of a raindrop on the windowpanes, is a monster coming for you. I’m afraid that someone in the room has been reading my mind. I realize that I’m rocking forward and backward slightly in my chair so I stop as nonchalantly as possible and look around to see if anyone has noticed my movement in the first place, but the others are already standing and stretching, retrieving phones from their pockets, texting friends and boyfriends and girlfriends. Everyone, that is, except Clarisse, who is still sitting in her chair across the circle from me, her green shoes flat on the floor. She’s looking right at me, her blue-lidded eyes locked on mine for a few seconds before she bounces out of her chair and heads to the cookie table. I can’t explain why, will never be able to explain why, but I follow her.
Tonight, Greg is serving an assorted cookie tray from Publix and off-brand lemon-lime soda. The soda is flat, no bubbles. Clarisse is standing over the cookies, holding a small plastic cup in her teeth as she surveys her choices, finally reaching for a thumbprint cookie, a dollop of thick icing in the middle radiating like a bright pink eye. She pours herself some soda, puts the entire cookie in her mouth, and then takes a long drink to wash it down.
“Hey,” Clarisse says, and laughs, tilting her head back slightly. One high-pitched note rises in the air above us. Clarisse smiles, showing her top front teeth, which are small and pointy.
“Hey,” I say back. I grab a chocolate chip cookie from the table and take a small bite, something to occupy my mouth and maybe prevent me from saying something stupid—something that makes me wish I hadn’t opened my mouth and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“So why are you here?” Clarisse asks, and my face must register a peculiar reaction because she feels the need to clarify. “No offense,” she says, “but you don’t seem like the type.” I grab a napkin from the table and use it to cover my mouth as I quickly chew the rest of the cookie, hoping to look natural, hoping that Clarisse can’t sense how insecure I feel when people watch me eat.
“Why am I here?” I say out loud. When I don’t know how to answer a question, I usually repeat it until either (a) I come up with an answer or (b) the person asking the question thinks I’m strange and finally gives up on talking to me. Clarisse doesn’t give me a chance to say it again.
“Existential crisis?” Clarisse asks. She reaches for another cookie, oatmeal raisin this time. She chews the cookie deliberately, raises an eyebrow as she walks away.
After Wavelengths, Shea picks me up, and on the way home, we head south on Pinellas Bayway toward the beaches.
“So are you making any friends?” Shea asks.
“It’s not that kind of group.”
“Says who?
“Says me.”
“Oh, teenagers!” Shea says in an exaggerated voice, making me laugh. She smiles at the windshield, and then turns the music up—an album by Iron & Wine. The prickly sound of a banjo fills the car, and Sam Beam’s hushed voice serenades us as Shea drives the rest of the way home.