Under Rose-Tainted Skies(25)
‘Norah.’ Dr Reeves startles when I whip open the door. The gust it creates sends her hair into a brown-fire frenzy. I snatch her wrist, pull her inside before any Lukes can jump out to say hi.
‘Morning,’ I say, out of breath and straightening my shirt. The doc’s eyes narrow and her head tilts a little to the left.
‘Everything okay?’ she asks. My eyes home in on her mouth. Or, more specifically, on the clump of hair clinging to her lip gloss.
‘Everything is fine.’ I nod until my neck feels like it might snap. Her lips are a burnt-orange colour. She doesn’t wear this shade at the office. My fingers curl into fists and I pop a knuckle. I really need her to brush that hair away before it finds its way into her mouth.
‘Norah, where’s your head at?’
‘Huh?’ My eyes stay focused on her rogue tresses. Would it be rude to mention it? It probably would be, so I won’t. But there is so much gross stuff lurking in hair, on hair. She might want to know. She must be able to feel it.
‘Norah.’ The doctor snaps her fingers a bunch of times, and I adjust my eyeline to meet her concerned gaze. ‘Where’s your head?’
‘Nowhere.’ My knees turn in, touch, and I feel like I just got busted doing something I shouldn’t. She takes a deep breath and opens her mouth but doesn’t say a word.
Unfortunately for me, Dr Reeves didn’t turn stupid in her sleep. She allows the silence to stretch, questions me with her stare instead.
‘Everywhere,’ I admit. ‘I can’t focus.’ My eye starts to twitch. It tickles until I give it a scratch. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is what a breakdown feels like. ‘And you have some hair stuck to your lip.’
‘Better?’ she asks, swiping it away.
I nod, feeling way more awkward than she ever has, ever will.
‘I’m trying this new stuff,’ she tells me, pressing her lips together and making a schmack sound with her mouth. ‘The colour is Autumn Mist. The consistency is glue. I think the best place for it is in the trash. Anyway . . .’ She smiles softly. ‘I know there is more on your mind than a slight make-up mishap. Spill.’
We make our way into the kitchen, her heels clip-clop-ping across the floor.
She makes a cup of coffee, the instant kind that sits in an unopened jar in the condiment cabinet. Then we both take a seat at the breakfast bar.
It all feels a bit tense, me on one side of the counter, her on the other. The space around us has somehow morphed into the shady interior of a police interrogation room.
‘Talk to me. Talk to me as a friend,’ she urges.
‘There’s this boy,’ I say, voice shaking, words so dense they struggle to slide beyond my lips. The doc raises her eyebrows. Shock. That’s fair. Nobody is more shocked by this development than me.
‘He lives next door. I resolved to avoid him, but our paths kept crossing, and now I’m not so sure I want to . . . avoid him.’
My face feels how Botox abuse looks. ‘I might be in a little over my head.’ I abandon my chair, stand up, and start pacing, which usually helps me think, but today it’s just making me dizzy. I grab the hem of my shirt, search for a loose thread, and pull at it.
‘Norah, we’re just talking right now. Who knows, I may even be able to help you figure this out. At least let me try.’
It’s like smashing down a dam, opening floodgates, dropping a flame into a box of fireworks. My mouth opens and the words keep on coming.
‘It’s my fault. I watched him a couple of times and he saw. And then the groceries got left on the porch, but Helping Hands was closed, and so he passed them to me. So he must be nice, right? And then he wrote me some letters. Not love letters; stupid stuff. He’s funny. And I lied about going to the same school as him. And about having a cold.’ Imagine Hamlet sauntering about the stage, hand to heart, delivering an epic monologue. That’s about where I’m at right now.
Dr Reeves just lets me talk, doesn’t even attempt to slow me down or stop me. She does this thing where she pushes a thumb up under her chin and strokes an invisible goatee with a hooked finger.
At first, I thought it signalled her tuning out my incessant ramblings, but then she explained that she was taking mental notes. She says she doesn’t like to interrupt my stream of panic because she knows my mouth is directly quoting my mind and she wants to hear exactly what is going on inside my head. I think she’s brave.
‘I can’t tell Luke why I lied. Can I? How can I be his friend? I’m afraid he’ll laugh at me. He came over to talk to me about France.’ Dr Reeves always smiles broadly when I mention France. ‘I couldn’t tell him I can’t go there. But when he talks, he doesn’t think about the things that are wrong with me because he doesn’t know. Which is bad, but I like it. I think I’m his friend. I think we’re friends. And then he goes and invites me to this party. Obviously I can’t go to that either, but not that obvious because I think something inside me wants to go to the party.’ I slap a hand down over my heart and clutch at the skin because that’s where I’m hurting right now. ‘I’m curious. And not just curious because my mind is trying to compute the millions of ways everything could go wrong. This is different. Persuasive. Powerful. It convinces me to leave my room. My room. My fortress. It talks me into getting closer to the music. And then he’s at my door. Luke is. He writes me more notes. And suddenly he wants to come by today. He seems interested. So why does he leave when Queen Amy wants to talk to him? She’s everything, and she’s not hiding, so it makes sense that he would want to talk to her. She is probably normal. I’m so afraid he’ll mock me.’