Page 64 of The Golden Boy's Guide to Bipolar
“I don’t want to talk about Yami,” I say curtly.
“So she’s still at that Catholic school then?” she asks, ignoring my request completely.
“Why do you care? I thought you hated her.” My voice comes out cold, but it doesn’t matter.
She turns a little red at that. “Idon’tcare,” is all she offers.
“Good, me either,” I lie, and that seems to placate her because she slithers her hand onto my knee and leaves it there the rest of the ride to school.
As soon as we get there, I run off to “class.” Really, I make a beeline for the bathroom. I rush into one of the stalls, lock it behind me, kneel over the toilet, and empty my guts into it.
I don’t stop when someone opens the door and walks in. I can barely hear them pissing over the sound of my own vomiting. Hopefully they ignore the awkwardness and just leave when they’re done.
But of course I’m never so lucky.
“Um, you okay?”
Fuck.It had to be him.
“I’m fine,” I say between coughs as I wipe my mouth with toilet paper.
“You don’t sound fine, Cesar.” Shit. I guess I can’t be surprised he recognized my voice when I knew it was Jamal right away. A plastic water bottle rolls under the stall door.
“I said I’m fine!” I snap this time. I can’t handle Jamal being kind to me right now. I can’t handle it. I kick the water bottle back under the door, even though my throat is screaming for relief. “Please just leave me alone.”
He hesitates, and for a moment, a small part of me hopes he’ll argue back. That he’ll say no. That he’d never leave me alone like this. But instead he wordlessly trails out the door without a protest.
24
When Stargazing with Your Strictly Platonic Astronomy Partner Seems Like a Good Plan
Illogical Reasoning
The second my end-of-therapy alarm goes off, I head straight for the door. Dr. Lee tries to invite me to group again, but I ignore her. There are a few other people around my age sitting in the lobby. Their faces are familiar since they’re here every week after I get out of therapy, but we’ve never interacted. When I try to walk past them this time, my mom grabs my hand to stop me.
“Not so fast, mijo. You still have group to go to.”
“I never agreed to go to group.” I pull my hand away from her. How did she even find out about group? I sure as hell never mentioned it. I mentally curse Dr. Lee for snitching on me yet again.
“I agreed for you,” she says. “It will be good for you to bond with kids your age who are going through something similar.”
I can feel everyone around us staring at me, and it makes me want to make a run for it. But I don’t want to make even more of a scene than I already have if I’m going to have to see the same people every single week.
None of these people care about me and my problems, so Ireally don’t see the point of group, but in the name of not embarrassing myself even further, I drag my feet and follow the rest of them into a larger room.
At least this will get my mom to leave me alone.
We all sit in a circle of chairs in the middle of the room, with Dr. Lee at the head of the circle. She doesn’t have her usual notepad this time, which makes it feel like we’re in a totally different setting, even if it’s therapy all the same.
Just when she’s about to start, someone else walks into the room and takes the empty chair across the circle from mine. I almost get out of my seat and walk away right then and there at seeing Avery.
He’s basically Nicks’ left ballsack, the way he’s always hanging around him and doing literally anything Nick tells him to. When they used to jump me, Avery was the one who held me back while the rest of them wailed on me.
I clench my jaw as Avery’s eyes meet mine for a split moment before he quickly looks away. The last thing I want to be doing is therapy withhim, but if I leave now, he’ll have the satisfaction of knowing it’s because of him. I’ll be damned if I’m giving Avery even an inch of satisfaction at seeing me here. So I refuse to let him take any information about me back to Nick and them. If there’s any consolation, it’s that he’s still got the ankle bracelet on, so I’m relatively safe, at least from a physical fight.
“Since we have a couple of new faces today, let’s go around the circle and introduce ourselves. You can start with your name, pronouns, and your diagnosis, if you’re comfortable giving it. Zo, would you like to start?” Dr. Lee looks to the kid on her right, who’s wearing a shirt with the Mexican flag on it, with the word DECOLONIZE written in bold over the flag.
“Sure! I’m Zo. They/them pronouns, please,” they say while playing with a strand of their neon-pink hair. “I’m bipolar.” Dr. Lee discreetly glances in my direction at that with a small smile, and I roll my eyes, hoping Avery didn’t catch that look. Then Zo looks to the person next to them, who’s also next to me. A goth Black girl with a slight facial twitch I didn’t notice until now.
