Now
“Emma was screaming, you said. These are your words. Do you remember telling the police that, Heather? That you heard her, from the path?”
I ignore him. My eyes are on the clock, watching the minute hand tick around. Three minutes. I smile to myself smugly. Another hour gone, and once again Dr. Petersen has gotten little more from me than a word or two. I see him glance at the wall too, registering the time. He’ll be annoyed, and that makes me even happier. All the qualifications and certificates in the world can’t mask the fact that he’s failing to make any progress whatsoever.
No matter what he says, what he thinks, I am winning.
I shift in my seat, preparing to rise. To begin the long walk back through the plush hallways until we get to the polished linoleum and bare white walls that family members and visiting dignitaries never get to see, deep within the bowels of the institution—Petersen’s personal little empire. My escort coughs lightly behind me, and I know he’s warning me: he’s there. If I make any sudden movements—explode forward, launch myself at Dr. Petersen as I have done in the past, and quite successfully, I might add—he will stop me. At least, he thinks he will. I am not so sure. He’s big, though. And young. It doesn’t matter; I have no plans to attack Dr. Petersen today.
I’m just getting ready to leave. To go back to my nonlife and stare at the walls. The television. The other “patients” who actually are total whack-jobs. I stare a lot. I’m doing it to Dr. Petersen right now, waiting for him to give up the ghost and dismiss me.
He turns away from the clock, back to me. I see a twitch as he registers the change in the way I’m looking at him—expectant relief rather than complete disdain and loathing—but he smothers the expression before I can read the emotion underneath.
“Is something wrong, Heather?” he asks me calmly.
Too calmly. My brain registers the odd tone—too nice, too smug—but I’m so desperate to get out of the room that I’m not paying proper attention. Instead I speak. Might as well; there’s nothing he can do now, with his perfect schedule and all that. “Our hour’s up,” I say. A monotone. Another thing I do a lot.
“Oh, I see.” He’s still calm. Still self-satisfied. What am I missing? “Well, Heather, I cleared you a double slot today. I thought you and I needed to reconnect, and what with this being the anniversary of the event…”
His words melt away. There’s ringing in my ears, and shock rebounds around my head. Two hours, not one. This sends me reeling.
Because it’s hard. I sit here and pretend that I don’t care, but it’s hard. Of course I care. Not about Dr. Petersen, but Martin…Emma…Dougie. Even Darren. Not talking about it, swallowing it back and forcing it down—deep, deep down—isn’t helping. On the outside I’m a hard shell: detached, emotionless, cold. But on the inside I’m burning, suffering my own personal purgatory. And he knows. That bastard Petersen knows, and he will not rest until he pulls it out of me piece by piece.
Hate courses through me and I grab onto it, use to it brace myself until I can feel the floor under my feet again. Until I can feel some semblance of control come back to me. It’s fragile, though. Rage comes in waves, unlike contempt, and when it ebbs back out again, that’s when I’m vulnerable.
I take a deep breath. Make myself look at Dr. Petersen. God, how I hate you. But you will not break me. “Fine,” I spit through tight lips.
He smiles at me; that’s another point chalked up to him. The rage burns hotter. I am not performing well today. Probably because it is the anniversary, and yes, I was aware of that fact before he so kindly reminded me.
“You didn’t like Darren, did you, Heather?”
There wasn’t much to like. I don’t nod or speak, just stare at him, waiting for whatever’s coming next. He sees that and drags the moment out, taking a sip from an expensive bottle of fizzy water. The hiss as he twists the cap is oddly appropriate: it’s snakelike, just like him.
“You were jealous of him. Of the way he was stealing your friend from you. Weren’t you?”
I raise one eyebrow in superb disparagement. Dr. Petersen sits back a little, and I’m even able to crack the barest hint of a smile.
No, I was not jealous of Darren. I might be a little bit now, though. At least he doesn’t have to sit here and listen to this. “Do you want to know what I think, Heather?” No, but Petersen isn’t really asking. “I think you needed to get Darren out of the way. I think he was suspicious, a thorn in your side. Was it easier with him than with Martin?” I look away. Not at the floor; that would send entirely the wrong message. I go back to the wall, those fancy glass-framed certificates. Foolish Dr. Petersen, they’re potential weapons too. I try to use the wry humor of my thoughts to damp down my anger, but I can’t drown out his voice. “After all, with Darren gone, Emma might have come back to you afterward. Was that it, Heather?”
I swallow back a wave of sadness, because Emma is not coming back. Not ever.
But I don’t want to think about that. I will not think about that. I grit my teeth, engineer synthetic anger, and use it as armor. It can’t protect inside my head though, and that’s the part Dr. Petersen is most interested in. I feel a wave of panic that nearly propels me out of my chair. I am not controlled, I am not composed, and I want the hell out of here before I do something stupid like let him in.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I say.
It’s a child’s tactic, but I’m clutching at straws. I look at him pleadingly, hating myself more than him at this moment. Please, please, after all you’ve put me through, give me this.
He shakes his head.
“We are not finished here, Heather.”
“I have to go,” I insist. “I have my period.”
That’s a lie. He looks down at my file as he considers it, and I wonder if the truth is written in there. They keep such meticulous records: the drugs I take, the drugs I don’t take; my weight, my height, the length of my fingernails; my mood; what I’m eating and how much of it. I would not be surprised to know they have my menstrual cycle charted too.
They must have taught strategic mercy at whatever nutjob university Dr. Petersen obtained his PhD from, because he acquiesces with a subtle nod. I rise, thinking I’m leaving, but my escort guides me over to a discreet door to the left. He opens it, and I see a tiny room, less than a yard square and fitted with a minuscule circular sink. Beyond that is a second door, half ajar, revealing a gleam of white porcelain. Not an escape then, but a reprieve at least. Dr. Petersen acknowledges my lie by neglecting to offer me a tampon or any other such accoutrement.
I glance uneasily at the escort as he keeps close to my heels—surely he doesn’t think he’s coming in with me?—but he pauses in the sink room and lets me proceed, alone, to the cubicle.
There’s a mirror here, in the toilet rather than by the sink outside. I don’t know why. Does Dr. Petersen send his patients in here for self-reflection? I catch my face staring back at me, and for a millisecond, just the smallest fraction of time, I see something else. Something black and evil and terrifying, hovering over me like a malignant aura. I start and can’t stop myself from crying out, but I muffle the sound before it can reach beyond this claustrophobic square of space. Another blink, and the thing is gone. But my racing heartbeat remains.
I sink down onto the closed toilet lid and drop my head into my hands. I concentrate on breathing normally. I know Dr. Petersen’s patience will not let me draw out the rest of our “session” in here; I have only five minutes at best before I’ll have to face him again. It’s important to be calm, collected, when that happens.
In. Out. In. Out. I count the breaths. Slow them gradually. Taming my pulse is harder. It speeds through my veins, screaming. A gentle tap on the door. A summons. I stand, sniff, then swallow. Just to keep up the pretense, I flush the toilet. Then I smooth my clothes and open the door. It’s almost too small for me to squeeze in beside my escort to use the sink, but I make a show of washing my hands, using the fancy soap dispenser, which daintily releases a squirt of pearly liquid that smells like oranges. Pretending I’m not unnerved by the mountain of man standing just inches behind me, I take my time coating and then rinsing the fingers on my good hand. All too soon, the door is open and Petersen is smiling pleasantly at me from behind his desk.
The leather is still faintly warm as I sink back down into my chair. That should be comforting, but it isn’t.
“Where were we?” Petersen asks.
Trying to look as if I’m just idly glancing around the room, I let my eyes flicker to the clock. Forty minutes. I can last forty minutes.
“Emma.” He says her name triumphantly as if his question were real, as if he hasn’t sat and planned this line of attack while I hid in the bathroom. “You disapproved of her relationship with Darren, didn’t you? In fact”—he ruffles several note-covered sheets in front of him—“you were quite disparaging about it. You said since they’d met, she’d become silly. Shallow. Pathetic, you called her more than once. Do you remember calling her those things, Heather?” Pause. “Did you think that you were better than her?”
Yes.
No. Maybe. No.
I hadn’t believed her, though.
As angry as I was at my parents, the police, Dr. Petersen—all the people who refused to listen to me—I hadn’t believed her.