“How’s school going?” he asks during our Monday afternoon session.
It feels strange to be back here, sitting on this leather couch again. The last time I sat here, I was due to leave for Aunt Lydia’s house in a few days and Dr. Lemke had grilled me about my reasons for skipping town. I couldn’t give him any concrete answers. Back then, my thoughts were cloudy wisps, always slipping away before I could get a decent grasp on them.
My head is clearer now.
“It’s okay,” I tell him.
“Last summer, you expressed some concern about going back to Hadfield High and facing your peers.”
I glance at my chart, which rests on the table beside him, unopened. He obviously studied it before I came in here. “Yeah,” I say.
Dr. Lemke twists his wedding ring around and around on his finger, a quirk I suddenly remember drives me crazy. “How’s the reaction been so far?”
“Pretty much as I expected, I guess.” It’s mostly the truth. That awful rumor managed to catch me off guard, but the stares, whispers, and awkwardness—all exactly as I anticipated. “I mean, it’s not easy being back, but there’s a counselor I can go to if it becomes too much.”
“Good. It’s important for you to have that support.” He stops playing with his ring and grabs a pen, flipping open my chart at the same time. “So. Last time you were here, you weren’t very open to discussing your reason for leaving after your friend’s death. Do you think you’re ready to talk about that now?”
And we’re back to this already. “There were a few reasons. Three, to be exact.”
“Can you tell me the first one?”
I hesitate, and Dr. Lemke’s face drops slightly like he’s expecting me to do what I did last year—clam up and refuse to discuss it. Part of me wants to—talking about those first few weeks after Aubrey’s death isn’t easy—but thoughts of my parents and their drawn, worried faces won’t let me avoid it. They’re paying a small fortune for these weekly sessions, and I owe it to all of us to get the most out of the experience.
“My family,” I say.
“Your family . . .” He waves a hand, prompting me.
“They’re the biggest reason I left.” I scratch an itch on my nose and quickly return my arm to my side. “Mom and Dad and Tobias. They needed a break from me. I was making their lives miserable.”
“You were suicidal.” He says this like I need a reminder.
“I only thought about it.” I say this like he needs a reminder. “I never would’ve actually done it. And I’m not suicidal anymore.”
Dr. Lemke regards me for a moment and then nods. He knows I’m telling the truth. I haven’t wanted to die since I hugged my parents and brother good-bye at the airport over a year ago, when I realized that losing me—even to my aunt and uncle—tore their hearts out. I couldn’t put them through any more stress and anguish. And I knew, even then, I deserved to live with what I did.
“What’s the second reason?” Dr. Lemke asks when I fall silent.
I cross my legs to stop them from jiggling. “Cowardice. I wanted to go away and pretend it never happened. Start over somewhere else.”
“And did you? Start over?”
My mind drifts back to my time there, living with Lydia and Jared. Attending Somerset Prep. My parents had sent me there out of desperation, hopeful that the new setting would rouse me from my debilitating grief. I gave in for much the same reason—because I was stuck, with no clue how to move forward. Maybe leaving it all behind could be the first step.
And it did help, for a while. No one there knew about me; I’d made up some elaborate lie about how the lack of satisfactory education in our public schools drove my parents to send me to Somerset Prep because my aunt taught there and could get us a discount on tuition. My aunt and uncle went along with it unquestioningly. I guess they didn’t want any horrified stares or nosy questions either. But a person can only pretend for so long, and denying Aubrey was dead because of me just made me feel like a giant fraud.
She’s dead, it’s my fault, and there’s no running away from it.
“I tried for a while, but eventually it followed me there,” I tell Dr. Lemke. “That’s why I came back.”
“Can you expand on that a little bit?”
I look down and pluck at a loose thread in the couch cushion, wrapping it around my finger. “I was sort of in a bubble there,” I explain. “I got so good at pretending to be fine, I convinced everyone it was true. I think I even convinced myself at one point. But I wasn’t fine, not really. I was just avoiding dealing with it, and I could do that there because I was so far away from everything here, all the things and places that remind me of Aubrey. She seemed almost like a dream sometimes. A person I knew a long time ago.”
Dr. Lemke jots something down on my chart. “How did that make you feel?”
“Guilty,” I answer immediately. “I felt like I took the easy way out and ran away to avoid responsibility. I shouldn’t get to do that.”
He nods again and goes back to the ring-twisting. Since I became a human girl statue, I notice other people’s gestures and tics all the more. Dr. Lemke’s are especially dizzying. Nod, twist, nod, twist. “What was your third reason for going away?” he asks.
I see the graveyard, the coffin containing Aubrey’s broken body slowly dipping into the ground. Red-rimmed eyes, not once meeting mine. “Ethan. Aubrey’s brother.”
“How did Ethan factor into your decision to leave?”
“I didn’t want him to have to look at me every day. The person who . . .”
Killed his sister. I want to say the words out loud, but I know Dr. Lemke will probably latch onto it if I do. Those words make people uncomfortable. Killed is harsh, deliberate. It makes me sound like a cold-blooded murderer instead of a girl who accidentally pushed her best friend in front of a truck. Fortunately, Dr. Lemke lets my sentence trail off without comment.
“And now? Do you still feel that way?” He sticks his pen into his shirt pocket.
I think about how quickly Ethan disappeared in the hallway the other day. He stuck up for me, but he barely looked at me and then left without a word. Seeing me probably brought back horrible memories for him. Seeing him wasn’t exactly easy for me either, and he wasn’t the one who did something horrible.
“Do you think it helped him heal, not seeing you every day?” Dr. Lemke continues when I don’t respond. “Did it help you heal, not seeing him?”
I shrug, even though for me the answer is no. Escaping was a Band-Aid, not a stitch. The wound tended to reopen with the slightest movement.
“Well,” Dr. Lemke says as he glances at his watch. My hour is almost up. “It’s a good sign that you came back, Dara. It shows your willingness to face what happened and move on from it.”