One Last Thing ✅

twenty-six things

"Will Liliana Crane please report to the counselor's office?"

It is halfway through the period.

Crouched in the corner a bathroom stall, I have spent the last twenty minutes staring at the graffiti on the ugly mauve walls. Instead of a yearbook, I've decided, the school should just take pictures of the stuff scribbled in Sharpie on the walls of the girls' bathroom. 

It's so much more truthful.

I think it's kind of weird that they're not calling me to the main office so Mr. O'Hara can yell at me for skipping. I would actually prefer talking to him instead of the counselor.

But, really, what are my alternatives?

I've got a bad arm, no transportation, and really nowhere else to go, if we're being honest here. Sighing, I pick myself off the floor and trudge toward the counselor's office. She's standing in the doorway, arms crossed over her sweater, eyebrows raised.

"So you are here," Mrs. Feldmann says. She's a tiny woman with short, dark hair, but for as little she is, her voice is powerful.

"I am here."

We stand there for a minute, sizing each other up, and then she pushes open her office door. "Come on in."

I follow her into the room and take a seat across from her.

She sits down and regards me with a grave expression. I expect her to launch into some typical school counselor bullshit like looking at the bright side and seeing the glass half-full, but instead she just shakes her head.

"Well, shit," she says.

I feel my eyebrows jump.

This is not what I was expecting, the lady who walks us through our registration process every spring, the woman who supervises the lunchroom and yells at kids to stop throwing Cheetos at each other.

She rubs her temples.

"Lil, I don't even know what to say to you."

I look at my lap. "Yeah."

She leans back and runs her fingers lightly through her hair. "I'm trying to think of the right thing to say. You know, the things I learned in school, how to support people going through these kinds of crises. But you know what?"

"What?"

She meets my eyes. "It's bullshit. All of it. There's nothing I can say to you that will make this better. I can't even imagine what you're going through right now."

Tears prick at my eyes.

I could sit stoically through a lecture on how I need to just carry on and hold my head up high, like Grams said, but this I don't know what to do with. This compassion, this understanding. It's so unexpected.

Mrs. Feldmann leans over her desk and offers me her hand.

I'm not sure what to do. I've never touched a teacher, let alone held one's hand. But it seems like it would be impolite to just pull away, so I awkwardly reach out and take her hand in my good one. It is warm and soft and dry, the way you'd expect a high school counselor's hand to feel.

"You can talk to me," she says.

I look away, ashamed by the rush of emotions that her words have stirred in me. "I'm fine," I say, still not looking at her.

She leans forward. "I highly doubt that."

I don't respond.

"The way you just kind of turned off when I asked you how you were doing just now. That's not real. You're covering up what's going on inside, maybe even to yourself. But the only way you're going to get through this is to let yourself feel it. Really, truly feel it."

To my dismay, I feel tears stinging my eyes. I don't want to cry in front of Mrs. Feldmann. I don't like to cry in front of anyone, let alone authority figures. It makes me feel out of control, like I might literally crumble into a thousand pieces and scatter all over the floor and have to be swept up by some poor custodian at the end of the day.

The problem is, when I get started, I just can't stop. The tears come, and then the sobs, and before you know it, I'm doing the ugly cry all over Mrs. Feldmann's office, snotting and snorting and all.

She doesn't say, "It's okay."

Or, "There, there."

Or, "I feel your pain."

She doesn't say anything, just grabs a box of tissues from a nearby table and hands them to me. I pluck out a few and use them to blow my nose.

"I'm sorry," I say. "I just haven't..." My voice trails off.

"You haven't cried it all out yet?"

I shake my head, the tears still streaming down my face. It's like I can't shut them off. It feels like they'll go on forever. And it's not about one thing, like my mangled hand or the fact that Mrs. Edwards's daughter doesn't have a mother to read her bedtime stories anymore or that my relationship with Jared will never be the same. It's like everything that's wrong with my life multiplies and piles up, into a mountain casting this huge shadow over me and I don't know if I'll ever see the light again.

"You have to let yourself cry," Mrs. Feldmann says softly. "I know it sucks, but you've gotta do it. Give yourself permission."

So we sit there for a while, and I cry and cry and cry until I think I'm dehydrated from shedding all those tears, and then I collapse into the back of my chair and stare at the ceiling. I keep expecting her to make some excuse about having to go pick up her kids or something, but she doesn't. She just sits there until I am silent.

Then: "It's going to be bad for a while. It just is. I'm not going to tell you it's going to get easier, not for quite some time, but eventually it will. You've gotta trust me on this."

I hear her words, but I don't comprehend them. The concept of things "getting better" seems so slippery, the words slip out of my grasp before I can even make sense of them. Everything is murky. I'm stuck in a swamp, and there's no getting out, no matter how hard I try.

"Look," Mrs. Feldmann says, "I'm here, whenever you want to talk? Okay?"

"Okay," I whisper finally.

"So do you think you'll be able to make it to class? I could write you a pass."

I look away, fix my eyes on the photograph of her children. "I..."

My instinct is to lie. To describe standing in the doorway of Mrs. Edwards's classroom and how my airways seemed to constrict and how the walls appeared to close in on me, it makes me feel naked. Vulnerable. But then I remember that Mrs. Feldmann just said the word shit and told me I had to cry if I was ever going to get through this.

It felt real.

She feels real.

I decide to take a chance.

Leveling my gaze at her, I say, "I couldn't go into her room."

For a moment, there is silence.

"You couldn't... oh, Jesus." Mrs. Feldmann turns to her laptop, mashes a few buttons, stares at the screen. "You had her first period, didn't you?"

Had.

Such a simple word, and yet it makes it difficult for me to breathe.

"Yeah," I manage.

"God, Liliana, I'm so sorry," Mrs. Feldmann says. She gets out of her chair, skirts the desk, and puts her hands on my shoulders. "I should have thought of that. Of course we'll transfer you to Mr. Cooper's class. I'll switch your schedule right away. He teaches Senior English at the same time. It will be no problem, no problem at all. Will that help?"

I only know Mr. Cooper from seeing him in the hallway sometimes before school and what Abbott, who has him for English, told me. He sounds like a pretty good teacher. In any case, it will be better than forcing myself to walk into Mrs. Edwards's room every day.

"Yeah," I say finally. "A little."