“You’re always on the phone, you know,” Mia tells me after lunch on Tuesday when I tell her that I’m going to go make a phone call.
I just shrug sheepishly. “I just like to keep in touch with my family.”
“Oh, that reminds me. Did your brother tell you anything about Renée?” She asks me, her eyes looking up at me with complete hopefulness.
I hate to tell her no but I don’t want to lie to her either. Although, I’m sure that would be the nice thing to do here, to tell her that Penn had checked the hospital and he told me that Renée is fully recovering and everything is rainbows and sunshine but that’s not fair to Mia, so I just shake my head. “He wouldn’t tell me anything. Sorry. I’m not giving up though, I’m still looking for answers.”
“Thanks,” She smiles at me gratefully but I can still tell that she’s a bit disappointed that I couldn’t get anything out of Penn. I smile back at her before walking away to go make a phone call to Niles. I’m not sure if I should or not because I don’t want to be too pesky and call him too much but when I was on the phone with him on Sunday night, I didn’t ask him about Renée and I’m really worried about her and so is Mia so I’m going to call him again.
I go to the last phone in the corner, which is my favorite one because I feel like I have a sliver of privacy when I’m so far into the corner and privacy is a very rare thing around here. I dial Niles’ number and listen to the ringing until he answers the phone.
“Hello?” He answers.
“Hi,” I supply softly. “It’s Ana.”
“Oh, hey,” He greets me, sounding slightly chirpy. “What’s up?”
“Nothing really,” I sigh. “I just have a quick question.”
“Sure, go for it.”
“Okay, well I think I told you about my friend who’s in the hospital,” I say. “I was wondering if you could find out how she’s doing?”
“Isn’t that Renée?” He wonders.
“Yeah,” I confirm. “Do you think you can do that?”
“I already know how she’s doing,” Niles tells me. “I overheard my sister talking about it the other day. She’s scheduled to come back to Bernard’s next week, I think. I’m pretty sure she’s going to be stuck in solitary for a while though.”
“Really? Wow, that’s great. Mia will be really happy to hear that,” I say with a relieved breath and a little smile because I was so worried that she wouldn’t be coming back here. Even though she’ll be in solitary for a while, at least she’s going to be here and we’ll probably see her again after a while. “Thank you. Don’t tell anybody that you told me that though.”
“Nobody even knows that we’re talking at all,” He reminds me. “I wasn’t going to tell anybody. Why? Are you not allowed to know?”
“Dr. Lombardi thinks that worrying about Renée will interfere with my recovery or something. It doesn’t make any sense but she convinced my family not to tell me anything and we’ve just been so worried about her,” I explain to him. I wonder if I should ask him about the case too, to see if Gavinberg got out on probation or not, but I’m suddenly realizing that I’m not so sure if I want to know the answer to that anymore. Maybe it’s best if I just don’t know because I know that I’ll worry way more about it if I know for sure. I also don’t want Niles to know about my past and if I asked him to look up Gavinberg, I’m sure he’d be able to piece it together. “And I don’t want you to get in trouble for telling me.”
“I don’t mind getting in trouble for you, Ana,” Niles assures me. “But we’re not in trouble yet. If Sophie found out that we’re talking on the phone, she’d be pretty pissed though so we really have to keep that quiet.”
“Of course,” I agree. “I’d be embarrassed to admit that I’m talking to you anyway.”
“Are you trying to tease me?” He wonders in amusement.
“I don’t know, I was trying to, I guess,” I blush in embarrassment because I was just trying to be funnier than I usually am but I’m not so sure how that turned out. I really shouldn’t say things that I’m unsure of at all. I just thought that friends tease each other so I was just trying to do that but like I said, I’m not a very good friend at all.
“You did a good job,” He chuckles. “Now, it’s my turn to ask you a question.”
“Sure, go ahead,” I sigh, kind of grateful to get the attention off of me.
“Do you know how to find the area between two functions on a graph?” Niles asks me.
“What? Are you asking me for math help?” I wonder for clarification.
“Yeah, I’m taking this online math class to catch up on my credits but I don’t understand this,” He explains to me.
“You’re in college?”
“I am,” He confirms. “Why do you sound so surprised?”
“I don’t know, I just didn’t think about it, I guess. What year are you?”
“I’ll be a sophomore,” He tells me. “But that’s beside the point here. Can you do it?”
“Are you using integrals?” I ask him.
“Sure. I think so,” Niles mumbles, seemingly confused about the math that he’s doing, which is very understandable because math can be incredibly confusing.
“Okay, well then you’ll have to integrate each function- you know, by taking the anti-derivative and everything- and then subtract the one on the bottom from the one on the top,” I tell him. “Does that make any sense?”
“A little.”
“I could probably help more if I saw the problem,” I explain. “But that’s obviously impossible.”
“So you’re good at math, I take it?” He wonders.
“Well, I’m no college student but I did take college-level calculus in high school, so I guess I’m okay at it. It’s one thing that always makes sense, you know? Like, there’s always a definite answer. A specific goal to reach. I don’t know, it just feels safe,” I say to him.
“Well, to me, it feels like pulling teeth,” Niles jokes. “Remind me to pay you to do all of my math homework ever.”
“Sure thing,” I joke. “I will use it to pass time in the crazy house because there is literally nothing exciting to do here.”
“Oh, come on, I’m sure there’s at least a few exciting things that you can do,” He assures me, trying to be optimistic.
“Yeah,” I scoff. “I won a game of Parcheesi last night so that was pretty awesome. I don’t see how this place is supposed to help me recover, I feel like I’m just rotting away in here like a lifeless piece of meat. Completely un-extraordinary.”
“Well, you’re an extraordinary person so I’m sure that you’ll figure out something,” Niles says.
“What makes you say that?” I wonder. “I’m surprisingly ordinary.”
“Call it a hunch,” He suggests. “Have you added anything to that list that we started forever ago?”
I’m confused by his random change of the subject but I just go with it and answer his question. “No, not really. Part of the reason that I’m painfully ordinary is that reason right there- no reasons to live. Well, I guess that’s not ordinary. That’s worse than ordinary.”
“Just keep thinking,” Niles tells me. “You’ll think of something.”
“You know, for somebody that you haven’t known for very long, you sure do have a lot of faith in me,” I say, leaning against the wall and twirling a piece of my dark hair between my fingers absentmindedly. I check the clock on the wall and see that I have a little longer until my session with Dr. Lombardi but I’ll have to say goodbye to Niles in about ten minutes and that makes me unreasonably disappointed. Talking to Niles is just so easy- it’s not as forced as it feels when I’m talking with just about anybody else. Even with my family, I have to be careful about what I say so that I don’t induce panic or too much sympathy or guilt. Mia’s pretty nice to talk to but I don’t know what her triggers are and I can’t talk to her about any real things because I’m too afraid of upsetting her too. Niles, though, he’s different. I don’t have to worry about him falling apart or him thinking that I’m going to fall apart. It’s just easy.
“Ana,” Is all that he says as if that explains everything but all it really does is just confuse me.
“What?”
“Honestly? You’re right. I haven’t known you for very long and I’m no therapist but you just… I think that you’re special. Not specifically to me, but to the world. You’re special to the world and I think that you’re everlasting greatness will rule the world someday. This rehab center- not a crazy house, by the way- will someday be a blip in your radar and so will I.”
To say I’m surprised in his confidence for me would be an understatement. I have no idea what to say to something like that except to say something that distracts the attention of this conversation away from me. “So I get to be some awesome goddess but you’re just a blip? That sounds unfair to me.”
I hear him laugh a little bit but I’m being serious. I’m no better than he is, so his theory really doesn’t make any sense. “Life isn’t fair, Ana.”
“Don’t I know it,” I sigh. “And I appreciate your theory- it’s very flattering- but also very false. I’m not going to argue about it though, I’m just going to say thank you and we can move on. When does the hockey season start?”
“Mine or the NHL?” He wonders.
“I don’t know, both.”
“Well, my season starts when school starts, so at the end of August. The NHL season starts around the beginning of October. Why do you ask?”
“I was just wondering when the Kings are going to eat the Ducks for lunch,” I tell him jokingly.
“That’s so funny,” Niles says sarcastically. “When the season starts, you’ll see how wrong you are, Ana.”
“Ana?” I hear a girl’s voice in the background of the call. It kind of sounds like Sophie, which is really bad, I think. “You’re talking to Ana?”
“What? Soph, no, of course I’m not,” Niles refutes with a scoff. “You told me not to talk to her, remember?”
She says something else but I can’t really understand what it is.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Terrance. Bye,” He says into the phone before abruptly hanging up. Still really confused about what just happened, I put the phone back on the receiver and walk away from the phone bank. I wonder if Sophie is going to take his phone away or something to make sure that we don’t contact each other but I don’t think she’d do that because that’s kind of unreasonable. I wonder if they might throw me in solitary or something for going behind Sophie’s back but that’d be kind of harsh considering it wasn’t an official rule and it’s not like she told me not to talk to him. I still feel guilty about getting Niles potentially in trouble though.
I wander down the hallway towards Dr. Lombardi’s office because it’s almost time for my session and while I walk, I wonder if it ever occurred to him that I don’t want him to just be a blip in my radar. Maybe, I want him to be a big whopping ship, anchored right in the center.
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Song: Battle Scars by Paradise Fears
Picture: A crappy banner that I decided to make