The Words We Keep

The Google gods diagnose me with about a million disorders, and as much as I hate to admit it, there may be something to Micah’s panic-attack theory. My late-night internet deep dive tells me it’s like the survival mechanism we learned about in biology. Your body pumps blood and oxygen to your arms and legs, getting ready to either battle or run. Your pulse spikes. Your lungs inflate. It’s simple science, fight or flight.

But what if there’s nowhere to run?

And the only person to fight is yourself?

By school on Monday, I have exactly no muse and no ideas how to help Alice or myself.

I also have zero idea how to act around Micah. We haven’t talked since the beach. If I could, I’d Google how to be normal around a boy after sharing an oddly intense moment atop a cliff while he was half-naked and you had just spilled intimate details about your messed-up mind.

Alas, no search engine in the world is equipped for my next-level neurosis.

And my brain is doing what it does best—taking something shiny and new and turning it ugly.

You’ve already told him too much.

He probably does this all the time—takes girls to the beach, makes them feel endlessly interesting and unique.

And you fell for it.

And you shared.

So. Much.

Idiot.

Idiot.

Idiot.

It doesn’t help that every time I look up, Sam shoots me suggestive eyebrow signals from across the room. So now I’m sitting across from Micah during today’s collaboration session, staring at my empty notebook, trying not to think about the way he looked at me as we watched our art slip away.

“Earth to Lily.” His voice brings me back to reality. “Where are you today?”

With you

on a beach

in the in-between.

“I’m here.”

“Could’ve fooled me.” He’s tapping his pencil on his sketch pad. “You freaked me out Saturday night. Alice made it home?”

“Yeah. If, in fact, the girl they sent back from Fairview is Alice.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means—I don’t know. It means she’s not herself.”

“Yeah, well, Fairview’s supposed to change you,” he says. “Changed me.”

Of course. Micah’s been at Fairview. He probably knows all about getting back to normal after treatment. Probably knows more about bringing the real Alice back than I could ever find online.

“So,” I say, trying to act casual. “Were there a lot of people with bipolar disorder there?”

“Some.”

“And do they, like, treat it, or is it something that takes time?”

He’s eyeing me suspiciously now. “If you want to know about Alice, you should ask Alice.”

“Yeah but, just, how long does the medicine take to work? And what about therapy? She doesn’t want to go anymore.”

“Oh! I know! Talk. To. Alice.”

“Fine. Just tell me this—will the medicine fix her?”

Micah frowns. “Fix her? I’m sorry, has Alice broken?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Actually, I don’t.”

He’s waiting for an explanation with an expression on his face that says I’m a total jerk. All my thoughts of beaches and boys and soul-searching looks scatter to the wind.

He hates you.

Kali flops down in a seat next to me, and for once I’m grateful for her interruption.

“Can you believe about the summer scholarship?” she says.

“Gifford told you?”

Kali smiles, but it’s not really a smile, more like a wolf baring her teeth. Very unsettling.

“What? You thought you were the only one in the running?” Before I can stop her, Kali reaches across me and grabs my notebook. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

She flips open the emptiness. Page after page of jack squat. Zilch. Nada. She turns from the nothingness of my notebook to the nothingness of me, and I want to crumble into dust.

“No way,” she says, her smile becoming even more predatory. “Don’t tell me straight-A Lily Larkin is having writer’s block?”

Damon has sauntered over now. My heartbeat picks up speed.

Do NOT freak out.

I look around for Gifford, but she and Friedman have left the room, so I try to recall the pages of suggestions from my late-night Google search on how to stop a panic attack in its tracks.

Join a club!

Get a fidget spinner!

Just stop thinking.

Mind over matter.

Deep breaths.

I inhale as deeply as I can, but my chest seems to be stuck, and I’m scratching at a scab on my stomach even though I told myself I wasn’t doing that anymore, but it’s not working, and just as I start slipping out of my body, Micah stands up, grabs the notebook, and tosses it back to me.

“Like she’s going to let you see our idea. You’d probably just steal it because, believe me, it’s A-mazing. Right, Lily?”

Micah’s staring at me, offering me an out.

“Definitely.” I sit up straighter. “Amazing.”

Kali flashes her smile-not-smile again and flounces off, her ponytail whipping unnecessarily hard behind her. But Damon doesn’t leave, just grabs Micah’s sketchbook from his desk.

“As long as we’re sharing ideas—”

He covers his mouth in faux shock before turning the drawing toward his buddies. On the page, Micah has drawn a boy, his mouth wide, screaming. And inside that mouth, the same boy, screaming again. And so on and so on, screaming boy spiraling back into eternity.

“Dude. That’s messed up,” Damon says. “They teach you this at the loony bin?”

In one movement, Micah’s in Damon’s face, his hands balled into tight fists, his eyes full of darkness and rage, so different from the boy on the beach. Is this the Micah everyone whispers about, the one who got kicked out of his old school for fighting? And Damon’s telling him to “Settle down, man,” and Micah’s looking around, like he’s waking from a trance, seeing everyone staring at him, and just as quickly as it started, he sits back down, trains his eyes on his desk, opening and closing his fists slowly.

Damon holds the pad out to Micah, who doesn’t even move one millimeter. Damon laughs and chucks the pad into the metal trash can by the door, but Micah just stares at his desk, eyes forward, jaw gritted tight as Damon pops open an energy drink near Micah’s ear.

“Payback’s a bitch,” Damon says before dumping the liquid in after the sketch pad.

I wait for Micah to say something. To defend himself like he defended me a second ago. When it’s clear he’s not going to, I jump up and shove Damon out of the way.

“Do you have to be such a tool all the time?”

He smirks and drains the rest of the drink into his mouth before chucking the empty can into the trash. I pull out the sketch pad and let it drip dry for a second before handing it to Micah. He wipes it with the sleeve of his hoodie, but the screaming boy is all but obliterated.

“Why didn’t you do anything?” I whisper once the onlookers have dispersed. Show’s over, folks.

“Nothing to do,” he says, ripping out the wet pages. “You heard Principal Porter. Probationary means ‘play nice, keep my head down.’ Damon would love nothing more than for me to go all Manic Micah and get kicked out of here. Prove the rumors right.”

He stops trying to salvage the drenched notepad and throws it back into the trash. He closes his eyes a moment, and when he opens them, the darkness is almost gone.

“So,” he says. “Are all the guys at Ridgeline such Neanderthals, or was I just lucky enough to piss off the biggest douchebag in the place?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

“And you dated this king of the d-bags?”

“Who told you that?”

“I have my sources.”

I want to ask more about these dubious sources, since I’ve seen Micah talk to exactly no one since he got here, but I’m hung up on the fact that he knows about my dating history. He’s asked about me.

“First of all, that was freshman year, so it hardly even counts, and second of all, I have officially filed that under things I regret doing in high school.” My cheeks warm up when Micah raises his eyebrows. “I mean, I didn’t do him, do him. I’ve actually never done—”

I take a deep breath. “Wow, I’m saying a lot of things here, and I’m just going to—” I make a sound like I’m rewinding the last few seconds. “And we’ll just pretend like that never happened, yes?”

Micah shakes his head, grinning wide. “No way. That may have been my favorite moment of our partnership so far. Flustered looks good on you, Lily.”

I look down at my desk, biting my lip as my cheeks burn once more, which is all sorts of stupid.

“Well.” I clear my throat. “I’d like to personally apologize on behalf of Damon and all the Ridgeline d-bags. And also, to say thank you. For saving my butt with Kali back there. I kind of froze.”

“Yeah, I picked up on that.”

“But she’s right, you know. We still don’t have anything solid.”

One quasi-transcendent day at the beach isn’t going to beat Kali or help keep my family and future from falling apart.

“Hey, we can’t give up now. Not until round two of Discovering Your Muse with the Micah Method.”

“Oh, it’s a method now?”

“That sounds like questioning.”

“Oh, wow, it’s a method now!”

“Better. Friday after school? My house.”

“Shall I bring my own rake?”

The bell rings and Micah gathers up his stuff, but before he goes, he gives me that I’ve-got-a-secret grin again with his eyebrow reaching upward. “Oh, did I forget to tell you? You’re in charge this time.”

Ridgeline Underground

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Whoa. Guys. Check out Manic Micah’s page @100-acre-wood. Some weird shit on there.

15 comments

WTF

What’s with the cartoons?

Go back to Fairview, freak.

Tuesday, 2:00 am

LogoLily: You up?

100-acre-wood: Always.

LogoLily: What did you mean, I’m in charge?

100-acre-wood: I mean it’s your turn to capture the muse. Show me what inspires you. Teach me something about poetry. Anything.

LogoLily: Micah. I can’t even write a poem. How am I supposed to teach you?

100-acre-wood: I don’t know. Think outside the lines.

LogoLily: 😒

100-acre-wood: You did not just use an emoji.

LogoLily: What? It’s the language of our generation.

100-acre-wood: I refuse. Little cartoons to express emotion?

LogoLily: This from the boy with a profile pic of WINNIE-THE-POOH!

100-acre-wood: officially insulted emoji

LogoLily: hold on

LogoLily: looking for an anti-establishment-damn-the-man-burn-all-the-coloring-books emoji

100-acre-wood: we’re done here emoji

100-acre-wood: (but also, excited to be inspired emoji)