Little Lies(21)

I nod and yawn. I’m so tired, and all the worries seem to be seeping back in. I want to fall asleep before they make it impossible.

River goes back to his own bed, flicks off the lamp, and we lie facing each other. I close my eyes and focus on trying to sleep, but the dark reminds me of the closet, and the panic makes it hard to swallow. And I’m worried about Maverick now too. River’s breath has evened out. He never has trouble sleeping.

I slip out of bed and push the door open. I check over my shoulder to make sure River is still asleep before I pad down the hall toward Maverick’s room. I have to pass Mommy and Daddy’s room on the way. Their door is open a few inches, a light still on.

“It’ll be okay, Vi.”

“I don’t know if it will, Alex.” Her voice cracks, and she sucks in big breaths. She’s crying. Because of me.

“We’ll call Queenie in the morning and up Lavender’s sessions with her.”

“She was so scared, Alex.” She hiccups.

“Shhh, baby, it’s okay,” Daddy says. “It’ll be okay. I’m sorry I lost it. I just thought . . . I don’t know what I thought. It took me right back to when she went missing.”

I peek through the crack in the door, my body full of energy I don’t like. Daddy keeps wiping Mommy’s eyes. He looks so sad. They both do.

“It was exactly the same for me. All I could see was what she looked like when you found her. I feel so awful. Kody was just trying to help. That poor kid. Those poor kids. River was losing his mind.”

“I know, but he’s okay. They both are. We’re not going to fix the problem tonight, Vi.”

She’s quiet for a few seconds. “I want to protect her from everything. I want to keep her safe from the world and everything that can hurt her.”

“We all do. C’mere, baby, let’s try to sleep.”

The light extinguishes, and the sound of sheets rustling follows.

I don’t go to Maverick’s room. Instead, I head back to River’s. My parents’ conversation makes me uneasy. I don’t like it when they talk about the night at the carnival.

I crawl back into bed and try to sleep, but the dark makes me feel alone, even with the sound of River breathing close by.

All I want is for things not to change. But they always do. And every time, I lose something. Pieces of memories disappear, and new fears creep in and live in those holes. I can never get a handle on things. I can’t keep up. And no matter how much I wish time would stand still, it keeps moving forward, pulling me and everyone else along with it.





Chapter Eight


Misinterpretation Nation

Lavender

Present day

“HOW WAS YOUR first day of classes?”

I adjust my laptop monitor so my therapist isn’t looking at my rack and neck. “Clusterfuck would about sum it up.”

Queenie nods slowly and folds her hands in her lap. As a kid, when I used to see her, I’d stay busy with my hands, working on some kind of art project while we talked. But now that our sessions are less frequent, I try my best to stay in the moment, even if it’s uncomfortable sometimes. We’ve been working together since I was four years old. Even though she’s still in Seattle with her family, she’s always made time for me.

There have been times when I only needed to talk once a month, but we decided since I’ve moved away from home, we’d start my first month with weekly sessions and adjust from there. This is the one relationship in my life no one is worried about me being too dependent on, myself included.

“Would you like to tell me what made the clusterfuck?”

I give her the abridged version—Maverick taking my car, breaking my glasses, Kodiak driving me home and being a giant dick, him being a dick again at the school café, and me basically holing up in my room after that.

Queenie’s expression shifts ever so slightly at my mention of Kodiak being a dick. I never told her what happened two years ago, not the real story. But the way her jaw tics tells me she’s unhappy with this news.

I run my finger in a figure eight around my knee, needing to keep my hands busy. “You know what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately?”

“What’s that, Lavender?”

“That time I got locked in the closet. I’m sure it’s symbolic, or some living metaphor for my deep-seated trauma or whatever—like the closet symbolizes my powerlessness and the feeling of being trapped.” I stare up at the ceiling for a moment, bits of memories filtering in—ones that aren’t related to the time I got locked in the closet. I always recognize them when they come. Sometimes it’s a sound and sometimes a smell, like dirt and metal and gas and watermelon Jolly Ranchers. “I felt like that today,” I continue, “when I was trapped in the car with Kodiak. Powerless and insignificant.”

“How did he make you feel insignificant?”

I sigh, debating how much truth I want to share. “He said I hadn’t changed at all.”

Queenie tucks her hair behind her ear, wedding ring glinting in the sunlight from the window behind her. “And how would he come to that conclusion during what you’ve said was a five-minute drive home?”

I keep my hands clasped in my lap to hide the damage to my palms. The upside of a video session is that she won’t see what I’ve accidentally done to myself. I don’t want it to raise red flags, or for my parents to come to the conclusion that this is already too hard for me. “I refused to speak to him and told him he didn’t deserve my words because all he’d do was twist them around.”