Jacob smiled. “Yeah, me, too,” he said, and he mostly meant it. “If it’s okay, though, I think I’m gonna take off,” he said, nodding back at the path to the dorms. “It’s past my bedtime,” he joked.
Callie laughed. “Yeah, of course,” she said. “I’ll see you around.”
“Have a good night,” he replied. He gave a wave to Angela and her boyfriend on his way around the mob of closely-pressed dancing bodies.
The closer he got to the dorms, the more the party sounds began to fade into the distance, and he was left alone with only the crickets to break the eerie silence. It was something he still wasn’t quite used to – silence. No blaring car horns, no police sirens, no alarms denoting a mental breakdown of a patient. Nothing to distract him from his own mind.
As he walked in the near-silence, listening to the crunch of leaves and rock under his feet, he took a deep breath of the fresh, mountain air. Rather than having a calming effect, it set his nerves on edge. In the open field, in the cool breeze, under the clear, starry skies, he felt exposed. With no noise and no distractions, there was nowhere to hide, not even from himself.
“NEW MUG?” JACOB ASKED.
Doctor Summers looked down at the clay cup in her lap. “Oh, yes! You like it?” she asked with a smile, raising it up to show it off. “My husband got it for me for our anniversary last week.”
“It’s nice,” Jacob replied, taking a closer look at the uneven rim. “Did he… make it himself?”
She chuckled. “Do you have to ask?” she rolled her eyes but looked back at the mug with an enamored grin. “Nine years is supposed to be ‘pottery,’ so he had one of our more artistic friends help him out.”
“Wow,” he raised his eyebrows. “Nine years. Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” she smiled, taking a sip of her tea and setting the mug on the table between them.
Jacob sipped his coffee from his usual white mug, appreciating the subtle note of hazelnut from the new beans the doctor had that morning.
“So,” she began, flipping to an empty page in her notepad. “You made it through your first month of college! How are you feeling about that?”
“Good,” Jacob nodded. “Things are going pretty well, I guess. I’ve got a couple friends, and the classes aren’t as hard as I expected.”
“That’s great,” she nodded along.
“Of course, it would be nice if I had a job,” he added.
Picking up her tea for another sip, she asked, “Haven’t had any luck in that department?”
Jacob let out a small sigh. “I’m pretty sure I’ve made it through all of the online applications available, but I haven’t had any calls. But then again, why would I?” he shrugged. “This town is full of eager, hard-working college students looking for jobs, and I would venture to guess most of them aren’t felons.”
“Hm,” the doctor pursed her lips, jotting something down on her pad. “So, you think that’s why you haven’t gotten any callbacks?”
“Well, that and my pitiful resumé,” he scoffed, outlining the rim of his mug with his thumb. Dejectedly, he added, “I guess my past is finally catching up to me.”
“How so?” Doctor Summers prodded.
He shrugged. “I spent my entire high school career looking after Maggie. And then when she died, I was so obsessed with her case that I didn’t have time to think about anything else.” Jacob shook his head at his past self. “Turns out, revenge doesn’t pay the bills. Who knew?”
Doctor Summers gave him a sympathetic grin. “Well, it’s never too late to start fresh,” she encouraged, and he fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Is your parole officer helping you with your job search?”
Jacob laughed and rolled his eyes anyway. “He’s not helping me much with anything,” he said, thinking back to the last few meetings he had with the old, surly man.
Their meetings were always brief. It was just a urine sample and the basic, mandatory questions. Have you been drinking? Have you done any illegal drugs since our last meeting? On a scale of 1-10, how stable would you rank your mental health in this moment? Killed anybody lately?
“Are you having problems with your parole officer?” she asked, concern creasing her forehead. “Do you feel he isn’t doing his job properly?”
“I mean… technically he’s doing his job,” Jacob said.
His response didn’t ease the concern on her face, so he sighed and tried to explain further.
“I think he thinks investing in me is a waste of time,” he elaborated. “That I’m just gonna be back in the system again soon anyway, so what’s the point.”
“What makes you think that?” she asked, setting her tea down to write something.
Jacob thought back to the previous weekend, sitting in the waiting room of Officer Millburn’s office with several other clients, waiting for the previous meeting that was running late to finish. The other men were going on and on about how much Officer Millburn had changed their lives and how valuable he had been to their recovery. If it hadn’t been for the familiar red-headed receptionist juggling sticky notes and phone calls in front of him, he would have thought he must be in the wrong building.
“A lot of his other clients seem to be happy with him, but the common denominator is that they’re all working off misdemeanors,” he explained. “First time drug offenses, mostly. I guess he just sees me as a lost cause.”
“Is that how you see yourself?” Doctor Summers interjected. “A lost cause?”
“No,” he responded, and for the first time in a long time, it was an answer he didn’t have to think about. “But I can see why other people might see me that way.”
“Hm,” Breanna nodded, setting her pen down atop her notepad. “Well, I hope you know that’s not how I see you,” she stated.
He smiled. “Thanks.”
She returned his grin. “You’ve made a lot of progress, Jacob. At Bellevue, of course, but even here, since you arrived. You seem more confident and self-assured. Are you starting to feel like you belong here?”
That was a question he did have to think about.
He thought back to his first week at college, getting used to a new place, a new bed, a new life. Nothing was familiar. Even the simple act of eating breakfast was its own sort of ordeal. Although maneuvering the cafeteria at Westbridge wasn’t too different from eating at Bellevue, the fact that he was the “new kid” again made Jacob feel like he was starting over from scratch, and he only felt minorly more prepared for this go around.
He took a long swig of his coffee to give him an excuse to think a bit longer, and he stared at the milky substance as the hot liquid warmed his throat. Watching the white swirls move around the mug, he thought back to the reason he opted to forego his usual routine and put cream in his coffee that day.
It was the previous Sunday, early afternoon. After a long night of searching the internet for applications and tips to beef up his resumé, Jacob had allowed himself to sleep in a bit longer than usual. The cafeteria was busier than he usually found it at six in the morning, and after snagging a cup of coffee from the bar, he found pajama-clad Callie and Angela sitting at a table near the windows.