Ch. 4: You've Changed/ You're the Same
The weight I carry that no one else can see
This is chapter 4 of 8, that I’m publishing one chapter at a time every Friday. I wrote this first draft of my novel in 2022, and I’m sharing it here along with new artwork exploring what it could be like if I turned it into a graphic novel.
PREVIOUSLY: Imogen digs up something from the past before throwing a Halloween party, and June's social anxiety leads to a strange, startling discovery in the pantry.
You can also listen to me read this chapter—just hit play above.
CW: grief, dissociation, panic, blood imagery
It feels a bit silly in the light of day—the idea of a ghost in Grandma’s pantry.
Sunday went by quietly, and I tried not to spend too much time in the pantry, or look over at it too much. Grandma kept eyeing me as we tidied from the party, and I tried to be as normal as possible. And with the jabbingly bright sun shining in the window, I started to feel the creeping anxiety of facing school the next day more than the bizarre certainty of the last night’s encounter. It was a strange day, full of stranger, more awkward silences than usual for us.
And now.
Now it’s Monday, and no ghost (real or not) can save me from that.
As I get ready for school, I think of the little pink door and wonder if I should just try to forget about it. We have enough going on, the two of us, and more than enough to worry about.
If I’m going crazy, I’d rather pretend to be normal as long as possible, for Grandma.
But I pause as I go down the stairs anyway, just in case.
No tapping.
Baloo twists himself between my stocking feet, purring, and it’s such an everyday moment it makes me wonder. Maybe I did imagine it all. And I don’t know if I wish I did, or not. It’s been a weird couple of days, and I’m not confident today will be better. I can already feel the knot of dread in the pit of my stomach, cat snuggles or no cat snuggles—it’s been growing there since the dance.
There’s going to be a Team Meeting this afternoon. “Team Meeting” is the less-scary way Grandma uses to refer to the official meetings Mrs. Stanford (my social worker) has with Grandma (my legal guardian), Colleen (my current therapist), and Dr. Perlman (the local doctor who works at the school a few days a week), and sometimes Mr. Choi (the Principal). Sometimes I’m there, or only for part of it, and sometimes I’m not. It just depends on what they need to talk about, and whether they want me to know. 1
After the dance last weekend, Mrs. Stanford called a meeting for today, which I’m sure will make the day even better than it was already going to be with the aftermath of the dance at school.
Go team. *sarcasm*
I probably shouldn’t be so grouchy about it. I know they’re all working hard to help me. And sometimes these meetings are pretty routine, just checking in, and don’t make any real difference to my life. But other times they completely upheave it. You never know when they’re going to suddenly decide something different, or that I need to have this other kind of therapy, or a new medication. Every Team Meeting, I, and everything about my life, hangs in the balance, and I’m on edge until I know what it means for me.
Imagine if they knew I was trying to communicate with a ghost?
Not for the first time, I wish I could curl up with Baloo on the couch all day.
On the walk to the diner, Grandma tries to encourage me about school, and the meeting.
“I think Mrs. Stanford just wants to check in about the dance, June. It’s been awhile since anything that big happened, you know?”
I shrug. I’m feeling off today, and grumpy, and I know it. She does, too, and I can see her guessing what I’m most worried about.
“It’s been a whole weekend, with lots of parties and things like that in between, love. They might not even be thinking about it anymore.”
She puts her hand on my shoulder as I hunch, pulling hard on my backpack straps and staring just as hard at the sidewalk passing under my feet.
I shrug again, trying to lighten it up a bit. More of an “I-guess-it’s-possible” shrug and less of a “yeah-right” shrug.
But we both know which one I’m actually feeling, and I hate myself for making everything worse.
I try not to let it get the best of me, but the dread grows through the early breakfast shift at the diner (three stacks of pancakes, four eggs Benedict, a black coffee with a cinnamon roll and five omelettes), and my stomach drops when Grandma motions to me that it’s time to go.
Usually she doesn’t have to—I know how to take care of my own schedule—but today I’ve been dragging my feet more than usual. I wish I wasn’t such a stormy mess inside, but I can’t help it.
Grandma comes over to give me a hug and whispers, “It’ll be okay,” in my ear as I pull on my jacket. I nod and do my best to smile.
“And I’ll be there before you know it.” She’ll be coming later, for the Team Meeting, at the end of the school day. I’ve been told I can’t be there for the first part, but they might call me in at the end. If I’m not there at all, they can make decisions without me, and if I’m called in, I can contribute, but they ask lots of questions.
I’m not sure which to hope for right now.
As I approach the school, I’m casting sideways glances at other kids arriving.
Are they looking at me, too? Are they thinking about the dance?
About what Louis said?
About my family?
About me?
I make my way, alone, through the small crowd of students, trying to keep my head down, but keeping tabs as much as I can, to know what’s coming.
Some kids, I think, are trying to be nice about it. They notice me, but look the other way—they know something of what it’s like to be in my shoes, and don’t want to make it worse. Others do more of the predictable stare and whisper.
In the morning rush to get to first classes, someone—I don’t see who— yells “Where were you this weekend, June, jail?”
“Leave her alone, you jerk!” Gemma shows up out of nowhere and yells indiscriminately into the crowd, and someone laughs.
I just keep my head down. I appreciate it, but there’s no point in defending me.
“You okay, June?” Gemma asks me quietly, hesitantly putting her hand on my shoulder. I can hear the kindness in her voice, and it hurts. I pull out my phone, and I type.
“You don’t need to be so nice to me,” my app says for me, in a tone of voice that isn’t appropriate for any of the ways I mean it.
“What… what do you mean?” Gemma asks.
I shake my head. There’s no way to explain.
“I don’t need you to defend me. I don’t want you to.” Nothing I type today sounds right, but I don’t have the words or energy to fix it.
There’s a pause, and somewhere deep down I already regret what I’ve typed next, but it’s too late:
“Please just go away.”
Gemma blinks at me for a moment, and the kindness is gone.
“I just don’t get you, June,” Gemma exclaims, and her voice is both hurt and angry, “don’t you know anything about friends?”
But she doesn’t wait for a reply, and I wouldn’t have been able to give one. She rushes off into the crowd, and I’m not sure she wasn’t crying.
I’m losing count of the times I wish I could no longer exist.
Alone in my storm cloud, I make it through the school day, somehow. Sometimes, when I catch someone laughing at me behind their books or someone else outright jeers at me (“careful—she might kill you!”), I want to throw something. Scream. Wreck the whole classroom. I picture myself walking, strangely calm, down the row of bookshelves at the back, maintaining glowering eye contact with the teacher while I knock every. Single. Book. Off onto the floor. In those moments, I feel like such a stranger to myself. This isn’t me, is it? This dark, red-eyed cloud of anger and chaos I feel in my chest? But there’s also something very, very deep about this Dark June, that feels truer than People-Pleasing June who lowers her head and nods or forces herself to smile when she’s not feeling it. Dark June feels like she’s holding something real in her bones.
Still, I reign her in. Letting her out would just give them more “murderer” ammo to hurl at me.
All day, I fight Dark June.
I’m surly when my teachers ask me any direct questions and I’m forced to answer, and I ignore opportunities to make things right with Gemma. I feel every pair of eyes watching me like they’re hot pokers in my skin. Difficult math problems make me want to tear pages out of my math book. As I sit alone at lunch, I practically dare people to come and say something.
I suppose, at least, I’m not feeling like a frightened animal today, like I thought I might.
Is this better? I don’t know.
I try breathing more deeply, and it takes the edge off.
Focusing hard on an English lesson gives me something to distract myself with.
Letting a little steam off in Phys Ed helps even more, although I think I knocked the wind out of a poor kid named Skyler who took my cannonball-like dodgeball in the stomach. I apologized, and felt guilty, and Dark June stepped back a bit more.
By the time the officer manager, Miss Singh, comes to get me for the Team Meeting, Dark June is on the bench. She’s still there, I think, sulking, but now things have shifted and I’m starting to feel more guilty about letting her out as much as I did. This is a whole other version of me I can barely control sometimes—full of swirling, self-critical thoughts and endless internal debates about how and why everyone hates me.
Each step we take toward the conference room plunges me further into anxiety about how I behaved today. Did they talk to all my teachers yet? Will they be angry? If they know about Dark June, will they put me on daily meds again?
I glance up at Miss Singh for clues, but she doesn’t say anything, and wasn’t in the meeting—although I’m pretty sure she knows everything that happens around here, anyway. The conference room is just off the main office where Miss Singh has her command center, keeping student records with an iron fist and making sure all visitors have passes, and basically running the entire school. The only time I ever see Mr. Choi, the principal, is at school assemblies and occasional Team Meetings, and he often says too much, but nothing of note—at both kinds of events.
Anyway. The conference room itself is just a mostly empty room full of mismatched chairs and a couple of tables (including a broken one) that teachers sometimes hang out in when they’re on break—which doesn’t seem to be often.
Oh, and a coffee maker. It drips a lot.
Miss Singh opens the door and I see everyone lined up on either side of the table, waiting, unfinished bad cups of coffee in front of them. The fluorescent lights are unnerving, and make everyone look ill.
There’s an old red swivel chair at the end, for me. Miss Singh disappears for less than a second, it seems, while I sit, and reappears with a styrofoam cup full of hot cocoa for me. She’s a brisk lady, Miss Singh, but she cares a lot, I think. I can smell the hazelnut creamer she added, and I don’t think I’ve ever specifically told her I like it better this way.
Grandma’s in the seat closest to me on the left, and throws me a wink while I cup my hot cocoa and blow on it for something to do. Despite the gesture, she looks so old and sad and tired in this lighting, and it scares me.
Mrs. Stanford, my social worker, sits at the other end of the table from me. I know I mostly see her under lights like these, which doesn’t help, but I always think she looks so exhausted, and that maybe we need to be worried about her, too. Today she looks depleted and unhappy, but she tries to smile at me.
I smile back, but it’s definitely a forced one.
The rest of my team, or those who aren’t currently teaching classes, are assembled around the table. My math teacher, Mrs. McIntyre, with her rectangular glasses and sweater vest, Colleen, my therapist, who always wears pastels and smells like soap, and Dr. Perlman, with her red hair and freckles, who lets all the kids call her Phoebe. This is the current team–plus Mr. Choi, who has decided, it seems, to let Mrs. Stanford do the talking today.
“Nice to see you again, June.” Mrs. Stanford begins.
Is it? Inside I’m a mess of guilt and fear and still, under all of it, anger. And I’m tired, too. So tired.
But I nod and try to make my fake smile a little more genuine.
“Your Grandma was telling me about the party you had last weekend, and how much you enjoyed making the decorations.” She always starts something like this, to ease me in. To give Grandma a chance to help me speak for myself while I warm up.
I nod.
“We had a good time making those garlands together.” Grandma offers, looking at me.
I nod again.
Grandma shifts in her seat, and I remember—right. I’m supposed to try to “talk” more in here.
It feels silly, when no one in here really cares about party decorations, but I know they want me to do more than nod.
“I cut out a lot of paper bats,” my app announces.
Everyone laughs, but I’m not sure why. To cut the tension, maybe? It’s not even funny.
“That’s great.” Mrs. Stanford smiles again, at Grandma. She’s sort of my proxy at these meetings, when everyone’s trying not to make too much eye contact or put me under too much pressure to talk.
Mrs. Stanford clears her throat and I grip my hot cocoa for dear life. The meeting is shifting into business mode.
“So, June, I know the dance last weekend was… difficult.” I tense up, and she waves a hand to reassure me. “Your Grandma’s already told us what happened, but is there anything you’d like to add? That you want us to know?”
Is there?
I feel like there’s supposed to be, somehow, but I don’t know what. It’s like when Colleen asks “how are you” at the beginning of a therapy session, and it’s just too big to know how to start. I always flounder over that question.
Is there anything I want them to know? It feels like a trick question, somehow. Do they know about Dark June? Or about the pink door, and the ghost? Do they think I’m going crazier?
No one’s said I’m crazy, to be fair.
I have official diagnoses like PTSD, dissociative subtype, and generalized anxiety disorder, that in theory should help me not just think I’m going insane, but it doesn’t feel much different, sometimes. Especially when people gather like this, to talk about how I’m doing–they wouldn’t even need to if I was “normal”. I know I shouldn’t use that word that way, really. People talk like they don’t care what’s normal, but the world still expects it of everyone—me included.
No matter how much support I get for my “situation,” it feels like the entire goal of everything is for me to just be normal. Sometimes I hate how much it feels like it’s for others more than me–so I can be what they expect, not what I need, or even just what I am. Sometimes I wish, more than anything, that I could flip a switch and just be what they want. I expect it of myself, too, more than I think I should. But I get confused about what is the right thing to want, either way.
And today I feel so visibly, vulnerably, obviously, not normal. And that feels dangerous.
What could I say that makes it seem like less of a big deal? Like I’m not losing my mind? Like I’m not a 14-year-old kid with a string of diagnoses and a giant table full of professionals to help me exist?
“I’m okay now.” It’s a lame answer, but maybe it’s a start.
“I’m glad.” Mrs. Stanford pauses. I know she’s not fully buying it, but she knows better than to push. “I’d like you to talk about it with Colleen this week still, though, June. Perhaps an extra session?”
I nod.
Colleen smiles at me from down the table, and I give her a halfhearted wave. I know she really does mean well, but I don’t think she’s particularly good at her job. I know I’m a challenge, but mostly it feels like she’s trying to get me to talk when I’m not ready to, or offering “coping strategies” that don’t feel all that helpful.
Phoebe, on the other side of the table, coughs, and I think she looks uncomfortable, too. I like Phoebe much better than Colleen, and I think she does a better job at being a therapist—which is ironic because she’s not officially a therapist at all. She’s the local doctor, but works out of the school office a couple days a week in lieu of a school nurse. She’s here for everything from scraped knees to broken arms to a case of appendicitis last year to doling out prescription medication, and ends up being a sort of makeshift counselor since the school isn’t big enough to have one dedicated to it. I’ve spent a lot of time in her office over this past year, officially to get my anxiety medication, but we end up talking a lot, too, for times between official therapy sessions with Colleen. She’s not as expectant as Colleen. She listens better.
Mrs. Stanford straightens her notes in front of her. The lights blink in anticipation of something bigger coming, and I bite my lip.
“We’ve all had a chance to talk, and hear from your teachers, and Colleen, and Dr. Perlman.” She gestures at some of them seated around the table.
“And, June…” Mrs. Stanford pauses to let out a breath.
She’s disappointed. Why is she disappointed?
What happened at the dance wasn’t my fault. Was it?
Was it?
“I’m worried about your lack of progress. We all are.”
I don’t know exactly what that means, but my stomach thinks it’s the same as flying down a big hill on a roller coaster, and not in a fun way.
Lack of progress? What does that mean? Is this about Dark June? The door?
That dumb right armpit starts sweating again, even though, if anything, I’m cold.
Grandma reaches out to grab my hand, and I hold on for dear life.
What did I do wrong?
I did something wrong.
I’m all wrong, all wrong.
I can hear the disappointment in Mrs. Stanford’s voice as she speaks next, and it scares me, but I can’t seem to make out her words.
I can feel all their eyes on me, and I’m forgetting how to breathe properly. Every second takes a lifetime, and I can’t think of anything but the panic filling my head, coursing through my veins, all over my body. My head is full of thoughts:
I answered all wrong. I know it. What should I have said?
I stare at my cocoa too hard. I know it’s happening, but I can’t stop it. It’s loud and panicky in here, in my head, and on the outside, I’m starting to freeze up.
No, no, no, no, no. I’m all wrong, I’m so messed up. They shouldn’t have to deal with me Grandma shouldn’t have to deal with me this is all wrong it’s all wrong all wrong I’m wrong I’m wrong I’m wrong I’m not normal
Suddenly Phoebe is next to me, her hand on my shoulder. I hear her many bracelets jangle, and I try to snap out of it, but it’s still hard to breathe.
“Mrs. Stanford, can we have a minute?” Phoebe asks it in a kind voice, but it’s also clear it’s not a question. She’s like that—tough but gentle.
Mrs. Stanford must have agreed, because Phoebe is motioning for me to come along, and helping me out of my seat. Grandma’s hand is on my back as I stand, and I feel awful causing her more worry.
I’m the worst I’m the worst I’m the worst
“I’ll talk to her.” I hear Phoebe tell Mrs. Stanford, as if from a long way away.
Why can’t I just be normal be normal be normal
Phoebe helps me out the door and through the main office, and I start bawling.
I’m so tired of crying in public places.
Fifteen minutes and a Xanax later, and I’m sitting, elbows on my knees, on the little couch in her makeshift office, box breathing getting easier. Breathing exercises can be really hard for me sometimes, and often feel like they’re making the panic worse, but when I know relief is coming, it can help to have something to focus on, as long as I don’t have to hold the breath in.
I’m starting to panic less, and feel more embarrassed about the giant pile of used tissues scattered all over the couch. Phoebe magicked a little package of tissues out of her tote bag on the way here, and I think I’ve used most of them up.
Phoebe sits opposite me in her chair, quiet and patient, holding the remains of the tissue package. She’s always been very kind to me, and I’ve been in this position, coming down from panic in her office, many times. I’ve gotten used to seeing the freckles on her clasped hands, resting on her knees, as she leans forward in her seat, mirroring my position. She wears a lot of colorful bracelets on one hand, and it helps to focus on them sometimes. She’s looking down at her hands, now, too, so as not to pressure me. We’ve spent a lot of time here over this past year, in what must look like some strange ritual, both staring at her hands for a long time without talking.
It takes awhile before my heart rate slows down, and even longer before I feel I can confidently move. Often knowing that once I move, I’ll have to engage, makes it harder. I have to prepare myself. Phoebe is gentle and understanding, but she’ll still ask questions, and there are a lot of questions I can’t answer.
I let out a big breath and adjust in my seat, and my muscles scream at the movement. I grab the round, fluffy green pillow sitting next to me and hug it tightly—another ritual. I suppose it’s a signal for us. I’m sure I’m not the only one—how many other kids squeeze this pillow like this when they’re here? No one is ever here for a good time, no matter how nice Phoebe is.
Now that I’ve signaled with the pillow, Phoebe straightens up. I keep trying to get more comfortable in my own seat, but I know there’s a limit.
“Feeling any better, June?” She asks calmly while she looks away, picking up the tissue package.
I nod.
I know she’s still paying attention, and sees me, she’s just careful not to make me feel too looked at. I appreciate it, but somehow it frustrates me, too, sometimes—knowing I need to be handled certain ways. Or more particularly, that people handling me in the “right” ways means they’ve had to talk to someone about me, or research things about me, or, in Phoebe’s case, spend a lot of hours in meetings like the one we just came from, where all they do is talk about me. I think that’s the frustrating part for me—feeling so focused on. The other accommodations do actually make things easier, but it’s the attention that makes me feel all in knots.
She drops the tissue package back into her tote bag beside her. It has green handles, and a colorful quote from The Magic School Bus on it: “Take chances, Make Mistakes, Get Messy!”
She has her tote bag with her everywhere she goes here at school, and often when I see her at the diner, too—she comes in a few times a week, and almost always treats herself to a cup of decaf and a slice of pie on Friday evenings. Usually pumpkin, which Grandma keeps year round, and for good reason, I think—it’s my favorite, too.
Anyway, the tote bag. I think she keeps her notes and other supplies she must use a lot in there.
From here it always seems like Mary Poppins’ carpetbag—bulging with strange shapes and always seeming to have what she needs in it, but not overflowing somehow. There’s a filing cabinet here with student medical records, and some basic first aid supplies for times when Phoebe isn’t here and Miss Singh takes care of minor injuries, but otherwise I think this tote bag is her own command center for her work here at school. You’d think a doctor might go for something more professional, but I like that about Phoebe. She’s put a lot of work into being very good at her job, I think, without being so matter-of-fact and Impressive with a Capitol I like a lot of other (especially male) doctors I’ve met. She’s very calm and professional and seems to be in control of every room she’s in, but the Miss Frizzle quote, plus her red hair and colorful bracelets balance it all out, and make her feel like more of a person–which helps you feel like more of a person and less of a test subject, too, even when she’s asking you medical questions or checking your pulse or something.
“What are you feeling right now, June?” I see Phoebe resist the urge to pull out her usual steno pad and pen. We don’t really have official therapy sessions, here, but often we’ll talk after I have a panic attack, or dissociative episode at school, and I know she shares her notes with Colleen. But right now isn’t exactly a therapy session, either, is it? Instead, she waits while I consider her question.
It’s a good question—much better than Colleen’s “how are you?” Phoebe usually starts this way. What are you feeling is a bit more concrete than how, and helps ease you in a little. But it’s still hard to tell, often.
I think carefully.
“You can sign if you like,” She offers, and gives me a little wink, “I’ve been practicing, I promise.”
When I first came here, she didn’t know any signs at all. I barely knew any, either, but since then it’s become my preferred method of communication, and I’m getting decently fluent. It’s hard for adults to pick it up, but since she realized the app was getting in our way a bit, she’s really been trying. It must be hard—I know she has a million things to do, as the only doctor for miles.
Thank you, I sign. An easy one.
You’re welcome, she signs back, a little awkwardly.
It’s my turn again.
But first I have to know how I feel.
I feel sad. I sign. It feels too simple, but it’s a start. Phoebe nods. And angry.
And… “Vulnerable” is the word I want, but even I don’t know the sign for it. Does she know fingerspelling? Probably not. But I don’t have my notepad—it must be back in the conference room. I gesture and she pulls out her own steno pad for me to use. I write it down, “vulnerable,” and show her.
She nods again.
“Can you tell me why you feel sad?” She asks. This is usually when she’d make a note. I always wonder what she’s writing. That I feel sad?
That seems obvious, doesn’t it?
I try to grasp my own feeling, and what I can say about it. It feels big–too big– but also slippery. Like it just wants to hide when I try to pin it down.
I’m sad that… I told Grandma I would try at the dance, and it went so badly. That I’m doing so badly.
Phoebe struggles a bit over the sign for try, but we work it out with the notepad.
And I’m failing Grandma. And I don’t understand why. I sign.
“You’re not failing your Grandma, dear. I promise. We all know you’re doing your best.”
Do they? Mrs. Stanford didn’t seem to think so.
“Is there… anything else making you feel sad?” Phoebe asks.
Is that not enough? I know it’s kind of rude before I even sign it, but I can’t help it.
She nods. “Of course that’s enough, I just wondered if there’s more.”
No. I sign it quickly. Now I know what she’s doing. Colleen, my actual therapist, does it all the time, and it doesn’t work for her, either.
She wants me to talk about Mom.
I know this drill, and I’m not having it. I can’t do it.
We sit in silence for a moment.
“Okay, that’s alright.” Phoebe breaks the silence, “How about angry. Can you tell me about feeling angry?”
How is it that I can feel so frustrated by people being kind and asking kind questions to try to help me? Why does it feel like everyone’s just treating me like such a baby? I know that’s not what she means. I know it.
But it doesn’t matter, I’m already angry.
I’m angry that it feels like you’re trying to trick me into talking about Mom.
This one takes a few tries, too, but she gets there. By the third time I have to re-sign it, and then resort to the steno pad, I’m feeling guilty about lashing out like this. I think she can tell. She pauses, considering.
“I promise, June, I’m not trying to trick you.” She puts the steno pad down, and leans forward again, with her elbows on her knees. Her bracelets jangle, and she fiddles with the chunky red one.
“But you’re right, I do want you to talk about your mom. And if you’d prefer to talk to Colleen about it, I understand—“
I shake my head no emphatically, and think I see the shadow of a laugh at the corner of her mouth. She catches it in time, hides it away, and continues.
“—But we’re both concerned that you never mention her.
The anniversary of her death is coming up, and that can be really hard. Anniversaries are difficult. And with your father getting out soon… It really makes sense things are challenging right now.”
She pauses, but I don’t comment.
“Mrs. Stanford knows that, too. She’s not trying to punish you. But the fact that you haven’t been able to talk about what happened, in this amount of time, is concerning. And I think it’s very understandable you haven’t been able to speak yet, June, but…”
That red bracelet is getting a workout.
“But if you want to make progress, you’re going to have to try a bit harder.”
I know I’m horrible. I know I cause Grandma so much trouble, and stress her out, and I cause large groups of adults to have to gather around broken tables and bad coffee to talk about my problems and future, and I can’t talk to people and I’d just assume disappear, and I know all that is not normal.
But somehow I still don’t understand what else I could possibly do. How can I be something I’m not, just magically like that?
Try harder to what? Speak? Not be sad? I’m not usually this touchy—Dark June is still here today. At the moment, I don’t mind. She’s honest.
Phoebe looks sad, and her shoulders drop a little. “No, June. Of course not. I didn’t mean it like that, I’m sorry. I’m not doing a great job at this right now, that’s my fault.”
She holds her hand out, as an invitation, and despite my anger, I take it. Feeling a bit like a child, I reach out to hold her hand.
“What I mean is you don’t have to do it at this moment, and you can take it slow. But you’re going to need to talk about your mom, somehow, June, if you want to get through this.”
Talk about Mom.
Mom.
We sit there for a moment, and it’s like Mom’s dead body is just lying there on the coffee table between us.
There’s blood dripping on the floor.
I don’t want to remove my hand from Phoebe’s.
What will Mrs. Stanford do? I ask, signing as best I can with my free hand.
“I know Mrs. Stanford is concerned about slow progress, June. I don’t know what that will mean in the long term, but I know you’re old enough and have been through enough to know it’ll mean something, if nothing changes.”
She lets that land for a moment, and it falls in the pool of blood.
“For now, she wants you to have therapy more often with Colleen, and I think it’s important that you make some progress talking about what happened.”
I can’t stop staring at the body, and the blood, even though I know it’s not really there. It’s just in my head–but I feel it.
And I’m deathly afraid of it.
I feel like Mom’s body has been following me around everywhere, blood on everything, every moment since she died, and the only way I make it through is by pretending it isn’t there. By slogging it all around with me, silently, a trail of red behind me everywhere I go.
I don’t know how to talk about it.
I don’t know what words to use. None of them are right.
I don’t know what I could possibly say to anyone that would make it better. Make her body go away. Make me not feel like I have to wash my hands three times in a row sometimes just to get all the invisible blood off.
As I feel the blood dripping down onto the carpet, I’m not sure how to stop it. How to give them what they want.
There are things I haven’t told anyone about Mom.
About me.
And about the day she died.
It’s chicken and waffles night at the diner.
Technically, you can get chicken and waffles any time here, but today it’s the blue plate special. Blue plate specials are my favorite–we serve them on actual blue plates, for fun, but none of them match because they’re just old random ones Grandma’s found at the thrift store over the years, and there’s this one with a cat in a bow tie on it that’s become a diner game–whoever gets that plate wins a free piece of pie, but it’s also tradition for them to have to put $5 in the tip jar. Some people even put more, if they’re able to–Grandma’s been giving all the tips to Tracy, lately, to help her save up for college faster, and making sure everyone with the cat plate knows it. Tracy pretends to be upset about the attention, but I think she’s grateful for the help. It’s not much, but everyone does what they can here.
And tonight, Hank’s taking it to the next level. We had a bunch of chicken we needed to use up, and some other extra bits and bobs around, and he’s decided to try new sauces for this special. Maple jalapeño, spicy honey butter, maple sage gravy. He’s getting fancy in there, and I think he’s enjoying it. He has a big plate of chicken and waffles up at the counter, all cut up in bite-sized pieces, and bowls of all the sauces, and keeps asking everyone to take a bite and see what they think as they come in:
“Here, Jim, try a bit of this! What'd' ya think?”
“Mina, is this too much sage? Can you still taste the syrup?”
He made a big show of needing my “professional” opinion when we came in from school and the Team Meeting. I’m feeling exhausted and defeated, but I give it my best. Pretty much everyone here tries so hard, for me. Like with Tracy, they’re doing their best, and I’m scared I’ve let them all down.
I feel the weight of Mom’s body on me as I climb onto the stool at the counter next to Grandma. I swear I could have slipped in the blood on the floor on the way up. If we’re all broken souls, bleeding out invisibly as we go through the world, I’m bringing two bodies for the price of one.
I try to ignore this–I’ve worked so hard to ignore this. Part of me feels angry, infuriated, that Mrs. Stanford and Phoebe brought it up–they have no idea how hard I have to work to keep this out. And part of me knows it’s not fair to everyone else that I hide it so well.
Hank waits, leaning in, bushy eyebrows raised, as I try each sauce and consider them. Tracy hovers her marker over the dry erase board she’s been using to tally votes. There’s a bet going, I think, on which sauce will get the most votes by the end of the night, and the corner table of guys from the hardware store nudge each other in expectation while I take a bite of the maple jalapeño.
It’s a pretty quiet town, you know?
Usually that would make me feel safe, and kind of warm inside, as I consider the choices in this little diner bubble–but tonight it just makes me sad.
I point to the Honey Butter column, and one of the hardware store guys cheers. I think his name is Bobby.
Hank smiles and thanks me as Tracy marks my vote, but we all know he values Grandma’s opinion most of all. She tests them all thoughtfully. Hank waits patiently, but I think he knows what her vote will be already. They’ve known each other a long, long time.
Grandma knows how to work a crowd. She pauses dramatically, with her fork in the air after her last bite, and everyone hangs on the silence.
I look around in the pause. There’s Hank, smiling, eager for the verdict, and comfortable in his apron on the kitchen side of the counter, and Tracy, smile lines behind her heavy makeup, failing to look like she doesn’t care, and most of the diners are waiting, watching Grandma in her element, with friends and food and laughter.
This is The Cozy Spoon.
I see the blood spots on the black and white checkerboard floor below me, and I know I’m the one that’s brought them into this safe space, but I don’t know how I could have done anything else. How I can do anything else moving forward.
I don’t know how to talk about Mom, and there are some things I can’t–I just can’t–say. I feel awful– a gnawing, aching, guilty stomach knot of awful–for how much trouble I’ve caused Grandma, and how much anxiety she must be feeling about me.
Maybe I can make it work, somehow. Say just enough about Mom to get by, so they know I’m trying. So Grandma knows I’m trying.
But I don’t know that it’ll be enough.
I feel like I don’t deserve to be here.
“Maple jalapeño!” Grandma announces, and the hardware store table goes crazy. Tracy tallies the vote, and it’s winning.
All their smiles and cheers make me feel more alone, carrying Mom with me. I move back to my corner booth, and try to feel the cozyness of it–try to fade into the background again.
Phoebe walks in and gives me a smile and a wave (she checked to make sure I felt comfortable with her coming today, and I said I didn’t mind. No one should have to miss out on the chicken and waffles). Hank calls her over to be part of the voting, and she sticks around to eat her dinner there, chatting with Hank over the counter while other guests come and go and cast their votes (the hardware store guys are winning and getting as much celebration out of it as they can).
The other front corner booth is pretty much the opposite of the hardware store guys:
Leah, a cashier at Wellmans’ supermarket,2 and her best friend Chloe, who used to work with her, sit across from each other, sipping decaf and chatting quietly. They glance over and laugh sometimes at the festivities at the counter, but mostly they’re keeping to themselves. I haven’t seen them meet here in awhile– before Chloe had her baby a few months ago, they used to come in together all the time after their shift was over, still in their uniforms, eating pie and drinking coffee, talking a mile a minute and laughing over something another cashier said or oohing and aahing over some new thing Chloe had found for the nursery. Now her little boy, Max, is almost four months old, and he’s fast asleep with his head on Chloe’s chest, tied onto her in one of those baby wrap things. He’s a really cute little guy, with dark curly hair like his mom, and super soft pink cheeks– he’s almost like a cartoon of a baby, he’s that adorable. And Leah loves him, too. She was holding him for awhile earlier, when he was still awake, bouncing him and making him laugh. And he’s even wearing the little striped outfit I saw Leah give Chloe right here at this same table a few months before he was born.
But something is off.
Leah’s still in her supermarket uniform, and she’s fidgeting with her name tag, which she took off awhile ago and is now spinning on the tabletop.
Chloe looks tired, with circles under her eyes, but she’s made an effort to dress up a little, like this is a special occasion, or like she just wanted an excuse to wear a nice sweater and some earrings.
There are strange pauses in their conversation, where neither of them seems to know quite what to say. The rhythm is all wrong, and things don’t quite fit right.
“Oh! You won’t believe what Greg did the other day with the conveyor belt–
“I’ve been trying to get him to sleep by–”
They both start at once, and stop.
Chloe looks down at Max, just to check on him, like she’s done a million times since they came in. Leah smiles down at him, too, but the smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
They sit in silence across from eachother, half-eaten slices of pie and cooling mugs of coffee in front of them, and in the stillness of it I hear them both crying:
But you’ve changed.
But you’re the same.
They’re still themselves, still friends, still there. But somehow different. Something’s broken. They’re frozen here, each in their own worlds, just feet from each other. After everything that’s happened today, it’s breaking my heart, and I turn to look for Grandma, who surely will have some kind of a plan in place already to help ease their awkward situation. Something lifts in my chest as I imagine Grandma swooping in to Chloe and Leah’s rescue with her winning smile and a soft touch of the shoulder and a plate of something special covered in whipped cream with a cherry on top, and–
But when I catch sight of Grandma’s face, that bit of hope in my chest falters and falls.
Grandma is standing, carafe in hand, halfway to their booth, just watching them. That winning smile I imagined is miles away, replaced by a kind of loss I can’t put my finger on. There is pain etched into every line of her face, and she looks utterly lost, frozen in place.
It’s not like her to stand there, still and staring like that, and something about it twists in my gut–it bothers me even more than seeing the hurt Chloe and Leah are in.
I reach out and wave toward Grandma, hoping she’ll see me and break out of it, but I’m too far away. I don’t understand why, but this feels important, and crushing, seeing her like this, and I’m about to leap up and run to her, when Max wakes up with a cry and Grandma practically jumps a foot off the floor.
She stands there, blinking, and reaches up to touch her face, and I think she might be wiping away a tear.
Grandma doesn’t cry often. That can make it more painful, and even a little scary when she does, sometimes, but when it happens, I’m usually with her. She’ll have been telling me a story about Grandpa, or someone will have said something about Mom, and it’ll hit her and she’ll tear up –but I’m there next to her to give her a hug or squeeze her hand. We do everything together, and she’s always there for me, and I try to be there for her, too, but this feels different. Seeing her across the diner, silhouetted against the gray cloudy windows with the coffee carafe sagging lower in her hand than usual, it feels like she’s standing alone, a very long way away, somewhere I can’t reach her. And somehow like I shouldn’t try.
Before I can decide what to do, she’s moved on, and is back to her old self, offering top-offs in a flurry around the diner floor.
But I’m worried about her. Things have been strange lately, and she’s not been fully herself.
I don’t know how to carry all of this.
I look back at Chloe and Leah and Max, in their own little bubble of golden light in their booth, haltingly trying again at conversation they never used to have to think twice about. Everyone feels worlds away from each other, suddenly, even here, and I can’t help but feel it’s my fault.
It always smells faintly like dentists’ office in therapy with Colleen, and it puts me on edge every time.
Colleen herself is very kind, and soft, as she sits in her pink upholstered chair draped in lots of pastel–she’s always wearing scarves, or sweaters with drapey necklines, or bows on blouses. It gets hard to tell it all apart when everything she wears looks like swirls in saltwater taffy to me–I don’t think I’ve ever seen her wear a color I wouldn't expect from the little girl’s clothing section at a department store. I suppose the color palette and her also-pastel decor of butterfly paintings and the unusually large number of boxes of tissues scattered among pots of silk spring flowers are all meant to be comforting and safe–but with the smell, and the fluorescent lights, it always feels like two things at direct odds with each other. Like cotton candy flavored toothpaste.
And the blood doesn't help.
It’s been a few days since the Team Meeting and that moment with Phoebe in her office, and the weight of Mom’s body has felt heavier since then. I’ve tried to put it out of my mind again, but I can’t shake the feeling of her with me–but not in the way people talk about her being with me at all. At her funeral, everyone spent all their time trying to convince me she was still here somehow, to comfort me:
“She’s watching over you–your own lovely angel.”
“She’s always be here, with you, in your heart, June.”
They told me what they thought I needed to hear–or maybe what they needed to hear to make themselves feel better about seeing me and Grandma, alone, with no other family to speak of (or at least no family anyone wanted to speak of). They said all the things people think they’re supposed to–and really, what can you say, to be fair–but they just made it worse.
“You must miss her so much, you poor thing.”
“No matter what, she’ll always be a part of you. And oh, you look so much like her.”
I know.
I know I do.
I can’t get away from it every time I look in the mirror. Every time I see my reflection in a window. My eyes are not my own anymore. My hair is only hers, no matter how I try to cut it or style it. My nose is stolen from her dead face.
At her funeral, everyone made it their mission to make sure I knew, beyond a doubt, that Mom would still be with me, but I already knew that.
I was already haunted.
And for the past year, I’ve been trying so hard to forget. To build walls around it so I don’t have to face it every moment of every day. So I can breathe.
And here, in this sickeningly sterile pastel office, Colleen is doing absolutely everything she can to break all of that down.
She does it very calmly, with a smile, and a little push of the nearest tissue box closer to me. I know she means well, but I feel trapped, cornered.
“You can keep going, June.” Colleen crosses her legs and makes another note on her notepad–also pink. How does she find these things?
“We brought a picnic with us. And chocolate chip cookies–Mom’s favorite. It was nice.” My app announces, telling a pointless, random story from years ago in an attempt to appease Colleen (and Mrs. Stanford). I knew this was going to be hard, but I hadn’t anticipated how difficult even an unimportant story like this would be–how much it would cost me.
I wince as I adjust in the too-poufy couch, hitching Mom’s invisible body up, checking it’s still in place, and still hidden from anyone but me. Colleen leans in slightly, pen hovering, watching every move to evaluate how I really am. I swallow.
I’ve been telling Colleen about a time Mom and I went to the park. It was a long time ago, and has nothing to do with Mom’s death, or anything at all. I’m hoping it’s enough. I’m not sure, in this moment, whether I should smile, or cry, under Colleen’s careful watch. What am I supposed to feel?
Colleen gives me no clues as she keeps looking directly at me for too long through her reading glasses. Her eyes look abnormally large through the lenses, and they’re pinned on me.
Does Colleen see Mom here? Can she tell?
It feels hard to stay invisible like this, and I think back to my conversation with Phoebe, with Mom’s blood on the carpet.
How I just need to talk about Mom.
It’s not what they all think, but I can’t explain it.
I’m so tired of carrying Mom around, it’s true. I’m utterly exhausted from it, deep in my bones. But also there, deep in my bones, I know I have to.
I have to protect her–like I should have done before.
“And… that’s all.” I finish, and chance a look up at Colleen over my phone to see how my story went over. She’s still writing on her notepad. I look back down again.
“Why did you choose that story, June?” Colleen asks, clicking her pen closed.
To get you to stop asking, I think silently.
But I can’t say that, obviously. I look everywhere else around the room while I scramble for something to say. The fake tulips in front of me on the table are really dusty, even on the little hot-glue spots meant to be fresh dewdrops. Another weird combination–dusty fresh flowers.
“I don’t know… it was nice to spend time with her. To be together.”
“And you spend a lot of time with your Grandma, don’t you?”
“...Yes.” If I had been able to speak it instead of typing it through my app, it would have come out as a question. I don’t understand where this is going. Also, she already knows the answer. “Is that… a problem?”
“No, of course not.” Colleen shakes her head, “But I think you seem lonely, June. Do you feel lonely?”
“No.” Another statement that would have been a question. Am I lonely?
“I think, June,” Colleen takes off her reading glasses and sets her notepad aside, “that maybe you need to make some other friends.”
She catches the look on my face, and in what feels like a rare moment of understanding, corrects herself.
“A friend.”
I think of Gemma, and how hurt she was when I told her to leave me alone the other day. How little I seem to know what to do around her. How much I prefer to keep to myself.
“That’s… difficult for me.” My app announces.
“I know.” Colleen stares me down, almost daring me to protest again. “But I think you can manage it.”
This feels like a new side of her. Are we doing bad cop now?
“I think we need to talk to some trees about this.”
That was Grandma’s way of suggesting we take our worries on a hike in the woods, and I agree. We’ve both been off–sad, in a distant kind of way from each other since the Team Meeting.
The party–and the “ghost” in the pantry–feels a million years away, now. And silly. Of course there wasn’t anything there, just like I don’t actually have Mom’s blood dripping from my fingers all the time. And Grandma seems to have forgotten about it, too–we’ve just been sort of floating through the last few days.
Last night after closing the diner, we barely did anything at all–not that we’re usually the life of the party on Friday nights anyway. But on another Friday we might at least have put on a movie or played a game. Instead we both sat on our own, me picking at my homework in the living room to avoid thinking about Colleen’s command to make a friend, and Grandma sitting at the kitchen counter, writing a letter. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Grandma write a letter before, but she did it as if it was the most familiar thing, and walked it out to the mailbox then and there when she was done. She felt strange and flat when she came back in, and I didn’t ask who the letter was for. Somehow it feels like even when we’re in the same room, we’re not both actually here, for one reason or another. Like we just can’t get on the same frequency, or we’re both too off in our own worlds.
I try not to think about how right Colleen is–and how lonely I feel without Grandma and I on the same page together.
But sometimes nature helps, and I hope it will today.
We’re in our boots and comfy clothes, with jackets and beanies, and Grandma with her walking stick, and are making our way down the path past the graveyard that leads into the woods. The woods is really everywhere, here–in this town, it feels more like the woods are letting the town in instead of the other way around–but this path leads out deeper into the woods, where there aren’t any houses, and where the creek winds around lots of mossy rocks and pines, and the rocks grow into giant boulders as the path gets steep and snakes its way up the mountain that overlooks the town.
Hank and Tracy have the morning shift for today, and we’ll join them later for dinner, and to close up. I feel guilty about how much time my…stuff… has been taking away from the diner. How much my personal haunting affects everyone else. But Grandma looks relieved out here. She stops to close her eyes and look up into a patch of sun, feeling it on her skin, and breathing deep.
“This is better, isn’t it, love?” She asks.
I take my own deep breath and nod.
It smells of pine needles and moisture and leaves out here. You would think the death and decay of the season would smell rotten, or of fear, but it doesn’t. I try to let it sink into my bones, to fill me up.
Remember how the sun feels?
Remember how alive it is out here?
Remember this is real, too.
The pine needles soften our footsteps, and with the trees towering overhead I feel like I’m entering some kind of forgotten place of worship. I make as little noise as possible, and just feel it around me–the air, crisp but still inviting, and the sound of water somewhere in the distance, always alive as it tumbles down some rocks that have been there longer than any of us.
Grandma turns to smile at me from under her knitted beanie.
I smile, too.
We’re back.
I follow Grandma along the trail. It’s faint in spots, but she always knows where we are, and has been coming out here since she was a kid. We’ve done this hike plenty of times before, and you’d think more people from town would, too, since it’s pretty much in their backyards, but I’ve never actually seen anyone else out here, and I’m grateful. It’s another little sanctuary, like my corner booth, but much bigger, and with more squirrels and less coffee–although we often bring our own thermoses. It’s a long hike, if we want it to be.
Today, we do.
I packed our thermoses of coffee and tea and some PB&J sandwiches in my backpack, and Grandma smuggled some leftover chocolate muffins from the diner in her pockets.
There’s nothing like food and nature to bring you back to yourself.
We haven’t been talking much at home, and we don’t out here, either, but I know we’re both listening, and feeling, and soaking it all in together, and it doesn’t feel like we have to say anything at all again. We spend an hour or so like this, weaving our way past knotted trees and mossy boulders getting bigger and bigger as we get further from town.
We’re just about to the place where the trail forks, where we usually turn back, or go to the left if we want to make a loop through a little valley where the river cuts through before we head back home. On the right, the trail climbs higher up the mountain, and meets up with the river where it’s deep and wide, and drops off a small cliff into a green pool at the bottom. The trail goes all the way up to the top of the waterfall where you can sit amongst the boulders and trees and just let the roar of the water fill you up. It’s been my favorite spot since we first went there this summer, but usually Grandma doesn’t want to go there–I think the big drop-off must make her nervous. But today, at the fork in the trail, she’s forging ahead, like she’s on a mission. We take the trail to the right, and twenty minutes later, huffing and puffing a little, we’re at the top, with a chilly mist from the falls drifting through the trees, and thick moss underfoot.
I find a dry boulder and pull out our lunch, but Grandma wanders around for a minute like she’s looking for something specific, then disappears behind a little group of pine trees, and sticks her head back out to beckon me. I pack back up and follow her. I never would have even known this spot was here–she’s found a flat boulder that backs up against the pines, with a little stack of smaller rocks piled up on it. They must have been placed here a long time ago, because they’re covered with moss now and almost look like one rather precarious, crooked rock balancing there. It’s a nice spot, with the pine trees leaning overhead, sheltering you from the trail, and a view of the water moving swiftly toward the falls in front of you.
We sit and watch the water flowing for awhile, and eat our lunch.
I’m glad we came here today. I sign. Things feel much less confusing up here. Nature can do that–make things simpler, calmer.
Grandma nods. She’s been very quiet, staring at the water.
“I’ve been coming here a long, long time.” She says.
Did you put this here? I ask, pointing to the stack of mossy rocks, half joking. For some reason it doesn’t seem like something I expect of her.
She pauses, remembering.
“Yes. I did.”
She places a hand on it gently, feeling the moss. I reach out to touch it, too, and I’m not sure I should have–my hand there next to hers seems upsetting to her, somehow.
She takes a deep, shaky breath in. “A lifetime ago now.”
I pull my hand away and study her face. She thinks for a moment, forehead crinkled, and shakes her head as if to move bad thoughts through it. They seem to drift away down the river in front of us, because she turns to smile at me, and reaches out to stroke my hair.
“You know, your mom liked it here, too.” Grandma says, and laughs. “She used to sneak up here all the time and didn’t think I knew about it.”
She turns to lean toward me, eyes twinkling, as if telling me a secret.
“But of course I knew! I know things about this place she never did.”
I wonder if Mom came up here with Dad. If they met here, on their way out of town. I don’t know the whole story, but I know Mom and Dad left together–they ran away in the middle of the night, even. Mom used to tell me that bit, laughing at her teenage self a little, but still starry-eyed at the romance of it. That part of her story seems eons away now, and I wonder how many different kinds of stories begin and end, all in the lifetime of one person–how a teen romance could turn into such a nightmare later, and still be part of the same life.
“But she always wanted more than this, your mom.” Grandma continues. “Always looking for adventure. Always wondering what else was out there.”
What about you, Grandma? I ask, Did you ever want to leave?
“I almost did, once.” Her smile fades and she pauses, remembering, stroking the moss on the cairn beside her. “But no, chick. I like it right here. Always have. This is where I belong.”
We watch the water again for a long while in silence, and I wonder with a pang in my heart what else Mom would have wanted to do in her life. What adventures she would have gone on.
Finally, Grandma checks her watch. “We should get going.”
We pack up to move, but I see her staring at that cairn again as I zip up my backpack, sad lines on her face.
On the way back, we’re in a bit of a rush to make sure we can change clothes before our shift starts at the diner. Grandma’s hurried ahead on the trail as we come down the mountain, and I’m scrambling to keep up, looking down at my feet as I go so I don’t stumble over the rocks hidden in the leaves. We’re in the part where the brush gets thicker and it’s harder to tell where the trail is, and I lose sight of her purple hat. I push forward, thinking I’ve just fallen further behind than I thought, but still don’t see her. I spin in place, on tiptoe, scanning, but there’s only trees and rocks and squirrels, and I don’t hear her, either.
I’m starting to panic a little. That part of me that jumps to horrible conclusions is waking up with a gasp, ready to start running away with any little thing.
Grandma’s gone so far ahead of me, I’m lost. Or she’s tripped over a rock and broken her leg. Or she’s hit her head.
I picture blood on the ground, and I lose it.
When we go on hikes, I carry a whistle around my neck, in case of emergency, but I’ve never had to use it before. I blow on it, hard.
Nothing.
Three times.
Still nothing.
Heart beating fast, I try to get my bearings. I think I know roughly which direction we were going, and I set off that way, trying to talk myself down as I go.
It’ll be fine, I’m just falling behind a bit. She’ll be right around this tree.
No, right around that tree. Just keep going.
That boulder–she’s behind that boulder.
Did we pass this one on the way here? I think so. Still panicking, I start to run around it in a circle to see if I can pick up the trail–and I bump right into Grandma.
But this isn’t right.
She must have just been standing there, hands over her ears (to block the sound of the whistle?), and she spins around, fast, and afraid.
I swear she’s looking right at me, but doesn’t seem to find any answers in my face.
“Where…” Her hands are coming down from her ears, shaky and confused, fluttering like she’s had a terrible fright.
What’s wrong? I sign, my own hands shaking.
She doesn't seem to understand at all.
“Where.. …are we?” She’s not even looking at me now, just around at the woods, but not with purpose–just fear and confusion. “Where’s the baby?”
Baby? I sign.
She doesn’t understand, or even register my attempt to communicate. She grabs my shoulders– for steadiness or for fear, I don’t know.
“Did he take her? He took her, didn’t he?” She’s shaking me, panicking.
I struggle to reach into my pocket for my notebook, to write to her:
“It’s okay Grandma. There’s no baby.” But it’s barely legible–her shaking hands are still on my shoulders.
And she ignores the notebook when I try to hold it up for her, turning away from me again.
“Where? Where? The baby…” She’s looking around at the woods frantically, taking a few steps one way, then the next. And she’s so afraid.
How is it in these moments, time slows down, and you can think a million miles a minute like it’s nothing?
This isn’t stress. Of course it isn’t just stress–and I think somewhere, deep down, I’ve known that, but I’ve hidden it from myself, like so much else.
I didn’t want to know.
But this is so much worse than forgetting you’re making cinnamon rolls.
“Where? Where?” She keeps repeating it, looking for something among the trees.
I have to speak. I have to try–she’s not responding to anything else.
I try to just say “Grandma,” but it’s like there's a wall in my throat. I’ve never been more frustrated with myself–with how much worse I make everything.
Phoebe’s voice, from the Team Meeting, rings in my head: “If you want to make progress, you’re going to have to try a bit harder.”
Try harder, June. You have to.
I take a deep breath and give it everything I have.
Nothing.
Grandma’s wandering further away, and I follow desperately. I feel like I’m watching a child lost in the woods, and my heart is breaking.
Tears are streaming down my own face now, though I didn’t know I was crying, and I’m straining so hard to talk, the world around me blurring, and I lose sight of her again. I try to just scream–not even say her name. There’s a kind of grunt, deep in my chest, but nothing more.
Wait–the app! I scramble to pull out my phone as I hurry after Grandma–where is she?
My phone’s in my hand, ready to type, when I see her behind a tree just ahead.
She turns to me, smiling, and laughing, like nothing’s happened.
“Found the trail, chick! You’d think I’d know the way after all these years.”
And just like that, she keeps going.
I can’t move for a moment as it all catches up with me, my phone frozen in my hand, a half-typed “Grandma, wait” on the screen. Her purple hat leads the way, bobbing merrily along ahead.
I know what this is now. It isn’t stress–it was never just stress. The flashes of confusion in her eyes, and the struggling to remember, and the times she feels like she’s a million miles away.
I don’t know what the right word is (dementia? Alzheimer's? Does it even matter?), but I know what this means.
How is it, when something even worse than what I imagined is happening, that I’m strangely calm? It’s like the panic coursing through my body is more familiar than any false sense of calm I’ve had over the past year. Like my body and my brain only know what to do, and how to be, now, when things are terrifying and wrong–so wrong. And despite my shaking hands and the tears that found their way down my cheeks without my knowledge, I know exactly where I am and what’s happening and what needs to be done. I’m clearer than I’ve been in ages.
I hear Phoebe’s voice in my head again: “I don’t know what this will mean in the long term, but I know you’re old enough and have been through enough to know it’ll mean something.”
She’s right–I do know.
If they find out, they’ll put us both in Homes.
Nursing for her, foster for me.
If I was on thin ice before, it’s cracking under my feet now. I can hear the dark water underneath, waiting for us both with open arms.
I think of the diner, and school, and Gemma, and mornings with Grandma at the kitchen counter and our quiet morning walks past all the dark windows and the few that glow as people are waking up and the way Grandma puts hot cocoa in front of me at my corner booth and Hank flipping the turner behind his back and Baloo rubbing up against my stocking feet coming down the stairs.
It all feels so fragile, now.
And Grandma the most fragile thing of all.
As I follow Grandma through the woods, our footsteps muffled softly by the pine needles, and the late afternoon sun peeking through the tree branches, I feel like a completely different person than the June that came this way a few hours ago. It’s all upside down and backwards.
Grandma used to keep it all together, this mess of a life we have. She’s the backbone–anyone could have told you that.
But as I follow her back, watching her carefully, I know that’s all changed now.
If we’re going to stay out of those Homes, I have to be the backbone.
I have to keep us together.
I have to keep us safe.
All of us.
It’s my turn.
I wipe my cheeks and put my phone back in my pocket. I keep my eyes glued to Grandma ahead. I hitch Mom’s body back up onto my shoulders, stand up tall, and carry all three of us down the mountain.
But later, as I fall asleep, I can’t help but wonder–
What baby?
Graphic Novel Development:
PHOEBE AND MRS. STANFORD CHARACTER DESIGN
I enjoyed sketching Phoebe as a sort of warm but stoic real-life Ms. Frizzle with lots of texture and button ups and sweater vests instead of themed dresses. I think as I develop this story more, Phoebe might need a little more time to shine, I just didn’t have time to get all the balance right. But I love how now drawing these characters gives them more gravitas, more sense of being and roundedness, even in my own head as I re-read (and record audio for) what I originally wrote in a flash.
I’m not sure I captured Mrs. Stanford’s constant state of exhaustion yet, but it’s a start! She’s one of these characters I didn’t really have a clear mental picture of writing her, so it was nice to just sit down and see what she wanted to be as I drew her.
STARTING TO VISUALIZE WHAT IT FEES LIKE
This story deals with a lot of difficult experiences, including June’s PTSD. This week I’m starting to explore what visualizing things like panic, dissociation and grief could look like in Things Not Said as a graphic novel. I’ll be spending a fair amount of time on this over the next few weeks, but this is a start!
If you’ve been through trauma of any kind, grieved a deep loss, or experienced mental health difficulties, it can be really hard to communicate that to other people in ways you actually feel understood—especially if they haven’t experienced anything similar themselves. These things are invisible to others, which can make us feel invisible, too. It’s hard to explain to people, the depth and visceral nature of it—how it feels to be living it every moment of every day. To me, horror is really one of the best ways to capture what a lot of these real world experiences feel like through story (even though I can’t really handle much of it myself).
E.M. Carroll’s graphic novels A Guest in the House and Through the Woods are great examples of this, and definitely inspired my approach for communicating June (and Imogen’s) experiences.
I started off this week with a piece to try to show a bit of what the rising panic June feels at the Team Meeting feels like—and I realized re-reading it that both people with anxiety and/or rejection sensitive dysphoria might recognize this feeling, too. June is trying so hard to keep all the thoughts and panic in, but they take over:
I already use a lot of blood imagery in the prose text, but it feels like it’s reaching a new level in graphic novel form. This next spread concept takes place after the Team Meeting and June’s talk with Phoebe, where we first get a glimpse of how June feels carrying her Mom’s memory (and her own trauma) around with her:
Obviously I didn’t get to really finish these fully, but I love how the visuals already really lean into the pain I tried to express in Things Not Said. It feels like it brings it more viscerally to the surface, and hopefully helps it sink in more, so anyone who has felt anything like June can feel seen and understood in it.
Sometimes people I know think and talk and act like expressing pain is bad—that any overt emotion is a bad thing, but it’s not. We have to feel everything before we can heal from it, and acknowledging the depth of it is a very important part of that. That is the core of this story, and of showing June and Imogen’s trauma in these ways. Being honest about our trauma (to ourselves and each other) is how we begin to heal.
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Please note I had no time to do research for how this would actually work in June’s situation, so I’m sure many of the logistics here may need to be tweaked further down the road! I wanted to keep the focus on the story most of all, and as a graphic novel I wouldn’t be spending panels on too many nitty gritty details, so I left it be for now. Part of the point of writing this story and getting it out there so quickly was to push past the fear of getting everything wrong and just get something on the page—I can research and edit to improve what’s there, but I can’t build on what doesn’t exist. That being said, any resources you can share are always welcome!
I enjoyed doing a collective brainstorm in Notes this week to come up with a market name! Thanks to
for this one, and to and for joining in with ideas! It's pretty magical to be doing so much writing out in the open, and to share ideas with you all as we discover more of this story together. Maybe we can use some of our other ideas in future stories. 🧡 ✨Thank you!!
🥞