I don’t go to her. I just stare, mouth open. However I feel about Matt, I do love my parents, deeply, because I know they’re only doing their best. But all of a sudden, loving them and loving Penny and Will feel like currents pulling me in opposite directions.
Dad looks to her. He places his hand on her shoulder. She sinks into the seat back. I catch a small nod. “You’re right, Lake.” His voice is gravelly. “You’re…absolutely right. But—” I tense and he holds his palm out to stay me. “Bear with me. Will, Penny, or…well…you’re going to be dealing with loss. We’ve spoken with your doctors and we think it’s important for you to see a therapist.” I start to protest. I’m sensing a trap. He cuts me off. “Right away. You’re young. This kind of trauma, it’s very real.”
“I don’t need to talk to a stranger to know that.”
“Maybe it will provide some clarity for you.”
I soften. He doesn’t mention Matt. He doesn’t insist on the promise I made. The promise I already know I’m not keeping. Matt is alive. My friends are not. There can’t be a more stark distinction. Meanwhile my head is spinning, with nowhere to land.
“Please,” he says. “This one thing. For us.” And that’s the line that gets me.
My jaw clenches. I want to talk to Penny, not some shrink who knows nothing about my friends, who knows nothing about anything. But despite everything, despite how for years it’s felt like Matt, my mom, and my dad have formed their own family and forgotten to ask me to be in it, despite that, I still don’t want to hurt them. “Fine,” I say. And then I add, “But that’s the only thing I’m doing.”
I need some air. And some space. Miles and miles of each if I could get it. I can’t. Or, rather, even if I could there’s no running away from what’s happened.
So, it’s a small thing, but I convince my parents I can drive myself to the therapy appointment that it turns out they had already booked for me. A few days ago, when I needed to get away from my family, I could run to Penny and Will. Now there’s only this. I can tell my parents are trying to do “the right thing” and are struggling to figure out what exactly that means. I don’t blame them. There’s no handbook.
The heat fumes off the asphalt and snakes around my ankles. I drop my sunglasses into the seat behind me before I close the door and squint up at the sky, which is exactly as blue as it was on the day of the car wreck.
That’s the problem. None of this seems real, because the world’s not cooperating. I keep getting this feeling, like I’m just waking up from a nightmare, when actually I’m still living in it. Even the building of Garretson, Smith & McKenna looks more like a law firm than a psychology practice. I’m already starting to sweat by the time I cross the lot and push through the glass door into a blast of air-conditioning.
I have to blink several times to adjust to the artificial light, and I’m rubbing at my eye sockets as I approach the linoleum countertop with the sliding window. A middle-aged woman slides open the Plexiglas between us. “Name, please?”
“Lake Devereaux?” I say it as a question. My heart rate has already picked up its pace to that of a brisk jog. I try to relax by pinching the pressure point between my thumb and pointer finger, another Penny technique, but I’ve had what doctors call “white coat syndrome” ever since I was a kid and so my blood pressure skyrockets the second I’m in a doctor’s office. Even one where there are no needles involved.
The woman tap-tap-taps her keyboard. “First visit?” she asks without looking at me.
I shift my weight in my sandals. “Yes, ma’am.” I rest my cast on the countertop in front of me and pick at the cottony inside near the knuckles while she finishes finger pecking. Finally, the woman slides a clipboard in front of me. She frowns at my cast. “Can you write with that, hon’?” she asks.
I nod. “I’m right-handed.”
“Dr. McKenna will take that from you when she calls you back.” The glass slides into place, like a limo divider, letting me know that the conversation’s over.
I find a seat in the waiting room, which is empty but for one person, a boy around my age bent over a magazine. I choose a chair along the opposite wall so that two rows of chairs separate us. This feels like proper waiting-room etiquette. Particularly in a therapist’s office.
I slip the pen from the top of the clipboard balanced on my lap and begin jotting down answers.
Current medications? I hesitate, then write None.
I used to carry an inhaler with me everywhere I went, but I haven’t needed it in years. My parents say I must have outgrown it, that when I quit playing soccer my lungs had a chance to recover.
Anti-depressives? No.
Suicidal thoughts? Never.
Self-harm? Never.
Family history of clinical depression?
I think about Matt. Does it count if he had extenuating circumstances? Depression hardly seems genetic when it stems from paralysis. I quickly scribble No as my response. Because I suppose becoming a world-class jerk is a different thing from being depressed…right?
God, I’m already regretting agreeing to this.
From the other side of the room there’s a rustle of pages, footsteps, and then a shadow crosses on the ground in front of me. Without lifting my chin, I glance up from my clipboard to see that the other waiting-room occupant has moved to a chair just across and one to the right of mine. He has reopened his magazine and is now hunched over with his elbows on his knees flipping through the glossy insides. Dark hair falls down over his forehead.
Okay…I think, shaking my head and returning my eyes to the questionnaire.
How many items are on this thing anyway? I lift the page and peek underneath. Double-sided.
The boy sitting across from me clears his throat. I jot down another answer. Then, he clears his throat again. Keeping my head down, I close my eyes and pull in a deep breath. The aisle between us is narrow and his body feels close, like he’s punctured the carefully drawn boundaries of my personal space. Obviously he knows nothing about waiting room etiquette. By the third time that he clears his throat I press the clipboard down onto my lap and sit up, startled to find a pair of blue eyes trained on me. It takes only another quarter second for my own eyes to trace the outline of an angry red birthmark that covers the top quadrant of his face, from the middle of his forehead and down the bridge of his nose until it falls off to the left, cuts partway down his cheekbone, and recedes into his hairline, just below the temple. The effect reminds me of a picture book that my mom used to read to me as a kid featuring a dog named Spot.
Damn, I think. I know this face.
I press my lips into a thin line, the way I do when I make eye contact with somebody I don’t know in the grocery store and quickly glance away. Too quickly, I realize.