My Eyes On You

Terrified

He walked away. She followed him; but he wouldn‟t talk to her. With his jaw set, he didn‟t even lift his head to her. She felt like crying, but nothing came out.

From then on, she was chasing him.She stared at him in class.She caught glimpses of him in the halls. He wouldn‟t talk with her. She followed him after school, after the final bell, to the parking lot.

She wouldn‟t go home until she had seen that he had driven off and she had seen as much of him as she could.

She went home and wept. Draped across her bed cross-ways, she felt like every ounce of her energy was slowly draining from her body. Everything that she had dreamed

about, everything that she had wanted, was now crashing down around her head.

But then she looked up at her closet, and was comforted. She located his house on a map of Early Winter and

dreamed about taking the city bus to his neighborhood.Her fantasy was now different; now, after she brought the g*n to school, walked up to him at his locker at

school, put the g*n to his head and fired, she would turn the g*n on herself and do the same.

How could she endure a life in prison with this sickening pain? It was inconceivable.

And then the call came. She was up in her room, playing with her toys, when it happened.

A knock came on her door. “Leah, we need to have a talk.”

She felt nausea slam into her in full force. Terrified, she crept to her door and opened it. Her mother was standing there with a look of disbelief on her face.

Her mother had a severe frown on her face. “Did you threaten to kill someone, Leah?”

She should have said no. It would have been his word against hers, and perhaps she would have gotten off without getting into any trouble. But instead, she immediately broke down and wept.

“I see it‟s true.”

Leah was on her knees. “I‟m sorry, Mom, I didn‟t mean to, I‟m sorry, I‟m so sorry…”

She had gotten a call from the principal. Brendan had told his mother about it, and his mother had called the

principal. She couldn‟t stop weeping. But her g*n was safe.

When she was free from her mother, she picked up the phone and called Brendan. She was weeping so passionately that her voice deepened. It was humiliating, and though she didn‟t want him to hear her in that state, she

proceeded to ask him anyway, “How could you do this to me?”

They told her not to come near him ever again; if she did, she would be suspended. But she knew, even before

they said it, that that would be impossible.

She wrote him a mindless letter explaining why she

threatened him; but it didn‟t do her emotions justice. She

mstuffed it into his hands one day during class, her heart

thudding rapidly.

“You know, you‟re not supposed to talk to me,” he

said.

“I know,” she breathed.

He didn‟t end up turning her in. But two days later, after his mother had discovered the letter in his room, she

was suspended from school.

They took her to a nearby hospital to give her a psychiatric evaluation. She told them she‟d slit her wrists, but when they looked at them, they smiled and said,

“You must have just scratched them. There‟s no scar.”

They sent her home only with a referral to a psychiatrist.

She was spent of emotions by this time. She hated having to talk to a man who thought he knew the inner workings of her mind better than she did. He was a wiry man in his late forties with a gray beard and a salt-and-

pepper crew cut.

He wore Italian suits with red, silk ties. No doubt bought from the money he wheedled away from his patients. His voice was leathery and soft, and his calculating eyes were of an undetermined color behind a pair of wire-rim spectacles.

He had her sit on a leather couch as he took in the details of her appearance, from head to toe. She sat statue still with cold eyes as his glance furtively traced her figure, pausing at the voluptuous swell of her bosom.

“What is it you want?” she demanded, as he straightened his glasses and looked up from his scrutiny. Her posture was defiant and haughty, but of this he seemed to take no notice.

“I should ask you the same question,” he said, in his leathery voice. “This is your session. This is what

you‟re paying me for.”

Leah narrowed her eyes at the man, seeing through his professional front.

“To start off with, tell me why you‟re here. You can‟t possibly have come into my office just to stare at me like that.”

She uncrossed the arms that had been folded across her chest. She didn‟t like this man. She didn‟t like him one

bit. How was she supposed to trust someone who was paid to listen to her?

“I threatened to kill a boy,” she said, throwing her gaze towards the window.

He said nothing.

She turned back to him.

“Isn‟t that what you were after? A personal confession?” She chuckled, but there was no humor in her voice. “Maybe I should start

complaining about how my mother didn‟t breast feed me. Then I bet you‟d be happy.”

“I‟m not a psychoanalyst,” he said.

She didn‟t want to break down in sobs in front of this man, but she felt the surge of bottled-up emotions beginning to well up inside her uncontrollably. Brendan,

Jeremy, the indifference of her friends, the anger of her parents, all came together as she broke down.

Waves of pain washed over her as her body shook with the tension that had been building up gradually ever since she had first asked about the g*n. She cried passionately against the couch as the psychiatrist watched her, not saying

anything.

He wanted to put her on Lithium. Her parents said no way; they didn‟t want her to be on any d**g—especially one

as powerful as Lithium. Leah was torn about the whole thing. She didn‟t want to screw up her body, but at the same time, she wanted to feel better, not so empty all the time.

Her father found out that his job was going to be relocated to another part of the state. They would have to move out of their four-bedroom, two-story house, and Leah would have to switch schools.

And she still had the g*n. She didn‟t know what she was going to do with it.

Maybe one of these days she would

gather up the courage to stick it in her mouth and pull the trigger. The world would be a better place, she thought,

without her in it.

On a blistery January day, thoughts of suicide were crowding her thoughts. She thought of the various ways that she could go about it. She obsessed about it, even dreamed about it. She secretly bought the book, Final Exit, and hid it in her room.

But Leah didn‟t have the courage to kill herself. The only courage she had was in her fantasies, and when she finally made an attempt, it was only with a few too many aspirins.

Her friends found out about it,of course. They let a teacher know.

“Did you overdose on some pills, Leah?”

“I have my period. I had some cramps. I might have had one too many—that‟s all.”

She eyed her suspiciously. “Very well, then. If it‟s only one, then you should be alright.”

Minutes later, Leah took the remainder of the bottle in front of one of Brendan‟s friends. When Brendan found out about it, he went straight to a guidance counselor and turned her in. She was taken out of school and brought to

the hospital.

They didn‟t need to pump her stomach. The bottle of aspirins hadn‟t been full, and so they let her go with a

prescription for charcoal pills.When she got out of the hospital, she was crying.

Tears were dripping down her face, falling from her chin.She wanted to see Brendan again. She needed to see him

again. She persuaded her mother to take her to the last class period of the day.

She was weak from crying, but she made

it through well enough to catch just a few seconds of him standing outside, talking with a group of his friends out

where the buses picked up their loads of kids.