Journey to Psitharis

Chapter 23

Chapter Twenty-three

For the next few days I found myself falling asleep and having dreamless nights. It wasn't a big issue, since I had gone a lot longer without being in Psitharis and, let's face it, things weren't exactly a picnic for me when I was there. But I desperately missed it. More to the point, I desperately missed him. It was strange. I barely knew the guy, actually kind of despised him, yet I had saved his life and gotten to care about him in the span of just a few hours of being anywhere near him. Roland had quickly become the only reason I wanted to sleep, the only reason I wanted to dream of despair and devastation. If I had told one of my "lovely" counselors that they would have had more than sufficient grounds to have me committed or, as Mr. Daniels hoped and prayed for on a daily basis, more than sufficient grounds to have me kicked out and put into one of the alternative schools in the area. Delusional troublemaker, that's what they would call me.

Only I never gave them that sort of ammunition. During my weekly sessions with Dr. Tonsch and Ms. Martin I played the model student. When they asked me to tell them about why I made up stories to garner attention, I would tell them about my bruised psyche, what with coming from an abusive mother and all, and how I wanted so much to fit in with my classmates and to make my teachers proud of me and blah, blah, blah. I studied sites on what answers to give to fake out a psychiatrist so you could avoid a negative report and I spilled just enough guts to give Ms. Martin limitless hope and Dr. Tonsch no end of disappointment. He was hoping I'd be put under just enough duress to blow up, to lose it under the strain of being called a liar, a manipulator and a fraud, and hearing my mother be called an abuser and an enabler. I never did, and I'm sure every time he went to Mr. Daniels with his findings it was always, to their chagrin, bad news for the district. You could never have found a more willing subject for change. I even rubbed salt in the wound by talking about how much I loved the new class, and how I was learning fascinating new things every single day! I felt badly for lying to Ms. Martin, who saw my progress as nothing short of miraculous, but she helped them railroad me in the first place, so as far as I was concerned, screw her.

Besides, I actually was learning some very fascinating new things in that boring, awful class every day. Not from Coach Jones and his stellar fifteen minutes of looking up to teach us the proper way to balance a checkbook or boil a pot of water, but from my new friend Jordan. The day after I talked to Jordan in the lunch room, I took the vacant seat behind her in class. Coach Jones didn't even notice I had moved, which made me thankful for the clueless lout for once. We began writing notes back and forth during class; little things like are you as bored as I am? Or a movie about not doing drugs? In high school? Is he for real? Turned out Jordan wasn't as withdrawn as she appeared on the outside. She just never had anyone to really talk to before me. Lunch had become the best part of the day for us, and the reject table became our safe haven. Every now and then Jordan scanned the lunch crowd regularly to see who was staring at us. "Do you think they're talking about us?" She wondered.

I looked for a moment, but I honestly didn't care much if they were. "Maybe." I responded. "But if they are, they honestly need to go out and get a life! What's worse, the two rejects or the people who are overly fascinated by them?"

Jordan giggled nervously. "My dad is always telling me I need to make more friends. Then he's always telling me how sinful most of the people here are and how I should shun their behavior and continue to look to God for solace. It gets really confusing sometimes."

Jordan had told me a little about her dad over our lunch breaks. Her dad was one of the most notorious, fire-and-brimstone, hard-ass Pentecostal preachers in the area. He was just one step down from those crazy people in Kansas who protested military funerals. The only people Jordan was allowed to hate were gays and feminists; oh, and people who didn't believe the same way they did, which from what I could tell was everyone not associated with the Marshdale Church of the Pentecost.