America - Brossura

Frank, E. R.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1481451383 ISBN 13: 9781481451383

Casa editrice: Atheneum, 2015

Riassunto

For eighteen gritty years, a boy dodges the cracks in system in this “piercing, unforgettable novel” (Booklist) from E.R. Frank that Kirkus Reviews deemed “a work of sublime humanity.”

America is mistaken for black, Asian, Native American, even white. He doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere, and, parentless, he is shunted for eighteen years from a foster home, to the street, and ultimately to the brink of despair. Can one doctor pull him back and bring America somewhere new—somewhere with a future?

America was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a YALSA Best Book for Young Adults and has received numerous other honors, and E.L. Frank’s extensive experience as a clinical social worker and therapist is why “the author’s ability to capture so much emotion in the details makes this book remarkable” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Su questo libro

L'autore:

E.R. Frank is the author of America, Friction, Wrecked, and Dime. Her first novel, Life Is Funny, won the Teen People Book Club NEXT Award for YA Fiction and was also a top-ten ALA 2001 Quick Pick. In addition to being writer, E.R. Frank is also a clinical social worker and psychotherapist. She works with adults and adolescents and specializes in trauma.

Estratto. © Riproduzione autorizzata. Diritti riservati.:

America Now

YOU HAVE TO watch what you say here because everything you say means something and somebody’s always telling you what you mean.

“Step off,” I tell this nurse when she tries to get me to eat.

“You mean, thank you for caring,” she says. “You’re welcome.”

“I need a lighter,” I tell her, and she goes. “You mean you want a lighter. Dream on, sweetheart.”

So I take their medicine and walk around in socks the way they make you, and stay real quiet.

*  *  *

“Hello, America,” he goes. “I’m Dr. B.” He holds out his hand, but I play like I don’t even see it. “I’ll be your therapist while you’re here at Ridgeway.” He drops his arm like it’s no big thing and dumps his skinny butt in a chair behind his desk. “You can sit anywhere.” He doesn’t have any tennis balls or messed-up eyeglasses or an attitude like those other ones back at Applegate. He’s just regular. I stay standing. “We’ll meet at this time for forty-five minutes every Tuesday and Thursday.” I keep my back right up on the door. He’s all calm, like it’s cool with him. “Our sessions will be confidential. Are you familiar with the rules of confidentiality?” I don’t bother answering. “Confidentiality means what’s said in this room stays in this room.” He stops a second, looking at me, close. “Except for three things.” Looking at me straight up. “If you tell me that someone is harming you, if you express the intent to harm yourself, or do so, or if you express the intent to harm anyone else, or do so. Those three things don’t stay private between us.”

“That’s it?” I go.

“ ‘That’s it,’ what?” he goes. Not in my face. Just normal.

“That’s all you’ve got, if I say I’m going to off myself?”

“Is that what you’re planning?”

“Huh?”

“Are you planning to kill yourself?”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I know that’s not what you asked.” He’s leaning forward on his elbows, like he’s interested, like he for real even cares.

“It’s no big secret, doc,” I go. “How the hell do you think I got here?”

*  *  *

They try to make me do group.

“Who wants to share with America what the purpose of this group is?” the lady goes.

Nobody bothers, so she picks on some kid all bent over with his arms crossed looking like he’s got nails twisting up his stomach. “Don?” the lady goes, and he squeaks his chair and crosses his arms the other way.

“Supposed to talk or something,” this Don goes. I’m out of here.

“Please sit down, America,” the lady tells me. I head for the door. “America, you are required to participate in group,” the lady goes. I keep walking. “Privileges,” I hear her yelling.

Points, tickets, privileges. You do this, they give you that many. You get that many, they let you out. Let you out where? Some other sorry-ass place. I don’t need this.

*  *  *

I’m not stupid. I know it’s going to get real tiring standing by his door for near to an hour. So I sit this time.

“I guess you’re not in the mood to talk,” Dr. B. goes, after a lot of minutes. I lean my head over the back of the chair and stare up at the ceiling. “I guess you’re not much in the mood to be here, either,” Dr. B. says, all calm.

“You’re some genius,” I go.

*  *  *

A week. Maybe two. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m just slamming my pillow on the floor every night. Sleeping on my back, flat out, with my arms straight down my sides. Like I’m in a coffin.

*  *  *

“It’s hard to know how to begin.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

His ceiling is white stripes and a round light in the middle.

“Just what it says,” he goes. “Sometimes, it’s hard for people to begin their sessions.”

“Ah, man.” My neck aches, bad, but I keep my head hanging over the back of my chair anyway.

“You seem annoyed.”

“Yeah, I’m annoyed. Who wouldn’t be?”

“Maybe that’s part of why it’s hard to start each session.”

“Maybe you’re repeating yourself.”

“Maybe you’re so annoyed to start with, it makes you not want to talk.”

“Whatever.”

“What would it be like if you did talk?”

“I talk, man.”

“Not so much.”

“So?”

“I’m curious about what keeps you from talking.”

“Well, you’re going to have to live with curious a long time, doc.”

*  *  *

You get in line, and you slide your tray, and they hand over your baby carrots and your chicken and your roll, and you sit at some table with a million other dudes, and you eat, and it tastes like your own tongue, and you wish you could just choke to death once and forever right here, right in the middle of nothing.

*  *  *

“Some people believe that depression is anger turned toward the self,” Dr. B. says.

He might not have attitude like those other ones back at Applegate, but he’s got the same old pile of stupid games. Connect Four and checkers. Chess and Monopoly and all that. I grab his Uno cards and knuckle-shuffle them.

“It’s just something to know,” Dr. B. says. “Because usually people who try to kill themselves are depressed, and often they’re depressed because they’re angry.”

I shuffle again and then slap the stack down on his desk.

“People who are able to somehow acknowledge their anger often become less depressed.”

“Cut the deck,” I go, because he’s giving me a headache with all that.

*  *  *

I try not to think about it in the rec room. I watch those guys play Ping-Pong, and I try not to think. About that anger mess. About depressed. Only every time I remember that cement rectangle with a footprint in one corner, I watch Mrs. Harper sending me away, and whenever I see Clark Poignant, it’s when he’s got tubes running all into the backs of his hands, and if I try to picture Liza, I just hear how she said she’d hate me if I ever killed myself, and anytime Brooklyn’s face pops up in my head, I see him stealing those green Magic Markers. And every time I think about baseball, I see Browning.

I watch that Ping-Pong, and I try not to think.

*  *  *

“What would it be like?” Dr. B. goes.

“Huh?”

“Being dead.”

“Huh?”

“You’re interested in being dead. I’m interested in what you think being dead would be like.”

“You’re the doctor, man. You tell me.”

“I don’t know. Different people imagine different things. I’m wondering what you imagine.”

Empty. Quiet. Nobody’s good. Nobody’s bad. Nobody’s nobody. You don’t think. You don’t remember. You don’t be. Nothing hurts.

“Step off,” I tell him.

“Hmm,” he goes.

CONTRACT FOR SAFETY

I, America, agree that if I feel I might harm myself, I will immediately follow the plan below:

1) Notify on-duty nurse of my feelings.

2) Write down the date and time.

3) Write down the name of each feeling I’m experiencing, followed by the thoughts and/or events which preceded it.

4) Notify and discuss all of the above with Dr. B. immediately upon our next scheduled session.

In addition, I give my promise that I will not try to harm or kill myself, should I experience the wish to do so.

It’s one of the most messed-up things I ever heard in my whole stupid life. If you feel so bad you want to die, why would you even care what kind of lame-ass promises you make?

I’m not signing shit.

*  *  *

“Some kids don’t want to feel better,” Dr. B. says. So what. “Because it’s too frightening,” he goes, and then he stops. I’m resting my head over the back of this chair and staring up at his ceiling. “Think about it a second.”

“I don’t like to think.” I hang my head way far back and see his bookshelves upside down behind me. Instead of books, they’ve got some kind of little statues lined up. Dollhouse people, or something.

We’re quiet for a real long time, but then he goes, “I’m guessing you’re used to feeling mad and bad.”

“So?” I go.

“Feeling better would be something you don’t know.”

“You got that right,” I tell him.

“A lot of people are scared of what they don’t know. So they hold on to mad and bad.”

I’m not even going to play like I know what all he’s saying. So I stay quiet.

*  *  *

My pills used to be green. Wheatgrass, Mrs. Harper would say. Then blue. Now yellow. They’re all the same shape. Stretched-out ovals. The nurse brings me one every morning and watches me swallow it. I don’t care. Some people take all different ones. A mess of colors, and all these shapes. They try to hold their pill under their tongue, or sick it up after the nurse leaves. It’s likely a million pills these nurses have to keep all stocked up here. Somebody’s making a straight-up fortune.

*  *  *

“How many weeks have I been here?” I go to the group lady.

“Excuse me?”

“I didn’t know that kid could talk,” some scrub goes.

“How long have I been here?”

“About three weeks,” the group lady says. “Is that something you’d like to speak about?”

I shrug and stare at this crack on the wall, this crack that does the shape of a big-ass crumpled square. It looks like a TV after someone smashed up all the corners. I watch it for the whole rest of the time, so I don’t know how I get to noticing it, but all of them that used to be in this group are gone except me. It’s new guys now, and I’m the only old one.

*  *  *

“All right,” Dr. B. goes, after I won’t play Uno anymore, and I won’t play anything else, and I still won’t talk, either. “Where would you like to be five years from now?”

“Nowhere,” I tell him.

*  *  *

The thing is, Mrs. Harper might be alive. She might be in some bed somewhere, in some nursing home, just hoping for someone to come see her.

Or she could be hanging out with Clark Poignant up there in Heaven. Dead.

*  *  *

This one kid screams at night. If Liza or Brooklyn were here, either one, they’d find out quick right where he’s at and tell him to shut the hell up. This kid’s in some other hall or wing or someplace. The screaming’s not real loud, because must be he’s far away, but it’s bad. It’s the kind that makes you picture a movie scene with some crazy-looking dude, wrapped in sheets, all sweaty and bug-eyed. Like something real, real deep went down with him he’s likely never going to get out of his head.

I’m betting he’s real pissed they’re keeping him alive.

*  *  *

I could ask, but I’m too tired. So I listen instead. I listen to the nurses chitchatting, and I listen to the other guys telling all their private business and everybody else’s, and I listen to Dr. B. even when he thinks I’m not. You figure out a real lot when you’re just quiet and you listen.

Here’s what I figure out. This place, Ridgeway, has just about everything. It’s got buildings for girls and buildings for boys and buildings for both. It’s got buildings for real serious, like me, where you live, and for people who sleep somewhere else but come in here for the day. It’s got a building for if you’re here because a judge made you, and it’s got a building for if you’re all used up from drugs. The street kind, not their kind.

Me. I was in emergency first, right after I tried to off myself back at Applegate. Emergency drugged me up intense for a while, and then they didn’t drug me up as much, and then emergency kicked my butt out and put me here. Most people stay about a month, maybe two, and then go somewhere else. They go home for good, or else to sleep at night and then back to Ridgeway or some other place for day treatment. Or they skip home and land right in long-term residential. That’s what Applegate was, long-term residential treatment. I wasn’t supposed to get sent there in the first place. I should have gone to some group home. Some foster care group home, only the system screwed up. Stupid thing is, right now I would go back to Applegate, only they just got this new rule of not letting kids in older than thirteen, and the other long-term residential eighteen miles away is full, and the rest are out of my district, so I’m not allowed in, and there’s no beds left in any group homes, and the only places left besides here is jail, which is where I know I ought to be. Or else a state hospital, but you only get sent to a state hospital if you’re so far gone, you’re pulling out your eyeballs thinking they’re grapes, or some damn thing.

So I’m here.

*  *  *

“You only let people out after they spill their guts, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m saying, you only let people leave this place if they’re all talking every minute in their sessions, right?”

“Something’s given you that idea?”

“Hell yeah, man. I see how it is. It’s those guys who talk that get to leave. Like that Don guy from group. He used to never say boo, then all of a sudden you can’t shut him up. He’s talking every second, and bang. He’s out of here.”

“I see.”

“Well, I’m not telling you jack.”

“You think if you start sharing your thoughts and feelings with me, you’ll leave here more quickly?”

“I don’t think. I know.”

“So you’ve decided not to talk.”

“Yup.”

“So you don’t want to leave here.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So you do want to leave here,” he goes.

“So, nothing, man.”

“Maybe you have mixed feelings about it. Maybe sometimes you want to be here and other times you don’t.”

“Can you just be quiet a second?”

“Or, maybe, sometimes right at the same time you want to be here and also you don’t.”

“I asked you to shut up. You’re making me dizzy.”

*  *  *

We play checkers. You don’t have to think. You don’t have to talk. Say things that might make you remember, might make them send you away when you’ve got no place to go. No house, because you burned it right down to the ground, no shopping mall to hide out in, or bushes in a park. No couch up for grabs in some dude’s crib. No nothing.

*  *  *

I’m listening to that kid screaming from whichever wing they’ve got him in, and I wish I had my shoelaces. You can see good enough in the middle of the night here because they keep the hall lights on, and I could hypnotize my sorry self the way they do in those cartoons where some hanging watch going back and forth makes a dude black out even though the guy’s awake and all. I could tie something heavy to the end of a shoelace and swing it back and forth in front of my face and stare and stare, keeping my head real still, and letting my eyes go all side to side, and make myself get all spaced out. Only problem is these Ridgeway nurses, man. They took my shoelaces, and damn if I can find anything else to use.

*  *  *

“If you’re so interested in my...

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Atheneum
• Data di pubblicazione: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1481451383
• ISBN 13: 9781481451383
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 279