The Truth About Keeping Secrets(29)

‘Sweetie.’ She set my phone on the kitchen island, put her hands gently on my biceps, then moved one to my face. ‘We’re not doing that. You know we’re not doing that.’

‘What do you mean? It’s all here, Mom. They have to do something.’

‘They don’t.’ She moved away, obviously thin even in her baggy sweatpants, and lowered herself back to the table; she’d already checked out. ‘They don’t, because there’s nothing to do.’

‘Mom, read them again. Read the texts. This person sounds like … they sound like they could have done someone harm.’

‘I’ll call your school to tell them, but that’s all.’

‘No, don’t. I’d rather you not do anything than call the school. But the school won’t know anything, because it doesn’t have to do with the school, Mom.’

‘Sweetie, it’s just … people have been picking on you for years.’

This stung, but I wouldn’t show her. ‘Not like this. You know it. Not like this.’

‘I think you’re seeing things that aren’t there.’

‘I want to go to the police.’

‘I said no, Sydney. There’s been enough buzz around this house recently, and I – I don’t have the time. I absolutely do not have time.’

I scoffed. ‘You don’t have time? How can you say that?’

The paper she held creased beneath her grip.

‘How can you even say that, Mom? People are saying these things to me and you don’t have time? Someone is, is stalking me, and you don’t have time? Someone might have killed Dad and you don’t have –’

‘No.’ She said it so loudly I swore it echoed.

I stopped.

‘No.’ She scooted out from the table again and looked me dead in my eyes; she looked somewhere far away. ‘You cannot keep saying that. Stop it. Sometimes these things happen and there’s nothing we can do and there’s not always somebody to blame. Thinking there is … it’s making it impossible for both of us to heal. Do you understand? Nobody – nobody did anything to Daddy.’

‘Mom.’

‘Nobody. You stop it.’ She gathered the papers, straightened them against the table with a sharp thwack, and went to leave. ‘The support group meets next week. It might be a little short notice but I’m going to make sure I get you in.’

I felt like I was talking to a brick wall. No, not exactly that – a brick wall that hated me. ‘Mom –’

‘I make this decision. You don’t have a say now. And your father would have wanted you to, as well. This is the right thing,’ she said, maybe more to convince herself than me.

‘Really? Do you know that?’

‘I do.’

And that was how I found myself at Constellations Healing.

The office was located three towns over, in a square that vaguely resembled Pleasant Hills’, quiet and colonial with wreaths hanging from front doors and ribbons draped on lamp posts. It was five days before Christmas; apparently they’d wanted to squeeze the first session in now to give us some holiday-themed coping tips, or something. And although I absolutely was not looking forward to any of this, I sort of found myself thankful for the distraction.

Mom and I climbed, the stairs groaning beneath our weight – some sort of omen, I decided – until we reached the fourth floor and stopped at a door with a glass panel that read CONSTELLATIONS HEALING, surrounded by some peeling and discoloured sticker decals of shooting stars.

Ah, yes. This was the place.

A bell rang softly above us as we entered the windowless waiting room, which was cramped and grey and smelled like stale lavender. Mom went to the reception desk while I made myself comfortable in a couch across the room.

That was when I noticed the other kid.

He sat in the plush armchair opposite me, sunken in deep enough to suggest he’d been fossilizing there for a while, flicking through a battered copy of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells too quickly to actually be reading it. He was my age, I guessed, with dark brown skin entirely innocent of pimples. He tugged at his red beanie, which concealed what looked like a head full of short dreadlocks. Fiddled with the clear-framed glasses that dominated his face. Was he here for the support group? I could ask. This was my chance to start anew. The ease with which I’d become close to June had instilled in me a new-found confidence, and I thought maybe I’d been needlessly dismissive this whole time, that people were good and honest, that we were open books. I resolved that I was surely going to become best friends with this kid I’d been staring at for five seconds.

‘Hey, are you here for –’ I referenced my pamphlet so as not to seem too eager – ‘teen bereavement? The support group?’

He looked at me incredulously. Oh God. Maybe he was mute. Maybe that’s why he needed therapy. Because he was fucking mute, and I’d just tried to initiate a conversation with a mute kid. ‘No,’ he said finally, bored and drawn-out and sarcastic, just one step removed from a sigh, in a voice lower than I’d anticipated. ‘I’m just here for the ambience.’ And then he returned to flipping through The Time Machine at an inhuman pace.

Nope, I was right. People are the worst.

If pretentious, baby-faced sad kid didn’t want to make friends, then I didn’t either. ‘OK. Sorry.’ I slumped back into my chair.