My English Story That Needs a Title

“Reagan, you must be one of the most unique people I have ever met, and all I have done is looked at your application” said Joanne “You say on here that for a profession you would like to be a lawyer for schizophrenic murderers, yet your greatest ambition is to coach basketball….”
What the heck does any of this have to do with why I am here? I am pretty sure my “tendencies” have little to do with my greatest ambition or anything else that that stupid form had asked. But what honestly escapes me is why I had to fill out an application so I could see a psychologist…
“Well that’s all the time I have today, I’m glad I got to know you better.” She said, with that fake smile. I wonder if she uses that same fake smile for all of her patients or just the cutters.
“Umm yea, you too.”
After I walked into the waiting room and gathered my stuff, I gave the receptionist the check my mom gave me and started walking home. We only live two blocks from the hospital, so it was a pretty short walk.
“So did you have fun at the psychologist Reagan?” asked my mom, practically the minute I walked in the door.
“Oh yeah, I had lots of fun. Those shrinks really know how to have a good time.” I responded. All I wanted to do was escape this conversation with as little talk possible and retreat to my room.
“You don’t have to get all defensive; I just wanted to know how it went.”
“It was great, really” Then I turned and went up the stairs.
If you saw my room you would swear I shared it with three other people. On one side I have all of my books, my computer (which I built myself), and all of my video games. Turn 90 degrees and there is a pile of hockey gear, my basketball stuff, and other various sporting equipment. And on the opposite side of that was my entire music world, my ever expanding CD collection(it includes everything from NOFX to Journey to Green Day to BB King), my keyboard, and my pride and joy--my guitar. It’s a basic black Indiana Strat, nothing special, but it’s my favorite possession.
I turned on my computer, logged on to MSN, and checked out the forums psyke.org; Other than a couple new posts on how to hide scars, there was nothing worth reading, so I closed it out and tried to find the tabs to the new Fall Out Boy song while I IM’d a couple good friends about plans for tomorrow.
Tomorrow is Monday, which is the only day that I truly hate. I have nothing to do after school, which means I have to come home and actually do my homework. Who honestly does their homework at home when you have a 45 minute bus ride to school?


I have come to the conclusion that 6 a.m. is way too early to get up. Why can’t the world wake up at noon and work until midnight? That schedule would work much better for me. But until everyone else comes to their senses I guess I will just have to deal.
Every morning I have what my science teacher calls the “breakfast of champions,” A Hershey bar and a Coke. And I never eat it at home, always on the bus. If I don’t ride the bus, I don’t eat. It works great for me, who cares if its healthy…As long as I’m getting A’s I don’t think anyone should be able to criticize my eating habits, in fact, maybe more people should follow them...
Everybody keeps getting on my about my “bad habits” like when I eat, what I eat, when and how I study, and my entire schedule period. But the truth is I am actually a lot better off then half the kids at my school who do everything “the way it’s supposed to be done.” Well, if you take out that whole cutting thing.
My bus ride is very long and highly perverted, but when you ride with a bus full of middle school boys, what can you expect? This is where my mp3 player comes in. I can only stand riding the bus for about fifteen minutes without it. I can usually get in about 20 songs before we get to school, which makes me unbelievably happy.


“Your assignment for today is to make a soundtrack of your life. The point of this is to connect music to your everyday life. You need at least 20 tracks maybe more, make sure you include lyrics and why you added this song to your personal soundtrack…”
This should be fairly easy, I think. Only twenty tracks? That’s the hard part.
When the bell went off, everyone went flying out of the room, what I don’t understand is why everyone is in such a hurry to get out of the class, when they just have to go to an even hard, more boring class.
After an hour of painfully going over the formula for a sphere, Mrs. T called me up to her desk and asked me if I was ok. I said yes and asked her why she asked. She told me that my grades were slipping and that I wasn’t participating in class. I told her it was just a slump in my thinking process.
I have found that it is actually quite fun to watch people in social studies. The teacher asked what kind of government China has. It took them ten minutes, with their books open, to figure it out that it is Communism. Of course I could have volunteered the answer, but I just get so much joy out of watching my classmates struggle to find an answer to such a simple answer.


“Today I would like to address your ‘tendencies,’ if that’s ok with you, of course.” Joanne asked, with that same stupid fake smile. I wonder how old she is, forty maybe?
“Yea, sure, it makes no difference to me what we talk about.”
“So you’re completely comfortable talking about your, uhhh, cutting?” Nah, probably fifty, definitely not forty.
“Yea, I stopped so what does it matter to me?”
“Ok, well it seems to me that the reason you were cutting was because you had no other way to express your anger and sadness, would you say that’s accurate?”
“Sure, I’ll go with that, how old are you?”
“We are not going to get anywhere if you do not cooperate! Now why do you think you were cutting?”
“I quit, so where do I need to get?”
“I’m sorry, but this is all the time and patience I have today”
“Works for me.”
“Reagan?” she said as I left the room. I wonder if all shrinks paint there walls beige.
“Yea?”
“Fifty-two.”
Honestly I don’t understand where I need to get. I stopped, how much farther can you go? I have better things to do then to discuss my past mistakes with someone so they can overanalyze something that’s already done and over with. I think I liked it better when we were talking about my favorite bible verses and my greatest ambitions…

Tomorrow is Tuesday, my absolute favorite day of the week. To most people it may seem like just a normal day, but to me, its hockey and basketball practice. The two best things (next to music) in the entire world! And it gives me an excuse to eat left over pizza for dinner. And not to do my homework until I get on the bus Wednesday.
Just when I thought Tuesday couldn’t get any better, we got a new kid. A hot new kid. A hot Russian new kid, or at least I think so, that’s what his accent sounds like and his name is Sergei. He had jet black hair and a really cute smile. Maybe he plays hockey…I only have three classes with him; Choir (He sings!), social studies, and science.
Basketball practice went pretty much as usual, even though we have a game in a week against some team from the next county over. I’ve heard they were good, but apparently the coach heard otherwise, considering we didn’t do anything special.
Hockey practice on the other hand was much more fun than usual; because we have next to no ice around here, we play roller hockey, which I assure you hurts a lot more when you get checked. We scrimmaged almost the entire practice and I managed to get about ten good hits, 2 assists and a goal in. In other words: I had one heck of a good day.
This whole soundtrack thing for choir is actually pretty fun, not near as hard as I thought it would be. And I have another week to finish in, so I am in good shape.


Today I made the mistake of wearing a short sleeve shirt. So I spent most of the day trying to cover my bad arm with my not so bad arm, which, in all honesty, is pretty bad. But the good thing is only one person asked about it and I managed to come up with a pretty good story on the spot. I told him that two years ago I was in a horrible car crash (not completely untrue) that killed my older brother and my dog, and that I managed to escape with just these cuts and burns. I thought it was a pretty good story, but apparently it was really good because this kid looked like he bought every word of it.
I talked to Sergei today, he is pretty cool-even though he doesn’t play hockey. He likes to run and sing and play drums (can you say perfect match?). A bit of a goody-goody though. He is practically a genius. It turns out he just lives three houses down from me, so maybe if I try really hard I can turn him into enough of a rocker so that I can get a band together.


“So are you actually going to try to talk today” Joanne asked, the fake smile was gone.
“Can’t say I was planning on it”
“Why is it you refuse treatment, is it because you are afraid to confront what caused you to cut in the first place? Or do you just not like me?”
“The latter”
“Then why do you even bother coming?”
“Because my mom makes me. What would you think of me becoming a mute? I think it would be kind of fun…”
“Let’s stay on subject Reagan, if you don’t want to address cutting, then let’s talk about something else…like your moodiness.”
“Did you not read my file? I’m a bipolar teenage girl; I think it would be more of a concern if I wasn’t moody. Besides, it’s not my fault they didn’t put me on meds, now is it?”
“Do you honestly think they would have helped you any?”
“How the heck should I know?”
“Our time is up, at least we got somewhere.”


Even though today is Monday, it is still one of the best days of my life. Tonight Sergei and I are going to the boys’ varsity basketball game against Muncie. He has never seen a basketball game, not to mention playing. Russians are weird, I mean, who has never heard of basketball? Don’t they watch the Olympics?
The score was 21-26 Muncie at halftime, by then Sergei was beginning to understand the basics. He said he might even be interested in playing next year. After he started to get the hang of the game, we started talking about other things. His middle name is Ivan, He was born in a small town outside of St. Petersburg and moved to Turkey when he was twelve. I guess that is where he learned to speak English and three weeks before school started he moved here; to Indiana of all places.
I thought it was a little early to show him my arm, so I just kept my sleeves down all night. Saturday I am going to his house to help him finish unpacking, and Sunday we are going to the gym to work on his basketball. The guys could really use him considering he is 6-4 and there tallest guy is 5-11.


“I told you have a lot of stuff” said Sergei, his accent was actually starting to disappear, or maybe I just got used to it.
“No Joke” He had tons of boxes left to unload; how did he get all of this here from Turkey anyway?
As I started unloading stuff, I started to learn more about him. He seems to have a lot of movies, American movies no less; The Pacifier, Lord of the Rings, and tons of stuff with Arnold Schwarzenegger. It definitely contrasted my chick flick collection of Miss. Congeniality and Mean Girls. He had an Ipod and a Gameboy DS. Tons of magazines in Russian about a number of subjects, cars, guns, the military; you name it, he had it in a Russian magazine.
But of all the things he has what surprised me the most was the number of books he had on the Holocaust. There were at least twenty titles here.
“I am Jewish” he said, noticing my interest in the amount of books.” My great-grandparents were killed in the holocaust when they were living in Poland. During the war my grandparents were brought to a Russian death camp, but they escaped and passed as Russians.”
“Oh, I’m sorry” I wasn’t quite sure what to say. It’s not everyday you meet someone who has relatives who died in the Holocaust.
“It’s ok, I decided the best thing to do was educate myself as much as I can on the subject” he replied, I think he could feel that I didn’t quite know what to do.
“That makes sense” I said and then I looked at the clock. It was already 9:28 and I told my parents I would be home by 9:30 to do my homework. Yeah right. “I’m sorry to leave so suddenly like this, but I have to go home so I’m not late.
“Ok, see you tomorrow. I love you.”
I about stopped in my tracks when he said that. Did he really say that? No he couldn’t have said that. Someone wake me up, this really isn’t nice to tease me like this.
“Love you too.” Wait, did I really say that?

Somebody called at about 3a.m. last night. At first I didn’t answer. Don’t people know that they shouldn’t wake me up when I’m sleeping? But once they called again after the answering machine picked up, I figured it was probably pretty important.
“Hello” I said, as groggy as I could, just to make sure they knew they woke me up.
“Is this Reagan?” The voice on the other end said with a Russian accent. Then I recognized the voice, it was Alexandra, Sergei’s sister, she was crying.
“Yes it’s me, what’s wrong?” I said, I knew there was something was wrong with Sergei, but what?
“It’s Sergei, he was in a car crash” She was sobbing now.
“Oh my gosh, is he ok? Where are you at? What happened?” I was fighting back tears.
“He, he, he…is ddddead” she stuttered.
I dropped the phone. This couldn’t be happening, not now, not after yesterday. I was dreaming, I had to be. This was all a cruel joke. And then I started crying; still in denial. After everything that happened, this could not have happened. I picked up the phone again as my mom came down stairs. I asked Alex where she was, and she told me she was at the hospital, on 3rd street. I managed to get out that I would meet her there.
“What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” My mom asked, she look tired and slightly annoyed, but not at all worried.
“It’s Sergei,” I stammered out “he was in an accident”
“Is he ok? Who is Sergei?” Still without the slightest touch of sympathy.
“Never mind, I’m going to the hospital”
“Not at this time of night you aren’t” she yelled. How cold hearted is she?
“Well that’s too bad” I said, probably with a little more attitude then I should have used with my mother, but this is one of my best friends we are talking about. I managed to slip on my shoes and throw a hoodie on over my t-shirt as she was yelling at me. At this point I didn’t care what she thought, I was going to the hospital. I turned and walked out of the house. She’ll get over it eventually. I hope.

I sprinted to the hospital as fast as I could and ran into the emergency room, running into some little boy scout who I guess broke something at a campout. However, he was the least of my worries, I said sorry and went back on my frantic attempt to find Sergei’s parents and find out that he was actually ok and that it was a joke. I did find Mrs. Ivanov, but she was crying just as much as I was. Mr. Ivanov was in the wreck but only broke his arm. I felt so bad, there is no way this could have been true. And I spent all night there, sitting with Mrs. Ivanov and Alex, crying, and hoping it wasn’t true.
At nine the next morning my mom came and picked me, and said it wasn’t healthy to dwell on this. I wanted to cuss her out but I didn’t have enough energy, so I just sat there and went straight to my room and locked the door when I got home. I wasn’t planning on coming out any time soon.


I slept the rest of the day, and when I woke up, I tried to figure out how I dealt with this when my best friend had gotten killed in a car crash that I had survived. And that’s when I saw it; probably the most beautiful thing I could’ve seen at that moment. Silver, metallic and sharp. That is how I dealt with it when Sam died.
I took the box cutter and ran it across my arm, again and again, until all the pain was gone.