Life After Juliet by Shannon Lee Alexander

Author:Shannon Lee Alexander [Alexander, Shannon Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: John Green; The Fault in Our Stars; cancer; dying; Romeo & Juliet; drama club; teen romance, Romance, social issues, hope, Entangled; Teen; YA; romance, Coming of Age, Contemporary, family, Young Adult, loss
ISBN: 9781633753235
Goodreads: 26114303
Publisher: Entangled: Teen
Published: 2016-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

Scene Fourteen

[The counselor’s office]

Mr. Dupree’s office is decorated in shades of white. From the scuffed tile floor to the painted cinderblock walls to the shelves full of books, and I wonder at how many of those even have white covers. The nameplate on his desk is white with black letters—Mr. Bradley Dupree, Discipline Officer.

For some reason, I keep picturing him as the Lone Ranger. I’m expecting him to stride back in here wearing white chaps, spurs a-jingle-jangling, and tip a gigantic cowboy hat at me before locking me in jail forever.

The red hands of his clock tick around, counting out endless minutes since he dumped me in here to cool down, but he still doesn’t arrive. The whiteness of the room hurts my head. I close my eyes and lean forward, resting my forehead on the edge of his white desk.

I should not have lost it like that. All those eyes on me. All the whispering and pointing. That was no stage performance. That was lunch. I’m supposed to blend in at lunch. I’m supposed to blend in wherever I go. How have I let myself get so sucked in to all of this? I rock my head from side to side, using the pressure of the hard, cool desk to massage my forehead.

“Miss Hanson,” Mr. Dupree asks, pulling out his white desk chair, “are you okay?”

I can’t even bear to look up at him.

Okay?

No. I’m not okay. I begin to cry. It’s been so long. I’m not sure I know how to make it stop.

Mr. Dupree dumps a box of tissues in my lap and holds up a finger for me to wait here. He walks as quickly as he can, while still remaining impassively casual, out of his office. In other words, he’s just shy of breaking the school’s one-hundred-meter-dash record.

Five tissues later, he returns, ushering into the room a small woman with a long wispy skirt and dozens of bracelets clicking together on her wrists. I recognize her from last year. It’s Dr. Wallace, the school counselor I’d promised my mother I’d go see. Looks like I can stop feeling crappy about breaking that promise.

Dr. Wallace is a few inches shorter than me, but she manages to pull me to my feet. Slinging her arm around my shoulders, she walks me down the hall to her office, where she sits me on a slouchy couch covered with jewel-toned pillows.

She murmurs shushing sounds as I shred tissue after tissue. There are only a few left in the box when I finally take a deep breath to staunch the flow of tears and snot and misery.

I look around Dr. Wallace’s office. It’s like she’s trying to apologize for the sterile atmosphere of her colleague’s room by cramming every color in the spectrum into her own space. Where Mr. Dupree’s desk was clean, straight lines, hers is thick, with rounded edges and bulging stacks of papers on top. The shelves are crammed not only with books, but also with odd trinkets, pieces of driftwood, a collection of old bottles, a basket with wooden spools of thread.

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