Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio

Author:Gwyn Hyman Rubio
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 1998-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

Sitting on the fluffy blue rug, I experienced the deadening calm which comes after any good cry and the relief of feeling nothing. After five minutes, though, the numbness faded, and the first traces of panic set in. “Lordy sakes!” I said out loud. “What have I done!” I jumped up, nervously wringing my hands. Like a record player stuck in a groove, my mind replayed each moment with Dr. Conroy. I heard myself screaming, “Pot calling the kettle black. Damn liar! Goddamned liar! Shit and piss on you!” I dug my fingernails into my hands. Blood trickled over my skin. Red blood as punishment, I thought, staring at the droplets. Red stains of sin. Oh, God! I thought. What will become of me now? Dr. Conroy will think I’m crazy, and I’ll never get to leave this place! “Lordy mercy!” I said. “She thinks I told tall tales on Wilma.” What’ll I do? I asked myself. What’ll I do? I paced around the room; my heart ping-ponged against my chest; my breathing grew shallow. “What’ll I do?” I whispered. “What’ll I do about my disorder?” Panic-stricken, I paused in front of my stack of books, bent over, and, out of the blue, grabbed the dictionary which Mr. Wooten had loaned me.

Breathing in calmly, I tried to steady myself and focus on the task at hand. “Don’t worry, Icy!” I said, reassuring myself. “Everyone here has a disorder, but you’re not like everyone here.” I wondered about the word’s meaning and about how the meaning could apply to me. “Icy, we need to understand your disorder,” Dr. Conroy had said. This was the reason they gave for not letting me go home, for not letting my grandparents come to see me. I had a disorder, yet I was not a disorderly person. My room was clean and tidy—not as tidy as Dr. Conroy’s office, but tidy, nonetheless.

Resolved, I sat down on the floor, opened the dictionary, and quickly turned the pages until I came to the d’s, then I slowly flipped over each page until I located the word I was looking for—disorder. According to the Webster’s in front of me, disorder meant “a lack of order, disarrangement, confusion.” None of these words described me. So my eyes followed my finger down the column until they came to the phrases “a breach of order, disorderly conduct, a public disturbance.” These definitions, I realized, spelled trouble. Even the following one—“a derangement of physical or mental health or functions”—seemed bad. Determined to find a more positive meaning, I switched tactics and decided to concentrate on disorder the verb. “To derange the physical or mental health or functions of,” the dictionary said. This meaning sounded worse than the one before it. I was really worried.

Alarmed, I scanned what was left of the column; all at once, the word synonyms caught my attention. Miss Emily had taught me all about these words with similar meanings. “Brawl, disturbance, uproar,” I read. Gasping, I closed my eyes and saw clearly the writing on the wall.

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