“Better,” Sophia says, and smiles at me. “You should go.”
“Ugh, no thank you. Mernich’s going to ask about my feelings, and frankly I’d rather swallow a centipede than talk about those things. Or become a centipede and crawl away. Can I become a centipede? Do they allow that in America?”
“Isis,” Naomi says sternly.
“You can become a certified light saber maintenance engineer in America, so I really think you should be allowed to become a bug—”
“Arthropod,” Sophia corrects.
“—arthropod. And Naomi! My, what big hands you have. The better to grab me with, am I right? Ack, gently, woman! I’m damaged goods!”
Naomi steers me out of the room, Sophia cheerily waving as we leave.
Dr. Mernich is the kind of woman who forgets to brush her wild red hair but somehow makes the crazed lunatic look work for her, which is weird, because she works with crazies. Not that crazies are bad. I’ve met a few and am probably one of them. I just don’t know it. Or I do. But I refuse to let it get in the way of my fabulousness hard enough to require a shrink. Mernich is my way out of this place, in any case. She’s the one who’s keeping me here until she’s satisfied I’m all right in the head. Which is dumb, because mentally I am a diamond fortress of impenetrable logic and sexiness.
Dr. Mernich clears her throat. “Isis, you’re—”
“Someday I will not think aloud, and that will be a sad day for humanity. Also, quieter.”
She heaves a sigh. “How are you feeling today?”
“Parts of me are feeling lots of things! For instance, my intestines are feeling lots of things. That means I need to visit a restroom. Sometime in the next hour. In addition to this riveting prospect, I’m slightly worried about Mom’s meager finances and recent trauma, so if you could just write me a note so I can get out of here, that’d be great.”
“What have we said about avoiding the subject with flippant jokes?”
I squirm. “Uh, it’s vaguely negative. I think.”
“And why is it vaguely negative?” she asks patiently and scribbles some more.
“Because I don’t confront anything, I just run away from it,” I recite.
“That’s right.”
“But to be clear, I run away from it like a Baywatch babe, not a roly-poly kid in gym class. I mean, I still am roly-poly, but it’s an alluring sort of roly, you feel me?”
“Isis, do you really think you’re large?”
There’s a beat. The scale told me I’d lost eighty-five pounds years ago, but it never really sank in. I still catch myself thinking I won’t fit into chairs, constantly worrying about how much space I’ll take up, how much space people will see and laugh at me for, judge me for. I can’t wear bathing suits without bursting into hives of stress. Even that pretty blouse my stepmother gave me was pushing it.
You’re beautiful.
The words echo in my memories, but I can’t put my finger on them. Who said that? And when? I shake them out of my head and refocus.
“Duh, I’m big,” I reply. “And unlovable. But you already know that.”
Her eyes spark. Of course she already knows that; she’s spent two weeks with me, talking about my life. I’d stalled around her with jokes and lies for a good week, until I realized she was the one who gives the go-ahead to let me out. And then I had to start actually cooperating with an adult and Telling The Truth™. Ugh.
“You already know everything about me, right?” I tilt my head. “So c’mon. Why don’t you just let me out of this—pardon my French—absolute shithole?”
She adjusts her glasses. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. I’m certain there are still some things we need to work on. You’re close but not quite there.”
Even this shrink is full of herself. Her self-satisfied little smile as she says that gives it all away. The trophies and awards lining her stuffy walls give it away.
“You like it. Knowing things about people. It makes you feel powerful.”
Dr. Mernich looks up from her scribbling, the faintest whiff of startled hanging around her. “Excuse me?”
“You. Like. The. Ego. Trip. Shrinking. Gives. You,” I say slowly. “Aw, don’t give me that look. I’m not judging you. I just understand. I see things about people, too, and I love knowing I know. It’s weird. It’s stupid. Knowledge is a heady drug. But mostly it’s fun and it makes me feel superior. Maybe I’ll turn it into a way to make money someday, too. I gotta think about that kind of stuff, you know, with college and everything a few months away.”
Mernich is completely frozen for point-four seconds, and then she starts scribbling madly. She does that when I say something super interesting that she can dissect. So she scribbles a lot. Because I am, objectively, an insanely interesting person. I’d better be! I work hard to be interesting, dammit!
“Anyway, what was I saying?” I scratch my chin. “Right, I feel really cooped up and sort of tired of hospitals. Also I feel bad for Sophia. Did you know she has no parents? And her grandma died? How sucky is all that death? Majorly sucktastic.”
Mernich nods. “I’m her psychologist as well. She’s quite the strong girl, if a little tragic.”
“Wow. That’s sort of condescending? I said I feel bad for her, but you went straight to giving her labels like ‘tragic’? Wow. That’s interesting. Wow.”
I can see Mernich start a glare behind her glasses, but she quickly cuts it off and resumes her usual passive face. Oh, she’s good. But not better than me. Not better than Jack.
I pause, my swinging legs stopping under the chair.
“Jack?” I mutter. “Where did that come from?”
How would I know Jack is any good? I haven’t been around him for more than thirty seconds that first time when I woke up and he yelled at me.
“What about Jack, Isis?” Mernich presses.
“Uh, I don’t know. It just…it just popped into my head. Which is weird. I mean, most things that pop into my head are really weird, like that one time when I thought about Shrek in Victoria’s Secret underwear, but I think this actually beats Shrek’s Secret.”
Mernich leans back in her chair. “What do you remember before the incident, Isis?”
“I was applying to colleges. Boring.”
“And before that?”
“I…I was at school. And I—I yelled. At someone. I don’t remember who. Kayla, maybe. Maybe Wren? Yeah, I think Wren.”
“What did you yell about?”
My palm suddenly stings, and I remember the harsh feeling of skin-on-skin.
“I slapped someone. I yelled and I slapped him. Wren must’ve done something stupid, I don’t know.”
“And before that? Do you remember any major events?”
“There was a party. A big one. Avery’s house. Halloween—I dressed up as Batman. No—Batgirl?”
“Did Kayla go?”
“Yeah, she was a mermaid. She and her boyfriend—ugh, what’s his name? I don’t remember his name, but I know I slightly despised him.”
“Despise is an awfully strong feeling.”
“Yes, well, being alive is an awfully strong feeling.”
“Isis—”
“I didn’t like him. Or, something about him rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t know.”
“And can you recall what happened at the party?”
My head suddenly gives a massive throb, my spine tingling with pain. I squeeze my eyes shut and rub them.
“Isis? What can you remember?”
Leo’s face comes back, leering at me from the doorway. Panic wells up in my throat. I’m not going to be able to save Mom.
“I don’t know! Stuff!”
“Try to remember specifics. Did you drink anything? Did you dance? Who was wearing what costume?”
“Wren was… He was a green guy. Link! Link from Zelda. And I drank…Coke. I think. With rum. Don’t tell Mom that. We joke about me drinking, but she doesn’t know I really drink, because I don’t want to worry her,
and I danced and there was someone—”
He’s going to hurt her. He’s hurt someone before. He hurt Sophia. Sophia? No, that’s not right. Leo doesn’t know her. Who, then, has hurt Sophia? A baseball bat. Avery came at me with a baseball bat, and someone grabbed it. I can see a broad, spidery hand wrapped around it, wrenching it from her, a low voice saying something with an amused tone to a startled, frozen Avery—
The pain ricochets through my head like a tennis ball on fire.
“Fuck!” I grab my forehead and put it between my knees.
“Take deep breaths, Isis,” Mernich says softly. “You’re doing well, but don’t give up now. What else happened there?”
A bed. A soft bed, someone’s soft lips, someone whispering my name.
The pain splinters, blossoming in my brain like a demented flower. I can’t see anything. The world goes black and my ears ring.
That’s what you get for trusting someone.
Ugly.
Maybe I’ll love you. If you hold still.
Mernich says something, but I can’t hear her. It hurts. It hurts and I want it all to stop.
You got guts. I like that.
Have fucking fun trusting nobody for the rest of your life!
I don’t go out with ugly girls.
Ugly.
Ugly.
“Isis! Look at me!”
I look up. Mernich’s face is pale.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to push yourself anymore. I’m sorry. Just breathe. In and out. There you go. Slowly. Sit up.”
When I lean back into the chair, I realize my hands are shaking. My whole body is trembling, like a thread in the breeze.
“Why?” I murmur. “Why can’t I remember what happened?”
She pulls her clipboard out again and clicks her pen. “Well, to find that out, we need to go to the beginning.”
“You mean like, biblical Genesis? Because I have three rules for a happy, fulfilling life, and ‘Never Time Travel Ever’ is one of them. Because, you know. Dinosaurs killed things. And the bubonic plague killed things. And let’s face it—with my supreme amounts of unnatural charm, I’d be burned as a witch.”
She chuckles. “No. Not that far. I just want you to tell me your story. The real one. The one about Will.”
I flinch, my skin crawling at the sound of his name.
“Pulling my own tongue out and setting it on fire would be preferable to talking about that guy.”
“I know. But I think it’s time to stop running. I think you know that, too.”
I hate her. I hate her so much. She’s the reason I can’t leave. I’m racking up more and more pricey bills the longer I stay here. She’s the reason Mom worries. But I can tell she really wants to know about Nameless. If I tell her the story, maybe she’ll let me go. Nothing else has worked so far. It’s worth a shot, even if that shot will pierce through my guts and leave me to bleed all over the floor.
“From the beginning?” I ask softly.
“From the beginning.” She nods.
I inhale and then let it out as a long sigh. Somewhere outside, a bird chirps. I want its freedom more than anything.
“When I was in fifth grade, I developed a crush on a boy. This was my first mistake. He wasn’t a particularly attractive boy, he was sort of quiet and spit sometimes, but he had pretty, dark, silky hair. The female teachers complimented him on it. I wrote him a love note that said, ‘I like your hair,’ and he wiped his nose on it and gave it back to me at recess. I should’ve seen the warning signs in the mucus. But I was smitten. He’d paid attention to me! Me, the fat roly-poly girl with frizzy hair and a constant cloud of BO surrounding her. He actually didn’t snub me, or push me in the mud, or call me a fat whale, he just wiped his nose on my declaration of love and gave it back to me. It was the most promising social signal I’d received in my short ten years of life on the planet earth.”
Thus began my descent into utter madness.
“I did anything short of committing crimes to get his attention. Also, I committed actual crimes. Like riding my bike on the freeway shoulder lane to get to his house and stare at him through his window while he played video games. But then I found out it was illegal! You can’t ride your bike on the freeway at all! So I started taking the bus to look at him through his window while he played video games.
“Anyway, so there I was, in the prime of my life, and by prime I mean not prime at all. Mom and Dad were going through the divorce, which involved a lot of shouting and money and guilt, so Aunt Beth offered her home for a few months so I wouldn’t have to switch schools, which turned into nearly five years, but Aunt Beth was totally cool about it. We had grilled cheese almost every night and she let me watch R-rated movies. So basically I’d died and gone to heaven, and neither of my parents gave a diddly-damn except Mom who sometimes got guilty and sent me lots of exceptional socks. I love her, but really, socks?
“So while my lovable gene donors were off debating who owned what vase for sixty months, I grew up in the loudest ways possible. Well, I wasn’t exactly loud back then, I was more an indoor-mouse-whisper kind of gal, but you get my drift. There were fights. One time, a girl tried to run me over with her scooter! Do you remember scooters? I remember scooters. My shinbone remembers scooters. One time that girl even gave me a frog! Because she was so nice! I found it in my locker! Actually I had tons of friends and by tons I mean everyone in the library who squeezed around my bulk to reach their books.”
“And what were you doing in the library?”
“Hiding. I read a lot of Jane Austen and cried. It was a formative experience.”
Mernich nods, motioning for me to continue. She’s doing it. She’s making me bring out the big guns. I sigh.
“All right. No more pussyfooting around it. I talked to…Nameless…I can still call him that, right?”
“If that’s most comfortable for you, yes.”
I take a deep breath.
“After stalking him for most of middle school, the first time I exchanged words with Nameless was at Jenna Monroe’s beach party in seventh grade. The girls were wearing pastel tankinis and swimming. I was wearing two sweatshirts and yoga pants and sitting with her mom. I was still at a loss as to why Jenna Monroe invited me at all—Jenna was all legs and brown ponytails and glitter pens, the total opposite of my pudge and pencils. We’d been friends once, when we were still pooping ourselves and learning not to eat said poop, but judging by the way Jenna’s mom waved to me when I first came, I got the impression Jenna had no hand in inviting me at all.
“Anyway, there I was, waist-deep in an element that sure as hell wasn’t mine. Girls were giggling, splashing water on each other’s boobs, and boys were around! Staring at the girls! Well, all the girls except Jenna’s mom and me. Nameless was there, so I hid behind the soda cans on the picnic table and tried to look like I wasn’t there. Being almost two hundred pounds is sort of counterproductive to invisibility, though. Everyone saw me. Even Nameless. It was like, two seconds of eye contact, and then he looked away. And I thought I was done for! Because, you know, when people look at you and you’re fat, you think you’re done for.”
I look up, and I can see the faintest glaze coming over Mernich’s eyes. She’s skinnier than a beanpole. Probably has been her whole life. She has no idea what I’m talking about. No amount of college can teach her that. I laugh.
“You know what? Screw it. Just…I’ll just talk about the part you really wanna know. It’s what everyone wants to know. They don’t care about the how or the whys, just when and where and how quickly they can say, ‘awww, I’m sorry’ or try to fix it.”
“That’s…that’s not what I meant by this, Isis—”
“No, you know what? It’s fine. It’s probably better this way. This way I don’t have to drag out my entire sordid history for you to pore over. Saves you time! I’m sure you’re a busy lady with a lot of crazy people to talk to and I’m, frankly, a total purveyor of common sense and not––time wasting.
So you know what? Yeah. The day it happened it was raining. I was at his house. The frogs were outside and croaking because he lived near a marsh. That’s what Florida is. Marshes. Marshes and assholes. His mom made us popcorn. My hands were oily. His hands were oily. We’d been secretly going out for two months, but he wouldn’t let me tell anyone and when I tried to talk to him at school, he ignored me, laughed at me, and told me to buzz off. But then he’d apologize. When we were alone he was nice. Nicer. Marginally. I was fourteen. Fourteen, okay? I was fourteen and I thought I was in love and I would have done anything to keep him from leaving me—”
Bile rises in my throat, but I swallow it back and clench my fists on the armrests.
“Do you know what it’s like? Never wanting to lose another someone? Everyone else leaves. Mom and Dad left. I didn’t want him to leave. If he left, I would’ve lost it. He was the only normal thing in my life. He made me feel… When he smiled at me, he made me feel pretty. Do you know what that’s like, either? Feeling huge and gross and then finding someone who makes you feel pretty? Do you know what you’d do to keep that person? You’d do anything. Anything in this world short of killing yourself. Maybe even that, if he asked for it.”
Mernich’s eyes are softer now. But I don’t trust them anymore. This is what she wanted. She’s getting it. Her pen is scrabbling madly across the paper even as she opens her mouth to speak.
“I’m sorry, Isis. I didn’t mean to seem callous. But this is good. You, saying these things aloud, even if you hate me for bringing them out…it’s good. It’s helping.”
“Sure. Whatever.”
I’m shaking. My body trembles with a rage I can’t express. It’s not all anger at Mernich’s voracious curiosity, though. I’m not all mad at her. The anger is directed at someone else, too. Nameless for hurting me. Mom and Dad for leaving me. Myself, for letting them do these things to me.
Mernich pushes back in the chair. “We’ll stop here.”
She gets up and doubles around her desk, pulling out a familiar yellow slip.