Under Rose-Tainted Skies(26)

And then silence. Eardrums everywhere rejoice.

I’m shaking. I don’t cry, but I want to. Instead, I take a breath, suck all the air right out of the room and fill my depleted lungs with it. It feels good. Cold, the same way eucalyptus does when you inhale it deep. And freeing, like my entire torso has been wrapped in a bandage that has suddenly unravelled.

‘I’ve spent all night losing my mind. Can you please help me?’

‘Of course, but first, let’s get you something to drink,’ she says, clip-clopping over to the fridge.

I watch pearls of condensation roll down my glass of orange juice as Dr Reeves takes a sip of her coffee. If it tastes bad, I can’t tell. Beyond the slurping sounds, I can hear the wheels of her mind turning. I can’t look up and meet her eyes because I feel all kinds of naked right now.

‘You remember when we talked about neural pathways?’ She draws on the table with her fingertip. A tree with squiggly roots sprouting off in all different directions.

‘About how the brain learns and how it ties instances together so those things then become associated?’ It’s no coincidence that she’s still drawing roots on the tree that I’m pretty confident we can now label Norah’s Brain.

I nod. I remember this conversation. I remember breaking out in hives after hearing the conclusion. It’s about changing the way I think. Which sounds so simple, but whether I like to admit it or not, anxiety has become my best friend. It’s a crutch that helps me hobble through life. It’s the brassy bitch at school that I don’t like, but being her BFF makes me popular. Or the school bully that I don’t really want to be around, but being his friend means I don’t get beaten up. I don’t know how to be safe without it. We’re buddies. It’s like they say: keep your friends close, your enemies closer.

‘We said we were going to try and change those pathways, right? Norah, the thing about cognitive therapy is, it relies on repetition. It would be fair to say that we can’t create these new pathways, these new associations, if we’re still clinging to the ideas that created the old ones, right?’

Of course she’s right. Her brain’s so big it’s a wonder she can fit through doors that aren’t double.

With two fingers, she starts rubbing away at the tabletop, erasing some of the roots. ‘When we talked about how people perceive us, what was it we concluded?’

‘I don’t remember.’ I find a patch of skin on the back of my hand, start scratching, break flesh and feel blood, sticky, collecting under my thumbnail, but it doesn’t hurt. I’m numb.

‘Take a deep breath for me,’ Dr Reeves says.

She wants me to draw a parallel between myself and a story she once told me about a chick we’ve aptly named Perception Girl.

‘It’s not the same,’ I tell her, shaking my head. I can hear Luke laughing as I try to explain to him why I can’t venture beyond the front door. Why I count. Why I wash my hands a hundred times a day. Why I go days without eating and sleeping. Why I haven’t spoken to another teenager in almost four years.

‘What’s not the same?’ Dr Reeves pushes.

‘About the girl.’

‘What girl?’ She’s trying to pull words from my mouth and I’ve run out of ways to stall.

‘The perception girl!’ I yell. ‘The one that doesn’t get laughed at.’ Perception Girl’s job is to help me see what other people see when they look at me.

‘Remind me. Why doesn’t she get laughed at?’ Dr Reeves says, setting her cup down on the place mat. Except she doesn’t get it central and I can see it tilting. It agitates me. I don’t ask, just reach across the table and set the damn thing straight.

‘Because she’s sick. And people don’t laugh at sick people,’ I tell her through clenched teeth.

‘And what are you?’

‘I’m sick!’ I shout. But not because I’m angry. It’s like I’m trying to make myself listen. No, not listen, hear. The same way a sergeant drills instructions into the heads of his platoon.

Or maybe I am angry. Angry that my mind can function so proficiently on one thing and remain completely obtuse on the next.

‘Norah, listen to me. The general population doesn’t want to laugh at a seventeen-year-old girl whose life is being held hostage by her brain. As a rule, people don’t laugh at those who are suffering. And Norah, you are suffering.’

‘How can I expect people to empathize with a sickness they can’t see?’ Tears sting my eyes.

‘You don’t expect anything. You talk, you teach.’

I shake my head, pull back my chair, ready to sit down, but decide I’d rather stay standing. More control. That’s what I need. Somehow, height gives me this feeling like I have an advantage.

Dr Reeves draws new roots on our invisible tabletop tree. There aren’t quite as many now, and they’re not so squiggly, not nearly as erratic. I want to believe her; I want to be able to hear Luke understanding as easily as I hear him laughing.

‘I’m afraid,’ I confess in a whisper. I’m always afraid, but I don’t usually admit it out loud.

‘It’s a huge thing,’ she tells me. ‘That’s why you fight this therapy so much. Your brain is freaking out because it knows that to create new paths and form different ideas, you have to lend yourself a little to the unknown.’