The Quiet of Compazine

I folded my arms across my chest and sighed softly, staring at my shoes. The academic dean called my dad and me in for a conference because I was failing pretty much everything, which threatened to prevent me from graduating. Dad remained perfectly calm and collected throughout the conference as the dean went through all these complaints from my teachers about my lack of motivation, interest, what have you. So I knew I was in for it later.

After the conference, he drove us somewhere that wasn’t home. He drove us to…a doctor of sorts. I followed the doctor while dad chilled in the lobby. “How are you feeling today, Ms. Davidson?” A middle aged woman asked, opening a door for me to reveal the tell tale black leather couch.

I swallowed back my angry words. I couldn’t believe my dad took me to a shrink.

“Why don’t you have a seat here?” she said as she gestured to the couch and sat in the chair beside it. Scowling, I sat down on the edge of the couch that was farthest away from the shrink. “I don’t bite, Ms. Davidson,” the woman laughed, amused with the distance I tried to put between us.

I laughed as well. “Oh, well, I do.”

She just blinked and smiled serenely, adjusting her glasses. “Well, Ms. Davidson, My name is Dr. Reese Coleman…”

“Would you just call me Porter?” I asked irritably. And, boy, was I irritated. I mean, a shrink? Did my dad think I was mentally ill?

I didn’t say a word to Dr. Coleman the entire half hour. She kept asking about school, about home, about my friends or lack thereof, about how I wasn’t trying at life in general anymore. My responses consisted of nodding, shaking my head, and more often than not, shrugging. She gave up after half an hour, though.

“I know this was a tad strange, being your first session with me and all, but don’t be afraid to open up to me the next time we meet, all right, Porter?” she said cheerfully, walking me back out to the lobby. I glared at my dad, but he ignored it. “A word, Mr. Davidson?” Dr. Coleman asked, so I sat down for a bit while they talked up by the receptionist’s desk. When dad came back a few minutes later, he had a bottle of prescription pills in hand. “She said two pills a day, one in the morning and one in the evening.”

I gritted my teeth when I saw that the bottle was labeled “Compazine” and Googled it on my phone on the ride home only to discover that it was a medication most commonly used to treat schizophrenia…

“You think I’m schizophrenic?” I asked the minute dad killed the engine of the car, holding up the Compazine. “You think I, I hallucinate? I’m delusional? I hear voices in my head or whatever?” I continued, my voice heightened in my distress and cracked in my alarm.

“Porter,” my dad sighed, resting a hand on my shoulder which I quickly shrugged off. “I don’t know why Dr. Coleman prescribed this to you, but this is the medicine you need to take regardless, alright?”

I shoved the compazine into my pocket. “I’m not crazy,” I said, more to myself for reassurance than anything. “I’ve just…lost my will.”

“Exactly,” dad deadpanned as he got out of the car. Dinner was awkward as fuck. He made sure to watch me as I took the compazine. I stormed off to my room and fell asleep reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower, one of my favorite books of all time, but even that didn’t put me in a good mood the next day. Just like last night, dad watched me take the compazine.

I drove to school rather angrily, nearly getting into a car accident on the way there. I felt like the compazine was more of an anti depressant than anything else. I…laughed and smiled a lot today, and was actually somewhat loud. I could tell my classmates were just as puzzled with my odd behavior as I was. I simmered down by lunchtime, though, thank god.

I just sat in my car and drank some lemonade. I wasn’t really in the mood to eat anything. I was still so insulted by the fact that my dad took me to see a shrink. While drinking lemonade and reading a book of Sylvia Plath’s works, a knock on my windshield startled me into spilling some of my lemonade onto my book and myself. Even through the glass, I could hear John’s laughter. I rolled my eyes but unlocked the doors, grabbing some tissues to clean up the mess.

“You sure scare easily,” John observed, getting into the passenger seat and closing the door behind him. “Oh, snap, Porter – are you listening to Ivory?” John asked, grabbing my iPod.

“You like Ivory?”

“Only a lot! Porter, you are one cool cat in my book,” John announced as he turned up my stereo when “City Comes Alive” started to play, singing along, as well. His voice was great, yes, but I think what amazed me was how…happy he seemed when he was singing. You could tell he really fucking loved to sing. He sang his heart out, like I wasn’t even in the car with him. His enthusiasm for singing is what made his voice so attractive…wait, what?

“You sing well,” I piped up when the song had finished. John cleared his throat and mumbled his thanks, scratching the back of his neck as the faintest of blushes graced his perfectly proportioned cheekbones.

“Whatcha readin’?” he asked cheerfully, picking up my lemonade stained Sylvia Plath book. “And you read Sylvia Plath?” he asked incredulously, staring at me in awe. “Porter, you are my new favorite girl.”

I laughed a little bitterly at that. The word “favorite” implied that there was more than one “girl.”

John flipped through the book. “I’ll read you my favorite,” John decided, lowering the volume now. “Soliloquy of the Solipsist, by Sylvia Plath,” John began. What a coincidence – that was my favorite, too.



I let out a shaky breath, rubbing my arms up and down in an attempt to dispel the goose bumps brought on by John’s voice. “You alright?” John asked, nudging my arm.

“Yeah, of course,” I mumbled, forcing a smile. John studied my face for a while before grabbing my phone from the drink caddy. “I just…I should, you know, be getting to work now, so…”

“Oh, alright. See you around, Porter,” said John, putting down my book and phone on the dashboard of my car before getting out.

When he was out of sight, I bashed my head into my steering wheel and screamed in plain frustration. Why was he so perfect? Why was I so awkward? Why did he hang out with me at all? I sighed and started my car when I heard my phone go off, alerting me that I had received a couple of text messages from a new contact in my phone – “JCO’CV.”




John has a way of making things ok when he’s not around.