Casper asks, “How do you feel?”
Every day, she asks me this. One day a week, someone else asks me—Doc Dooley, maybe, if he’s pulling a day shift, or the raspy-voiced, stiff-haired doctor with too-thick mascara. I think her name is Helen. I don’t like her; she makes me feel cold inside. One day a week, on Sundays, no one asks us how we’re feeling and that makes some of us feel lost. Jen S. will say, mockingly, “I am having too many feelings! I need someone to hear my feelings!”
Casper waits. I can feel her waiting. I make a decision.
I write down what it feels like and push the paper across Casper’s desk. My body is on fire all the time, burning me away day and night. I have to cut the black heat out. When I clean myself, wash and mend, I feel better. Cooler inside and calm. Like moss feels, when you get far back in the woods.
What I don’t write is: I’m so lonely in the world I want to peel all of my flesh off and walk, just bone and gristle, straight into the river, to be swallowed, just like my father.
Before he got sicker, my father used to take me on long drives to the north. We would park the car and walk the trails deep into the fragrant firs and lush spruces, so far that sometimes it seemed like night because there were so many trees, you couldn’t see the sky. I was small then and I stumbled a lot on stones, landing on mounds of moss. My fingers on the cold, comforting moss always stayed inside me. My father could walk for hours. He said, “I just want it to be quiet.” And we walked and walked, looking for that quiet place. The forest is not as quiet as everyone thinks.
After he died, my mother was like a crab: she tucked everything inside and left only her shell.
Casper finishes reading and folds the paper neatly, sliding it into a binder on her desk. “Cool moss.” She smiles. “That isn’t a bad way to feel. If only we could get you there without hurting yourself. How can we do that?”
Casper always has blank sheets of paper on her desk for me. I write, then push it to her. She frowns. She pulls a folder from her drawer and runs her fingers down a page.
“No, I don’t see a sketchbook on the list of items from your backpack.” She looks at me.
I make a little sound. My sketchbook had everything, my own little world. Drawings of Ellis, of Mikey, the little comics I would make about the street, about me and Evan and Dump.
I can feel my fingers tingling. I just need to draw. I need to bury myself. I make another little sound.
Casper closes the folder. “Let me talk to Miss Joni. Let’s see what she can do.”
