Hyde and Seek

I was 14 years old or something like it on an airplane to Bath Maine. A place I never knew existed; however it made me think of The North Pole minus jolly old Saint Nick. I was flying away from everything I had ever known. Falling from 32,000 feet would have felt like nothing compared to the butterflies in my stomach. If only I had a Red Bull to go with them, I probably could have flown myself to Maine from Chicago. I was surprised my bouncing knee didn’t simulate such turbulence that the captain turned on the fasten seat belt sign. Britney Spears was blaring in my headphones, at an insatiable volume. Before I realized there was a world of sound outside the bubble of pop culture, Britney Spears was my angry music of chose. Before I discovered Atreyu, Marylin Manson or anyone else who markets toward fueling teenage angst. Before Simon and Garfunkle made me cry, and before Nirvana saw me through times I thought I wanted to die. Why I turned to a person who blew his head off is today beyond me. Anyway, I wanted to drown out the world and beat on something, so I artistically butchered the poor lady in to seat to my right. Taking it upon myself to draw this particularly plump lady drooling as she slept. Her head cocked upward like a baby bird reaching for food from its mother. She was even trying to feed in her sleep. That was how I drew her, as a turkey reaching for a worm, restricted by a tight seatbelt and fat rolls stuck between our conjunctional armrest. My mom looked over at me discernibly saying something accompanied by a glare of disappointment and a shaking head. so of course I turned my music up, and stared out the window. Rewind.

Play. We were in the Land Rover approximately 300 miles and 100 cornfields away from our house headed to Canada. Cursing with haste and tenacity, like a grey hound chasing a simulated rabbit. My dad had to get there in record time, no matter the destination. Key phrases in our car while dad was drove consisted of “WATCH IT JACK! This was often spewed while merging. “JESUS H. CHRIST,” was popular around break-happy drivers. “FUCK, I mean f-you-pal,” was directed towards anyone who cut him off or passed him. “Can’t I just kill him a little bit?” was complemented with a heartfelt smile and a chuckle, as if to say he was sorry for swearing in front of everyone in the car. Once upon a time, that was my personal favorite. He always saved that one for last in hopes that it would make me laugh like it used to. Really any outward deprecation was deemed necessary and justifiable when my dad was in the drivers seat. The unaware recipient no longer had an identity outside the box of his car. Between the missile cynicisms of my father’s vendetta with anyone else on the road, the joyous audible story of Sea Biscuit circumvented my eardrums. I wanted to scream, but didn’t. Instead I put my headphones on, listened to R Kelley’s remix to ignition, and stared out the window. Fast Forward.

Play. I was on cup of coffee number three when I snapped out of my dream world up in the clouds. Coffee and nerves is never a good cocktail. However coffee, nerves, and a floatation device for a seat while flying into the next chapter of my life may as well have been a cup of drain-O spiked with Four Loco. I wanted to puke, my life was turbulently tumbling around in my head, and my tears started to well. Biting the insides of my cheeks I hoped to stop crying before my mom noticed. Of course I failed. She began her intrepid attempt to console me; I pretend not to notice her. My foot bounced with jazzercise vigilance. She could see I was scared. She also knew I was hyped up on caffeine, and would shortly be in need a paper bag to avoid a panic attack; so she gave me a Benadryl. I was petrified half way through that flight. Not of falling, or combining Benadryl coffee and the heart attack I would have sworn I was having. I was transitioning from one world to the next on a one-way ticket to Bath Maine, feeling like Dorothy inside a tornado. When I landed, I may as well have been in Oz. The fasten seat belt’s sign deactivated, and everyone shot up like fizzy lifting drinks. However I did nothing of the sort; I wanted to people watch. Chaos flowed into the isle while people frantically grab their things. It was a race to wait in line. Strange concept, but it happens every time a plane lands; as if gathering your things faster than the person in front of you got off the plane sooner. Of course my dad is that one person who made it to the front of the plane. Waving his arms, motioning to follow in his footsteps. Like it was acceptable to weasel through the crowds towards him, because he was there waiting. He is the man who is always in a race. I sneered while mildly rolling my eyes, continuing to wait before standing. It was my turn next. I sloppily grab my immaterial Louis Vuitton carry on and move into the isle. I make sure to piss him off by dilly-dallying. I shuffled my feet off the plane and up the ramp. I did not make eye contact, and turned my headphones up to full volume; just incase anyone tried to talk to me. I looked up right in time to make note of the welcome sign. It was in bubbly dark blue Helvetica lettering with an exclamation point saying, “WELCOME TO MAINE!” What a tragic happenstance. It foreshadowed the future, giving me a glimpse of what I was in for. The two stenciled tourist attractions chosen to coincide with the welcome sign were ultimately unattractive. A moose and a lobster, oh what fun! I thought to myself, are you serious? This is where I am going to spend the next four years of my life? Honestly with the moose and the lobster? Where the deer and the antelope play? Those were the two things they chose to welcome people with? I guess that was a better what I would have picked, which would have been snowflakes, and a North Face jacket. The three-layered kind that you zip yourself into. Imagine the jackets you see in Nation Geographic, the kind worn while climbing Mt. Everest. The feeling of their gaze brought me back from my intrinsically sinister tangent. I transition my gawk separate yet equally between both parents gaze, in dismayed disbelief. Next stop boarding school. I started to understand where I was going. Rewind.

Play. 7 hours and three gas stations later, two of which gave me the sneaking suspicion they were once occupied by the Manson family or people like them; where the film, Deliverance’s banjo should have been playing in the background and I was about to boil over. Bottles and bottles of well-aged emotion were about to steam roll out of my mouth in one sentence. “I WANT TO GO TO BOARDING SCHOOL!” Pause.

Side-note -- I am from Glencoe Illinois. Best described as a Norman Rockwell painting on crack. Glencoe is the Jewish town in the North Shore of Chicago. The movie Mean Girls is based around the high school I would have attended. A breeding ground for ostentatious sheltered capitalists sealed in a bubble of consumerism. Mrs. cellophane should have been my name for all people living around me saw was my outfit. I was doomed popular on the first day of school in 6^th grade. Suddenly I was no longer the tomboy ballerina looking girl, who spent a lot of time at the horse barn. I was a different person. I had been initiated with a new identity meant to consume me. I was only allowed to keep my name from who I was, perhaps because we weren’t fleeing the country. Everything was suddenly a democratic tyranny, ruled weekly by the top three of the eight coolest girls. Translated this meant the three girls who ruthlessly manipulated their ways to the top. In my opinion the movie Cruel Intentions, post puberty would be the best way to depict our deviant behaviors. Everything was decreed from what we wore on certain days, to what we did after school. “We are wearing pink on Thursday and practicing our dance routine for the Bat Mitzvah party this weekend.” Was a popularly depressing demand, sugarcoated with a smile. I found myself discovering brand names like Juicy Couture, Seven Jeans, Church Girl, and Michael Star. I had highlights in my hair and perfectly waxed eyebrows. Suddenly I was wearing makeup and reading how to tips from Bobbie Brown’s book. I owned three of the most expensive hair strengtheners on the market, went to Starbucks every morning, and was in some of the most intensive classes I have taken to this day. Oh to be in seventh grade. Sometimes I think I have not learned much since I left that school, where I was amongst insipid cookie cutter spawn of desperate housewives and the inventors of things like the Hoover vacuum. These women were and are the real desperate housewives of America; women who would never condone television to broadcast their lives. Women who were legitimately screwing their fitness instructors, driving drunk and coincidentally crashing into Starbucks (their Mecca of gossip), running away with the mail man for a week, so on and so forth. That was my hometown. Imagine their degenerated offspring. I wanted to die. So my eighth grade year I completely stopped talking to anyone. I went from being amongst the top three coolest girls in school, to being invisible. I hated those top eight girls, the people who were supposed to be my friends. I hated being cruel to people who did not deserve to cry themselves to sleep at night. I hated the backstabbing, and the weekly alliances. I was over it. I wanted to leave anyway I could. -- End of side note.

Play. Prior to my cacophonous announcement, my mother had been ranting about her latest trend to make a difference. The Elephants Living in Africa were suffering and had no voice of their own. Their habitats were being destroyed by Starbucks. So my mother, like Colonel Mustard, took her last stand. “I can not believe it! Starbucks, of all places is hurting the elephants! The poor helpless elephants! I am never going to drink Starbucks again. She is a caffeine junkie by the way, with a persnickety pallet in preference of Starbucks, so the odds were against her, and we all knew it. My money was on three days. I could not handle being in that box anymore. I thought to myself, yes mom the elephants are most important. Forget about the ecosystems and the starving Africans who probably lost their jobs because Starbucks has to cover its ass. Worry about the elephants? Stop the world I want to get off! That was the last thought I had before my years worth of silence was broken. I screech, “I WANT TO GO TO BOARDING SCHOOL!” My parents were so stupefied that my dad stopped the car on the shoulder of the road. “What did you say?” As if he were questioning my reality, like I were a ghost that just popped out to say boo. I took a deep breath and repeat myself mocking the question by speaking ever so slowly. “I. Want. To. Go. To. Boarding school.” I hate living here! I want to go to a school where I can be in an academically challenging environment that doesn’t take a toll on my soul! I am literally dying here! Get me out!” My dad sat like a tombstone for 5 seconds before pulling out his phone and dialing a number. My mom couldn’t take her eyes off of me. She started to cry, and said something like, thank God you finally want help.” I wish I had translated that appropriately then. I had no idea that my dad was on the phone with a friend whose daughter was a drug addict who overdosed at the age of 14 survived and really did need intensive therapy. She was in need of a safe environment. With headphones still blaring, all I mustered from the conversation was: “Brittney, boarding school, Hyde, yes she needs help, I don’t care the cost, say the name again Hyde? Thanks I’ll call you back.” My dad hung up the phone and was quickly on the line with the headmaster of Hyde school. Somehow we got an interview even though the deadline application was a month prior, and the school was starting a week from that day. I should have known then. Fast forward.

Play. We grab our bags from the carousel. I dragged my bag hiding behind my Valentino shades masking my mascara-tainted tears, as we approached Hertz rental car. My dad yelled at the innocent bystander behind the counter, and suddenly keys appeared like magic. Bibbidi- bobbidi-boo, we were off in our pumpkin colored Ford Focus, I knew better than to comment on the irony, or to think it a carriage. No clock had to strike twelve for me to understand that the end of this ride lead to no happy ending. My life could never have been that simple. One vanilla latte from Starbucks and a giggle to how quickly I lost that bet later and Colonel Mustard’s stand dwindled with every sip. We were getting closer; I could feel it in my bones. We passed through New Port Maine, on a highway with a skyline infiltrated by huge billboards advertising commercial chains. There were no small stores to be seen. I ignorantly thought to myself, how tragically middle class. Rewind.

Play. No one spoke much for the remainder of the car ride to good old Canada. I was daydreaming of plaid skirts, hot guys, and fresh start to a prosperous future. I was excited again. I even smiled. Although no one else seemed happy I could breathe again for the first time in too long. The rest of the car ride went quickly, probably because I was in lala land. We crossed the Canadian boarder and the next thing I knew, we found ourselves somewhere near Toronto getting out of our now buggy, carcass ridden gut mobile, and were stepping into the wilderness. Children were literally immerging from the trees, where their cabins were apparently hiding. I saw my brother he looked sun burnt and was wearing his favorite brown shirt of a sloth with glasses saying, “this is a face only my mother could love.” He looked happy though, he had a fishing pole in his hand, worms were crawling out of his pocket, and the freckles on his plump round face were turning sienna due to his seasonal sunburn. It made his blue eyes pop out, and his teeth look whiter as he smiled and ran to give my mom a juicy hug. My parents told him my news. He barely said hello to me, let alone gave a damn that I was leaving the house. Fast forward.

Play. It was my last night as a full resident in my home. My things were packed in three duffels the size of body bags, which were definitely over the 65-pound limit. The room I thought I hated suddenly seemed too empty. I was getting everything I wanted, but did I want it? Where was I going? I wanted to go to art school in California, or college prep school at Exeter. What was Hyde? What did character building mean? Suddenly nothing made sense. I was irked by something that felt like my parents cloaked me in a security blanket of their trickery. Everything started to unveil. A scream escaped my lungs without permission. Instantaneously my dad came running and roaring. What is wrong? Are you ok? Are you hurt? He came to an abrupt halt in my doorway and stared. I was huddled in a ball on what was left of my bed holding Moe, my cat, while sobbing. Moe was the only things I loved in the world aside from my stuffed bunny Peaches. I don’t want to leave Moe! I irrationally exclaimed. My dad looked at me softly and the wrinkles on his forehead disappeared like someone snuck up behind him with a Botox injection. He exhaled slowly holding back the tears welling up behind his pale green eyes, which were hiding behind huge spectacles; the kind which kids wear on Halloween pretending to be old. He walked over to my bed slowly, trying to stop his bottom lip from quivering. “Britt honey, you have to get better. I am not doing this because I don’t love you, I am doing this because I want to see your soul shine again. I want to see your soul smile again. I want you to steal the show again like you used to. You were once so gentle and caring. Do you remember? You used to bring home little animals and nurse them back to health with mom. I don’t know what happened to you monkey. You were my little mouse and now you act like a rat. You don’t talk to anyone, you come home and go to sleep, or stay up late drawing, and writing. You wake up angry and resentful. You resent us. Please don’t think we are giving you away. We are not giving you away, we love you, but you need help right now; and we have ran out of options.” I continued to cry, clinging to Moe making his fur look oily from all my tears. Between sobs I said, “Why can’t I pick my school? Why do I have no say in any part of my life? This is my life; you ask me why I am not happy, well maybe it is because I am treated like a robot! When I asked you why you picked this school you yelled at me! Telling me not to tell you what to do, as if that was what I was even doing. Excuse me for asking a question about my life! I DON’T WANT TO GO TO HYDE SCHOOL! I WANT TO PICK ANOTHER ONE!” I WANT A SAY IN MY LIFE!” the yelling continued. Fast forward.

Play. We reach a tiny little town full of, tiny little restaurants and tiny mom and pop stores. There was one Holiday Inn, a McDonald’s, a CVS, a McDougal’s gas station, and a huge shipyard called Bath Iron Works. I started crying again, listening to Britney spears, not a I’m not a girl. My dad slows down. Apparently we were there, and driving through a inhospitable looking gate, which was always referenced, as “never closing,” as if they need a gate to keep kids locked in there. In front of me was a huge white estate built in the late 1800’s. It looked like the owner abandoned it in the twenties, and Hyde just moved in making little to no change to anything including the interior. That was incorrect though. Somewhere between the misfortunes of the original owner and Hyde’s take over, the place was a children’s polio hospital. Talk about haunted. I would later come to learn the first indoor pool installed in Maine existed in the basement. Which of course came along with the ghost story of the original owner’s mistress, who allegedly drowned her illegitimate new born, and then hung herself in the upstairs bathroom. Which by the way, still existed pole and all. Nothing had been changed, or renovated in that place. It was a mansion. In fact that is what everyone called it, The Mansion. I looked around at my new home through our looking glass windshield. I was confused. There were some kids dressed in Khaki pants and button down shirts walking about; but then there were the others. The kids wearing sweatpants and tee shirts solemnly carrying rakes over their shoulders. Some of them were raking grass and piling rocks. I remember seeing three sweatpants wearers in the distance with two superiors in Khaki pushing their pile of rocks over. Dorothy, we definitely are not in Kansas anymore. We park in what surely was side door of bountiful stories. I imagined valet parking was offered to the aristocrats of the early nineteenth century attending the balls, which must have been held there. I pictured extravagant events from the Great Gatsby, and lavishly dressed elitists promenading through the door, where the finest champagne’s awaited them. I later discovered that my suspicions of past extravaganzas, decadent balls and debutants were in fact true. One of our classrooms was even called The Ballroom, and of course still looked like one. We walked through my dream into the doorway, where there was no champagne on ice, and everyone looked miserably conformed. To what I was not sure yet, but I knew there was potential to find out. A tall blond girl with a volleyball physique, and a hinged smile greeted us at the door. She introduced herself as our tour guide, and hastily ushered us between the debutant style staircases beneath the enormous crystal chandelier, and through a dark walnut stained door. In what must once have been the master of the estates office; judging by the creepy portrait of the royally dressed man whose eyes followed you while you walked, standing proudly next to the fireplace. The exact fireplace I had been asked to, “please have a seat,” next to. Eerie. I wanted to run, but instead we waited. Then entered Mrs. Herd, the headmaster’s wife. She was pale and dehydrated looking. Her skin looked like crinkled paper and was in dire need of lotion. Her hair was dark and frizzy; her eyes matched the walnut door. She was wearing black, and had dark pink lipstick smeared on her Chiclet sized coffee stained teeth. She peered over her specs into my soul, and proceeded to smile as though she deciphered how to lock me in the highest room of the tallest tower. She slowly made her way to the seat in front of me, walking carefully like a lioness circling its prey about to pounce; and then she sat. My parents caught none of her creepy vibes, or maybe they didn’t want to admit they did. She never broke eye contact until she spoke. It was like a switch had been flipped in her brain, and autopilot kicked into high gear. She became a valley girl trapped in black drab. “Hi I’m so pleased to meet all of you welcome to Hyde! I looked over your file and you are a very smart girl who I’m sure would be a great addition to our community. Our community I thought to myself? Suddenly that Manson family gas station sounded like a more comforting of an idea. She was sly as a fox. She paused and sat in silence plotting. I nervously giggled, my Mean Girls training was not up to par with hers. She then said, “ I am only going to ask you one question Brittney. Why are you here?” Oh shit, I thought to myself, I’m stuck. I tried to diverge the topic, but my mother so lovingly divulged, “She is very depressed. We love her so much and we just want her to get better.” I wanted to hit her over the head with one of the rakes from outside. She had essentially just signed my papers for me, and did not stop there. Going and on about my issues, like she was my therapist. I was livid. Thanks for throwing me to the wolves mom, Et too Brute? The next thing I knew I really was signing papers. I tried reading them, but my dad scowled at me so I put pen to paper and signed. Funny he had always taught me to read over everything before signing. That was it. I was essentially emancipated from my parents, and thrown into a community. I was 14 or something like it wondering where the rakes came into play. Pause.