“When I do something great, no one ever seems to remember, but when I do something wrong, no one can ever seem to forget.” Anonymous
The drive home was unbearable. Leighton wouldn’t speak a word to her daughter. Elizabeth was curled in a ball in the front seat staring out the window. It was after eight ‘o’clock. They had been at the hospital for over ten and a half hours. Elizabeth was exhausted and worried about the rumors that were sure to have started around school.
“Do I have to go to school tomorrow?” she asked her mom faintly.
“Of course you do.”
“But, I have a huge Calculus test that I didn’t study for yet.”
“You should have thought about that before you stabbed yourself with a scalpel.” Elizabeth’s eyes swelled with tears. “Don’t start crying on me because you have to go to school tomorrow. Do you cry with you slice and dice up your own body or just when you’re around me.”
“The kids at school are all going to know what I did!” sobbed Elizabeth.
“You should have considered that before you jammed the blade in your arm at school. Did you think you were going to bleed on the floor all day and then get up and drive home?”
“Mom, please stop!”
“Or did you think you were going to walk into your second period class with blood all over your clothes?” Elizabeth cried harder. “You know, Beth, blood doesn’t come out of clothes. Now you’re down a shirt and a vest and it’s your senior year, I didn’t plan on having to buy you more school clothes. Your tuition alone costs your father and me a fortune and don’t you think we work hard enough for you?”
“You don’t even work!” Elizabeth screamed. “You make me do everything!”
“Enough,” snapped Leighton. “When you get home, go straight to your room and study for that Calculus test. You’re going to school tomorrow all day. And, when you get home, you’re going straight to your room because you are grounded all weekend, and the weekend after that and you are grounded until I say you’re not grounded anymore.”
“But Olivia is coming home tomorrow!”
“Apparently you’re too sick to be around normal people when you stab yourself so you are going to be alone until you can handle reality. Do you know how this reflects on our family? What am I going to say to people? What are people going to think about us?”
Elizabeth’s dad greeted her at the front door with a huge hug. “I’m sorry, dad,” she whispered. He nodded at her and pointed towards the stairs. Solemnly, she walked to the second floor and sat down on the top step to eavesdrop on her parent’s conversation.
“Robert, they called in a Psychiatrist. That shrink probably blames me.”
“He doesn’t blame you,” her father consoled.
Elizabeth nodded from the top of the stairs. “But, I do,” she muttered to herself.
“I think we should put her in one of those places,” she heard her mother say.
“Did he say that she’s trying to kill herself?”
“No, he called her a cutter, a self-harmer, a self-mutilator, creepy things like that. He thinks she has a lot of stressors in her life and that’s how she relives her anxiety. How insane is that? Who cuts themselves? I’m shocked there’s even a term for it. I bet it’s that Kate’s idea. Do you know she was smoking on the front porch earlier this week with your daughter?”
“Leighton, cutting and smoking are not the same thing.”
“Well, I bet they are out there drinking and having sex with god knows who,” huffed Leighton.
“Let’s not blow this out of proportion.”
“You weren’t the one at the hospital while our daughter was lying on the table bleeding to death and ….”
Elizabeth had heard enough. There were eight stitches in her arm. That was hardly considered dying. She flipped the switch to her overhead light and threw her backpack on the bed. Analyzing herself in front of the mirror she stared at her torn, blood stained shirt. She didn’t even know where her vest was. The bandage was smaller than the ones she usually wrapped. Stitches stopped the bleeding a lot better than any time she superficially tried to stop it.
She walked over to her window to close her blinds. Across the driveway, at the Bennett’s house, Jack was standing in the middle of his room watching her. The rope to the blinds dangled between her fingers as the two stared back and forth at each other through their open windows. Tomorrow, everyone would be staring at her, not just Jack. After all these years, she had never seen his room at night with the blinds open.
“Jack,” she heard a woman’s voice call. “Are you studying for that math test tomorrow? You have to get a good grade.”
“I’m doing it right now.”
Elizabeth closed her blinds and stared into the shield that protected her from Jack Bennett’s prying eyes. She dismissed the unusual encounter and changed into a pair of grey cotton pants and tank top from Banana Republic. She opened her Calculus book and was asleep before she was even able to review the first page of her notes. She dreamed of someplace warm and sunny. She could feel the sand between her toes, the sound of water splashing all around her. She was happy. She was very happy.
The faint tapping on the window woke Elizabeth up. Her overhead light was still on. Squinting her eyes at the clock, the green glow read 1:34AM. “Elizabeth,” she heard her name. Confused, she scooted over the end of her bed, and opened the blinds at the window. Jack was standing at his open window.
“I saw your light on,” he said. “Were you studying for the Calc test tomorrow?”
Elizabeth rubbed her green eyes. “I fell asleep,” she said pretending to be annoyed. This was the first time Jack had initiated any sort of contact that he didn’t have to. “What do you want?”
“What does N exclamation point mean?” he asked over the driveway that separated their two houses.
Calculus. Of course, he needs Calculus help. “It means that N is factorial.”
“Ok, but what does that mean?”
He didn’t stand a chance on tomorrow’s test. “It’s when you multiply all the numbers less than or equal to N together.”
“So what does 0 exclamation point mean?”
“Umm…” she struggled to gather her thoughts. Without studying, even she was in trouble. “It’s 1. Negative numbers don't have factorials. Neither do fractional numbers. Only positive integers have factorials.”
“Oh, okay, thanks,” he said looking confused. “I’ve been at this for hours. I should have thrown marbles at your window earlier. I’m good. See ya tomorrow.”
Elizabeth closed her blinds and turned off her light. Studying now wasn’t going to do her any good. She was just going to have to wing the test in the morning. She rolled over on her side. Her arm throbbed. It was more sensitive than her legs. Her mom had taken away the pain pills the doctor had prescribed and told Elizabeth to live with the pain she caused herself. Elizabeth smiled. None of that mattered anymore because Jack Bennett had just spoken to her on his own free will.