By the time Seth dropped me back off at my house, it was past 1 a.m. And worse, both of our houses were blazing with lights. Lit up like freaking Christmas trees.
This was really not my night.
“Well, that’s not good.” There was a trace of sarcasm in Seth’s tone, and I was proud of him for it.
“No, it’s really not.” I agreed. “Think your parents are going to flip?”
“Nah, my mom always pretends to be mad about this stuff, but secretly I think she’s just happy that I have friends.” He beamed over at me when he said the last word.
I threw my arms around him. I was just so grateful for Seth and for all he was doing for me.
“What are we going to do?” I mumbled the words into the shoulder of his fleece.
“You’ll figure it out, Kate. You always do.” Normally I would have made fun of him for sounding like an overenthusiastic preschool teacher, but I was too grateful for the words of encouragement tonight.
“I was so sure it was Sinclair and then Ms. D.” I shook my head. “I just can’t figure it out, Seth. Why can’t I figure this out?”
I was talking about so much more than just who was hurting members of the Brotherhood. I was talking about figuring out who the bad guys were and putting them in jail. It was so easy on the cop shows my dad watched all the time. I just didn’t understand why it wasn’t working that way in real life.
My parents came running out the front door like a pair of lunatics. I could already hear them yelling something about it being a school night and scheduling an appointment with good old Dr. P. first thing tomorrow morning.
Seth apologized and practically shoved me out of the car. Can’t say I blamed him.
“This stops now, Kate. Tonight.” My mother’s voice was full of anger and fear.
“We love you too much to worry like this, Kate. We’re done.” My father looked exhausted.
“I’m sorry.” It was all I could say, because I couldn’t promise them that this wouldn’t happen again. I couldn’t pretend like I’d had some epiphany that ended with me turning into the person I was before Grace died.
Because no matter how many times I lied to them, how many times I snuck out or skipped school, I would never stoop to making promises I couldn’t keep.
***
“So, Kate, your parents tell me there was an incident last night. Care to fill me in?” Dr. P. tapped his fingers together like Hannibal-freaking-Lecter. I wondered if maybe he was a secret sociopathic murderer. Honestly, I might have preferred it that way. At least it would have made our time together a little more interesting.
I shook my head in response. Today I decided to see if I could make it through the entire session without saying a word. It was a huge challenge, but I was feeling pretty good about it.
“Do you think you might be acting out right now because Alistair’s death has stirred up some of the same feelings you had when Grace died?” Dr. P. nodded his head slightly and made a little grimace that I suppose was meant to encourage some type of verbal response from me.
I shrugged, drunk on power. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? This not-talking thing was amazing. Honestly, it made me wonder why I was talking in general. I bet if I’d stopped talking, I would have finished the Sisterhood off months ago.
“When you act out like this, Kate, you’re pushing away all of the people who care about you the most. You’re alienating them and alienating yourself.”
It occurred to me that Dr. P. was kind of a crappy shrink. I mean, he was literally doing all of the talking and I was just sitting there. Shouldn’t he be pulling some psychiatric kung-fu moves where he matched my silence by not talking to force me to say something, anything? Not that it would have worked, but it would have been kind of awesome if he tried.
“Life is going to continue to throw curveballs, Kate. It’s never going to be perfect. You need to learn how to deal with these setbacks head on, but you can’t do that until you’ve finished grieving Grace. You’re stuck, Kate. It’s common, especially for those who are grieving a very sudden, very tragic loss for the first time.”
He paused to scribble something in his notepad.
“The only way out is through.”
Those words resonated with me more than I wanted them to. Hadn’t I come to the same conclusion?
“And to get through it you need to move past anger, move past this obsession with revenge, and you need to let yourself be sad.”
And he lost me. I was so over people shoving me into one stage of grief or another. Did anyone ever really stop being angry after they lost someone they loved? I sincerely doubted it.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and I managed to slide it out while Dr. P. was busy scrawling more riveting tidbits about our session in his little notepad.
The text was from a number I didn’t recognize, and there was no message, just a picture.
Liam and Bethany. Kissing. With lots of tongue by the looks of it. He was wearing the same outfit he had on last night, so this little encounter had happened either before or after we got caught by Ms. D.
It felt like someone had dropped a boulder onto my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to cry. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have assumed that he would just be waiting around for me indefinitely? How could I have trusted him? Because when it came down to it, if all of that bullshit about him caring for me and loving me and wanting the best for me had been true, then this picture wouldn’t exist.
“Screw it.”
I accidentally said the words out loud and Dr. P. jerked his head up in response.
“Yes, Kate, now we’re onto something! Screw the grief! Screw the anger! We’ve made such progress today, a real breakthrough!”
I nodded. Something had been broken all right. Unfortunately, it felt a little bit like my heart.