Page 9 of Let's Pretend I'm Okay

DANIEL

Olive hurries to catch up to me as I walk out of the school. “I didn’t see you at lunch. Where were you?”

“Detention.”

Olive’s mouth falls open. “Detention? How? It’s the first day of school.”

I walk toward the city bus stop. Laura’s house is so close to the school there isn’t a school bus route. The school gives us city bus passes instead.

When I slow down, Olive gasps, standing right beside me. “Your face.”

I almost forgot about it, but I doubt it’s that bad. She’s probably overreacting. It doesn’t even hurt anymore.

“My parents are going to flip out when they see you.”

She’s right. As soon as I walk into the house, Laura forces me to sit in the living room to “talk.” I don’t want to, but I don’t have a choice. Rob is using my room for work, and I have nowhere else to go.

“Who did this to you?” she asks, sitting next to me.

I shrug.

“Are you getting bullied?”

“No.”

She puts her hand on my shoulder. “You didn’t get in a fight, did you?”

I shrug again, pulling away from her touch.

“I know you’re upset, but this kind of behavior isn’t acceptable in our household.”

My heart speeds up. “So?”

Laura crosses her arms. “That’s all you have to say for yourself?”

It’s not like they want me here, so why should I act the way they want me to? Why should I act the way anyone wants me to?

“If you don’t want me, kick me out,” I say.

“That’s not going to happen.” She says it like a fact, and it takes me back. I figured she’d be happy to have an excuse to be rid of me.

I tap my foot, staring off.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you? I want to help,” she says.

I don’t know what she wants me to tell her. I don’t really know why I reacted the way I did. I’ve never gotten into a fight before, but my body is on edge. I feel like I can’t breathe and the world is suffocating me. It’s like I’m a kettle on the stove waiting to go off. I need a way to get rid of the anger building inside of me, and I don’t know how.

I shake my head. “I need a shower.”

Part of me expects Laura to force me to sit here longer, but she nods. “Okay. We’ll talk about this later. Go clean up. I know you don’t want to, but we need to visit your grandma.”

She’s right, I don’t want to visit her, but I also don’t want to sit here any longer. I rush to the bathroom and lock myself in there.

I get out of the car and walk into the building. My chest is heavy, like a brick is resting on top of it, refusing to let me take a deep breath; and my stomach is queasy, wrestling with my lunch.

The inside of this building screams old. The carpet is dark green, and there’s purple flowered wallpaper everywhere. There’s at least one mirror on every wall to try and make the place seem bigger than it is, but they do a poor job of hiding the truth. The place feels like a doll house—suffocating.

Laura and I sign in at the main desk and head down the hallway toward my grandma’s room. It isn’t very far, maybe two or three rooms down, on the left. I figured coming here would get easier after a while, but it hasn’t.

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