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The firefighters are gossiping. I heard about it from Jake. ARE YOU DOING GABE? You’d better call me later.
“I don’t kiss and tell,” Veronica had said aloud as she’d typed the same to Lauren, but God, she wanted to. She stared at the rumpled sheets of her bed and thought of all the things she wished she could tell someone.
Veronica paged through her emails, looking for a cheerful Dear Veronica letter to answer. She didn’t want to deal with questions about body odor or infidelity today. She wanted something happy.
Or maybe something obnoxiously fun. Something about yet another man who hated going down. Man, she could really go to town about that now.
Two more Dear Veronica emails arrived, and she immediately rejected the first one. It was a rant about American women and how they didn’t seem to appreciate “real men” anymore. Not an uncommon complaint, and one that always made her shudder.
But it was the second letter that stopped her cold. As soon as she saw it, she realized she’d been waiting. Dreading. Knowing it had to come someday. Her body hummed with a terrible prickling anxiety, a combination of alarm and self-loathing and fear. The email was titled “I Don’t Know How to Keep Going” and just that made Veronica break out in a sweat that chilled her whole body.
Dear Veronica,
I feel totally alone. Nobody in my school likes me and when I try to talk to my parents about it, they tell me to try harder to fit in. But you can’t TRY your way to fitting in, especially when nobody wants you around.
I don’t fit in and I never have. I don’t care about sports or hunting or video games, so I don’t know how to talk to other guys. I get sick just thinking of going to school, and most days I don’t want to live anymore. I don’t think I can get through two more weeks of this, much less two more years, and I don’t think anything will change after high school anyway. Do you have any advice?
—Nobody
Nobody. The screen went blurry and Veronica had to wipe her eyes several times before she could see the words again.
Nobody. She knew exactly how that felt. To be nothing. No one. It had been her life in high school, too. It had been her life in her own family.
Do you have any advice?
Oh, God. She wasn’t qualified for this. She was barely qualified to give advice on wedding etiquette and blow jobs. But this? This kid needed real help from a professional.
She took a deep breath. That was exactly what she’d tell him. As a matter of fact, she could still remember the language used for these kinds of letters at her previous job.
Feeling a tiny bit calmer, she read the letter again, but this time she took note of the email address and her heart fell. It appeared to be a randomly generated series of numbers and letters, and the email provider was one of the largest online sites. A lot of people used a temporary email address to submit questions. It usually wasn’t a problem, because the disclaimer on the paper’s website covered permissions, so she didn’t have to follow up before publishing.
But this was different. She needed to reach out to this boy.
She immediately hit Reply and crossed her mental fingers as she started typing, but she hit a snag immediately. She wasn’t going to call him Nobody. She refused to. So she just started with “Hello” and went from there.
I’m hoping you’re still at this email address so we can talk. Could you let me know? I’d love to get some more information about what you’re going through, because I truly understand. Please get in touch.
She signed her name and hit Send. When her inbox dinged just a few seconds later, she knew what it meant. Her response had been returned as undeliverable.
Veronica wiped her face again, then blew her nose and closed her eyes to try to stop her tears. If she couldn’t reach him directly, she’d have to post a response on her online column, because she couldn’t wait a week to answer this boy. What if things got worse for him? What if he decided to hurt himself? She knew what the suicide statistics were for teenage boys, and this boy was clearly depressed.
She needed to reach out and she needed to do it the right way. She ticked through her mental list of contacts, but she couldn’t settle on one that satisfied her. There was a psychiatrist she’d been in touch with through the paper once, but she didn’t trust him. He’d seemed arrogant and had even cracked a few jokes about his patients. No, she didn’t trust him at all.
Her social circle wasn’t very large, and it didn’t include any doctors or therapists, but she knew whose would. Ironic that she might have to get in touch with him about this. Her lip curled at the thought. But this wasn’t about her, and she could swallow her pride for this child.
She dialed her father and held her breath.
“Yes?” he answered curtly. He was all business with her and anyone else beneath him. If she’d been a US senator or one of the wealthy people in town, his tone would have been decidedly warmer.
“I need to ask a favor,” she said, hating the words as they left her mouth.
“I hope the favor has to do with Dillon Tettering.”
“It does not.”
“So it’s money?” he barked.
“No, it’s not money. Listen, I just need to know if you have any friends in therapy or psychiatry in town. I have a bit of an emergency regarding a letter writer, and I need a little advice.”
