15: MY INTERPRETATION
Larry was looking at me from across his desk, waiting for me to say something funny. And then he would go from there. Make a life point from it. Turn it around against me. I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to give him a reason to say anything bad about me.
“You’re quiet.”
I rolled my eyes.
“What’s the eye roll for?”
“I can never do anything right.” I looked down at my hands. They were pretty dirty, which wasn’t a surprise since I hadn’t washed my hands in a while. My skin felt rough, and it would’ve been nice to have a drink of lotion for them. I couldn’t stop thinking about Murray. He was such a messed up person.
“You do that a lot.”
I looked up at him.
“You look at your hands when you’re nervous.”
“No, I look at my hands when I don’t know what to do.”
“You don’t know what to do right now?”
“I don’t know what you want from me.”
“It would be nice, if you’re actually asking, if we could have a serious conversation for once. I don’t even care about the topic. I would love to hear about a passion of yours. Anything. There is nothing more pleasing for me to listen to someone talk about their passion.”
I laughed.
“Why is that funny?”
“I don’t have a passion.”
“Come on, humour me. Just think about it.”
I thought about it. For real. And even though I was just lazy and didn’t want to contribute at first, when it really came down to it, I wasn’t passionate about anything in life. At all. There was nothing that I would be all that miserable without.
“What are you thinking Valerie?”
“I’m not thinking about anything.”
“No, come on. What’s running through your mind right now?”
“I don’t have a passion. That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Do you believe that or do you just not want to talk to me?”
“I’m talking to you right now.”
He smiled.
I looked at my hands. And when I realized I was looking at my hands, I sat on them.
“What’s something you’re good at then?”
I sighed. “Honestly, this is a one sided conversation. I don’t have answers to these.”
“No? I think you do. You just don’t know the answers yet. And I can help you out. I know something you’re good at. But you probably don’t realize it.”
“Oh yeah.”
“You’re good with people.”
“Are you joking?”
“Come on, Val. There’s something about how you talk to people that is genuine. And you care about them. I’ve seen it with people around you in this program. You let strangers matter to you. What does that say about you?”
“I don’t think anyone matters to me here.”
“No? Then why do you stand up for Tracy McPherson, and why do you let yourself fight with Logan Mitchell, and why do you talk to Murray Little, when he is somebody, like you heard, that can be very dangerous.”
I felt the pressure of my body on my hands. I wanted to pull them out, and maybe get up and leave. But I stared at a spot on his desk, where a mechanical pencil laid on its side with the led too far out. There was no way he could write with lead that long. It would break off.
“Valerie Campbell, whether you know it or not, there is something about you that makes you likable without even trying, and that quality is seen only because you have a genuine curiosity about people and their problems.”
“Maybe I’m nosey.”
“No. You just care.”
“No.”
“No? I think you care about Murray.”
“Hell no.”
“You’re mad about something.”
“Yeah so? He’s a piece of shit. You know that too.”
“I don’t think so. I think he’s done terrible things, but he still deserves a chance at figuring out why he does the things he does. Just like anybody does.”
“That’s bullshit. Bad people are bad people because they make choices that good people don’t. It’s as easy as that.”
“Yeah? Do you think you’re a bad person?”
“Yeah probably. I’m not a good person. I’ve done stupid things, and I’m not going around trying to get better. I am who I am.”
“So since you accept being bad, is that good?”
“No, I didn’t say that.”
“Sounds like that’s what you’re saying. That since you know you do bad things, you’re a better person than someone who does bad things and doesn’t know it yet. I think those are the same kind of person. But the difference is whether or not you’re willing to change.”
“I guess I’m not.”
“Well, that means Murray is less bad than you.”
“I didn’t hold a knife up to anyone’s throat.”
“He didn’t push a 65-year-old woman to the ground either. And he never tried to kill himself either.”
And there it was.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.
“Because I don’t know why you need to bring that up.”
“You did it,” he said. “Didn’t you?”
“I know better now.”
“What exactly do you know better now? That guns are dangerous, and shouldn’t be pointed at anyone, including yourself? That it wasn’t going to be worth it—if you actually did it. And I’m sure you felt something when it was next to your temple, waiting for your move—what was it you felt? I bet you felt a lot of things. I bet your gut dropped, and I bet your heart was racing. I bet your thoughts were pounding on your skull—what would this mean? What would this do? Who would this hurt? Where would I end up? Is this bad of me? I don’t know what to do. That kind of stuff. And I hope for some quiet moment, somewhere deep in your head, that you realized it wasn’t normal to do what you were doing. That there was something wrong with you—is something wrong with you—that you needed and still need help with.”
I kept my eyes over his shoulder, away from his gaze, because if I tried answering him, the wells of tears would pour over. I didn’t want to deal with that, and for him to see how much I was still hurting.
“I just want you to know that you’re no different than anybody unless you actively make the choice to be a better person each and everyday of your life. And until then, you can’t judge anyone that enters into your life. Not one, single person.”
Larry let me leave his office without pulling more words from me. My hands were red from sitting on them. I wanted the family activities to end, but we still had one more until lunch. If I had a choice of activity, I would’ve chose running laps or treading water again over craft hour. Because craft hour, although meant to be a treat for us, was with other groups, and there was one group who had a girlfriend beating piece of shit on its team.
Murray tried sitting next to me but I sat at a wall. Another girl took a spot behind me, and a boy grabbed a spot in front of me. Murray had to sit a couple tables back, and I felt relieved that I didn’t have to be friendly with him. I wanted nothing to do with anyone, which was what the program was becoming about.
Mary and Sharon passed around baggies full of crap. They placed one on each person’s desk. I looked down at mine to keep my eyes distracted so I didn’t have to look at anyone.
“We are making dream catchers this afternoon,” Mary said. She touched the corner of one of her little eyes, and it looked like she had pushed her entire eyeball into her head.
My little baggie wasn’t full of crap like I had first assumed. It was full of dream catching tools. It was a bunch of cord and wire and rope. I wasn’t an artistic person, but in high school I took art because my option was art, drama, or band. I would have taken drama if I liked talking in front of people, but that wasn’t for me, and I would have taken band if I knew how to play something, but I didn’t know how. I chose art because art s
eemed easier than anything else to fake.
My art teacher was Miss Kay. She’d also been my geography teacher that semester, which was common at our school. Teachers always taught subjects they didn’t have an interest in.
Miss Kay was a teacher I was afraid of because she was always telling us to shut our goddamn mouths. She loved to yell, and I didn’t want to make her mad. Miss Kay also liked telling the smart students they were smart, and the dumb ones that they were dumb. One day Miss Kay told me I could be really smart if I wanted to be, and that was her way of telling me I was one of the dumb kids.
She gave me a ‘B-’ in geography, and an ‘A’ in art. I was terrible at art and that was just funny that she did that. She must have done that to a lot of kids because she didn’t know what good art was supposed to look like. She was a geography teacher, for fuck sake.
Lisa Hatcher was at the back of the classroom, near most of her group in the corner. She was taking her stuff out of the baggie even though Mary had told us to leave it where it was. That was what being in a classroom environment was all about. There was always someone telling people to do something, and then there were people doing what they wanted, and it was just a cycle of that bullshit every single day.
Mary wrote the instructions on the blackboard. They were pretty basic, and not as difficult as you would think a dream catcher was to make. She even drew little circle diagrams so we would have something to follow in case we wanted to skip ahead of the directions. Because maybe some of us were good at making dream catchers.
“You can do whatever colour you like for your feathers and beads,” Sharon said. “They are all up on the desk here to pick from.”
One by one we went up and chose the colours we wanted. But instead of using the white twine we were provided with in our baggies, I saw that there was black twine in the bin.
“Can I take some of that instead of white?” I asked.
“Of course,” Mary said.
We traded twine, and I grabbed the beads and feathers that I wanted instead of the ones I was given. Each person got their turn, and then the class was quiet in concentration. Sharon and Mary went around and helped when it was needed, and offered advice to those who didn’t really want it. When Mary came around to me, she looked down and smiled.
“That looks lovely, Valerie.”
“Thank you.”
Everything about it was black. It had black thread in the middle and black cord around the hoop. And black feathers. My beads were a glossy black that reflected a slight purple. The beads that held the feathers were all black, except one, which was a deep red.
“That is a very dark dream catcher,” Sharon said.
“Yes, it is.”
Sharon went to the front of the class while we were finishing up our dream catchers. She began to explain what exactly a dream catcher was meant to do. The mechanics of it. The science behind thread catching your nightmares and trapping them in a web.
“There are many stories about how exactly a dream catcher works, but I like the one I was told when I was little girl. The dream catcher is meant to be hung near light, right over the bed where the dreamer is to lay. And at night, when you’re asleep, the good dreams know how to escape through the knots and cords of the dream catcher, and fall down the feathers to your sleeping self, and the bad dreams get lost and tangled in the web, where they can’t escape. By sunrise, the bad dreams are washed away, and the good dreams were free the entire time.”
I raised my hand.
“Yes Valerie.”
“I am not a huge sleeper. Now, will this help the good dreams get into my head if I’m not asleep.”
“I believe you have to be asleep to dream.”
Some people’s dream catchers were pretty bad. The ropes weren’t tight, and the feathers looked like they were going to fall off. I guess the residents had no interest in it. Murray didn’t have an interest in it. He kept looking over at me.
“Hey Murray?”
He sat up straighter in his seat.
“Quit looking at me. I’m trying to work on my dreams over here.”
He turned his head back to his dream catcher. It didn’t look to be going so well. His feathers were thin, some even falling out, and the web was loose. I doubt it would do a good job of catching any dreams.
“Now, since we are done, we are going to trade,” Mary said.
“Trade?” I loved my dream catcher. I didn’t want anyone else’s dream catcher catching my dreams. It wouldn’t do a good job.
“Logan.”
Logan looked up at Sharon.
“Trade with Valerie.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No. Hers is ugly.”
“No, hers is her own interpretation of a dream catcher.”
“Well, her interpretation is ugly.”
“Come on Logan, be a good sport. I made this for you.” I handed my interpretation of a dream catcher, as Sharon had called it, over to Logan.
Logan reluctantly took it. When she handed me hers, I realized why she didn’t want mine—my black, scary, nightmare one. Because Logan’s was all sorts of different things that didn’t go together. There were mixed up beads, with no pattern. There were feathers of different sizes and fluffiness all over the place, and her web was uneven, which made the hole off centre. It made sense that she didn’t want to give me her dream catcher. Because hers was strangely beautiful.
“Logan, you can take it back.”
“No, it’s fine.” She looked down at the black one, and flipped it over in her hands to see if both sides were just as plain and sad. “It’s…okay.”
I smiled because it was so sad. That I had a colourful, wildly constructed dream catcher. And she was stuck with mine. A black, dead looking thing.
At the end of class, we were instructed to go to the mess hall for lunch. I headed for the classroom door, but before I could get out, Murray grabbed me by the arm.
“Separate you two,” Mary said.
“Yeah, Murray, let’s separate.”
He dropped his hand from me.
I moved out the door. There was nothing he could say that would ever change my mind about him. He was nothing like I thought he was. He was all bad.
“Val, can I talk with you?” Murray followed close behind me. It felt like his feet were going to clip my heels and trip me.
I didn’t stop walking.
“Val.”
I turned around and stopped.
“What’s going on? Can’t we still be friends?” he asked.
“We are both residents in a program for troubled youth. Sure, let’s be friends. Because it’s really going to go somewhere in the real world.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me? More like what’s wrong with you. You’re fucked up. You beat the shit out of a girl.”
“It wasn’t like that. I didn’t touch her.”
“Oh right, it was just the knife that did all the work.”
“I didn’t cut her.”
I laughed. “That is such a relief. Never mind then, you’re a saint.”
“It was self-defence.”
“You held a knife up to a girl’s throat. And not any random girl. She was your girlfriend. How is that self-defence?”
“She was crazy.”
“She was crazy, eh?” I shook my head. It was exhausting talking to people that wanted things really bad and didn’t see things how they actually were. “Why did you lie to me? Why didn’t you just tell me the truth? You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, and we will never know each other in any other way outside of this place. So why couldn’t you just be honest? It’s so dumb to lie about dumb things. Nobody cares. You shouldn’t either.”
“I didn’t lie about anything, and I wasn’t trying to keep it a secret. I just don’t want to talk about it. That can’t be too hard for you to understand, can it? I want to be good,” he said. His voice was shaky. “Just like you do, I’m sur
e.”
“It’s not hard, Murray. You make it seem like it’s hard. It’s pretty fucking easy to be good. You just have to choose so, and you do it.”
“Is that why you held a gun up to your head?” he asked. “Because you were being good?”
“Holy shit.”
I cringed when I heard the new voice behind me. All I hoped was that it wasn’t who I thought it was. But when I turned around, it was the last person I wanted knowing anything nuts about me.
Logan’s eyebrows were high on her head. Her mouth was open a crack. I could see her front teeth. Just the edges. It was enough to see that they were straighter than mine.
“What’s the difference between what I did to someone else and what you did to yourself?” Murray asked. “I don’t see a difference. If you try to hurt yourself, you might as well be hurting the people who care about you.”
“I just can’t trust you, Murray.” I hesitated for a second. “You’re bad.”
“You’re one to talk,” Logan said.
I looked over at her. Because she was probably right. What was the difference between Murray and I? What was the difference between holding up a knife to someone else, and holding up a gun to yourself? Both were very different, but both were wrong to try.
“What?” she said. “You know I’m right.”
“Mind your fucking business,” I said.
“Oh, just like you, right?” Logan asked.
Murray moved ahead of me. He left me with Logan. I didn’t know what was worse. They were both two different kinds of people that I couldn’t exist with.
“Go have lunch, ladies.” Mary pointed down the hall. “You’re late.”
Logan and I headed back to the dining area in the mess hall. While we walked, I placed my hands on random prints spread out across the walls. It was something to do to avoid a conversation with her. But that didn’t mean she didn’t stop talking.
“So you tried to kill yourself, eh?”
“I did not.”
“The facts suggest otherwise.”
There was barely any hallway left to walk toward. It was becoming an open space, with tables, and people. No corners to disappear in.
“Did you think a gun was your cell phone? Were you trying to make a call? I mean, what other reason do you need to hold a gun up to your head?”
There was no easy answer. Not that I was ever going to answer that. But I had thought about it quite a bit since the night I had done it. The gun was sitting in a drawer of a side table. A random handgun at a random party, ready for someone to mess with. And it was loaded because that was what I had imagined it to be when I lifted it up and held it to my temple. It might’ve been empty, but that didn’t matter. I pressed the tip against my skin, closed my eyes, and—-
There were shrieks.
I lifted the gun from my skin, and turned around. There were cops at the door, and one was looking right at me with the gun near my neck, still pointed toward me. He began to yell at me, and then people were yelling my name, telling me to drop the gun. So I did.
In that second, a thousand pound weight had been lifted off my shoulders. The music was still blaring through the house while the party was breaking up, and once the cops pushed me to the floor, a flood of relief washed over me—-
I had scared the shit out of myself.
It felt good to know that I was afraid to die, or that I wanted to live—it had been a while since I’d been reminded of that.
“I knew you were suicidal—the quiet ones always are.”
“I’m not suicidal. I promise.”
“Sure.”
“Why are you bothering me? Go bug Murray. Ask him why he held a knife up to his girlfriend’s throat. That should be more interesting than my story.”
“No, I know that story. It was self-defence.” She took a seat on her side of the table, next to Twin.
I sat down next to Brooke before rolling my eyes.
“Roll your eyes all you want, little girl. If you’re not going to listen to his side of the story, than you can’t make up your own.”
“You don’t know the real story.”
“And neither do you. Maybe he is crazy. I don’t know, but I don’t give a shit like you seem to.”
It was an annoying thing to hear. That Murray might still be innocent. That he might still be a good person even though he held up a knife to someone’s throat. Context seemed to matter. But it took energy to look into things. And it was easier to make things up.
“So what do you think?” Logan asked.
“I think this is all exhausting and I don’t really give a shit. It has nothing to do with me.”
“Then stay out of his business. Actually, maybe quit giving a shit entirely and then I might believe that when you say it.”
I decided right then to do just that. To stop thinking about anyone around me. Because it was too hard. It was difficult dealing with other people’s problems, getting involved, all the while having my own life lurking over me. If I wanted to ever be good, I had to worry about myself and not think about anyone else.