Oh, Shenandoah

JAKE- It ends, it ends, finally it ends. Thank you to everyone who made this memoir possible. Also, thank you for reading. It was my pleasure to mildly entertain you for a few minutes. Enjoy the close.

Haven’t We Met?

Senior year was a lonely time for me. I had school during the day and then it was over to Christy’s apartment during the evenings. Weekends I worked at the theater, with Christy of course, and then it all started over on Monday. Christy talked about moving into her parent’s house when they moved out of it soon. Oh no, what is going on with me? I can’t really be in this situation. We soon broke up and I was on to some other girl with slightly less obligations attached to her. I was not feeling any better.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” Baggage Man said as we headed for the side exit of the school. The rarely used gem was perfect for skipping out on the day’s last class and going home early.

“Nothing matters any more Baggage Man, it doesn’t matter.”

“What?” he said with a smile.

“I could do anything man, I don’t care, nobody cares,” I said.

“Okaaay,” He laughed. I grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall on the way out the door. BM smiled as he watched me while we walked.

“Nothing matters, lalala,” I said. I yanked the pin out and pointed the hose at the bare field in front of the parking lot. A fine dust whooshed out of the fire extinguisher as I squeezed the trigger. I sprayed left and right until nothing else came out and finished by throwing the thing at the brick wall on the West side of the school. Some kids had stopped and starred, BM and I continued to my car in the parking lot. We did not say anything.

I was not considering consequences for my actions when I went to school the next day. In fact, the first two hours of the day went rather well. It was on my way to my favorite class, Broomball, that I got stopped and asked to join the school counselor in her office.

“Hello, Jacob, how are you?” She smiled and acted overly polite. I squirmed in my chair.

“I’m well.”

“Really, have you been alright lately, or feeling a little down?”

“I think all of us, at times, feel like we aren’t quite right,” I said. It continued like this for a few minutes. I must have impressed her because at one point she broke from whatever standard operating procedure manual that she was using and said, “You are kind of a poet, aren’t you?”

I said nothing. “What would make you happy, Jacob?”

“Well, I would like to go to my next class.”

“Oh no, that’s not possible, Jacob.” It was then that I noticed the two police officers in the doorway, more or less blocking off any getaway attempt. But I had no intention of running, instead I cried. They told me I needed to go to the emergency room for a psychiatric evaluation. I asked through sobs if my mom could take me instead of an ambulance. They reluctantly consented though I heard later that they were so worried about me being a flight risk that they shut the school down, no one in, no one out, until they got me out of the counselor’s office and off the premises.

My mom was understanding and not upset. The car ride to the hospital was quiet, mostly. After a few hours in the ER I spoke with a psychiatrist for a few moments after which I was free to leave with a prescription for anti-depressants in my hand. That was it, back to school I go. Back to life. I guess the answer to what I was feeling was written on that small piece of paper. How convenient.

No one really talked to me after that, except my closest friends. I suppose word gets around a school like this pretty fast. There I sat, on the Freak chairs in my oversized black jacket. My fifteen minutes of fame were over as I sat and stared, sedated. I looked to my left and caught a glance of Lindsay walking down the hall, headed, no doubt, to talk to her friends at the senior chairs. I burned for her, I absolutely burned. She so much idealized everything that was right: normal relationships, normal friends, normal feelings. I barely saw her these days and if we passed each other she did not look.

Now, I wonder if she would even know my name. If she read this, would she know that it was me who authored it. The building I built for her in my mind was empty. Only me, sitting in the middle of a concrete room, in a chair labeled “Freak,” staring straight ahead. The building I built for her was empty.