Forever Mark Read online

My mom, who sat in a corner of the room, had buried her face in her hands. When she came out of hiding a moment later, she’d said, “Carson, this is not funny. This is serious.”

  I’d wanted to argue that a middle-aged woman asking a seventeen-year-old girl to identify a pair of scissors as a pair of scissors was funny, but instead I’d just said, “It’s a pair of scissors.”

  Dr. M had nodded. “And what were you doing with them in your bedroom?”

  “Admiring the craftsmanship of the handles.”

  “Carson,” my mom had said through clenched teeth.

  I’d looked at my therapist and swallowed. I’d known I was toeing a dangerous line and that my answer could mean the difference between walking out a free woman and being strapped down to a bed and wheeled out sporting a straitjacket – a fashion staple that was all the rage in mental hospitals that season – so I’d just decided to be honest. Sort of.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I’d said. “I thought about it, but I decided not to. My mom walked in on me as I was putting the scissors down.”

  It wasn’t totally the truth, but it was close enough.

  Dr. M had considered me for a moment. “Have you ever cut yourself before, Carson?”

  My eyes had flicked towards my mom for an instant, barely a fraction of a second. “No,” I’d said.

  Yeah, that wasn’t at all the truth.

  I didn’t have a cutting problem or anything, but I did have a few lines on my skin here and there, lines from times when a release had been necessary. I didn’t do it all the time though, and I hadn’t done it in a while.

  I had it under control.

  My mom knew I was lying to Dr. M. In the past I’d been careless and she’d seen some scars, so she’d had the ability to call me out right then and there, but she hadn’t. I saw her squirm in her seat out of the corner of my eye, but she’d kept quiet.

  So after that I’d spent the next half hour answering questions to convince Dr. M that my state of mind was stable. I’d kept the sarcasm to a minimum and told Dr. M that I had no desire to cut myself and in that moment it had actually felt true. I didn’t know how or why, but somehow talking to Kellen had taken away the urge. I apparently passed the test because Dr. M ended up letting me go with a warning. She’d told me if anything like that happened again she’d be forced to take things a step further. I hadn’t asked her to elaborate on what exactly that step would entail.

  Before my mom and I left the room Dr. M had told me that in our next session we’d discuss some techniques that I could use when I got overwhelmed or upset. In the meantime, she wanted me to call her if I got the urge to self-harm. I’d said okay but I was pretty sure we were all aware of the fact that such a thing was never going to happen.

  As we walked towards the exit, I’d looked over at Kellen. He’d been slumped in his chair with his baseball cap over his face, obviously sleeping. The old lady in the waiting room wasn’t the only one glaring at him. When I’d turned my head, I saw my mom staring him down too. “That’s just rude,” she’d muttered. “Some people don’t have any class these days.”

  I’d wanted to point out the fact that this was coming from the woman who forced her daughter to appear in public wearing mustard-stained jeans and no shoes.

  My mom didn’t say anything to me the whole ride home, but she spent the next four days watching me like a hawk. It was clear that I was on self-harm watch.

  You know when a baby takes its first steps and the parents frantically rush around the house safety-proofing everything so the kid doesn’t hurt itself while stumbling and bumping around like a little pinball? Well, that’s basically what my mom did as soon as we got home from Dr. M’s office, except when you baby-proof the house you don’t typically hide all the scissors, forks, and knives. Apparently that was precisely what you had to do when you self-harm-proofed the house, though.

  “Mom, where is all the silverware?” I asked when I went to get a fork later that night.

  “It’s in there.”

  “Well unless we’ve been robbed since the last time you looked – ”

  But she just walked out of the room as I was in the middle of talking, mumbling something about there being no injuries on her watch.

  I rubbed my fingers in circles on the sides of my forehead, feeling a headache coming on. I opened the medicine cabinet to get some pain reliever.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I mumbled as I slammed the door shut on the empty cabinet. “I’m going to take a shower,” I yelled. “You know, in case you want to join me to make sure I don’t drown myself!”

  I stomped up the stairs half-afraid that she’d actually follow.

  The next morning I practically had to wrestle my hair straightener away from her. After a tiring round of tug-of-war, she finally gave in. Sort of.

  “Fine,” she said. You can keep the flat iron on the condition that I have to be in the room when you use it.”

  “Whatever,” I said, mostly because I knew she would get tired of that real quick, especially if I decided to gooooo superrrrr slowwwww. I still hid the straightener in my closet for good measure. I wasn’t taking any chances. If I couldn’t straighten my hair, I wouldn’t have to kill myself because I’d drop dead as soon as I looked in the mirror.

  Here lies Carson. She died of cruel and unusual punishment.

  For the most part I didn’t say anything about how crazy my mom was being, you know, besides the whole shower thing. I didn’t say anything Saturday night when I needed to shave my legs and found that my razor had disappeared. I didn’t say anything Sunday afternoon when I went to staple an assignment together only to find that the stapler was staple-less. I didn’t say anything – just silently lost more and more of my marbles each day.

  Tonight, though, I could stay silent no longer.

  My mom had been making it a point to be home for dinner every night since the emergency therapy session. She said she wanted to spend more quality time with me and make sure I was getting balanced meals because “proper nutrition was essential for a healthy lifestyle.”

  I saw right through this Super Mom façade though. What she really meant was she wanted to keep an eye on me and make sure that I was eating and not actually trying to starve myself to death. Friday night had been hamburgers. Saturday was frozen pizza that honestly tasted like saucy cardboard. On Sunday we had gone gourmet with meatball subs.

  But tonight when I came downstairs there was a plate of chicken breast waiting for me at the dinner table. There was nothing but a spoon beside it. I could feel what little marbles I had left drop out of my skull, and you could bet your staple-less stapler and cardboard pizza that there would be nothing silent about the loss of these marbles.

  “Mom, I cannot cut a piece of chicken with a spoon,” I said.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. I thought I had handled the throbbing headache, the hairy legs, and the mommy-daughter dinner dates with quite a bit of grace, but I was all out of grace. This was too much and I was putting my foot down.

  My mom set her plate, as well as a fork and knife, down at the seat across from mine.

  “You can pull it apart with your fingers, can’t you?” she asked.

  I threw my hands up. “This is ridiculous. I’m not a barbarian, Mom. Why don’t you eat the chicken with your fingers?”

  “Because I have not proven to be untrustworthy and reckless with certain utensils.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Did she honestly think I was going to start hacking away at myself right there in front of her?

  I took a deep breath. “If I promise not to slice my wrist, can I please have a fork and knife?” I asked in what I hoped came across as a mostly-polite tone.

  Apparently I convinced my mom that I wouldn’t get blood on the kitchen table because she allowed me to eat my meal like a human being and not like a cavegirl.

  Chapter 10

  Ghosts of a Thousand Yesterdays

  There are people we leave behind
>
  Places we visit and never return to

  Things we say or do that we try to forget

  We try to pack all this up

  The people

  The places

  The things

  We try to stuff it all in a box

  Tape it shut

  And toss in into the basement

  Because the past is the past

  Yesterday was yesterday

  And we don’t want yesterday meeting today

  Sometimes someone else finds that box though

  And they rip off the tape

  And they release what’s inside

  The people

  The places

  The things

  Ghosts of a thousand yesterdays

  And that’s when you see your past coming to haunt you

  I was never a fan of Tuesdays. Most people said they hated Mondays. I hated those too, but at least on Mondays everyone shared a mutual dislike for the day, so people weren’t complete assholes because they were too preoccupied with thinking about how much they hated Monday and how they just wanted it to be over. On Tuesdays though, I swear everyone was all ready to take on the world, while I was still hiding under my covers in bed, wanting nothing more than to go back to Monday when everyone agreed on the world’s extreme level of suckiness.

  If the week were a human body, then Tuesday would be the sweaty back of the left knee.

  So far today had been a typically terrible Tuesday. For the fifth day in a row, my mom had sat and watched me straighten my hair, which was incredibly annoying. I’d really thought she would’ve given up on this by now since watching someone straighten their hair is about as enjoyable as watching paint dry, but apparently my mom had nothing better to do. I was going to have to do something extreme to get her off my back, like straighten every strand of hair separately.

  This morning I got a zero in gym class because I’d refused to run the mile on account of the fact that it was a billion and one degrees outside and I would’ve died. Plus the humidity was out in full force and running would’ve been a disaster for my hair. I had not gone through all the pain and agony of straightening my hair with my mother breathing down my neck, ready to pounce if the flat iron got too close to skin, just so it could get all messed up as I ran in circles like some kind of neurotic hamster.

  After that I’d been called “skank” and “whore” a handful of times, which wasn’t solely a Tuesday thing but today some asshole had actually thrown a dollar at me as I walked down the hall. Now, I’d kept that asshole’s dollar to teach him a lesson on what happens when you throw money at people because you want to be an asshole, so this actually would’ve been the highlight of my day, but when I went to use the asshole’s dollar to buy myself a bag of pretzels, the vending machine ate it. So I had no pretzels and no dollar and I’d wanted to bite the head off of Tuesday.

  As I walked into math class I couldn’t help but feel that I’d been put through enough already and should be excused from math class on Tuesdays.

  But the minute I entered the room, I was attacked by the enemy Aito.

  “Carson, can I speak to you for a moment before class starts?”

  Why did teachers do that? Why did they insist on giving an order while making it seem like there were options? It’s like “Hey I’m giving you the power to make this decision unless of course you make the wrong decision, in which case I will veto that power and make the right decision for you.”

  I followed Mrs. Aito over to her desk. I mean, did I really have any other choice?

  “I just wanted to let you know that I haven’t forgotten about finding you a tutor,” she said.

  Well, that sure made one of us. With all the excitement of emergency therapy and my mom doing everything but wrapping me up in bubble wrap, I’d completely forgotten about the tutoring thing.

  “It’s really not a big deal,” I said. “I don’t need a tutor.”

  I was 99.89% sure this wasn’t going to work, but my mom was always telling me to be more positive, so I was really pulling for that 0.11%.

  And I figured all that out without a tutor or calculator. Damn, I was good.

  “Yes, you do,” she said, firmly. Her face softened though and I could tell she was quite proud of what she was about to tell me. “I found a wonderful tutor for you. She is at the top of her class and has tutored for me before. She’s been very successful at getting through to her peers.”

  Mrs. Aito paused like she was expecting me to say something. I stared back at her blankly. Unless her top student was a highly attractive male musician or movie star then I just couldn’t join in on her excitement.

  “She was the first person I thought of and I contacted her almost immediately after talking to you,” Mrs. Aito continued when I didn’t respond, her enthusiasm practically bubbling out of her body. It was giving me a stomachache. “At first she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to do it, with all of her commitments and college preparations, but I’m so glad she finally agreed to help.”

  I was so not glad. The last thing I needed was some genius math prodigy making me feel like an idiot and writing it off as community service for her college applications. Charity Case Carson at your service.

  The bell rang and I looked longingly at my desk. “Can I sit down now?”

  Mrs. Aito looked a little deflated. For some strange and unexplainable reason, I think she assumed I would be a little happier to hear about this. “Of course,” she said, the excitement fading from her voice. “Your tutor will be calling you sometime tonight. Her name is Bree Rewins.”

  Please, for the love of jet black nail polish, let me have heard her wrong.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “Bree Rewins,” Mrs. Aito repeated. “She’s going to tutor you. Have you met her before?”

  I felt a mix of anger and anxiety bubble inside me. “Once or twice,” I said through gritted teeth before I went and sat down.

  I had not heard Mrs. Aito wrong. Bree Rewins was going to tutor me. Bree Rewins was most certainly not a highly attractive male musician or movie star, and she was the last person that I wanted tutoring me.

  Now I at least knew why it took so long for Mrs. Aito’s prized tutor to decide if she could squeeze some time for me in her super hectic schedule. I couldn’t believe she’d agreed to do it.

  Mrs. Aito began talking about something to do with triangles that I wouldn’t have understood on a day where I wasn’t totally disgusted with her, so I put my pen to my notebook and began drawing swirls, drowning out her voice as I tried to come up with a way to get out of tutoring.

  There was no way that I would willingly subject myself to math lessons with Bree Rewins, my ex-best friend.

  I spent all afternoon plus the bus ride home thinking and I came up with several plans for dealing with the tutoring situation. Ideally, Bree wouldn’t call and everyone would just pretend this whole tutoring thing was never brought up. If that didn’t happen then I would just tell Bree that I really didn’t need the tutoring. If all else failed then I could always run away to Vegas and become an exotic dancer.

  The clock said 6:24 when I heard the phone ring and saw my ideal plan go up in smoke. It was no biggie though because I’d known it was a longshot. Bree always had this annoying saying about honoring commitments: you should honor commitments.

  So I prepared to put my back-up plan in motion as I reached for the phone.

  When I put the receiver to my ear I heard my mom’s voice. Apparently she’d beaten me to the phone. This was a snag that I not had not prepared for. I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I just listened to what my mom was saying.

  “Bree! It’s been so long since I’ve heard your voice. How have you been?”

  I could hear the evident excitement in my mom’s voice. You’d swear she was talking to a long lost child. She’d always liked Bree, probably more than she liked me.

  “I’m doing well, Mrs. Norton,” Bree said in the ever-so-polite voice she used
with all adults. “Just doing a lot to get ready for college in the fall.”

  “How wonderful!” my mom replied. “Do you know where you’re going?”

  “I earned a full-ride to the University of Florida,” Bree said. “I’ll be playing basketball there.”

  I rolled my eyes. Bree was such a showoff. It was all in the words she used. She earned a full-ride. She didn’t get or receive a full-ride, but she earned it. God, it was like she knew I was listening in on the conversation. Come to think of it, she probably did know. We were best friends for years after all, and old habits die hard.

  “Well that’s exciting,” my mom replied.

  I could hear a slight tinge of disappointment in her voice. I hadn’t filled out any college applications and had no plans to do so. My mom didn’t agree with this, as she thought a college education was crucial to my life. I wasn’t college material though, and so I planned on taking off the day I turned eighteen. I’d get a job as a waitress and rent a crappy apartment somewhere, anywhere, as long as it was far away from here. I had no idea where I’d end up or how I’d get there and that was perfectly fine with me.

  “Yes, it is,” Bree said. “So is Carson there? Our math teacher has arranged for me to tutor her and I wanted to figure out a time that fits our schedules.”

  She just had to mention the tutoring, didn’t she? I could just picture her smug little university-bound face on the other end of the phone. And here I was, about to flunk out of geometry for the third year in a row.

  “Carson needs a tutor?” my mom asked. “For what?”

  The voice in my head was screaming: Abort mission! Abort mission! Skip the conversation and go right to Vegas! I knew I couldn’t do this, though. I’d have to at least try to diffuse the bomb that Bree so kindly planted. I’d deal with that later, though. Now I had to step in and keep her from setting the thing off. Kaboom.

  I cleared my throat. “I’ve got this, Mom,” I said.

  “Carson? I didn’t realize you were on the phone,” my mom said.

  That’s because you were so mesmerized by your dream-daughter.