for a second, a split second, maybe just a millithousandth of a second, I feel like everything that’s happened to me has been worth it. Like somehow, next time, I’ll know just a little more, get closer to doing the right thing, saying the right thing. I’m proud of the changes I’ve made, even if they are small. Maybe I’m not doomed like Sisyphus. Sure, I will roll the rock up and down, but there will be a summit. An end. And my arms will be that much stronger from all that pushing and chasing.
I feel a hand grip my knee and am startled out of my dozing. “That’s us! You’re lucky that Rachel didn’t call the police about the property assault,” Sue says, tapping me gently on the thigh. “Don’t worry. It’s likely they’ll drop the break-and-enter charge. You’ve got a good judge.”
Sixty-Nine
The judge is a kind-looking old man with greying hair and laugh lines around his eyes. He sort of reminds me of Anthony Hopkins—when he played a quiet butler in a movie, not when he was Hannibal Lecter. After a while of blah blah blah to no one in particular, he finally directs a question to me. “Well, Melissa. It’s been three months. You’ve had a chance to reflect on your actions. I see you’ve been going to counselling regularly and you’re passing your courses. I know there was some recent trouble, but I’m assured you have good supports in place. I have your latest report card here in my hand. Good grades …”
As he’s talking, I stare him down with my black eye that’s no doubt revealed itself under the pasty foundation diluted by sweat. I keep staring, letting him get a good look at me, wanting him to notice the cracks in my face, the way Ms. Dally did, because in a way I still want someone to fix me. To give me another chance. Send me somewhere else, away from everyone I know.
I wait and wait. Staring. I do it long enough for it to become awkward. But he seems clueless. He just goes on about the consequences of my actions being a chain effect, and how it’s often the parents, the mothers, who bear the stress of a teen who just can’t make things work …
“Do you know what you want to do when you graduate from high school?” he asks.
My mom takes my hand and squeezes tightly, cueing me to respond, to say the right thing.
“When I graduate from high school? A veterinarian,” Echo says, which is the right answer, because he smiles at both me and my mom and relaxes in his chair.
“How wonderful.”
I take it back. Kids are not the only ones who see only black and white. Adults do too. I think there’s this phase as a teenager where things are murky, when the truth is naked and raw. You see people wholly. You see all the hypocrisy and the contradictions, the intertwined good and bad. But it’s so stressful and confusing to see things this way that eventually you stop looking. The little window of perception closes up and you learn to keep it shut. You jam it with something so it doesn’t open up again. And just like that, people are put back into their blacks and whites, a little more categorized, but clearly divided all the same.
Then you get older and you forget that you are seeing only one side of people. I suppose it’s easier to go through life that way. But if you really stopped to think about it, you would understand the jerk who pushes you out of the way, or the bitch in the coffee shop lineup who sighs and mutters about the noisy kid, or the punk who keys your car … You’d know there’s something behind that behaviour. But you don’t care. It’s too late, because you’ve learned to be an echo for so long that even you have forgotten who you used to be.
“So tell me, Melissa, how things are going. Better?” the judge continues, his hopeful eyes awaiting my response.
I feel my heart pound in my chest. What is the right answer? So maybe I’m not doomed to be Sisyphus, but I’m not quite ready to completely let go of Echo yet. I don’t know if I ever will be. Freestyle says, “You can’t change the system. Never try. It’s a machine that will keep running with or without you. Stick a wrench in it and the interruption is only temporary. It will rev up again and you’ll just be left tired and without a wrench.”
Up. Up. Up.
“Better,” Echo repeats, and forces her best smile.
a cognizant original v5 release october 27 2010