Page 32 of The Last to Let Go
She gives me a shrug.
“Work, probably,” I answer myself. “Look, we have to leave in, like, three minutes, so...”
She stabs the on/off button on the remote with her thumb and hoists herself upright, as if getting off the couch is the most taxing activity she’s ever had to complete. Tossing the remote onto the coffee table, she stands and walks into the kitchen, without a word.
I barely have enough time to drop off my books and backpack, go to the bathroom, wash my face, grab a speckled banana, and pop a couple of ibuprofens before we have to rush downstairs to catch the next bus across town to Dr. Greenberg’s.
“So, first week. How’s school been going for you, Cal?” I ask her, needing to raise my voice over the rumbling bus engine, the road noise, the blur of idle chatter. “Are some of your friends in class with you?” I try.
A single nod, barely discernible.
“Has anyone, you know, asked you... about what’s going on with Mom and everything?”
She turns to look at me, her hazel eyes seeming to turn black as they bore into me. “You mean likeyou?” she asks, more words strung together in a row than she’s spoken to me in months, which is a relief, despite the iciness of her tone. “No,” she answers, slowly turning her head away from me to stare out the window again.
The bus lurches, jerking us forward in our seats, as it comes to a grinding halt to let one last person aboard.
I open my mouth, but I can’t think of anything to say that won’t offend her. I wish she would fill me in on the hidden criteria she’s worked out in her head—which topics are off-limits and which are still fair game. I think back to that rainbow day, when I was so close. I’ve been losing ground with her ever since. We sit next to each other in silence as the bus dips and rocks down one street, then the next.
I reach over Callie to pull on the cord as we near the corner building where Dr. Greenberg’s office is located. We descend the giant steps of the bus, still wordless. I follow Callie into the building, then into the elevator—she presses a button and the number seven illuminates—and the doors slide open with a ding. I follow her through another door and into a waiting room, all the while silent. The tension between us pulled taut like a rope being tugged back and forth. Words only pit us against each other, both of us yanking in opposite directions with equal force.
“Callie! Right on time,” the woman behind the reception desk says, the volume of her voice filling the room, each syllable placing strain on the fragile places in my head, threatening to overpower the soft washout effect of the pills. “Dr. Greenberg will be right with you. Please have a seat.”
There’s a giant fish tank in the corner of the room. How did I not notice that before? It’s taller than me. Not only a fish tank—it’s much fancier than that—an aquarium. A habitat. Bright and luminous, fitted perfectly in the corner like it was built specifically for this room. Real plants swaying in the currents created by the humming, motor-powered water pump, and neon-colored fish swimming in circles, charting a path that leads to nowhere. I know from my brief foray into planning out a future career in marine biology that these are tropical fish. I wonder if fish can miss the sea, even if they’ve never lived there. If something instinctual tells them,This isn’t real, this isn’t what life is supposed to be like.Probably not, I decide as I take my seat near an end table stacked with magazines.
Callie sits down directly next to the aquarium and traces her finger along the glass, tracking the path of a flat, disk-shaped blue-and-yellow fish with long, flowing fins.
“Hey,” I whisper to Callie. “Is that new?”
She looks at me, wide eyed, and shakes her head like I’m the stupidest person in the world. I want to ask her if she likes them. The fish. Ask if maybe she’d like to get a small fish tank at home. But I feel that rope once again between us, pulled, stressed, and inflexible.
A phone rings behind the reception desk. “Callie?” the woman calls out. “Dr. Greenberg is ready for you.”
Callie stands and walks toward the door, says “Thank you” to the receptionist, but doesn’t even bother to cast so much as a glance in my direction. I catch a quick glimpse inside the office as she slips through the door. I see a desk—one of those big, old wooden desks—bookcases lining the walls from floor to ceiling, a leather couch overflowing with big pillows, and a table by the window filled with houseplants, green and sprawling. And then the door closes.
I hear muffled greetings exchanged. I strain my ears. I try to switch casually to a seat next to the door. The woman comes out from behind the reception desk, giving me a suspicious sideways glance as she switches on the sound machine that sits on the table next to the door—the white-noise setting. She could’ve at least given me rain forest or thunderstorm.
She goes back to her desk without so much as a word. I’m half afraid she’s going to kick me out. I reach into my bag for my AP English textbook and thumb through the unit on the Romantics so I have something to distract me from her sporadic glares in my direction.
Behind the door, underneath the foamy static of the machine, I hear a small chirp of a laugh followed by the raucous roar of unselfconscious male laughter, accompanied by Callie’s signature hiccup-cough-chuckle sequence, the kind she reserves only for truly funny circumstances.
Un-freaking-believable.
I slam the book closed on Lord Byron and march up to the reception desk. The nameplate reads simply,INGRID.“Ingrid?” I begin. “After Callie’s appointment I need to speak with Dr. Greenberg about something.” She stares up at me with blank, unblinking eyes. I am so goddamn sick of people not responding to me. “It’s about Callie,” I add impatiently, an audible edge to my voice. “Five minutes?”
She sighs.
“Three minutes?” I feel my fists clench at my sides. “It’s important.”
Reluctantly she shifts her bored gaze from my face to her ancient computer screen, double-clicking her mouse. “There’s a chance he’ll have a few minutes before his next appointment. But in the future you really need to schedule appointments ahead of time.”
I clamp my mouth shut on the words in my mouth.It’s not an appointment.Instead I force a smile and tell her, grudgingly, “Thank you very much.”
Back in my seat by the door and the noise machine, I feel my phone suddenly vibrate in my pocket. I reach for it. I have eight missed messages from Dani.
The first is from 2:20, while I was still standing in front of her:
This is me, busy girl.
