K Y L I E
Jacob's housekeeper opened the door for me when I rang the bell to his house. I had hoped it would be him, ready to leave for his appointment with Dr. Davis. He hadn't been at school for the past week, but he had told me he would make it to therapy, and I had believed him. Maybe I shouldn't have.
I managed a smile, "Is Jacob home?"
She smiled back at me, but her eyes were apologetic, like she would prefer I was here for someone else. I was getting déjà vu.
She said, "Yes, he's in the pool."
I frowned, "Really?"
"Would you like me to go and get him for you, Miss?"
"Oh, no, that's fine. I'll just go to him, if that's okay."
"Yes, of course," she lied. "I'll show you the way."
I followed her inside, thinking the worst, that maybe the reason she wanted me to wait outside was because Jacob wasn't in the pool at all, but in bed, like he had been last time. What if all this time he had never left his bed?
The woman opened the door to the interior pool and made way for me, the apologetic smile still on her face, and a serviceable voice, "Mr. Miller hasn't been feeling so well, so don't mind him if he says anything crass."
"I won't." I smiled. "Don't worry."
"If you need anything, I'll be in the kitchen."
"Thank you."
I watched her leave and close the door behind her, and then looked back at the pool, where Jacob was lying on an inflatable mattress, sleeping, an empty beer bottle floating next to him. I looked around. There were more beer bottles by the loungers, still inside their crate, untouched. He wasn't drunk. He was just asleep.
"Jacob, wake up," I said, walking over the edge, arms crossed over my chest.
I didn't have to say it again. He woke up suddenly, like he was having a bad dream and couldn't wait for it to be over, and almost fell off the inflatable and into the water.
"Fuck!"
"Fuck is right," I said. "I thought you said â"
He rolled into the water and made it for the stairs, "I fell asleep, I'm sorry. Did I miss it?"
I watched him get out of the pool and grab the nearest towel, shaking my head, "No, but you need to hurry."
"I will," he said, drying himself off and walking towards the door. I followed him back into the hallway and watched him rush up the stairs to his bedroom. "Just wait there."
I did, arms still crossed over my chest, sweating from the heat of the pool, and all the baffling contradictions in me. I wanted to be right about him, and really have him be an emotionally challenged narcissist who saw girls like me as collection toys, but also completely wrong. A part of me wanted to validate my cynicism and another one wanted to debunk it all together, to be proved wrong and be made an optimist, one of those beautiful little fools from the books we read in class.
After a while, Jacob came rushing down the steps in suit pants and a t-shirt, like he had struggled to settle on the dress code for therapy, and just decided to go with both, formal on the bottom and casual on the top. I thought he looked good. I thought he always did. He was holding his jacket in one hand, and his wallet and phone in the other.
"Right," he said. "I'm ready."
I made way for the door, then for my car, and finally for the road. When I asked him if he was nervous, he leaned back against his seat, and turned to me, his hair still wet from the pool, eyes red from the chlorine or maybe from lack of sleep.
"Honestly?" he asked.
"Please."
"I've spent the last few days hoping I would actually feel worse than I do," he said, looking at his hands on his lap. "I have this irrational fear that she'll tell me I'm making all this up, that I really am the lazy piece of shit my family says I am."
"You're not lazy."
He laughed, "I've been in bed for the past week. You have no idea the effort it takes me to get up. I'm failing all my classes. I've ruined my chances of getting a sports scholarship cause I haven't been to practice in weeks, maybe months, I don't even know anymore. Everyone hates me at school. My family thinks I'm as good as dead, and honestly, I wish I did too. I wish I actually wanted to kill myself cause then no one could say I'm making this up, right? They would have to just take me fucking seriously. But I don't wanna kill myself cause I'm a narcissist, remember? Maybe if I could be dead for a few years, you know, just until things get better, then, of course, yes, fucking yes, but not for good. I don't wanna be dead for good. See? I can't even commit to killing myself. That's how fucking lazy I am."
"You don't actually believe that," I said, mostly because I had just decided I didn't. "And you're not making this up, any of it."
"How do you know?"
"Cause I think wanting things to get worse just so you can prove to people that things are bad in the first place is itself proof that things are bad. If nothing was wrong with you, you wouldn't want it to be any other way, right? It just doesn't make sense. You don't really wanna be in bed all day, do you?"
He didn't answer. He just turned his head towards the window and watched his neighborhood turn into a blur as I drove away from it and towards the hospital. I didn't say anything else the whole way there. Dr. Davis would know what to say. She would know what to do.
I sat cross-legged in the waiting room under the hospital's bright lights, a magazine in my lap for something to do, hands sweating, like the back of my neck, and the top of my forehead, and the small of my back, the heat coming from inside me instead of the outside.
I waited, and waited, and waited, until finally, Jacob came out of Dr. Davis' office, his eyes on the floor, his shoulders down, like they were too heavy to hold up.
I got up and walked up to him, the question ready on the tip of my tongue, but he just took his jacket from my hands, and started walking towards the elevator at the end of the hallway. I followed him without a word.
When we were alone in the elevator, he turned his back at me, and took a deep breath, and then another, and another, and without realizing it, he was crying, both hands on his face, his shoulders going up and down with his chest, like he might just throw up too. I felt warm tears in my own eyes and then moved to hug him from behind. I thought he would push me away, tell me to let go of him, but he didn't. He just kept crying.
Later, in the passenger seat of my car, he wiped his face with the back of his hand, and finally said to me, "She said I wasn't making it up."
His shoulders were still down, but I realized as he said it that it was relief that was causing it, and not anything else. He was just relieved.
He laughed, "She thinks I might have a personality disorder, but she wants to me to come in again so we can go over a list of diagnostic criteria or something. She says a lot of people have it."
"Is there treatment or â"
"Yes, she says there's medication I can take, and that therapy helps too."
"That's good."
"She can't give me any treatment without my parents' consent though," he said. "But she says it's obvious I need treatment, even without an official diagnosis."
"Well, your parents have to consent though," I said.
"They think doctors just want to sell pills." He shrugged. "They won't."
"No, I mean legally, they have to," I told him. "You just said Dr. Davis told you it's obvious you need treatment. It would be neglect on their part to deny it to you. They have to provide for your mental health. I'm sure Dr. Davis will agree. She would have to report them if they refused to help you, Jacob."
He looked at me, skeptical, "Really?"
"It's like if you broke your leg and your parents refused to take you to the hospital."
"I guess that makes sense," he said, and after a while, "Thank you."
"I mean, I'm not sure, but Allora's mom is a lawyer, so I'll ask her."
I started the car. He shook his head, "I meant thank you for everything."
I shook my head too, "Don't worry about it."
He leaned back against his seat, "Do you wanna go get sushi?"
"You remembered." I smiled, and he shrugged like it was nothing, and said of course.
I pulled the car out of the parking spot and drove us to a restaurant downtown, where we stuffed ourselves with food and drinks without saying another word to each other, like costars in a play that had gone on for too long, both finally out of the unforgiving spotlight, and instead under the warm dim lights of a corner table where no one could find us, both out of character, sitting there like we didn't know each other at all, or perhaps like we knew each other too well.