Original Stuff: What You Get When You Mix....
So, like, one day I'll post actual entries about my life. Today is not that day. Today is a second draft and second chapter of an original story.
Author: Stephanie
Title: What You Get When You Mix...
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 7,143
Summery: What do you get when you mix and insane mother who thinks you can see ghosts, a drunk father whose parenting skills are limited to teaching you how to mix drinks, and a best friend who is the sanest person you know but locked away in a mental clinic? You get Kate, of course, and a list of things not to mix.
Note: I very rarely write original stuff anymore, so any feedback you can offer would be lovely.
What You Get When You Mix...
Notebook #3, List #1 - Kids In ‘Children of the Way’ (sorted by age)
1. Addie & Maddie Ramos
2. Terra Brown
3. Saphira Carter
4. Timber Olsen
5. Tree Brown
6. Kate Blair
7. Kali Smith
8. Starella Roberts
Chapter One
“Ocean!”
There is no easy way to start this story, because it is not at all an easy story to tell. As your own life probably couldn’t be smooshed and smashed and forced into a nice, pretty pink cover for little kids to read at bedtime, neither did Kate live her life so that it would make for an interesting book. In fact, in Kate’s neatly kept list entitled, “Things I Want Out of Life” that a school counselor once made her write out, the goal of having her life read like a fairy tale had never once appeared.
So it might be a bit rough around the edges, and the beginning is not as eye catching as a good, solid beginning should be, but it is where you have to begin. After all, to understand Kate you have to understand her childhood and, perhaps fortunately, it was not one filled with trouble, explosions, murder mysteries, or torrid love affairs. There was the divorce, but Kate doesn’t remember enough for it to be all that interesting and so that doesn’t leave very much. There are parts you might read later that you’ll probably think would have made much more thrilling openings. For instance, it could have started like this:
“Stop!” Kate screams, blood nails ripping through the dashboard as she braced herself for the impact. Her head is spinning, and the list she had made of advice her mom gave her is starting to come back. 1. She has amazing abilities. 2. She needs to remember that she is unique. 3. If she doesn’t get her act together, she’s going to became nothing but an alcoholic pig like her father. “Stop! Lana, you need to stop!”
But then you’d be thrown right into the action and you’d have no idea what think of this annoying Kate girl screaming at someone whose parents were so consumed with their own lives they did not stop to think that naming their child Anal-spelled-backwards is an incredible cruel thing to do. Especially if one is to ever attend school where children are clever enough to figure this out.
So although it might be boring, the only sensible place to start is with a ten year old Kate hiding out under her bed, hoping that her mom won’t notice her.
“Ocean, darling, it’s time for group. Don’t you want to see your friends?”
If you want to understand Kate’s mom, you’d have to understand her mom’s parents, and their parents and theirs as well, to the point where the story would never be complete. It should be suffice to say that Kate’s mom, who insists on just going by Jenny, was raised by parents who thought that hitting a child was the best deterrent, and then were surprised when a whole generation entered therapy. As a result, Jenny believes that the best way to raise a child is to be their friend and always understand and believe them, no matter what they say. So when her daughter came home claiming to be followed by an invisible person (her fake imaginary friend after reading a book about them and wanting to see what would happen if she had one) her mother immediately believed her and whisked her off to a psychic and supernatural empowered children’s group.
It had been, to say the least, a slight overreaction. Even after Kate apologized and tried to explain, her mom was determined to believe that her daughter pressed “the gift”. So for two years now, despite never saying anything like that again, Kate has been dragged to the ‘Children of the Way” meetings, bored to tears while her mother talked with other parents about how special they all were.
The main purpose of ‘Children of The Way’ is to help parents think that they’re children are more amazing than other children, and thus feel better about themselves. Although no one says that, and instead claim that it is a group that helps children with “the gift” grow and understand their powers. They have games, talks, and a bake sell. They encourage children to participate in actives to foster their self-awareness and strengthen their connection with the Powers.
Mainly, Kate sits in a corner playing with Timber, who she found odd but not as annoying as the others. Occasionally Timber would start screaming and yelling for no reason, throwing things across the room or collapsing and shake violently across the floor. If the parents at ‘Children of The Way’ believed in other things, like doctors, they would have found out that Timber was in fact desperately bipolar and also prone to seizures. The sort of parents who brought their children to these sorts of group are not the sorts of parents who believe in doctors, though, and so they claimed that the fits and seizures were the results of bad energies visiting him and would try and comfort him with crystal therapy.
When Timber had these episodes, Kate would be left by herself in her corner, even more bored than before, wishing desperately that her parents had been cruel in other ways, such as naming her Anal-spelled-backwards.
This is why Kate is currently hiding under her bed, trying not to make a noise as her mom walks by.
“Ocean!” From around the blanket hanging over the side, Kate can see her mom’s sandals and the edge of her skirt swaying around her ankles. Her mom loves those skirts, believing they make her look more in touch with nature. She tells people they’re 100% Native American. In reality the only connection to Indians the skirt has is that it happened to be made in a New Delhi sweatshop. “Ocean, darling, you know we can’t play right now. I love that you’re expressing yourself through games, but we have to attend the circle today.”
Kate’s nails dig into the carpet as she continues to hold her breath, feeling herself turn blue but determined not to let herself be discovered. She imagines the look on her mom’s face when she decides that Kate has been kidnapped, running through the house screaming and crying for her little girl. In a fit of tears she’ll confess that she should have never taken Kate to the group, knowing how much she hated it there, and if she could do it over again she would have loved Kate even if she weren’t psychic.
Then, and only then in Kate’s mind, would she come out from under the bed. And mom would hug her and kiss her and promise that she never has to go to the meetings or Aunt Kimberly’s again.
Kate is so consumed by this, that when she’s sees her mothers face popping past the edges of her blanket she screams and jumps up, hitting her head on a metal beam. “There you are, Ocean!” Her mom says, reaching to drag Kate out from under the bed. Kate’s fingers scratch through the carpet but do nothing to save her. “What are you doing down there?”
Her mom’s eyes, wide and expressive, turn down at the corners as she forces an over the top look of motherly concern. It is not something that she is good at. “Did you sense a frightening spirit?” her mom asks, patting Kate’s cheeks a little too hard in fake comfort, making Kate yelp and squirm more than they make her feel better. “Like the kind Timber sees?”
“Mom!” Kate says, whining as she tries to push her mom’s hand away. Once she’s wiggled away from her, Kate fixes her with her best grown up look. It is one of the many things she is better at than her mother. “Timber doesn’t see demons.”
“Of course not!” Her mom says, looking back beneath the bed like she expects to catch a monster hiding under there where Kate had been. “They aren’t demons, only misplaced energies.”
“No,” Kate says in a voice that she only learn because of her father. Perhaps if her dad and grandparents hadn’t been so sensible, Kate would have been a much different kid. Perhaps she would enjoy the meetings and not spend time hiding from her mother. Most likely Kate would have still thought her mom was a bit of an idiot. “Timber throws fits, that’s all.”
For a second, Kate thinks that she has actually hurt her mom’s feelings. This is a very hard thing for a child to deal with, for even if you’re use to having our own feelings hurt is an entirely different matter to see your parents - the adults that are supposed to be so incredible strong - break down as you would. It is one thing to want to hurt your parent’s feelings, to hide under your bed and hope that they think you’ve been kidnapped, or to say something that is meant to hurt like calling them mean or evil or a sheep herder (an insult that sounds much more cruel in it’s native tongue) and quite another to actually see your parent’s feelings get hurt, which is what Kate believes she has done when she sees her mom’s face fall and her lips quiver. Suddenly Kate feels guilty and very sorry for her mom, who she loves even if she believes in silly, childish things like ghosts.
Then, like most things that come all the sudden, it is over just as quickly. “Is that what the children in your class make you think? I knew I shouldn’t have let Bill send you to that horrible public school. They just don’t understand how special you are.”
Actually, the teachers are Kate’s school did understand how special she is, and had sent about a hundred letter and messages to her mom requesting a meeting to discuss Kate and her fondness of keeping obsessive lists and nearly breaking down if the desks are not in perfect rows. If Jenny had ever gone to any of those conferences she would have also heard that Kate had been one of the first children in her grade to learn to read and write, and had an amazing vocabulary and comprehension level for a girl her age.
Jenny never did attend any of those scheduled talks, though, and probably wouldn’t have been aware that Kate could write at all if they didn’t have ‘free writing’ at ‘Children of the Way’. As a result, Kate herself didn’t think she is particularly good at any school subjects and spent more time in class thinking of ways to run away from home than learning.
The only time she did read anymore was at the meetings. Her mom would drop her off to go talk with the other parents, and Kate would curl up in her corner with a pile of magazines that Oak - the woman who organizes the meetings, tries to there. If there were a test for these things, the teachers at Kate’s school would have also found out that she knew and incredible amount about this years top fashion blunders, 10 ways to please her boyfriend, and the latest dieting tips as well.
Today when he mom forces her into the group she decides to read People Magazine, which is usually boring and always about people she has never met doing things with other people she has never met and doesn’t care about in the least. It is the only one she hasn’t read through, yet, so that is what she starts with. Trying to hide herself behind the couch, she begins to read through letters of people complaining to the editor about people she assumes they have never met, either.
She is up to a list of the top ten shows of the year when Timber plops down next to her. Timber is heavy boy, three years younger than her, who has never been to school. His mom thinks it will interfere with his energies, when really he had to be taken out so that the Board of Education didn’t force him into a hospital. His mom says that she had once been a slave to medicine, and the doctors had used it to hide her gift and so she refuses to let them do the same to her son. The doctors had really been using it to hide her bipolar disorder and low-level schizophrenia.
“Whacha reading?” Timber asks, scratching at the back of his hand. Every few weeks, Timber will come to the meetings with a new tick. The parents say it is a sign of his power manifesting. Kate doesn’t know what it is, but she keeps a list of them. She keeps a list of almost everything; The kids in her class, the games at recess, what the school serves for lunch, phone calls from dad, times the garbage man comes. She writes them down and keeps them all in a bright yellow notebook her dad bought her at the beginning of the year. She keeps notebooks for each year, too, and lists of her notebooks inside her notebooks. This is why Kate’s teachers sometimes worry.
Grabbing her backpack she takes out a notebook and neatly writes, ‘Hand Scratching’ right below ‘Tongue Gargling’, which had been last weeks. “When did you start scratching your hand?” She asks, pointing down to his nails as he scrapes across the already red skin.
Timber’s hand stops suddenly. He looks down as if surprised to find his skin so raw. “Last Tuesday,” he says after thinking it over for a while. “Mom says it’s a sign that I’m trying to get my bad energies out.”
In her notebook, Kate writes down the date that hand scratching started. She erases the numbers and writes them again until they’re perfectly aligned wit all the other letters and numbers on the page. “The tongue gargling lasted eighty two days,” she declares, tucking her notebook safely back away. “That is about twelve days more than normal.”
“Mom says that was to help call the powers to me,” Timber explains and although she had already heard this, Kate acts like she hasn’t. Timber often tells her things a few times, as if he has forgotten everything he has just said. “Whacha reading?”
“It’s about people you’ve never heard of,” she promises with a sincerely apologetic look. She doesn’t mind Timber so much. He is about the only thing that she likes. Sure, he is a bit dumb sometimes, but she thinks that is because he is seven, and maybe all kids that age are dumb. Timber nods in the same solemn manner, equally sorry that he hasn’t heard about the people in the magazine.
Kate is about to pick up an old magazine that he will get, like Home Cooking, when her mom pops her head back in the corner. “Ocean, Timber,” she says, dragging the kids out from their hiding place. “Come on, we’re having a group circle.”
Groaning and stomping her feet the whole way, Kate follows her mom out to the circle. Oak is sitting there in a big white robe that Kate imagines Timber thinks makes her look like a snowy hill. She’s big enough to go sledding on as is, and the giant white fabric rolling down her doesn’t help. When she draws in a deep breath to request calm in the circle, her whole body seems to jiggle around and Kate watches, biting at her lip to keep from giggling as she imagines her a snowman, shaking as kids run past.
“Children, your powers are a blessing,” she starts with this smile, her whole face red and clashing with the white robe. She looks like she’s run a hundred blocks, probably from kids with sleds. She takes a long sip from the bottle next to her, the kind that Kate sees dad drinking out of. The kind that turns people’s faces red and makes them sleepy, only no matter how much she drinks Oak never seems to get tired enough to let them go home. “But they can also be a curse. One that no one else can begin to understand.”
It’s a boring speech that she’s heard already, so Kate looks around the group, trying to imagine what they’re imagining. Jenny tries to help her daughter by telling her that she had a wonderful imagination. Like most things her mother says, Kate probably would have ignored this or figured it out on her own. Unfortunately for Kate, the rest of the world had been conspiring at the same time to teacher all children just how wonderful their imaginations are and how unique and special each child is instead of other, less productive things such as teaching them basic math skills. You probably had the same thing happen to you, and grow up either thinking that you were truly the most wonderful child in the world and ended up being a spoiled and self centered or else grew up feeling insignificant when you discovered that you were neither unique nor all that special, and now need extraordinary amounts of therapy.
Kate fell rather hard into the second group. Much younger than you might expect, she decided that she was neither special, unique, or that her imagination could possibly live up to the standards others had set. So she made up her own game, since she felt it useless to imagine things on her own. She would steal from others, staring them down until she could imagine what they were imaging, which she felt was usually much more exciting than anything she could come up with on her own.
At the moment, one of the girls that sat across from her is imaging what would happen if the ceiling where to collapse inward as an earthquake shock the house, burying her in a rubble tunnel that she would be forced to crawl through to save everyone else. Kate finds that, often, fantasies are about that person being a hero or particularly amazing in some way. If rubble fell on her, she’d probably just die.
Perhaps that is why she has to steal other people’s daydreams.
“We have to learn to protect ourselves against the darker forces,” Oak is explaining, and everyone in the circle expect for Kate and a few of the really young kids, the one who really do just have an imaginary friend, nod. “So now we’ll join hands, and how would like to be the first in the circle?”
“Owe!” The whole circle turns to look at Kate, who is rubbing her side. Jenny ignores Kate’s glaring, shoving her into the circle. “Err…. Uh, me,” she says as she is forced into the middle, still aching where her mom had elbowed her.
“Good for you, Ocean,” Oak says as she has everyone link hands. “And now we close our eyes…” Settling back down, the rest of them start holding hands instead of just staring. Like a child at church, the second no one is paying attention Kate starts to bounce around a bit, staring at the ceiling and others and not paying any attention to what is going on around her.
“Close your eyes, Ocean,” her mom hisses, and Kate shuts her eyes. She wishes she would spend more weeks with dad. That is what she thinks with her eyes closed. Not about energies or connections, but that dad never makes her do this. Dad doesn’t really make her do anything, because he’s never home but Kate doesn’t mind being left alone. It is better than holding hands and closing her eyes while a bunch of people hum around her.
“Now,” Oak says, her voice trying to hard to be calm and mystical. She sounds like she’s a three year old, and Kate bites her lip to stop from giggling. Last time she giggled in circle she had to go climb a tree. There were ideas behind this, that it would help Kate focus her energy, but they are too far fetched for you to understand. Unless your family is like Kate’s, in which case you understand perfectly and don’t need a reminder. “Let’s focus our energies. Clear our minds an imagine the protective lights flowing around us.” Again the group starts humming, and Kate leaves her eyes closed as she waits for something to happen.
There is a twitch in Kate’s arm. Really, there is nothing unusual about this twitch. It’s been there before, but this twitch feels like a vibration that spins through her body and Kate wants to believe that it actually is energy. After all, there has to be something out there other than drunk program runners and moms who don’t listens and fathers who aren’t there and boring old school. Kate imagines that she can actually feel the energies going through her system as everyone else hums for her, following along with Oak’s soothing voice. “Into your fingers, down into your toes, call on this golden and bright light.”
“There here with us now,” Oak says in the at too light tone that suddenly feels arm and comforting to Kate’s ears, or at least she pretends it does as she pretends that the light is warming her body and protecting her. Wouldn’t it be great if Timber isn’t crazy, if Kate is special, if there really is a light out there that is protecting her and maybe if she imagines hard enough she’ll see it. She is ten years old, and you can’t really fault her for wanting someone to protect her. Even if it is just a stupid beam of light. “You can see it, can’t you?” Oak says to the group, and them mutter in respond, quiet sounds of concentration.
Even though she isn’t supposed to, Kate opens her eyes to immerse herself in the protective light, to see the golden colors arching over the group and spinning them into a circle, fighting back the darkness. Kate wants to see herself being protected, something to hold her at night and a glowing, mystical light will do that.
Instead what she sees is a bunch of adults and kids sitting in a circle, holding hands and humming. There is no golden light, there is no gleaming arches embracing them. The light bulb above them flickers. One of the three year olds lets go of his mom to pick his nose before taking her hand again. Kate keeps looking around, but there isn’t so much as a stray sunbeam.
And that is the beginning, where Kate figures out that the whole world is bullshit.
Notebook #18, List #2 Drinks at Dad’s Place (sorted alphabetically)
1. Coffee (2 cans)
2. Guinness Drought (4 bottles)
3. Johnny Walker’s Blended Scotch Whisky (1 bottle)
4. Orange Juice (1 jug)
5. SKYY Vodka (1 bottle)
6. Smirnoff Ice (2 bottles)
7. Smirnoff Ice Triple Black (1 bottle)
Chapter Two
The first day of class, every teacher calls her Puree without fail. It’s what the birth certificate says, so that is what they call her. Usually, they only get through Pu- before she has time to say, “Call me, Kate.”
Then, and this always happens, they’ll stare at the name for a little longer. She is pretty sure what is going on. At first they’re trying to figure out if maybe it is a French name of some sort. She doesn’t sound French. That’s because it isn’t French, it’s an ingredient on something her mom ate when she was pregnant. She thought it sounded pretty, and so now her daughter has to be called Puree for the first week of class, until the teachers learn that she’s Kate.
“I don’t see why it matters,” her mom says when Kate would whine about it. “We always call you by your middle name.”
Next they try and figure out how you get Kate from the “name” Puree Blair. You can’t, of course, and that is why she goes by Kate. Then, quite innocently, they’ll ask, “Is Kate your middle name?”
“No,” she says, trying not to scream out at them. How could they not understand? Wouldn’t they change their name, too, if they were Puree? “It’s just what I go by.”
She never tells anyone that her middle name is Ocean. She is not Puree and she is not Ocean, she is just Kate.
“I wanted you to be unique,” her mom claims, upset that her daughter doesn’t get how clever she is to name her Puree Ocean in a world full of Emilys and Stephanies and Kates. You may have been one of those in school, or maybe a Jennifer or a Mike or a Jacob, and maybe you think her mom is incredibly clever to not to do the same to her daughter. The only problem is, with a name like Puree Ocean, you’re pretty much doomed to be a boring, blend into the wall sort of person. How can you not be, with a name like that?
That is why she goes by Kate, to try her best to blend in. In elementary school, her mom made sure that all her teachers called her Ocean and in fifth grade a boy said, “I’d like to swim in that,” and grabbed her skirt. Now, in high school, at least one boy will tell her, “So, how pure are you?” They think they’re clever in the same way her mom thought she was clever. Like her father thought he was being clever when he ran away off to California to become a tattoo artist, officially leaving Kate as the only sane person in the family, and even that is a stretch.
It is a of all this cleverness that people keep using on her that Kate ends up on the bridge beside her house, staring at the rushing water below. She catalogues, mentally, how many waves pass beneath the bridge as she watches it wash by. She is up to one hundred and fifty seven when her concentration is broken.
“You aren’t going to jump.”
“Dylan,” Kate says carefully, trying to keep her count even still, although now it is of something else. Dylan’s sentence, it had five and half words, and nineteen words. She makes a note of that. “I love you like a brother, but don’t tell me what I can or cannot do.”
Dylan bites down on his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Dylan is the sort of guy who still eats his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, even though he’s eighteen. He’s the type of guy who will eat that sandwich while his best friend stands at the edge of the bridge, counting waves and words. He isn’t the kind of guy that Kate loves like a brother, but it makes him feel good to hear it and keeps him there with her.
There are, Kate has demised while making her lists, four different types of friends although she says five, just because she likes her lists to end in fives or tens. She doesn’t know what five is, but she does know that Dylan is a three, which is good although it is certainly no one. It isn’t even a two. But all in all, three really isn’t that bad.
“I’m just saying..” Dylan licks the jelly and peanut butter from his fingers. It takes six licks. All she has to do is glare and Dylan takes four more licks. That is what makes him a three. “You won’t do it.”
Kate turns her nose at him, which she imagines he imagines is a very honorable looking pose for her to take at the moment. “I can’t take it anymore,” she says, stomping her foot on the bridge. “My dad ran away, my mom is an idiot, and Mr. Samson assigned twenty two pages of reading in one night. You know that means I have to read an extra three pages.”
“Or,” he says, standing up and throwing the wrapped his mom had put around his sandwich down into the water. They both watch it splash over the side. “You could just read to twenty pages.”
Kate has to admit that this isn’t an entirely bad plan. Like most teenagers, she isn’t willing to admit that a good plan has been given to her, though, and would much rather do things her own way. Even if it meant jumping.
You see, this is why you read the first part. To get to the juicy bits like this, with a girl standing over a bridge not caring to live anymore. This is why people read books, so that they don’t have to jump.
“Good cruel world,” Kate says, not bothering to come up with anything more imaginative as she steps off the edge. She hopes that when Dylan tells the story, he comes up with something better to say.
There is a wet splash and then silence.
“Hey,” Dylan says, sitting on the edge of the bridge, looking up at Kate. “You done now?”
Opening her eyes, Kate stares down at the water, watching it part and slit around her sneakers. She sighs and sits back on the bridge, kicking at a pebble in the rough water. “Yeah.”
Dylan kicks the wrapper he’d thrown down in the water earlier. It starts to go under the bridge before getting stuck. “The bottom of your jeans are all wet,” he points out. It is the awkward talk of a boy who has a crush on a very strange girl. Dylan often wonders why he had to choice Kate to like, and perhaps would feel better to know it was just hormones and would wear off in a few years. The first time he met her she was laying on the hardtop at school, trying to go blind by staring into the sun. He’d thought she was quirky and cool back then. Now she’s jumping off of creek bridges, and he really isn’t sure what to think.
Kate kicks at the water, and her jeans turn dark blue as it splashes onto her. “Yeah.” She looks up at the sun, squinting into it, then back down to her wet sneakers and pants. Sighing, she pushes herself off the bridge, walking through the creek and to the shore. “I have to go see Timber.”
“Want a ride!” Dylan calls out, because even if he doesn’t understand it, he still likes her. It’s really unfortunate. If anyone where the tragic hero in Kate’s story, perhaps it would be Dylan. Of course, that is a very long line to be in.
“No,” Kate says, waving goodbye to him as she walks away, completely casual about her own lame attempt at suicide. She picked up that trick from her dad, who would to threaten to swallow whole bottles of pills at a time unless she went to her room. In Kate’s head, he was still the better parents. She didn’t have many choices. It was either the suicidal drunk of the crazy reborn hippie who thought Kate could talk to the dead. Either would have gotten her child services attention if she’d bothered to call.
Kate didn’t want to be taken away, though. She just wanted to blend in. Besides, she had seen what happens to kids who are “unique” and who don’t blend in.
“Kate!” The nurses at Saint Francis’s Mental Health Clinic know Kate by name. They never call her Puree. “I see you’re back for your daily visits.”
“They only allow visiting Thursday through Saturday, so I can’t come daily,” Kate points out as she signs herself in. The nurse at the font is pretty, here because she is young and couldn’t get a job with any real hospital. Which is a shame, because no one needs people who want to be there quite as much as Saint Francis’s Mental Health Clinic. She isn’t use to Kate, though, and frowns a bit as she is told off by this young, seven teen year old who has to erase her name three times before she is pleased with it. “Is Timber waiting?”
“He is,” she says, lips still turned down like she is confused about something. This isn’t new to Kate, who confuses a lot of people, although she isn’t sure how. Everything she says is perfectly logical, at least in her own mind. “Right down there,” she says, pressing the button that allows people in and out of the gates and handing Kate her pass.
“Thanks,” Kate says, hurrying in before some one from the institution escapes. She has never actually seen anyone try, but Timber swears it has happened before, with people diving to get out of the door. Kate doesn’t blame them for trying, if this is true. The mental clinic is frightening. First off, they try and make it seem home and pleasant, with paintings on the wall and a visiting area that is supposed to look like a living room, but not Kate’s own personal living room which her mom has covered in plants and cushions without furniture to help spread their energies. Someone else’s living room, though. Only everything is clean, watched over, locked in, so instead of feeling at home you feel very much so like you’ve broken a law and are on the executioner’s list.
When Kate walks in to the room, Timber is already sitting at the table, waiting for her. She pulls out her notebook, label ‘TIMBER’ and flips to the first list. He smiles at her and says, “Hello, Dr. Blair.”
It’s like a game of doctor, only Kate is seventeen and obsessive compulsive, and Timber is an abandoned kid who, if were to actually play doctor, might accidentally cut someone up just to see. “Hello, Patient One,” she says in her best grown up voice. “Tick?”
“Same,” Timber says without question. On cue, his arms jerk, shaking a bit uncomfortable. Kate hardly notices at all. He’s had that one for almost a year now. The doctors say it’s Tourettes’s Syndrome. His mom says the government has stuck chips in him. Kate’s mom says he’s possessed. Kate just writes it down in her notebook.
“Medication?” She asks in the same no joking around tone as she flips through a few pages. He lists that off as well, and she writes it all down. “Doctor? Roommate? Patients in your ward?”
“Rubio and Thomas still, and one new guys making it thirteen.” Timber cocks his head when he sees Kate wince. “I could kill three of them, though.”
“No,” Kate says, diligently writing it all down in her Timber notebook. “That’s okay.” Finish the list she has off, she closes the notebook and tucks it into her backpack. “Dr. Rubio has lasted a while.” Timber has been in the clinic for six years, and has managed to stay through eight doctors. He says he’s pretty proud of that. No one else has been here that long.
“He’s a pretty nice guy,” Timber says shrugging. “He lets me read during our talks and doesn’t yell so much. I think he might be moving to California, though. I heard him on the phone with his wife, and they’re having a kid so he needs a better job.”
“Everyone goes to California,” Kate says, and she is allowed to sound bitter since that is where her dad went when he left. You might have not remembering that, being distracted by her suicide jump and crazy friends, but Kate can’t forget it. It’s a hard thing to get past. “Has your mom come to visit yet?”
“Nope.” Timber reaches into his pocket, pulling out a letter and handing it to Kate. “She refuses to come visit. She says that now that I’m a ward of the state, they’ve probably brained washed me and coming here would be a trap so that they could harness her energies.”
Kate carefully unfolds the letter, squinting down at the messy, desperate looking handwriting scribbled across the page. It’s all unevenly spaced and driving her insane. “This doesn’t even make sense,” she says as she reads over a few of the detached, choppy sounding sentences.
You’re probably wondering what exactly a very disturbed mother would write her son, the one that got taken away from her when he was seven after she throw her doctor’s cat out the window when he refused to refill her prescription. Well, maybe you’re wondering how this woman managed to raise a child for seven whole years before someone finally caught onto the fact that she was completely insane. The answer, as Timber would put it, is that she didn’t really raise him at all. More like had him, and then let him do what he wanted until finally some nice lady came and took him here.
Neither Kate nor Timber realized how sad it is that a mental clinic is a step up from their own homes. This is probably true of more people that you would like to think.
The letter read: dear son;
I would like you to see My old ChildhOod hoMe very soon If you Need anythinG like FoOd foR the trip than YOU to bring it as well as it might get cOld dowN there. So just remember to pAck hoT stUff in case someboDy were to need thAt. I love You.
MOM
Kate read over it a few times, face wrinkled with a deep frown as she tried to look past the horrible way the letters slanted and towards the actually context. She couldn’t manage this. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s a code,” Timber explains, grabbing the letter and turning it around for Kate. In Timber’s writing it says: Imcomingforyouonsatuday. “And not a very good one,” he points our at Kate carefully separates and rewrites the sentence until she’s happy with the way it’s aligned. “At least she remembered all the letters this time.”
His mom’s last coded message had read ifthegovtementhasntgotyubrianwashthanrepliebytwosuday. Timber had sent her a letter back claiming that the doctors had hooked needles up to his brain and forced him to show them to an ancient Indian burial ground using only his psychic abilities. It had been just a little cruel of him, but mostly he found it funny.
“When is this from?” Kate asks, looking over the letter for some sort of date.
Timber shrugs, taking it back and folding it again, slipping it into his pocket. No matter how cruel they are, you can never just throw away your parents. At the moment, poorly written code is Timber’s mom, so he keeps it safe along with her other three letters. “The envelope was dated about a month ago.”
“So I guess she missed the deadline then, huh?” Kate asks, and Timber nods. He doesn’t seem disappointed. Of course, by now the letters are more like his mom than she is, so it wouldn’t matter to him if she came or not. Kate imagines that he imagines at night her coming and swooping him away. Maybe not being crazy anymore, maybe just like she was before. Kate is never sure about that part of Timber’s daydream.
“Did you bring any books?” Timber says to help change the subject. Because Timber’s mom didn’t believe in school, no one knew that Timber had a near genius IQ until the mental clinic made him go to classes. Of course, all the classes are as simple as could be, and so Timber will never actually get to use his intelligence. Expect for sometimes, when Kate brings her schoolbooks.
“Yep,” she says, kicking her bag to him. “Algebra II, Chemistry, and World History today, but I need them back by Saturday because I have a test on Monday in Chemistry.”
“No problem,” he says, leaning down to grab the books. He glances at her jeans, stopping to stare at the wet spots spattered up to the ankles. “Did it rain before you walked here?”
“No,” she says, glancing down to see what he is looking at. “I jumped off a bridge.”
“Why?” He asks, setting the books up next to him. They’re a daunting looking pile to Kate, but Timber strokes their spines like they’re kittens.
“I was trying to kill myself,” she explains as if this happens every day, and Timber takes the news with the same causal attitude.
“How did it go?” He asks, marking the books with a little sticker that claims they’re his so that no one else in his ward tries to take them. Kate isn’t sure who would try and take books, but she’s gotten use to peeling those stickers off when she leaves. She imagines it wouldn’t be hard for others too, either.
“I don’t know,” she admits. “I think I might be dead, but I’m not sure.” Because there are so many books and movies now a days with some truly twisting and weird endings, be assure than Kate isn’t dead.
Timber pauses for another second as he thinks about this. This is a film with a script, so sometimes witty responses take a moment to formulate. In this case, there wouldn’t be one at all. “Ask your mom. If she says you’re dead, you probably aren’t.” For a while now Kate’s mom had been on her latest supernatural kick that involved a lot of “communicating with the dead”. In reality, Jenny would probably die of a heart attack should a dead person try to speak to her, but for a few months she has held séances and lined the walls with this weird art she claims “calms the restless spirits”.
Kate is a restless spirit, and the art makes her want to throw things and scream and tear up the room until it’s gutted out and there is nothing left.
“No,” she says, zipping her bag back up. The visitation is only for an hour a day, to help keep the patients calm. Kate told the nurse that the patients would be a lot more calm if they were with people they actually liked and you had five chairs in the living room instead of just four. As usual, the nurses don’t seem to understand her. “She’s off that. She’s on this Asian energy kick now. Threw out all our furniture.”
“Wow,” Timber says, standing up with Kate and clutching to the books tight. They’re the only things in the super sterile, locked in living room that feels natural. “Everything? Even your bed?”
“No,” she says, tugging her backpack on and smiling across the table at Timber. They don’t realize, but you should know how heart breaking it is to always be this far from the only one on you’re five types of friend list. “Don’t worry. I can still hide under my bed if I need to.”
Author: Stephanie
Title: What You Get When You Mix...
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 7,143
Summery: What do you get when you mix and insane mother who thinks you can see ghosts, a drunk father whose parenting skills are limited to teaching you how to mix drinks, and a best friend who is the sanest person you know but locked away in a mental clinic? You get Kate, of course, and a list of things not to mix.
Note: I very rarely write original stuff anymore, so any feedback you can offer would be lovely.
What You Get When You Mix...
Notebook #3, List #1 - Kids In ‘Children of the Way’ (sorted by age)
1. Addie & Maddie Ramos
2. Terra Brown
3. Saphira Carter
4. Timber Olsen
5. Tree Brown
6. Kate Blair
7. Kali Smith
8. Starella Roberts
Chapter One
“Ocean!”
There is no easy way to start this story, because it is not at all an easy story to tell. As your own life probably couldn’t be smooshed and smashed and forced into a nice, pretty pink cover for little kids to read at bedtime, neither did Kate live her life so that it would make for an interesting book. In fact, in Kate’s neatly kept list entitled, “Things I Want Out of Life” that a school counselor once made her write out, the goal of having her life read like a fairy tale had never once appeared.
So it might be a bit rough around the edges, and the beginning is not as eye catching as a good, solid beginning should be, but it is where you have to begin. After all, to understand Kate you have to understand her childhood and, perhaps fortunately, it was not one filled with trouble, explosions, murder mysteries, or torrid love affairs. There was the divorce, but Kate doesn’t remember enough for it to be all that interesting and so that doesn’t leave very much. There are parts you might read later that you’ll probably think would have made much more thrilling openings. For instance, it could have started like this:
“Stop!” Kate screams, blood nails ripping through the dashboard as she braced herself for the impact. Her head is spinning, and the list she had made of advice her mom gave her is starting to come back. 1. She has amazing abilities. 2. She needs to remember that she is unique. 3. If she doesn’t get her act together, she’s going to became nothing but an alcoholic pig like her father. “Stop! Lana, you need to stop!”
But then you’d be thrown right into the action and you’d have no idea what think of this annoying Kate girl screaming at someone whose parents were so consumed with their own lives they did not stop to think that naming their child Anal-spelled-backwards is an incredible cruel thing to do. Especially if one is to ever attend school where children are clever enough to figure this out.
So although it might be boring, the only sensible place to start is with a ten year old Kate hiding out under her bed, hoping that her mom won’t notice her.
“Ocean, darling, it’s time for group. Don’t you want to see your friends?”
If you want to understand Kate’s mom, you’d have to understand her mom’s parents, and their parents and theirs as well, to the point where the story would never be complete. It should be suffice to say that Kate’s mom, who insists on just going by Jenny, was raised by parents who thought that hitting a child was the best deterrent, and then were surprised when a whole generation entered therapy. As a result, Jenny believes that the best way to raise a child is to be their friend and always understand and believe them, no matter what they say. So when her daughter came home claiming to be followed by an invisible person (her fake imaginary friend after reading a book about them and wanting to see what would happen if she had one) her mother immediately believed her and whisked her off to a psychic and supernatural empowered children’s group.
It had been, to say the least, a slight overreaction. Even after Kate apologized and tried to explain, her mom was determined to believe that her daughter pressed “the gift”. So for two years now, despite never saying anything like that again, Kate has been dragged to the ‘Children of the Way” meetings, bored to tears while her mother talked with other parents about how special they all were.
The main purpose of ‘Children of The Way’ is to help parents think that they’re children are more amazing than other children, and thus feel better about themselves. Although no one says that, and instead claim that it is a group that helps children with “the gift” grow and understand their powers. They have games, talks, and a bake sell. They encourage children to participate in actives to foster their self-awareness and strengthen their connection with the Powers.
Mainly, Kate sits in a corner playing with Timber, who she found odd but not as annoying as the others. Occasionally Timber would start screaming and yelling for no reason, throwing things across the room or collapsing and shake violently across the floor. If the parents at ‘Children of The Way’ believed in other things, like doctors, they would have found out that Timber was in fact desperately bipolar and also prone to seizures. The sort of parents who brought their children to these sorts of group are not the sorts of parents who believe in doctors, though, and so they claimed that the fits and seizures were the results of bad energies visiting him and would try and comfort him with crystal therapy.
When Timber had these episodes, Kate would be left by herself in her corner, even more bored than before, wishing desperately that her parents had been cruel in other ways, such as naming her Anal-spelled-backwards.
This is why Kate is currently hiding under her bed, trying not to make a noise as her mom walks by.
“Ocean!” From around the blanket hanging over the side, Kate can see her mom’s sandals and the edge of her skirt swaying around her ankles. Her mom loves those skirts, believing they make her look more in touch with nature. She tells people they’re 100% Native American. In reality the only connection to Indians the skirt has is that it happened to be made in a New Delhi sweatshop. “Ocean, darling, you know we can’t play right now. I love that you’re expressing yourself through games, but we have to attend the circle today.”
Kate’s nails dig into the carpet as she continues to hold her breath, feeling herself turn blue but determined not to let herself be discovered. She imagines the look on her mom’s face when she decides that Kate has been kidnapped, running through the house screaming and crying for her little girl. In a fit of tears she’ll confess that she should have never taken Kate to the group, knowing how much she hated it there, and if she could do it over again she would have loved Kate even if she weren’t psychic.
Then, and only then in Kate’s mind, would she come out from under the bed. And mom would hug her and kiss her and promise that she never has to go to the meetings or Aunt Kimberly’s again.
Kate is so consumed by this, that when she’s sees her mothers face popping past the edges of her blanket she screams and jumps up, hitting her head on a metal beam. “There you are, Ocean!” Her mom says, reaching to drag Kate out from under the bed. Kate’s fingers scratch through the carpet but do nothing to save her. “What are you doing down there?”
Her mom’s eyes, wide and expressive, turn down at the corners as she forces an over the top look of motherly concern. It is not something that she is good at. “Did you sense a frightening spirit?” her mom asks, patting Kate’s cheeks a little too hard in fake comfort, making Kate yelp and squirm more than they make her feel better. “Like the kind Timber sees?”
“Mom!” Kate says, whining as she tries to push her mom’s hand away. Once she’s wiggled away from her, Kate fixes her with her best grown up look. It is one of the many things she is better at than her mother. “Timber doesn’t see demons.”
“Of course not!” Her mom says, looking back beneath the bed like she expects to catch a monster hiding under there where Kate had been. “They aren’t demons, only misplaced energies.”
“No,” Kate says in a voice that she only learn because of her father. Perhaps if her dad and grandparents hadn’t been so sensible, Kate would have been a much different kid. Perhaps she would enjoy the meetings and not spend time hiding from her mother. Most likely Kate would have still thought her mom was a bit of an idiot. “Timber throws fits, that’s all.”
For a second, Kate thinks that she has actually hurt her mom’s feelings. This is a very hard thing for a child to deal with, for even if you’re use to having our own feelings hurt is an entirely different matter to see your parents - the adults that are supposed to be so incredible strong - break down as you would. It is one thing to want to hurt your parent’s feelings, to hide under your bed and hope that they think you’ve been kidnapped, or to say something that is meant to hurt like calling them mean or evil or a sheep herder (an insult that sounds much more cruel in it’s native tongue) and quite another to actually see your parent’s feelings get hurt, which is what Kate believes she has done when she sees her mom’s face fall and her lips quiver. Suddenly Kate feels guilty and very sorry for her mom, who she loves even if she believes in silly, childish things like ghosts.
Then, like most things that come all the sudden, it is over just as quickly. “Is that what the children in your class make you think? I knew I shouldn’t have let Bill send you to that horrible public school. They just don’t understand how special you are.”
Actually, the teachers are Kate’s school did understand how special she is, and had sent about a hundred letter and messages to her mom requesting a meeting to discuss Kate and her fondness of keeping obsessive lists and nearly breaking down if the desks are not in perfect rows. If Jenny had ever gone to any of those conferences she would have also heard that Kate had been one of the first children in her grade to learn to read and write, and had an amazing vocabulary and comprehension level for a girl her age.
Jenny never did attend any of those scheduled talks, though, and probably wouldn’t have been aware that Kate could write at all if they didn’t have ‘free writing’ at ‘Children of the Way’. As a result, Kate herself didn’t think she is particularly good at any school subjects and spent more time in class thinking of ways to run away from home than learning.
The only time she did read anymore was at the meetings. Her mom would drop her off to go talk with the other parents, and Kate would curl up in her corner with a pile of magazines that Oak - the woman who organizes the meetings, tries to there. If there were a test for these things, the teachers at Kate’s school would have also found out that she knew and incredible amount about this years top fashion blunders, 10 ways to please her boyfriend, and the latest dieting tips as well.
Today when he mom forces her into the group she decides to read People Magazine, which is usually boring and always about people she has never met doing things with other people she has never met and doesn’t care about in the least. It is the only one she hasn’t read through, yet, so that is what she starts with. Trying to hide herself behind the couch, she begins to read through letters of people complaining to the editor about people she assumes they have never met, either.
She is up to a list of the top ten shows of the year when Timber plops down next to her. Timber is heavy boy, three years younger than her, who has never been to school. His mom thinks it will interfere with his energies, when really he had to be taken out so that the Board of Education didn’t force him into a hospital. His mom says that she had once been a slave to medicine, and the doctors had used it to hide her gift and so she refuses to let them do the same to her son. The doctors had really been using it to hide her bipolar disorder and low-level schizophrenia.
“Whacha reading?” Timber asks, scratching at the back of his hand. Every few weeks, Timber will come to the meetings with a new tick. The parents say it is a sign of his power manifesting. Kate doesn’t know what it is, but she keeps a list of them. She keeps a list of almost everything; The kids in her class, the games at recess, what the school serves for lunch, phone calls from dad, times the garbage man comes. She writes them down and keeps them all in a bright yellow notebook her dad bought her at the beginning of the year. She keeps notebooks for each year, too, and lists of her notebooks inside her notebooks. This is why Kate’s teachers sometimes worry.
Grabbing her backpack she takes out a notebook and neatly writes, ‘Hand Scratching’ right below ‘Tongue Gargling’, which had been last weeks. “When did you start scratching your hand?” She asks, pointing down to his nails as he scrapes across the already red skin.
Timber’s hand stops suddenly. He looks down as if surprised to find his skin so raw. “Last Tuesday,” he says after thinking it over for a while. “Mom says it’s a sign that I’m trying to get my bad energies out.”
In her notebook, Kate writes down the date that hand scratching started. She erases the numbers and writes them again until they’re perfectly aligned wit all the other letters and numbers on the page. “The tongue gargling lasted eighty two days,” she declares, tucking her notebook safely back away. “That is about twelve days more than normal.”
“Mom says that was to help call the powers to me,” Timber explains and although she had already heard this, Kate acts like she hasn’t. Timber often tells her things a few times, as if he has forgotten everything he has just said. “Whacha reading?”
“It’s about people you’ve never heard of,” she promises with a sincerely apologetic look. She doesn’t mind Timber so much. He is about the only thing that she likes. Sure, he is a bit dumb sometimes, but she thinks that is because he is seven, and maybe all kids that age are dumb. Timber nods in the same solemn manner, equally sorry that he hasn’t heard about the people in the magazine.
Kate is about to pick up an old magazine that he will get, like Home Cooking, when her mom pops her head back in the corner. “Ocean, Timber,” she says, dragging the kids out from their hiding place. “Come on, we’re having a group circle.”
Groaning and stomping her feet the whole way, Kate follows her mom out to the circle. Oak is sitting there in a big white robe that Kate imagines Timber thinks makes her look like a snowy hill. She’s big enough to go sledding on as is, and the giant white fabric rolling down her doesn’t help. When she draws in a deep breath to request calm in the circle, her whole body seems to jiggle around and Kate watches, biting at her lip to keep from giggling as she imagines her a snowman, shaking as kids run past.
“Children, your powers are a blessing,” she starts with this smile, her whole face red and clashing with the white robe. She looks like she’s run a hundred blocks, probably from kids with sleds. She takes a long sip from the bottle next to her, the kind that Kate sees dad drinking out of. The kind that turns people’s faces red and makes them sleepy, only no matter how much she drinks Oak never seems to get tired enough to let them go home. “But they can also be a curse. One that no one else can begin to understand.”
It’s a boring speech that she’s heard already, so Kate looks around the group, trying to imagine what they’re imagining. Jenny tries to help her daughter by telling her that she had a wonderful imagination. Like most things her mother says, Kate probably would have ignored this or figured it out on her own. Unfortunately for Kate, the rest of the world had been conspiring at the same time to teacher all children just how wonderful their imaginations are and how unique and special each child is instead of other, less productive things such as teaching them basic math skills. You probably had the same thing happen to you, and grow up either thinking that you were truly the most wonderful child in the world and ended up being a spoiled and self centered or else grew up feeling insignificant when you discovered that you were neither unique nor all that special, and now need extraordinary amounts of therapy.
Kate fell rather hard into the second group. Much younger than you might expect, she decided that she was neither special, unique, or that her imagination could possibly live up to the standards others had set. So she made up her own game, since she felt it useless to imagine things on her own. She would steal from others, staring them down until she could imagine what they were imaging, which she felt was usually much more exciting than anything she could come up with on her own.
At the moment, one of the girls that sat across from her is imaging what would happen if the ceiling where to collapse inward as an earthquake shock the house, burying her in a rubble tunnel that she would be forced to crawl through to save everyone else. Kate finds that, often, fantasies are about that person being a hero or particularly amazing in some way. If rubble fell on her, she’d probably just die.
Perhaps that is why she has to steal other people’s daydreams.
“We have to learn to protect ourselves against the darker forces,” Oak is explaining, and everyone in the circle expect for Kate and a few of the really young kids, the one who really do just have an imaginary friend, nod. “So now we’ll join hands, and how would like to be the first in the circle?”
“Owe!” The whole circle turns to look at Kate, who is rubbing her side. Jenny ignores Kate’s glaring, shoving her into the circle. “Err…. Uh, me,” she says as she is forced into the middle, still aching where her mom had elbowed her.
“Good for you, Ocean,” Oak says as she has everyone link hands. “And now we close our eyes…” Settling back down, the rest of them start holding hands instead of just staring. Like a child at church, the second no one is paying attention Kate starts to bounce around a bit, staring at the ceiling and others and not paying any attention to what is going on around her.
“Close your eyes, Ocean,” her mom hisses, and Kate shuts her eyes. She wishes she would spend more weeks with dad. That is what she thinks with her eyes closed. Not about energies or connections, but that dad never makes her do this. Dad doesn’t really make her do anything, because he’s never home but Kate doesn’t mind being left alone. It is better than holding hands and closing her eyes while a bunch of people hum around her.
“Now,” Oak says, her voice trying to hard to be calm and mystical. She sounds like she’s a three year old, and Kate bites her lip to stop from giggling. Last time she giggled in circle she had to go climb a tree. There were ideas behind this, that it would help Kate focus her energy, but they are too far fetched for you to understand. Unless your family is like Kate’s, in which case you understand perfectly and don’t need a reminder. “Let’s focus our energies. Clear our minds an imagine the protective lights flowing around us.” Again the group starts humming, and Kate leaves her eyes closed as she waits for something to happen.
There is a twitch in Kate’s arm. Really, there is nothing unusual about this twitch. It’s been there before, but this twitch feels like a vibration that spins through her body and Kate wants to believe that it actually is energy. After all, there has to be something out there other than drunk program runners and moms who don’t listens and fathers who aren’t there and boring old school. Kate imagines that she can actually feel the energies going through her system as everyone else hums for her, following along with Oak’s soothing voice. “Into your fingers, down into your toes, call on this golden and bright light.”
“There here with us now,” Oak says in the at too light tone that suddenly feels arm and comforting to Kate’s ears, or at least she pretends it does as she pretends that the light is warming her body and protecting her. Wouldn’t it be great if Timber isn’t crazy, if Kate is special, if there really is a light out there that is protecting her and maybe if she imagines hard enough she’ll see it. She is ten years old, and you can’t really fault her for wanting someone to protect her. Even if it is just a stupid beam of light. “You can see it, can’t you?” Oak says to the group, and them mutter in respond, quiet sounds of concentration.
Even though she isn’t supposed to, Kate opens her eyes to immerse herself in the protective light, to see the golden colors arching over the group and spinning them into a circle, fighting back the darkness. Kate wants to see herself being protected, something to hold her at night and a glowing, mystical light will do that.
Instead what she sees is a bunch of adults and kids sitting in a circle, holding hands and humming. There is no golden light, there is no gleaming arches embracing them. The light bulb above them flickers. One of the three year olds lets go of his mom to pick his nose before taking her hand again. Kate keeps looking around, but there isn’t so much as a stray sunbeam.
And that is the beginning, where Kate figures out that the whole world is bullshit.
Notebook #18, List #2 Drinks at Dad’s Place (sorted alphabetically)
1. Coffee (2 cans)
2. Guinness Drought (4 bottles)
3. Johnny Walker’s Blended Scotch Whisky (1 bottle)
4. Orange Juice (1 jug)
5. SKYY Vodka (1 bottle)
6. Smirnoff Ice (2 bottles)
7. Smirnoff Ice Triple Black (1 bottle)
Chapter Two
The first day of class, every teacher calls her Puree without fail. It’s what the birth certificate says, so that is what they call her. Usually, they only get through Pu- before she has time to say, “Call me, Kate.”
Then, and this always happens, they’ll stare at the name for a little longer. She is pretty sure what is going on. At first they’re trying to figure out if maybe it is a French name of some sort. She doesn’t sound French. That’s because it isn’t French, it’s an ingredient on something her mom ate when she was pregnant. She thought it sounded pretty, and so now her daughter has to be called Puree for the first week of class, until the teachers learn that she’s Kate.
“I don’t see why it matters,” her mom says when Kate would whine about it. “We always call you by your middle name.”
Next they try and figure out how you get Kate from the “name” Puree Blair. You can’t, of course, and that is why she goes by Kate. Then, quite innocently, they’ll ask, “Is Kate your middle name?”
“No,” she says, trying not to scream out at them. How could they not understand? Wouldn’t they change their name, too, if they were Puree? “It’s just what I go by.”
She never tells anyone that her middle name is Ocean. She is not Puree and she is not Ocean, she is just Kate.
“I wanted you to be unique,” her mom claims, upset that her daughter doesn’t get how clever she is to name her Puree Ocean in a world full of Emilys and Stephanies and Kates. You may have been one of those in school, or maybe a Jennifer or a Mike or a Jacob, and maybe you think her mom is incredibly clever to not to do the same to her daughter. The only problem is, with a name like Puree Ocean, you’re pretty much doomed to be a boring, blend into the wall sort of person. How can you not be, with a name like that?
That is why she goes by Kate, to try her best to blend in. In elementary school, her mom made sure that all her teachers called her Ocean and in fifth grade a boy said, “I’d like to swim in that,” and grabbed her skirt. Now, in high school, at least one boy will tell her, “So, how pure are you?” They think they’re clever in the same way her mom thought she was clever. Like her father thought he was being clever when he ran away off to California to become a tattoo artist, officially leaving Kate as the only sane person in the family, and even that is a stretch.
It is a of all this cleverness that people keep using on her that Kate ends up on the bridge beside her house, staring at the rushing water below. She catalogues, mentally, how many waves pass beneath the bridge as she watches it wash by. She is up to one hundred and fifty seven when her concentration is broken.
“You aren’t going to jump.”
“Dylan,” Kate says carefully, trying to keep her count even still, although now it is of something else. Dylan’s sentence, it had five and half words, and nineteen words. She makes a note of that. “I love you like a brother, but don’t tell me what I can or cannot do.”
Dylan bites down on his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Dylan is the sort of guy who still eats his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, even though he’s eighteen. He’s the type of guy who will eat that sandwich while his best friend stands at the edge of the bridge, counting waves and words. He isn’t the kind of guy that Kate loves like a brother, but it makes him feel good to hear it and keeps him there with her.
There are, Kate has demised while making her lists, four different types of friends although she says five, just because she likes her lists to end in fives or tens. She doesn’t know what five is, but she does know that Dylan is a three, which is good although it is certainly no one. It isn’t even a two. But all in all, three really isn’t that bad.
“I’m just saying..” Dylan licks the jelly and peanut butter from his fingers. It takes six licks. All she has to do is glare and Dylan takes four more licks. That is what makes him a three. “You won’t do it.”
Kate turns her nose at him, which she imagines he imagines is a very honorable looking pose for her to take at the moment. “I can’t take it anymore,” she says, stomping her foot on the bridge. “My dad ran away, my mom is an idiot, and Mr. Samson assigned twenty two pages of reading in one night. You know that means I have to read an extra three pages.”
“Or,” he says, standing up and throwing the wrapped his mom had put around his sandwich down into the water. They both watch it splash over the side. “You could just read to twenty pages.”
Kate has to admit that this isn’t an entirely bad plan. Like most teenagers, she isn’t willing to admit that a good plan has been given to her, though, and would much rather do things her own way. Even if it meant jumping.
You see, this is why you read the first part. To get to the juicy bits like this, with a girl standing over a bridge not caring to live anymore. This is why people read books, so that they don’t have to jump.
“Good cruel world,” Kate says, not bothering to come up with anything more imaginative as she steps off the edge. She hopes that when Dylan tells the story, he comes up with something better to say.
There is a wet splash and then silence.
“Hey,” Dylan says, sitting on the edge of the bridge, looking up at Kate. “You done now?”
Opening her eyes, Kate stares down at the water, watching it part and slit around her sneakers. She sighs and sits back on the bridge, kicking at a pebble in the rough water. “Yeah.”
Dylan kicks the wrapper he’d thrown down in the water earlier. It starts to go under the bridge before getting stuck. “The bottom of your jeans are all wet,” he points out. It is the awkward talk of a boy who has a crush on a very strange girl. Dylan often wonders why he had to choice Kate to like, and perhaps would feel better to know it was just hormones and would wear off in a few years. The first time he met her she was laying on the hardtop at school, trying to go blind by staring into the sun. He’d thought she was quirky and cool back then. Now she’s jumping off of creek bridges, and he really isn’t sure what to think.
Kate kicks at the water, and her jeans turn dark blue as it splashes onto her. “Yeah.” She looks up at the sun, squinting into it, then back down to her wet sneakers and pants. Sighing, she pushes herself off the bridge, walking through the creek and to the shore. “I have to go see Timber.”
“Want a ride!” Dylan calls out, because even if he doesn’t understand it, he still likes her. It’s really unfortunate. If anyone where the tragic hero in Kate’s story, perhaps it would be Dylan. Of course, that is a very long line to be in.
“No,” Kate says, waving goodbye to him as she walks away, completely casual about her own lame attempt at suicide. She picked up that trick from her dad, who would to threaten to swallow whole bottles of pills at a time unless she went to her room. In Kate’s head, he was still the better parents. She didn’t have many choices. It was either the suicidal drunk of the crazy reborn hippie who thought Kate could talk to the dead. Either would have gotten her child services attention if she’d bothered to call.
Kate didn’t want to be taken away, though. She just wanted to blend in. Besides, she had seen what happens to kids who are “unique” and who don’t blend in.
“Kate!” The nurses at Saint Francis’s Mental Health Clinic know Kate by name. They never call her Puree. “I see you’re back for your daily visits.”
“They only allow visiting Thursday through Saturday, so I can’t come daily,” Kate points out as she signs herself in. The nurse at the font is pretty, here because she is young and couldn’t get a job with any real hospital. Which is a shame, because no one needs people who want to be there quite as much as Saint Francis’s Mental Health Clinic. She isn’t use to Kate, though, and frowns a bit as she is told off by this young, seven teen year old who has to erase her name three times before she is pleased with it. “Is Timber waiting?”
“He is,” she says, lips still turned down like she is confused about something. This isn’t new to Kate, who confuses a lot of people, although she isn’t sure how. Everything she says is perfectly logical, at least in her own mind. “Right down there,” she says, pressing the button that allows people in and out of the gates and handing Kate her pass.
“Thanks,” Kate says, hurrying in before some one from the institution escapes. She has never actually seen anyone try, but Timber swears it has happened before, with people diving to get out of the door. Kate doesn’t blame them for trying, if this is true. The mental clinic is frightening. First off, they try and make it seem home and pleasant, with paintings on the wall and a visiting area that is supposed to look like a living room, but not Kate’s own personal living room which her mom has covered in plants and cushions without furniture to help spread their energies. Someone else’s living room, though. Only everything is clean, watched over, locked in, so instead of feeling at home you feel very much so like you’ve broken a law and are on the executioner’s list.
When Kate walks in to the room, Timber is already sitting at the table, waiting for her. She pulls out her notebook, label ‘TIMBER’ and flips to the first list. He smiles at her and says, “Hello, Dr. Blair.”
It’s like a game of doctor, only Kate is seventeen and obsessive compulsive, and Timber is an abandoned kid who, if were to actually play doctor, might accidentally cut someone up just to see. “Hello, Patient One,” she says in her best grown up voice. “Tick?”
“Same,” Timber says without question. On cue, his arms jerk, shaking a bit uncomfortable. Kate hardly notices at all. He’s had that one for almost a year now. The doctors say it’s Tourettes’s Syndrome. His mom says the government has stuck chips in him. Kate’s mom says he’s possessed. Kate just writes it down in her notebook.
“Medication?” She asks in the same no joking around tone as she flips through a few pages. He lists that off as well, and she writes it all down. “Doctor? Roommate? Patients in your ward?”
“Rubio and Thomas still, and one new guys making it thirteen.” Timber cocks his head when he sees Kate wince. “I could kill three of them, though.”
“No,” Kate says, diligently writing it all down in her Timber notebook. “That’s okay.” Finish the list she has off, she closes the notebook and tucks it into her backpack. “Dr. Rubio has lasted a while.” Timber has been in the clinic for six years, and has managed to stay through eight doctors. He says he’s pretty proud of that. No one else has been here that long.
“He’s a pretty nice guy,” Timber says shrugging. “He lets me read during our talks and doesn’t yell so much. I think he might be moving to California, though. I heard him on the phone with his wife, and they’re having a kid so he needs a better job.”
“Everyone goes to California,” Kate says, and she is allowed to sound bitter since that is where her dad went when he left. You might have not remembering that, being distracted by her suicide jump and crazy friends, but Kate can’t forget it. It’s a hard thing to get past. “Has your mom come to visit yet?”
“Nope.” Timber reaches into his pocket, pulling out a letter and handing it to Kate. “She refuses to come visit. She says that now that I’m a ward of the state, they’ve probably brained washed me and coming here would be a trap so that they could harness her energies.”
Kate carefully unfolds the letter, squinting down at the messy, desperate looking handwriting scribbled across the page. It’s all unevenly spaced and driving her insane. “This doesn’t even make sense,” she says as she reads over a few of the detached, choppy sounding sentences.
You’re probably wondering what exactly a very disturbed mother would write her son, the one that got taken away from her when he was seven after she throw her doctor’s cat out the window when he refused to refill her prescription. Well, maybe you’re wondering how this woman managed to raise a child for seven whole years before someone finally caught onto the fact that she was completely insane. The answer, as Timber would put it, is that she didn’t really raise him at all. More like had him, and then let him do what he wanted until finally some nice lady came and took him here.
Neither Kate nor Timber realized how sad it is that a mental clinic is a step up from their own homes. This is probably true of more people that you would like to think.
The letter read: dear son;
I would like you to see My old ChildhOod hoMe very soon If you Need anythinG like FoOd foR the trip than YOU to bring it as well as it might get cOld dowN there. So just remember to pAck hoT stUff in case someboDy were to need thAt. I love You.
MOM
Kate read over it a few times, face wrinkled with a deep frown as she tried to look past the horrible way the letters slanted and towards the actually context. She couldn’t manage this. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s a code,” Timber explains, grabbing the letter and turning it around for Kate. In Timber’s writing it says: Imcomingforyouonsatuday. “And not a very good one,” he points our at Kate carefully separates and rewrites the sentence until she’s happy with the way it’s aligned. “At least she remembered all the letters this time.”
His mom’s last coded message had read ifthegovtementhasntgotyubrianwashthanrepliebytwosuday. Timber had sent her a letter back claiming that the doctors had hooked needles up to his brain and forced him to show them to an ancient Indian burial ground using only his psychic abilities. It had been just a little cruel of him, but mostly he found it funny.
“When is this from?” Kate asks, looking over the letter for some sort of date.
Timber shrugs, taking it back and folding it again, slipping it into his pocket. No matter how cruel they are, you can never just throw away your parents. At the moment, poorly written code is Timber’s mom, so he keeps it safe along with her other three letters. “The envelope was dated about a month ago.”
“So I guess she missed the deadline then, huh?” Kate asks, and Timber nods. He doesn’t seem disappointed. Of course, by now the letters are more like his mom than she is, so it wouldn’t matter to him if she came or not. Kate imagines that he imagines at night her coming and swooping him away. Maybe not being crazy anymore, maybe just like she was before. Kate is never sure about that part of Timber’s daydream.
“Did you bring any books?” Timber says to help change the subject. Because Timber’s mom didn’t believe in school, no one knew that Timber had a near genius IQ until the mental clinic made him go to classes. Of course, all the classes are as simple as could be, and so Timber will never actually get to use his intelligence. Expect for sometimes, when Kate brings her schoolbooks.
“Yep,” she says, kicking her bag to him. “Algebra II, Chemistry, and World History today, but I need them back by Saturday because I have a test on Monday in Chemistry.”
“No problem,” he says, leaning down to grab the books. He glances at her jeans, stopping to stare at the wet spots spattered up to the ankles. “Did it rain before you walked here?”
“No,” she says, glancing down to see what he is looking at. “I jumped off a bridge.”
“Why?” He asks, setting the books up next to him. They’re a daunting looking pile to Kate, but Timber strokes their spines like they’re kittens.
“I was trying to kill myself,” she explains as if this happens every day, and Timber takes the news with the same causal attitude.
“How did it go?” He asks, marking the books with a little sticker that claims they’re his so that no one else in his ward tries to take them. Kate isn’t sure who would try and take books, but she’s gotten use to peeling those stickers off when she leaves. She imagines it wouldn’t be hard for others too, either.
“I don’t know,” she admits. “I think I might be dead, but I’m not sure.” Because there are so many books and movies now a days with some truly twisting and weird endings, be assure than Kate isn’t dead.
Timber pauses for another second as he thinks about this. This is a film with a script, so sometimes witty responses take a moment to formulate. In this case, there wouldn’t be one at all. “Ask your mom. If she says you’re dead, you probably aren’t.” For a while now Kate’s mom had been on her latest supernatural kick that involved a lot of “communicating with the dead”. In reality, Jenny would probably die of a heart attack should a dead person try to speak to her, but for a few months she has held séances and lined the walls with this weird art she claims “calms the restless spirits”.
Kate is a restless spirit, and the art makes her want to throw things and scream and tear up the room until it’s gutted out and there is nothing left.
“No,” she says, zipping her bag back up. The visitation is only for an hour a day, to help keep the patients calm. Kate told the nurse that the patients would be a lot more calm if they were with people they actually liked and you had five chairs in the living room instead of just four. As usual, the nurses don’t seem to understand her. “She’s off that. She’s on this Asian energy kick now. Threw out all our furniture.”
“Wow,” Timber says, standing up with Kate and clutching to the books tight. They’re the only things in the super sterile, locked in living room that feels natural. “Everything? Even your bed?”
“No,” she says, tugging her backpack on and smiling across the table at Timber. They don’t realize, but you should know how heart breaking it is to always be this far from the only one on you’re five types of friend list. “Don’t worry. I can still hide under my bed if I need to.”