She Dims the Stars(31)

“I didn’t run away. So, no.”

He holds my gaze, our eyes locked and bodies only inches apart for what feels like the first time in eons. He’s so familiar and yet the most foreign thing in my entire life right now. “Why would your dad lie about that? Tell everyone you ran away if you didn’t?” He asks, his voice low and a little shaky.

I shrug and look away, grabbing another treat before I sidestep him. “Some lies are easier to say out loud than telling people the truth.” There’s no reason for me to turn around and look at his face as I walk away. There’s confusion and hurt there that I’ve seen so many times before, more than I could possibly keep count of. Part of this trip is making that right, but I’m forcing myself to take my therapist’s advice and stick with the plan I have in my head. Ignoring the impulse to tell him everything in the here and now is overwhelming. and that’s exactly how I know it’s not right.

It’s not time.



The first day I met Dr. Stark. she didn’t look at me with pity or like I was some kind of miracle. She didn’t treat me as if I were some sort of hopeless thing that couldn’t be cured. She treated me like a person, and I didn’t know how to respond to that.

The first session began with the question, “What brings you here?” And I answered with a name, so she cut me off. It wasn’t who brought me there. There was no one person that caused me to end up in her office. No two people were responsible for my time spent in the hospital while Patrick and Miranda played damage control and lied that I’d run away. I half expected to hear the therapist tell me no one can make you feel inferior without your consent, but she stopped just shy of that.

She asked for a complete history. A full rundown. So I told her everything, down to the very last moment I could remember, and she wrote her notes all the while. She would cross and uncross her legs, nod and stop writing at particular intervals if something of note would come out of my mouth. Otherwise, she was nothing but professional, and by the end of that first session, I think I had told her everything I could think of, starting from the moment I was born until that very second I was in her office.

There was blame and guilt everywhere, almost as if I could see it piling up on the ground around me. The more I spoke, the more carnage, the higher the body count, there was. Everyone had a hand in my misery and owned a bit of why I was sitting in front of this slender woman with honey colored hair and a blank expression as I bared my fifteen-year-old soul.

By the time I was done, I was a mess, both emotionally and physically. I’d cried until I was dry, and my body hurt from the act of it. But all she did was offer me a tissue and then a small piece of advice that changed the course of my life forever. “Now that you’re done blaming everyone else for your troubles, we can start working on the root of the problems inside of you, Audrey. Let’s figure out where those come from.”

It was the inability to understand the origin of that—where those issues arose from—that had confounded me so deeply. I had no sense of who I really was or where I had truly come from. Now the only people who knew the truth were a few adults who were paid to know my secrets or were trying to pretend they didn’t exist.

Then I got assigned Cara, the voice on the other end of the phone. My weekly check-in to make sure everything is still okay. A twisted kind of pen pal or internet friend, but we’d been relegated to speaking only by phone and for the express purpose of my mental wellbeing.

Sitting in the car with Elliot as we drive back into Alabama, I wonder if there will come a time where I can tell someone else how I’m feeling instead of depending on a Tuesday night call. I wonder if this plan that my therapist set in motion, where I let go of these preconceived notions about the guilt I associated with each person I blamed for having a hand in what happened all those years ago, will actually make a difference. I wonder if I’ll come out on the other side like some sort of monarch butterfly. Maybe I’ll end up like that confused moth in the bathroom, bumping into everything and trying to escape a bathroom stall instead.

I wonder how September will be as a psychologist when she finally establishes her own practice. When we were up on the cliff and I was melting down, she was so kind and reassuring. She knew before I even said anything. It must have been the fear in my eyes. Or the way I curled up into a ball and started freaking out about how there was no way in hell I was going over that ledge. She told me it was all in my head. Her touch was so tender and reassuring. Her voice was so calm and soothing. Her eyes held mine while we spoke and she encouraged me to face my fears.

A smile plays at my lips as a thought hits me suddenly. With the way Cline has become interested in her so quickly, would she end up practicing as September Worley? Or September Somers?

“What are you smiling about over there?” Elliot asks as he pulls up to a red light. September and Cline pull up beside us, and I look over to see the two of them talking with the windows down, huge, stupid smiles on their faces. They’re so into each other it’s ridiculous.

“If those two get married, then her name will forever be September Somers.” I say without any sarcasm at all.

“They’ve known each other for all of three days. I don’t think you can start planning a wedding for them yet,” Elliot says as the light turns green.

We pull ahead of them at least thirty seconds before September even realizes that the signal has changed, and I turn to glance back over at the boy sitting to my left. “I have a hunch about this one. I know we’re not close anymore, but he’s pretty easy to read when it comes to girls. I haven’t seen him this into someone before. Not even Kelsey. And I’m pretty sure his twelve-year-old brain thought he was going to marry her one day.”