Chapter 18

On Thursdays, either Ashley or I go to the counselor at our church. Mrs. Ogilvie has been talking with us ever since Mom started going to Mountain View Chapel. A lot of people call counselors “shrinks” and think you have to lie on a couch or let them hook probes to your brain. But we just talk.

Mrs. Ogilvie’s office is on the side of the church with the best view of the mountains. We started the session like we always do, with me picking out a piece of candy from a jar on her desk. That makes me feel like a little boy, but I kind of feel like that anyway, talking about my dad.

Sometimes Mrs. Ogilvie tells stories about when she was a kid. Her father died when she was 10, and she says that affected her like nothing else.

When I first started going, I worried she would ask personal questions, but she just gets me to talk. A lot of times she’ll ask, “How did that make you feel?”

This week I talked about Boo Heckler, because the week before he tried to bully me. I told her a little about Gold Town, but I didn’t tell her everything.

Before the hour ended—it always goes really fast—she asked me what I knew about the attack at school.

I told her I didn’t know the girls but that everybody seemed scared. “Ashley and I hate that we can’t ride our ATVs to school.”

Mrs. Ogilvie smiled. “That would dampen my day too.” Then her face scrunched up, the same way it did when I told her about how we found out my dad had died.

“Something wrong?” I said.

“I know the young man who’s been accused,” she said. “His parents used to come to this church. They asked me to talk to Danny right after his . . . well, I just can’t imagine him doing something like that.”

It was the first time I had heard anyone use his name. “Danny what?”

“Ingram. He’s such a bright young man. He’d spend hours at the Garden of the Gods, drawing the rock formations, climbing them.”

“What happened to him?”

Mrs. Ogilvie closed her notebook and smiled. I figured she couldn’t say. “Let’s just say his parents have been worried.” She pulled out a calendar and scheduled my next visit for three weeks later. “I’m going to be away next week at a conference in Chicago. Can I bring you back anything?”

I thought about the restaurant in Chicago that serves the best barbecued-pork sandwich and coleslaw. Dad used to take us there. But I shook my head.