I perch on the edge of a white, over-pillowed couch in a small white room. My new therapist has gone overboard with the color scheme. There’s white carpet, white chairs, white side tables holding delicate white lamps. Black-and-white photographs cover the walls. Their frames are white. Of course.
Harper did the same thing our senior year, only with black. She painted her walls the color of ink, bought a matte-black bedspread and gauzy black curtains. Hung shiny silver frames on her walls to break up the dark. It looked sort of cool, actually, but then Mara started calling her goth princess, so she changed it.
Dr. Andrews takes the seat in front of me and studies me for a moment without speaking.
I study her right back. She’s black, in her midforties, with deep brown shoulder-length hair and wide, sympathetic eyes. Everything she’s wearing is white. Her eyes are a shade or two lighter than her skin. Tiger’s eyes, my mother would call them. They’re hypnotizing.
“So,” she says, folding her hands in her lap. “Why don’t you start by telling me why you’re here?”
“Here, like, in this office?” I plop back against the pillows. “Daily therapy sessions with you are a requirement during my last three weeks. I figured you knew that.”
Dr. Andrews nods. She narrows her eyes just enough to make the corners crinkle. Something about her expression is incredibly calming, like staring into still water. I wonder if they teach that in shrink school.
Mara’s thick premed textbooks flash through my head. I bet she’d know.
I clear my throat, waiting for Dr. Andrews to speak, but she only tilts her head, examining me with those strange hypnotist’s eyes. The silence grows.
Finally, I ask, “Or did you mean why am I here, like, at the institute?”
She wets her lips. “What do you think I meant?”
I squirm, digging a pillow out from behind my back. “That’s all in my file or whatever. Don’t they make you study up on us before sessions?”
“They do. But I’d like to hear the story from your perspective.” Dr. Andrews leans back in her chair, opening a small notebook. It’s a black leather Moleskine, and I don’t remember her holding it a second ago, but now it’s balanced on her crossed knee, and she has a felt-tip pen in her opposite hand.
I pull one of her pillows onto my lap and start playing with the fringy bit. I expected us to start slowly. Something like “Tell me about your home life” or “Do you have a boyfriend?” I’d almost been looking forward to talking about myself, telling her how my dad used to make us grilled cheese at midnight, our secret ritual. Or how I’d watch ancient Nora Ephron movies with my mom on weekends, the two of us giggling over bowls of popcorn. I’d been normal before all this.
But nope. This lady opens our first session by asking me to give her a breakdown of the worst day of my life. Well, second-worst day.
“It’s not a secret or anything,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “My friend had just committed suicide. I was sad, and I was at this stupid party, for some reason. I took too many drugs and, like, freaked out or whatever. Had a panic attack. Or ‘panic episode.’ End of story.”
“Is there a reason her death affected you like that?”
“She was my best friend.” This comes out more sharply than I intended.
Dr. Andrews lifts her chin. “The mourning process is different for everyone, of course, but a panic episode seems like an extreme response. Was something else going on?”
I think of Tayla and me at five years old, playing Barbies-meet-dinosaurs in my backyard. The two of us taking a break to run inside for cookies and lemonade. I give a quick jerk of my shoulder. “I don’t know. I was just . . . sad. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I feel better now, though, so I don’t know why it matters.”
I smooth the pillow tassels with my thumb and forefinger, waiting for Dr. Andrews to say something. She watches me for what feels like a full minute.
Finally, she says, “And that’s the only reason you think you’re here?”
“Well, yeah,” I blurt, frowning. “I’d just started college—NYU? I was nearly finished with my first semester when it happened—the episode, I mean. The dean even said I could finish out the year, see how things went, but my mom made me drop out. She wanted me to do six weeks here first, as a precaution. I was hoping that if you talked to me and saw that I wasn’t really crazy, you’d see how this was all a big mistake.”
Dr. Andrews studies me. I swear, she hasn’t blinked once since I sat down. “Is that right?”
“Yeah?” But my voice rises at the end, making it sound like I’m not sure.
Dr. Andrews nods and leans over her notebook.
“What are you writing?” I ask.
She straightens, tapping the edge of her notebook with her pen. “So far, you’ve told me the reasons other people think you should be here. I want to know why you think you should be here.”
I feel my jaw tighten. I don’t think I should be here. I think I should be walking down University Avenue with Harper and Mara, drinking overpriced smoothies and looking through the used books at the Strand.
But, out loud, I say, “Those are the reasons I think I’m here.”
Dr. Andrews closes her notebook and places it on her lap, like it’s a period she’s putting at the end of this particular sentence.
“Therapy is a process,” she explains. “There’s no way to get through everything we have to work on in one session. Perhaps we’ll leave it at that for today.”
I dig my fingers into the pillow on my lap.
Sometimes, when I’m in a situation I can’t control, I try to think of how my friends might handle it. How Harper would smile and charm her way into getting whatever she wanted. How Mara would use cool logic to point out exactly why the other person was wrong. How Tayla would—
But I don’t have those tools. I sit there, silent.
“You can spend the next twenty-four hours thinking about what you’d like to discuss with me tomorrow.” Dr. Andrews places her notebook on the table next to her chair and stands, nodding toward the door.
“Whatever.” I get up, tossing the pillow aside, and head back into the waiting room.
The waiting room is a carbon copy of Dr. Andrews’s office, except there are half a dozen white chairs scattered around, instead of a couch, and more throw pillows than I’ve ever seen in one place in my entire life. If I had my phone, I’d snap a pic for Harper. She’d love this.
Sofia sits in one of the chairs, staring into space, knee bouncing like crazy. She looks up when the door opens. “Oh, hey.”
“You up next?” I ask.
Eye roll. “Unfortunately.”
“Not a fan?”
Sofia goes back to studying some spot on the floor at my feet, eyes unfocused. “Are you?”
“It’s only my first session.” I glance over my shoulder to make sure Dr. Andrews isn’t standing there, listening. The door stays closed, so I drop into the chair next to Sofia and lower my voice. “I was kind of hoping therapy wouldn’t be so . . .” I trail off, searching for the right word.
Sofia’s eyes come up to meet mine. “Mind-numbingly lame?”
“Something like that.”
Her lips purse, like she has a bad taste in her mouth. “Get used to it. The only ways out of here without Andrews’s stamp of approval are the three B’s.”
“The three B’s?”
“Bribery, blackmail, or . . .” Sofia sticks her tongue into her cheek, one hand pumping like she’s giving a blow job.
“Gross,” I say, slapping her. “And whom, exactly, am I supposed to be giving a blow job? If you haven’t noticed, there’s a severe lack of men in this place.”
“Yeah, but it starts with b. You’re ruining the joke, Berk.” She snickers. “What’s the big deal, anyway? It’s just talking. You told me your story easily enough.”
“With her it’s exhausting. It’s like she thinks you should be able to determine your emotional state down to the millisecond.”
I catch the twitch of Sofia’s mouth from the corner of my eye. She asks, “You sure you told her everything?”
I feel a sudden spike of anger, like a muscle spasm. “You think I lied?”
“Does it matter what I think?”
I force myself to take a beat, lips pressed together tight as I inhale through my nose. I look Sofia full in the face, half expecting to see her laughing at me or at least looking all superior, like she’s figured out all my problems in a day of knowing me. But there’s not a hint of judgment there. She’s got her head tilted to the side, thumb tapping her chin, like she really wants to know what I’ll say.
“The deal here is pretty simple,” she tells me, after a moment. “Confess your secrets and you’re saved.”
I squirm in my seat. “What if I don’t have any secrets?”
“We all have secrets.”
It reminds me of something Harper used to say, when the four of us first started hanging out. Secrets keep you close. And then she’d wrinkle her nose and wait for us to spill ours, like an offering to the gods of popularity.
Tayla and I gave it, willingly. It never occurred to me that it was weird that Harper and Mara didn’t spill their secrets in return.
The office door swings open, making me flinch.
“Berkley,” Dr. Andrews says, frowning. “I didn’t realize you were still here.”
“Just leaving.” I stand, catching Sofia’s eye on my way to the door. She hops out of her chair and follows Dr. Andrews into her office.
Confess your secrets, I think as I step out into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind me. What a weird way to put it. Not tell or reveal.
Confess. Like we’re in church.