“Honey, I know but—” Ms. Waters begins.
The fiancé cuts her off. “Look, I can’t do this right now. I have to—”
Then Gray is suddenly pushing his way into the classroom. He grabs Ms. Waters’s phone from the desk. “What the hell is your problem?”
“Gray, what are you doing?” Ms. Waters reaches for her phone.
“Who’s Gray? Am I on speaker?” the fiancé asks.
“Why are you talking to her like that?” Gray demands.
“Gray—” says Ms. Waters, trying again to take the phone.
But Gray just keeps going. “You keep this up, you’re gonna drive her away.”
“Whoareyou?” asks the fiancé.
“I’m a patient of your wife-to-be. She’s great. She’s trying to help us. She deserves better than your shit.”
“I have no idea—”
Gray grits his teeth. “You are absolutely driving her away, Dad.”
“What the hell?” says the fiancé.
For the briefest of seconds, I think maybe Ms. Waters’s fiancé really is Gray’s dad. But then I understand. Something about the argument reminds Gray of the way his parents fought. Of the way his dad treated his mom.
By now Gray has come back to himself. He looks confused and embarrassed at the same time. More than embarrassed. Mortified. He hands the phone to Ms. Waters, who tells her fiancé she’ll call him back later.
We all shuffle to our seats, and a solemn kind of quiet descends on us.
Ms. Waters flips through the pages of activities on her clipboard for longer than she probably needs to. I’m guessing she’s giving Gray some time to recover. Maybe she needssome time herself to figure out how to move us on from his outburst. All of us take furtive glances at Gray. He keeps his eyes firmly cast downward.
Maybe it’s because I feel guilty for pushing him so hard before. Or maybe it’s because, out of all of us, he’s the one who has shown us—intentionally or not—the deepest and rawest parts of himself. Anyway. I don’t want him to feel alone.
I take a couple of deep breaths before I begin. “My parents used to really love each other. No one could make my mom giggle like she was a little kid the way my dad could. They used to kiss. On the lips. In public. They were married for almost twenty years. They promised to love each other forever. Now my dad is in the Bahamas. With his new girlfriend.” I can feel tears threatening to fall again, but I refuse to let them. I look at Ms. Waters. “You asked me earlier whether I still believed in love. My answer is that I don’t. You’re divorced. You know that love doesn’t last. It can just vanish one day like it was never there in the first place.”
Instead of saying anything, Ms. Waters simply waits. Somehow she knows I’m not at the end of all I want to say. She knows that the fact that I don’t believe in love anymore is not my true problem.
I force my next words out. “I don’t believe in love anymore. But I want to. I want to go back to being the person I was when I did believe. I just don’t know how.”
Our collective quiet shifts, takes on a more expectant quality. We want Ms. Waters to have the answers. We want her to be able to fix us, even though she says we don’t need fixing.
Gray’s the one to break the silence. “I’m afraid I’m turning into my dad. One minute I’m fine, and the next I’m—” He cuts himself off, but I know his next word would’ve been “angry.”
The energy in the room shifts again. Something about Gray’s admission, his vulnerability, makes everyone else feel safe and brave, too.
“I’m on my phone all the time,” says Joey. He pantomimes scrolling. “It’s easier than dealing with ... everything.”
“It used to be okay for me not to be okay, but now it’s not. My parents need me to be fine,” Preethi adds.
“It turns out I have emotions,” Lilliam says, looking at her nails with a rueful half smile. “I preferred it when I didn’t know.”
We all smile at that.
“You guys want to know why my parents sent me here?” Joey asks.
Preethi is the first to nod, eager.
