Jade (Wildflowers 3)

"At first she asked me to talk about myself, my daily routine, my interests, my schoolwork. That moved to what life was like in my house, how often I spent time with my parents, how often I was just with my father or my mother and if I enjoyed spending time with each of my parents. She wanted to know how I felt about either of them not spending more time with me, how interested I was in each of their lives, too. I think she was surprised at how little I know about their work. I wasn't even sure what my mother did at her job, and I couldn't explain what my father was working on at the moment.

"Dr. Morton had a way of keeping her attention on me while she jotted notes. I tried to figure out what was important to her and what wasn't, but everything seemed important. Finally, she asked if she could see my room. I took her upstairs and she walked around, looking at my things. Then she started to ask me questions about dolls, clothes, pictures. Who gave me what? How did I feel about it? What was precious to me? Why? Every time she asked me something and I answered, I couldn't help wondering does that help my father or my mother more?

"Then she set up some 'what if' situations for me and asked for my comments," I said.

"What if's?" Misty asked.

"What if your father won custody but your mother won the house, would you mind moving out with him and living with him someplace else? What if you had to leave the school you were in? What if your mother moved out and wanted you to live in a different part of the city? Would I miss my friends?

"Then she asked how I would feel if the court awarded custody to my father and how would I feel if it awarded custody to my mother?

"She was surprised when I said I didn't care.

"'Do you say that because you don't want to hurt one or the other?' she asked.

"I th

ought about it for a moment and said, `No, I said it because I feel like I'm not living with them now so who I live with afterward won't make much difference:

"I remember she just stared at me and then jotted something on her clipboard and told me she might be back when my parents were there, too. I told her to call well in advance. 'I don't even know when they'll be here together,' I said.

"I was deeply in it now, deeply in the quicksand their marriage had become, and I hated it more than ever. Because of Rosina, my parents found out that Dr. Morton had been there and each of them found a way to be alone with me to question me about her and the things she wanted to know. Both were surprised I hadn't mentioned her visit myself, and I could see they each took that to mean I might have spoken against them.

"'What did she want to know about us?' they both asked, but what each really meant was, 'What did she want to know about me and what did you tell her?'

"'She asked me not to talk about the questions she asked me,' I told them, 'not that she asked that much or I said much. She had a lot of questions about the house,' I added. Of course, I made that up.

"I know neither was happy with my replies. I felt as if I was living in a spy school or something, each of them peeping around corners now, listening with one ear to my phone conversations, checking my mail, searching for clues as to what I have said and what I would say.

"It got so I didn't want to go home anymore. I dreaded the evenings and especially the dinners if they were both at the table. I could see the way they analyzed my every comment and soon I hardly said a word, or if they asked questions, I kept my answers to one or two words.

"The funeral atmosphere that I had felt in the house before thickened like fog. I could feel the crisis building, the tension stretching until something was bound to snap.

"The only way to escape the awful tension and avoid dealing with either one of them was to lock myself in my room and disappear into the world beyond my computer screen. I'd used my computer mainly for schoolwork but soon I discovered chat rooms where there were people talking about movie stars or bands I liked."

"Chat rooms?" Star asked.

"You don't have a computer?" I thought everyone had a computer these days.

"Hardly," she said. 'We're lucky we have a microwave."

Misty laughed and even Cat smiled.

"You go on-line and you can talk to people all over the country, all over the world, for that matter?'

"Talk?"

"Well, you don't actually talk. You write and they write back instantly and you carry on

conversations, sometimes with a dozen people at once. Some of my friends are really into it.

"One night, I noticed a private chat room and just sat back and read the dialogues. Most people make up names to use, but sometimes you can tell a little about them from the names they choose, like Metal Man is probably into heavy rock music, understand?"

"I guess:' Star said.

"Anyway, I was reading the conversation and I realized someone named Loneboy had parents who were in a bitter divorce, too. I asked him how old he was and he said seventeen. He said he had a younger brother who was taking the divorce a lot harder than he was. In fact, his little brother was already in therapy because he was acting out, much like you said your brother Rodney was doing, Star, breaking things, getting into fights with other children 4-school, stuff like that.

"Anyway, Loneboy and I exchanged some information and soon afterward, we skipped the chat room and E-mailed each other directly instead. He told me he lived in San Francisco. The more he told me about himself, the more I told him about myself."