Free Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer Page B

to dismiss you early today.”
    “Really, are you sure?” says Marc. He looks panicked, like,
Isn’t it against the rules?
    “You heard Mrs. Q,” says Griffin.
    “Go get a little mountain air, all of you,” she says. “Mrs. Q here insists. It’s pointless trying to teach you when your beautiful brains are all somewhere else far, far away. Go see if you can focus on nature.”
    But the mountain air can’t help me sort this out. What I really want to do is call my parents and confess what happened to me last night. Before I met Reeve, I used to tell them so much. Something would happen at school when I was a little kid—like, Dana Sapol would “accidentally” bang into me as we walked past each other, or else push me out of the lunch line—and I’d come home and unburden myself to my mom and dad at the dinner table. They’d always be so supportive.
    There’s a pay phone on the first floor of the dorm, and I have a calling card. You almost never see pay phones in the world anymore, which is probably a good thing. I read that somebody did a study and found that the receivers are swarming with millions of disgusting bacteria.
Fecal
bacteria, if you must know. But here at The Wooden Barn, which is like living in Amish country, pay phones are the only way to connect to the outside world.
    It’s the morning of a school day, a workday for my mom, so I call her office number. She answers, saying, “Karen Gallahue,” in her businessy voice.
    Just hearing her makes my throat tighten and my eyes flood. “Oh, Mom,” I say.
    “Jam?” she says. “Is that you?”
    “Yep, it’s me. Can I come home? There’s a bus. And maybe you and Dad could even get a tuition refund.”
    “Now, babe,” she says, “we talked about this. Remember that family meeting with Dr. Margolis? We all agreed you needed to try it for at least one semester. To get away from home, to get out of your bed. To be someplace where they’re good with adolescent—”
    “But,
Mom,
” I say. “You don’t understand.”
    “I think I do, Jam. You feel homesick—”
    “That’s what you think?”
    “Well, yes. Because you’re outside your comfort zone. Thrown into a new situation, after being in a cocoon for so long.”
    “Listen, Mom, it’s not like that at all.” I gather in a breath and then, in a quiet voice, I say, “I was with
Reeve
last night, okay? We were
together,
and he was right there, and we were holding each other—”
    “
Jam,
” my mother interrupts sternly. “You know that isn’t true. If you remember, Dr. Margolis said we were likely to see certain behaviors, but that we shouldn’t validate them.”
    “Certain behaviors?” I cry into the receiver, and immediately I feel bad for speaking so sharply to my mom. But I just can’t take it. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about! You’ve got to let me come home. I’m starting to unravel here—”
    “
Jam,
” she interrupts again. “You have to give it time. One semester at least.” She is serious. I am really and truly not allowed to come home.
    When I hang up, I’m shaking hard. Should I go to the infirmary and try to sleep it off? Or go upstairs to my room and try to get back to Reeve?
    I start to head blindly out of the dorm now, and I run into Sierra, who’s just coming in. We’ve been sort of awkward with each other since we had our moment in the trees. When I saw her that day, she’d wanted to know if I’d possibly had an experience like hers. If I’d experienced something “surreal.” I hadn’t known what she was talking about then. But maybe now I do.
    I block her way in through the front door, and I say, “I have to ask you something.”
    Sierra looks at me without much interest. I’d had my chance, and I blew it. It’s like she can’t imagine that what I’m going to ask her now can be very interesting; she thinks she’s all alone. But maybe I can pull her back from her isolation. Or else maybe I’ll just seem