I have never been good at sticking to a schedule, and therapy appointments were no exception. I talked to Alyssa for a time, but gradually, life and lack of motivation conspired in various ways to make me miss many, many appointments. And so, it came as no surprise when Alyssa called me and told me she was closing my case with Columbia River Mental Health. This was, she told me, partly because of my numerous absences and partly because her inturnship had ended and she was being transferred to another fascility. Now, I don’t remember whether or not Alyssa had told me she was so new at headshrinking. Most likely she had, but I had forgotten, and now I was angry. How dare Columbia River put my complex mental problem in the hands of a mere student! I didn’t stay angry for long, however, because I liked Alyssa, and I had enjoyed our time together. She had a straightforward, easy-going way about her, and I knew I would miss that.

I resolved to stay far away from Columbia River Mental Health in future, lest I end up with yet another inturn, fearing that the next one would not be as competent or understanding as the last. Before Alyssa, they had assigned me a seemingly nervous young man named Aaron who I instantly pegged as incompetent. He was not, in reality, incompetent at all, so I would like to apologize to Aaron for assuming the worst of him so prematurely. As I sit at my old computer, typing out what is to be the most difficult manuscript I will ever complete, reliving many things I am proud of and many things of which I am ashamed,, I wonder how many pairs of eyes reading the print there in, pairs of fingers running across the Brailled addition, or pairs of ears taking in the audio version, will judge its writer just so harshly. Be kind, dear reader, if you can, and if you wonder how one such as I stumbled into a life so blessed and rich with promise, don’t worry. I wonder the same thing at least once every day.

As the days turned to weeks, feelings of hopelessness and helplessness built in me until, against what I thought of as my better judgment, I once again signed up with Columbia River Mental Health. Upon going to resubmit my intake form, I met a nice woman named Carolyn who read me the questions and wrote down my answers. She too had come to Columbia River with people living in her mind.

“I had four of them,” she told me. “And it took me years in therapy, but now I feel great!”

“What happened?” I couldn’t help asking. “Did you all become friends, or did they go away, or what?”

“Well,” she said confidentially “first, we had to come to an understanding with one another. Then, we were able to merge, and so now, there’s just me.”

“But don’t you get lonely?” I wondered aloud. “I mean, to go from having roommates living in your conciousness to, well, nothing? Didn’t that take some getting used to?”

“No, not really,” she said with a chuckle. “For the longest time, we never new about each other. I came to therapy because I was having blackouts, and let me tell you! I don’t miss that.”

“Blackouts?” I asked. “How scary! I’ve heard of it, but all of mine just sort of share the mind like one great big clubhouse or something.”

“Hmm.” Carolyn tapped her pen thoughtfully against the fake wood top of the desk at which we sat. “Now I’ve never heard of that. I imagine it’s probably helpful at times, but at other times, more trouble than it’s worth.”

I nodded, looking away from what I imagined to be a round and honest face. How right she was. I thought of all the times our multiple minds had brought pain, both slight and severe. I thought of how we’d hurt each other, the ones who loved us, and the ones we loved, and a single tear fell on the papers laid out in front of me. A poem began in me, and I relaxed into the rhythm of it, letting it sing me into memories.

How perceptive were the eyes of pain,

When agony’s cruel memories remain,

To leave behind a mind both bound and free,,

To see another’s world with empathy.

Elizabeth longed for something to long for. The absence of anxt in her life made her temples throb with bordom. She was outside, walking the campas of her beloved school in search of the glider. The glider, a metal benchswing, was where Elizabeth went to wish, to sigh, and to daydream. Today, the air was filled with the smell of wanting. This was the name Elizabeth ascribed to the mingled scents of fresh air, sunshine, and any sort of plantlife. How lucky they were to grow as they did while she remained stagnant in her childish form. Thus, growth ment wanting, and often, this unexplainable wanting left the girl longing for something worthy of being sighed after, sought after, longed for.

Just ahead of her, Elizabeth heard the hglider squeaking back and forth. She sighed to herself, brushing a strand of her shoulder-length brown hair out of her sightless eyes. It was not the sigh of lovers, dreamers, or martyrs, but an unceremonious sigh of annoyance. The glider was famous for its raucus squeaking and creeking, and hearing it, Elizabeth knew the swing held at least one other occupent. Oh, she had heard legends of the campas possessing another glider somewhere, but Elizabeth had only a limited time here, and she would not waste it searching when she could spend it dreaming in the sunshine.

“Hi!” Elizabeth said brightly. The glider stopped. “Do you mind if I get on?”

“No, of course not,” a black boy named Keenan said politely.

“Yes,” said a familiar voice. “Ashley and Keenan were kind of in the middle of something.”

Elizabeth sighed again. How she hated the way Mary spoke for Ashley. If Ashley and Keenan were so busy, why wasn’t either of them telling her so? People who didn’t have the sense, nerve, or brains to speak for themselves didn’t deserve to speak at all.

“Maybe you’re right,” Martin’s voice echoed up to her from the back of his cell. “But, Elizabeth, those who live in glass houses should never throw stones.”

“It’s okay, Mary,” Ashley was saying. “I don’t care.”

“Great!” Elizabeth said, smiling brightly while fiercely ignoring Martin’s taunting voice. She would deal with him later. For right now, she was a normal girl with no personalities at all.

Elizabeth laid her cane on the grass and stepped aboard the magical metal contraption, seating herself next to Mary. The sun was shining, and nobody knew about Martin. Nobody knew about Shawn, Amber, or even Liz. Best of all, nobody could see her beneath her skin. As far as they knew, Elizabeth was seventeen, beautiful, and completely in control of her own mind. It was, she reflected, a mind capable of oh so many things: of romance, of revenge, of silly girlish flights of fancy, or serious studies into some lofty future goal as yet unknown.

Inwardly, she sighed as though star-struck. In such a beautiful world as this, how could … No good. She tried again. Oh, how she longed for … Still nothing. What was wrong with her? Seventeen was fading fast, and Elizabeth had yet to find her earth-rending teenage romance, that wellspring of sweetest pain from which all her favorite poetry was summoned.

Oh, there had been Ben. Dear safe Ben had been good to her, but the curse he wore like a banner turned all his masculine charms to ashes. Her parents had actually liked him! That would never do. What Elizabeth needed was a wild boy – someone she could risk everything for, someone whose very soul bucked at the neat little stable Mom and Dad would build. It wasn’t as though Elizabeth was very choosy when it came to how her love would be set apart from the world she knew. A hethen, an ugly boy, an older boy, a younger boy, a rebel, a foreigner, a mental case, an under-achiever, an over-achiever, a dark boy, a boy of delicate health, or a poor boy would do nicely. As long as there was romance, lots to talk about, and a kind of jolly humor, Elizabeth knew he would be the perfect end to her blaze of teenage glory.

For a little over a year, they could be together. Then, like the mist that rose over her Dad’s river at dawn, Elizabeth would vanish from his life in search of her twenties romance. This guy, she would probably marry. If, Heaven forbid, she ended up with her teens romance boy, she could say she had been scared of commitment or something by way of explanation. It was, as Liz was forever telling her, smart to plan one’s own future.

“But Ashley! Ashley! Don’t you love me anymore?” Elizabeth heard Keenan ask plaintively.

Instantly, all disappointed thoughts were forgotten as she hung on every word. Love? She loved love! So much did she love it that her dad often joked, much to her annoyance, that Elizabeth was in love with love. Love was her destiny! Couldn’t he understand that? Couldn’t he see the epic romance written in the stars for her? Elizabeth knew she would see it if she had only been granted the gift of vision.

Liz always told her God made her too beautiful to live on earth, so he had to take something away to compensate his mistake. On most days, Elizabeth did not believe this, of course. That wasn’t to say she wished Liz to stop telling it to her. On the contrary, it was a pretty lie, a lie that had seen her through many a rough patch in the last seven years. Liz had begun telling what Elizabeth called her favorite lie when the two girls were much younger. One of her breasts grew frighteningly bigger than the other so that her dresses hung visibly crooked on her tall, gangly, and still oddly overweight frame. Elizabeth had felt like the ugliest person alive.

“For Heaven’s Sake, Elizabeth!” Mom had yelled at her then, yanking in vain at the grotesquely stretched right strap of her denim sundress. “Use more safety pins next time! You look like an old abandoned house! Are you trying to embarrass me? They’ll think I don’t take care of you! I do take care of you, don’t I?”

Mom did take care of her, and though she hated her sometimes, Elizabeth tried to make herself look better. She had tried safety pins. She safetypinned the strap up so tight that the hole was barely big enough for her arm to fit through. Still, the dress hung strangely, and Mom raged on. Oh what a saint Liz had been.

Many were the nights Elizabeth lay awake, wondering what would happen if she took a large kitchen knife and simply hacked the offending lump of flesh off. It would hurt, of course, and Elizabeth hated pain almost as much as starvation. There would be a lot of blood as well, but Dad could run her to the hospital where the doctors, clucking their tongues in disapproval, would mend the damaged place with stitches. The following Sunday, Elizabeth would go to confession for the sin of harming herself, thus mending the damage to her emortal soul. How unbelievably simple it all would have been!! But, Liz kept a strict watch on her, telling her that perverted old God had given her this deformity to try and even the playing field for some of the other unfortunate female creatures he hadn’t made as well.

“Just think, duck!” Liz had said then. “When the left boob grows out, you and I will be the proud owners of a spectacular wrack!”

Elizabeth supposed Liz had been right. While the left breast was still smaller than the right, it was no longer noticeable over her clothing. Mom had stopped yelling at her for wearing her dresses wrong, and every once in a while, the two of them would go bra shopping. Elizabeth dearly loved bra shopping. She felt so beautiful then, and Mom always seemed so proud of her.

Having breasts too big for a bra was a lot different than having a waist too big for a pair of pants. To Elizabeth, they were the same thing, but, for whatever reason, mom felt very differently about the two. Mom and Elizabeth had gone on one of their bra shopping expeditions not too long ago, and the bra she was wearing was so new it still creaked every time the girl shifted her weight. She did so now, feeling rather than hearing the creak of the underwire adjusting to fit her. Ashley was shifting too. Elizabeth could hear the metallic swish of her pants against the planks of the glider seat and the rubbing of skin on skin indicative of one ringing restless hands.

“Uh, yeah!” Ashley was saying. A barely suppressed quiver of uncertainty ran through her voice like the line between two unseperated orange slices. “I … Of course I … You’re very … Oh, why do you have to ask?”

“Ashley,” Keenan said earnestly “I feel like I’m losing you! You walk fast whenever I come up to you in the halls at school, and when I do get you alone, you always have to pee.”

“Um, I have a very small bladder,” Ashley said defensively. “I told you that! Remember? And, as for walking fast in the halls, half the time, I don’t even know you’re coming up to me. The other half of the time, I’m afraid I’m going to be late for class, or miss out on buying a pop, or doing that thing. You know, Mary. That thing? The thing we always have to do at breaktime and lunch time?”

“Elizabeth could feel Mary’s twin braids bobbing back and forth in a nod, and Keenan sighed. “What thing?” he asked.

“Oh, you know,” Ashley said with forced casualness. “It’s just a thing, that’s all. Erm, a girl thing. A thing thing! It’s really not important, but we always have to do it during the day.”

“Why did I even ask?” Keenan asked noone in particular. “That’s another thing, Ashley. You’re always with Mary. Now, Mary, I don’t want you to feel like I don’t like you, but sometimes, I just wanna be alone with Ashley! Without you.”

“I understand,” Mary said sweetly. “If you want, I could leave now and give you two some alone time.”

“Noooo!” Ashley cried to Elizabeth’s great relief. “Don’t leave me here!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Keenan asked.

Even if Ashley didn’t come clean, Elizabeth knew why she would not want to be alone with Keenan. Last year, during Little Shop of Horrors, Mary had told her that she and Ashley were trying to get pregnant. They dated boys only so they could use them to make babies, and once the babies were made, they would break up with their boyfriends and leave town. Unbeknownst to him, Keenan must have been one such boy.

“You know, Keenan,” Mary said in that same syrupy sweet voice “where I come from, it’s tradition to take an older sister or cousin on dates if you are a new couple.”

“Oh,” Keenan said flatly. “So then you do love me, Ashley?”

“Well,” she stammered. “I-I…”

“Stop!” Keenan’s voice was soft but wracked with emotion. “Just stop. Ashley, it shouldn’t be this hard. I gave you everything, and maybe the everything I had to give wasn’t as much as somebody else’s might’ve been, but if you’d loved me even a little, you’d’ve known what a good thing we had.”

The sound of a nearby car was closely followed by the scuffing of Keenan’s shoe as he stopped the glider and got off. He, like Elizabeth, was one of the non-residential students whose parents allowed them to come on campas and visit their friends for a while after school. The three girls were silent and still, each lost in her own thoughts until the car’s engine could no longer be heard. Elizabeth didn’t know who had at last started the glider swinging again, but it swung on, rising and falling like the tide of emotion against the shore of Elizabeth’s soul. Poor, poor Keenan! Though this whole situation was a heart-rending cloud of tragedy, there was a definite silver lining. She had found it! Her perfect, epic, life-changing teenage romance!

“Damn!” Ashley said, breaking the silence. “And I was sure he had weak genes.”

“Ashley,” Mary said reproachfully, a glare in her voice “Keenan was dark and you were white. Chances are, the baby would have been dark, LIKE ITS FATHER.”

“You mean its donor, right?” Ashley asked.

“No,” Mary replied with a sigh. “I mean its father. Ashley, Keenan really loved you. If he found out you had gotten pregnant with his child, he would have fought for partial or full custody.”

“Whew!” Ashley sighed happily. “Then it’s a good thing I got out of that one, isn’t it?”

“Don’t do that again,” Mary said seriously. “When this whole thing started, we agreed not to use slow people or people who could end up scarred from it.”

Elizabeth stopped the glider, bent to retrieve her cane, and left. The conversation was veering dangerously from romance to babies, a topic she had absolutely no interest in. Let Ashley and Mary have their noisy, stinky babies. Elizabeth would have Keenan all to herself. She would make him forget all about Ashley, and everywhere they went, people would smile and say: “Oh look! There goes the Beautiful Couple!”

Always reliable, Dad would try to understand Elizabeth’s feelings toward that younger black boy with his boing boing hair and his smell of manly musk, but mom would forever disapprove. Elizabeth would be the tragic heroine trapped between right and wrong, between what she ought to do and what she knew her heart needed. Keenan would fight for her, fight as fiercely as Romeo had fought for his Juliet, and when the relationship died, the earth would tremble and the sky would weep with the pain of it. Distantly, Elizabeth felt the warmth of tears on her face. She hadn’t known she had been weeping like that future sky, but now, as the tears streamed from her unseeing eyes, rolling down her pretty face to shatter like glass on the sidewalk, Elizabeth thought how fitting it was that this newest conquest should both begin and end with tears.