Lauren Kate: Teardrop

Of course Eureka still thought about suicide. And yeah, she’d pondered other methods, knowing mostly that she couldn’t try drowning—not after Diana. She’d once seen a show about how the lungs fill with blood before drowning victims die. Sometimes she talked about suicide with her friend Brooks, who was the only person she could trust not to judge her, not to report back to Dad or worse. He’d sat on muted conference call when she’d called this hotline a few times. He made her promise she would talk to him whenever she thought about it, so they talked a lot.

But she was still here, wasn’t she? The urge to leave this world wasn’t as crippling as it had been when Eureka swallowed those pills. Lethargy and apathy had replaced her drive to die.

“Did Dad happen to mention I’ve always been that way?” she asked.

Landry set her notebook on the table. “Always?”

Now Eureka looked away. Maybe not always. Of course not always. Things had been sunny for a while. But when she was ten, her parents split up. You didn’t just find the sun after that.

“Any chance you could dash out a Xanax prescription?” Eureka’s left eardrum was ringing again. “Otherwise this seems to be a waste of time.”

“You don’t need drugs. You need to open up, not bury this tragedy. Your stepmother says you won’t talk to her or your father. You’ve shown no interest in conversing with me. What about your friends at school?”

“Cat,” Eureka said automatically. “And Brooks.” She talked to them. If either of them had been sitting in Landry’s seat, Eureka might even have been laughing right now.

“Good.” Dr. Landry meant: Finally . “How would they describe you since the accident?”

“Cat’s captain of the cross-country team,” Eureka said, thinking of the wildly mixed emotions on her friend’s face when Eureka said she was quitting, leaving the captain position open. “She’d say I’ve gotten slow.”

Cat would be on the field with the team right now. She was great at running them through their drills, but she wasn’t brilliant at pep talks—and the team needed pep to face Manor. Eureka glanced at her watch. If she dashed back as soon as this was over, she might make it to school in time. That was what she wanted, right?

When she looked up, Landry’s brow was furrowed. “That would be a pretty harsh thing to say to a girl who’s grieving the loss of a mother, don’t you think?”

Eureka shrugged. If Landry had a sense of humor, if she knew Cat, she would get it. Her friend was joking, most of the time. It was fine. They’d known each other forever.

“What about … Brooke?”

“Brooks,” Eureka said. She’d known him forever, too. He was a better listener than any of the shrinks Rhoda and Dad wasted their money on.

“Is Brooks a he?” The notebook returned and Landry scribbled something. “Are the two of you just friends ?”

“Why does that matter?” Eureka snapped. Once upon an accident she and Brooks had dated—fifth grade. But they were kids. And she was a wreck about her parents splitting up and—

“Divorce often provokes behavior in children that makes it difficult for them to pursue their own romantic relationships.”

“We were ten . It didn’t work out because I wanted to go swimming when he wanted to ride bikes. How did we even start talking about this?”

“You tell me. Perhaps you can talk to Brooks about your loss. He seems to be someone you could care deeply about, if you would give yourself permission to feel.”

Eureka rolled her eyes. “Put your shoes back on, Doc.” She grabbed her bag and rose from the couch. “I’ve gotta run.”

Run from this session. Run back to school. Run through the woods until she was so tired she didn’t ache. Maybe even run back to the team she used to love. Coach had been right about one thing: when Eureka was low, running helped.

“I’ll see you next Tuesday?” Landry called. But by then the therapist was talking to a closing door.

Jogging through the potholed parking lot, Eureka pressed her key chain remote to unlock Magda, her car, and slid into the driver’s seat. Yellow warblers harmonized in a beech tree overhead; Eureka knew their song by heart. The day was warm and windy, but parking under the tree’s long arms had kept Magda’s interior cool.

Magda was a red Jeep Cherokee, a hand-me-down from Rhoda. It was too new and too red to suit Eureka. With the windows rolled up, you couldn’t hear anything outside, and this made Eureka imagine she was driving a tomb. Cat had insisted they name the car Magda, so at least the Jeep would be good for a laugh. It wasn’t nearly as cool as Dad’s powder-blue Lincoln Continental, in which Eureka had learned to drive, but at least it had a killer stereo.

She plugged in her phone and cranked up the online school radio station KBEU. They played the best songs by the best local and indie bands every weekday after school. Last year, Eureka had DJ’d for the station; she’d had a show called Bored on the Bayou on Tuesday afternoons. They’d held the slot for her this year, but she hadn’t wanted it anymore. The girl who’d spun old zydeco jams and recent mash-ups was someone she could barely remember, let alone try to be again.

Rolling down all four windows and the sunroof, Eureka peeled out of the lot to the tune of “It’s Not Fair” by the Faith Healers, a band formed by some kids from school. She had all the lyrics memorized. The loopy bass line propelled her legs faster through her sprints and had been the reason she dug up her grandfather’s old guitar. She’d taught herself a few chords but hadn’t touched the guitar since the spring. She couldn’t imagine the music she’d make now that Diana was dead. The guitar sat gathering dust in the corner of her bedroom under the small painting of Saint Catherine of Siena, which Eureka had lifted from her grandmother Sugar’s house after she died. No one knew where Sugar got the icon. For as long as Eureka could remember, the painting of the patron saint of protection from fire had hung over her grandmother’s mantel.

Her fingers rapped on the steering wheel. Landry didn’t know what she was talking about. Eureka felt things, things like … annoyed that she’d just wasted another hour in another drab therapy room.

There were other things: Cold fear whenever she drove over even the shortest bridge. Debilitating sadness when she lay sleepless in bed. A heaviness in her bones whose source she had to trace anew each morning when her phone’s alarm sounded. Shame that she’d survived and Diana hadn’t. Fury that something so absurd had taken her mother away.

Futility at seeking vengeance on a wave.

Inevitably, when she allowed herself to follow her sad mind’s wanderings, Eureka ended up at futility. Futility annoyed her. So she veered away, focused on things she could control—like getting back to campus and the decision awaiting her.

Even Cat didn’t know Eureka might show up today. The 12K used to be Eureka’s best event. Her teammates moaned about it, but to Eureka, sinking into the hypnotic zone of a long run was rejuvenating. A sliver of Eureka wanted to race the Manor kids, and a sliver was more of her than had wanted to do anything other than sleep for months.

She would never give Landry the satisfaction, but Eureka did feel utterly misunderstood. People didn’t know what to do with a dead mother, much less her living, suicidal daughter. Their robotic back pats and shoulder squeezes made Eureka squirrelly. She couldn’t fathom the insensitivity required to say to someone, “God must have missed your mother in Heaven” or “This might make you a better person.”