Page 132 of The Sound of Him

I dart my eyes over to my notebook where my own chart is. He has the bigger one on the coffee table, too, beside all of my other resources.

I force myself to grab my wipe-off board and put the little flag up to show him that I want to answer, I just need time. I don’t have to look at the chart. I’ve looked at it a lot since they left. Ifeel like too many of the words. At the same time, not a single one of them feels right for what’s happening inside of me. It’s like I’m a round peg and the hole is round too, so I should fit, but the hole is full of spikes. I see the words and I know I’m feeling them, but they scrape against my skin when I try to get close.

Just like when I laughed.

It had felt so, so good to laugh.

Then the sound had died down and everyone went back to life as normal and I felt empty.

I felt emptier than ever before.

I’m careful with my marker, not wanting to get the black on my bunny.

I read over my words,NOT RIGHT TOO MANY,then lift my board to show it to him. The movement gets his attention.

“Too many words, like you’re having a difficult time reading them or narrowing the choices down?” he asks, putting a single finger up. “Or too many feelings?” He adds another finger.

I think about the chart.

I put up one finger. Then, when he’s about to speak, I put up the second. He pauses and watches as I go back down to one, then up to two again.

“Too many words and too many feelings?”

I nod.

Then I put my flag back up and write,FIT WRONG.

He relaxes, like it’s a relief to understand. “So you have a lot of feelings about them leaving, and you have a lot of words that connect to those feelings, but there’s nothing that feels exactly right?”

My face twitches, trying to remember how to smile. I nod a lot. Over and over.

He smiles for the both of us.

“That happens sometimes. I wish there was a word for that. Overwhelmed is kind of close, right? But you’re onlyoverwhelmed by all of the emotions, not overwhelmed by the situation itself, so it doesn’t exactly fit. Just an example.”

I nod again.

“Well, then, fuck words. Let’s draw it.”

How would I draw it?

There must be something on my face that tells him I don’t understand because he laughs and says, “I know, it sounds crazy. Let’s just try it.”

I figure it’s worth a shot, so I work on wiping my board clean while he goes to his bookcase and grabs a plastic bin. He shuffles some things on the coffee table with his free hand until there’s an open space for him to take out a stack of paper and a plastic pencil box and set them down.

“There’s a cushion, if you want to use it to sit on the ground,” he says, gesturing to where a big floor pillow is at the side of the couch. “But you can stay where you are, too. You can use the back of your wipeoff board as a table. Or I can get a clipboard. Whatever you’d like.”

It seems easiest to use the table, so I place my bunny and board to the side and slide down. The floor isn’t that bad. I’m used to the hard feel of it, but he frowns at me, so I grab the cushion to make him feel better. It’s nice. Fluffy.

“So, I’m going to show you a few examples. You don’t have to do yours like these, you can draw absolutely anything you want, but just to give you an idea or two.”

He places a plain piece of paper down. Well, plain on the back. One it’s facing up on the table, I can see it has a swirl of colors on it. So many colors, circling and zig-zagging.

“That is how I felt the night we found out Carter was taken,” he explains. I can see that. I can’t explain it, I think because there isn’t just one word for it. It’s chaos. It’s the feelings chart all tangled together. But I canfeelit. I can feel in my chest what he was feeling.

“And this is how I felt when Travis was able to buy him,” he says, placing the next one down. It’s a sunrise, the sun bright and yellow as it shines over a body of water. It’s not the best, he’s not an artist, but it’s enough to get the point across.

Except, there’s a storm cloud in the corner, dark and - and - I can’t remember the word I want. The word for when bad things are going to come. But it's that word.