Free Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer Page A

me unless it was an absolute emergency. But they might decide I was too unbalanced to stay here, and I’d wind up in a mental hospital like Sylvia Plath did, with electrodes sending shuddering impulses through my brain.
    So I’m not going to tell anyone at all.
    • • •
    Somehow I manage to fall asleep, but in the morning when I wake up I immediately remember what happened the night before, and I reach onto my desk and grab my red leather journal to make sure it really did happen. Five full pages are filled in with my handwriting. There’s a long description of Reeve on the day we first met in gym class, and another description of the moment when I saw him again in that strange version of the playing fields behind my old high school.
    It happened.
    “You seem weird today,” DJ says as we get dressed. She strips off the big My Chemical Romance T-shirt she slept in, and puts on a bra and boys’ plaid boxers. “I mean weirder than usual,” she adds.
    “You should talk.”
    “I’m well aware of how weird I am,” she says.
    I feel out of it this morning, the way Sierra seemed after her bad dream. At breakfast I sit in a corner by myself, facing the wall eating a banana muffin that’s as solid as a doorknob, not wanting to talk to a single person. Everyone seems to know enough to leave me alone. People get into funks here, and everyone is respectful.
    I eat in silence, slowly gnawing off the muffin top, allowing myself to go over every minute of what happened last night, to remember how the arms of the study buddy morphed into Reeve’s arms, and then we were together again. I might have stayed lost in this for the entire breakfast, but suddenly there’s a crash.
    “Shit!” I hear. Casey has backed her chair away from a table straight into Marc, whose tray has flown to the floor. His cereal bowl wobbles like a top, then finally goes still. “For fuck’s sake, Marc,” says Casey. “Look where you’re going.”
    Marc, pinned between the wheelchair and the next table, says, “It was an accident. Cool your heels.”
    “They’re cooled.”
    “You know what I mean.”
    Without even thinking, I hurry over and grab the handles of the wheelchair to help Casey move.
    “Leave it, Jam,” she says, as if talking to a disobedient dog. And then, with great difficulty, she extricates herself, and all I can do is watch her go. When she’s gone, Marc crouches down to start cleaning up the food and scattered silverware, and I help him.
    “I don’t know why she got so upset,” he says. “She’s really on edge.”
    “She’s not alone.”
    He gets a dustpan and a broom, and we finish cleaning up, then we leave together and walk toward English class in silence. I predict that class isn’t going to go very well today, and when I get there I’m proven right. Casey’s in a crap mood, and so are Marc and Sierra, and so am I. Griffin’s always in a crap mood, and today’s no different.
    Mrs. Quenell looks at us from her place at the table and finally asks, “What’s going on?”
    No one has an answer for her.
    “I see,” she says, but of course she can’t possibly see.
    I’m bursting out of my skin. If there’s a teacher on earth who I would want to tell what happened to me last night, Mrs. Q is the one. After all, I’d been writing in my journal when it happened. Maybe somehow she’d understand. But I couldn’t possibly explain something that I can’t even figure out myself.
    “Shall we pick up where we left off last time?” Mrs. Quenell asks. “I believe Sierra was—”
    “No offense, Mrs. Q,” says Sierra. “But I just can’t focus on this.”
    “Me neither,” says Marc. “Sorry.”
    “It’s like the words on the page mean nothing,” Griffin says.
    Mrs. Quenell looks around at us. Will she be irritated and say, “It doesn’t matter whether you can focus or not. You are here to learn.” Or will she be understanding?
    Then she really shocks us all, saying, “You know what? I’m going