Where It Began(79)

“Right,” I say.

Ponytail fidgets with her ponytail.

“The dog,” I say. “I’m thinking that she probably said more than one sentence if she gave you the dog.”

Ponytail says, “Oh! He’s a retired therapy dog.” She gives the dog a sideways, hello-doggie kind of sappy look before she pulls herself back together. “The woman is very persuasive. But we did not discuss you.”

“Then you’re the only person in the B’s who didn’t. What’s his name?”

“Barney.”

I get out of my chair and start scratching the dog’s warm little head behind his oversized ears, but you can see he’s pretty serious about his retirement because he just opens his eyes, gives me a once-over, goes back to snoring, and ignores me.

“I can imagine how shocking this must have been for you,” she says.

“My friend showed me the picture last week, but yeah.”

“So you’d known for several days before it hit the press, so to speak. . . .”

Then I stop scratching the dog and I just look at her, and it hits me that even with the vast amount of stuff I didn’t tell her in the hospital and the even more vast amount of lying I had done in here, starting with why I couldn’t go to AA and moving right along, she believes me.

She believed me all along.

The Do Not Trust Therapist tape loop is still going like the annoying, disembodied voice that tells you to please take a ticket when you pull into an automated parking structure, even after you already took a ticket, when you’re already driving through the open gate. Billy’s voice: Do Not Trust Therapist.

Oh yeah, thanks for that.

The gate is open. I start to talk. Lame as it is, I pretend the empty chair is Billy and I scream at the empty space where he’s supposed to be sitting for fifty-five minutes.





LXX


THE ACTUAL BILLY IS GONE.

Nobody sees him after morning break and by that night, his Facebook page is down and his email bounces. He doesn’t show at Fling, and Jack Griffith is drafted into being king at the last minute.

Attempts to contact Billy to find out when he’s planning to show up are in vain. His cell phone says that the number is not in service, please check the number before redialing. By the end of the week, Andy Kaplan says that Billy is in boarding school in Western Massachusetts and he says he’s sorry.

“How?” I say. “I thought he went dark.”

“He borrowed some other kid’s cell phone.”

Andie grabs Andy’s arm. “Why didn’t he use that other kid’s phone to call Gabby himself?”

This is not a rhetorical question.

You can tell that even though Andy knows the answer, he doesn’t have the heart to explain it to her. You can tell that the answer makes him sad and uncomfortable, but not sad and uncomfortable enough to hang up when Billy calls him on the other kid’s phone.

What was I supposed to say, that it was okay? It wasn’t.

That I forgave him? I didn’t.

That as good as I was at swearing at empty chairs, the thing I wanted most was to be able to go back to pretending that I was an adorable hot girl and he was my boyfriend who loved me, which made even my therapist look at me as if I were a hopeless case? It wasn’t my drinking problem or my closed head injury problem that was interesting to her all of a sudden—it was my Total Evasion of the Truth Problem. How much I wanted things to go back to the way they were even though I knew, I completely knew, that things were never really ever like that.

Andie says, “Well, he should have called Gabby. I’m sorry,” she says, looking over at Andy. “I know he was your best friend, but he isn’t very nice.”

And I think, How is it that Andrea Bennett gets it but somewhere deep, somewhere that seems impossible to change, I don’t?





LXXI


“IS THIS WHAT HAPPENED?” MR. PIERSOL ASKS, thumping on the Wildcat. “Or is this one of those photoshopped dealies that’s someone’s idea of a joke?”

Everyone in the picture is there with a full complement of parents, except for, obviously, Billy.

Agnes is there, glaring at everyone, white despite excellent makeup.

“Jim,” she says to Mr. Piersol. “I don’t see how we can determine what happened, until we have forensic experts. Which I would be happy to provide. Why don’t we just collect these Wildcats here and now and hold them in a safe place until we can do that?” You can tell she isn’t going to be happy until she has all the Wildcats in a shed with some lighter fluid and a match.

Huey says, “It isn’t photoshopped.”

“Who authorized you to take that picture?” Agnes snaps. “Did a faculty member sign off on this? Did you get a release?”

Mr. Piersol more or less cringes. “Well, Gabby,” he says, “we seem to have been operating here on some unfounded assumptions. And we know about assumptions—”

“I really can’t remember,” I say very quickly in what turns out to be a very effective attempt to preempt an onslaught of Piersol clichés.

“You can stop saying that now,” Vivian sighs. “The cat is out of the bag.”

There it is. My own mother still doesn’t believe me.