“She thinks it’s a waste of my time and money.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “She doesn’t believe in this stuff.”
My sister had been like that since we were kids. I’d wanted to pretend our neighborhood playground was an amusement park, and she would list all the reasons that was impossible. I’d wanted to make the LEGO building a few inches taller, and she’d launch into a lecture about architectural stability. We’d be lying in the park on summer break and I’d say I heard the music of the ice-cream truck, and she’d say no, I didn’t, that the ice-cream man didn’t come on Mondays.
Why can’t you believe? I wanted to ask her.
Rebecca nodded knowingly. “So Natalie has also turned her back on you by minimizing your needs. Notice I did not call them wants, but needs. Because I believe you are in critical danger. Even as you sit here composed in front of me, you are crying out for something more.”
I trained my eyes on hers. So far all I had accomplished was feeling awful about my family and realizing my new “friends” were gossips. I badly wanted Rebecca to be wrong about the people in my life. She wasn’t.
She tucked a strand of pearly hair behind her ear. Tattooed on the inside of her wrist in white ink was a single word: endure.
She folded her legs into a pretzel. “Rest your head on my lap.”
I did a double take.
“Your body is tense. We need to relax you in order to continue making progress during this session. A brief temple massage usually does the trick.”
I let her guide my head onto her crossed legs. She ran her fingers through my hair, gently tugging it away from my face. I closed my eyes, felt pressure on both temples. Soft finger pads massaged in small circles. I lay there, anxious at the strangeness of letting a woman I barely knew hold me this way. But after a couple of minutes, my breathing slowed. My shoulders relaxed. My head felt jiggly.
“There we go,” she cooed. “That’s it.”
I listened to both of us breathe. She matched her breath to mine. The world outside the office doors was quiet. I pushed aside thoughts of Mom, Nat, April, Georgina.
“Describe the moment you decided to join Wisewood.”
I kept my eyes closed. “The application form had been sitting in my inbox for a week. I was at work on a Thursday afternoon, eating leftover pasta for lunch, when I had this strange déjà vu. I tried to remember if I’d had ziti the day before or the one before that, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t remember when I’d made it or what I’d eaten for lunch any day that week.” The pitch of my voice rose. “For a minute I couldn’t remember what day of the week it even was—they all blended together; they were all the same—and I panicked.”
My shoulders had tensed again. Rebecca grasped and massaged them. “Relax,” she sang. “Relax.”
I lowered my tone, tried again. “I’d been going through the motions, sleepwalking through each day. I’d shower, go to work, eat, work some more, go home, watch TV, go out for drinks, go to bed, get up, do the same thing all over again. Every single weekday. For a year. I got scared that the next time I snapped out of it, I’d be forty or eighty or somewhere in between and diagnosed with something terminal. When I couldn’t sleep that night, I filled out the application.”
I’d tried to find meaning in my life. After Mom died, I moved to New York, thinking a new city might do the trick. When it didn’t I took that Thailand trip, staying in hostels to keep costs down. I considered going back to school but already had thirty-three grand in student loan debt—the thought of adding to it sickened me. Instead I found the receptionist job. I’d describe the ennui from time to time to coworkers and then Nat, but no one understood. They suggested I find a new career or get out of New York. I tried to explain it wasn’t the job or the city—I’d felt as trapped in Tempe and San Diego—but they still didn’t get it. Another month went by.
I opened my eyes. Rebecca was watching me from above. I sat up, pushed myself to the other side of the couch, and wrapped my arms around my knees. “I kept thinking, what if this is the rest of my life? What if I look back and I’ve done nothing but eat leftover ziti for four decades?”
“Which is why you came here.”
“Right. I like that every day is different. I can hear myself think again.”
She studied me through long eyelashes. “I’m sensing a ‘but.’?”
I let go of my legs and put my feet on the floor. “I miss my sister.” I tugged the edges of the scab again. I knew I shouldn’t pull it off. Nat would have told me to leave it. More likely, she would’ve rummaged through her purse for Neosporin and a Band-Aid. I never had Band-Aids on me.
“Yes, she can be unsupportive,” I said, still working at the scab, “but she’d also do anything for me. We haven’t talked much since Mom . . . you know. I’ve been acting like her passing was Nat’s fault, but it’s not.”
“Are you ever going to rip that thing off? Or are you going to torture yourself forever?” Rebecca stared at my hands.
I winced and stopped picking. “It’s starting to heal. You’re supposed to leave them alone.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” She winked.
Rebecca smoothed her platinum hair, dark fingernails like spiders scuttling down her scalp. “It’s common for students to get lonely or homesick during their first month here. But I promise if you throw yourself into the program, you’ll find your tribe.
“Best of all, your fellow students aren’t content to walk through life like sheep in a herd. They want to make a difference like you do. They’re not interested in clocking in and out, in binge drinking and watching. They’ll be more supportive in helping you find your way than your sister ever was.”
I chewed my lip. To not be ridiculed constantly, to spend my days with others who understood what I was searching for. I thought back to the parental transference exercise, to being surrounded by people willing to do whatever it took to create a more meaningful life for themselves.
“You also have me.” She moved her legs so our knees grazed. “We can help each other, you know.”
My eyes flitted to her face.
“I think you’re exactly the person Wisewood needs.”
20
GABE EXCUSED HIMSELF from my dressing room, grinning and stuttering his thanks. He hurried down the hall, leaving me alone with Jack.
She swept into the room and wrapped me in a hug, like she hadn’t spent most of her adult life avoiding me. I kept my arms by my sides.
She pulled away. “I’m so proud of you. The crowd loved you up there, Madame Fearless.”
I nodded. “Thank you, Jack.” I hadn’t seen my sister in forever. The clumsy makeup application aged her well beyond twenty-seven. Somewhere along the way she had also acquired a nose ring, which struck me as desperately jejune.
She hesitated. “I go by my real name now.”
I raised my eyebrows, surprised my sister had finally grown some cojones. “I see. And what is Sir calling you these days, Abigail?”