This week, he asked if I’d decided when I would visit the graves of my friends, stating that doing so was important to begin the process of closure. I didn’t want to answer the question, but I also kind of wanted to, because I wasn’t talking to my friends about any of this, especially Abbi, who apparently thought I was a terrible human being, and I kind of thought the same about myself. I hadn’t opened up to Sebastian. Not even after last Tuesday night—after we spent the time together really getting to know the feel of each other’s mouths.
I ran the palm of my right hand over the edge of the chair’s arm. “I can’t think of them like that,” I said finally, staring at the skydivers over his shoulder. They were all wearing different-colored jumpsuits, so they reminded me of a box of crayons. “When I think of Megan, I still think of her sitting in my room, talking about TV shows. The idea of going to a cemetery, where they are now, I...” I shuddered. “I can’t.”
Dr. Perry nodded slowly as he lifted his mug. The Greatest Dad Ever mug was replaced with one that had an image of Elvis Presley. “You haven’t moved past the trauma of the accident. Until you do so, you won’t be able to grieve.”
My hand stopped moving and I curled my fingers around the arm of the chair.
“I can get you past the trauma. Do you want that?”
I lowered my gaze to him and drew in a deep breath. “I want, more than anything, to go back to the way things were.”
“But you can’t go back to the way things used to be, Lena. We can never go back. You have to accept that, no matter what happens from here on out, your friends are not coming back—”
“I know that,” I cut in, frustrated. “That’s not what I meant.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I...I just want to be who I was,” I forced out, and then it was like something deep inside me was unlocked, and a torrent of words spilled forth. “I don’t want to be this me anymore. I don’t want to think about this every waking moment, and when I do start to think about anything, anything else, I feel horrible because I shouldn’t. I don’t want to look at my mom anymore and see that look on her face. I want to be able to go back to volleyball, because I did...I did love playing, but I can’t even think of doing that, because of Megan. I don’t want to sit with my friends and constantly be worrying about what they really think of me. I don’t want them to think that I don’t understand the accident affected them just as badly. I want to be able to believe that Sebastian loves me and it’ll be okay and I can love him back,” I blurted out, having no idea if he knew what I was talking about, since I wasn’t even sure I did. “I don’t want to feel any of this. And I know it won’t go away. I know when I go to bed later tonight and I wake up tomorrow it will be the same, but I don’t want any of this.”
His gaze sharpened. “Do you see a future for yourself, Lena?”
I fell back in the chair, wincing when I felt the stab of pain in my ribs. It wasn’t often that my ribs still bothered me, but throwing myself around in a chair sure didn’t feel good. “What do you mean?”
“Where do you see yourself a year from now?”
“I don’t know.” What did that even matter? “At college, I guess.”
“Studying history and anthropology?” he clarified. “I talked to your guidance counselor. They filled me in on your interests.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’ll be doing.”
“Where do you see yourself five years from now?”
Annoyance flared. “What does this matter?”
“It matters because if you don’t start working at this, you will still be dealing with this in five years.”
My shoulders slumped. Five years was forever from now.
“Do you want to get past the trauma and the grief? Do you want to feel better than you feel right now?” he repeated.
Closing my eyes, I nodded even though I felt terrible about it, even though it felt so wrong to want to feel better.
“Then we have to get past the trauma to get to the grief, and I promise you, once we do that, you will feel better.” He paused. “But you have to work with me and you have to be honest, no matter how uncomfortable the truth makes you.”
I opened my eyes and his face blurred. “I don’t...don’t know if I can.”
“This is a safe place for you, Lena. No judgment,” he insisted quietly. “And getting better starts with rewinding time back to the party. It starts with you talking about what you remember and what you know happened.”
*
“You’re not hungry?”
Blinking, I slowly lifted my head and looked at Sebastian. He was sitting sideways in the seat beside me. One arm was resting on the table, the other hanging in his lap. Just the tips of his fingers touched my thigh. My body immediately reacted to his touch. A rush of warmth flowed over my skin, but my brain recoiled from the want and the need and the anticipation soaring through my veins. We hadn’t kissed since last Tuesday, but he’d been at my house every night and drove me to school every morning even though I could drive myself. He sat with me at lunch and he touched me more, a little here and there. A brush of his hand on my arm or waist, a soft touch to my lower back or the nape of my neck.
And I thrived on those little moments even though I knew I shouldn’t.
“What?” I said, having no idea what he’d just asked.
“You haven’t touched your food.” He glanced pointedly at my tray. “Well, if you consider salad food.”
Salad? I checked out my plate with a frown. Yep. The plate of leafy greens was definitely a salad. I didn’t even remember grabbing it when I was in the lunch line. That wasn’t exactly surprising, though. After meeting with Dr. Perry this morning, knowing that on Wednesday I was going to have to rewind everything, my head was not where it needed to be. The morning had been a blur of going through the motions.
I was going to have to really, really talk about it, and I didn’t know if I could. But Dr. Perry knew. Abbi suspected as much. It was all I could think about when I looked at my friends. It was all I heard in my head when Sebastian showed up at night and did his homework alongside me. It was what I saw when I spotted Jessica in the hallways between classes—the girl who was back together with Cody. She never saw me, but I saw her.
Dary laughed now, snapping my attention back to the present. “I was wondering what was up with the salad. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat one without a ton of fried stuff on it.”
“I don’t know.” I looked across the table at Abbi. She, like Dary, had a slice of pizza and what appeared to be coleslaw on her plate.
Abbi’s pizza was half-eaten. She was sketching a rose in bloom on the cover of her notebook. She’d barely said anything to me in our Chem class and at the start of lunch. She wasn’t ignoring me or anything like that. I wasn’t even present enough to be ignored, to be honest.
I glanced around the table. It was a weird mixture now. Normally it would just be us—Abbi, Dary, me and...and Megan. There’d be other students we didn’t know, but it was just us, really. Now it was us and Sebastian and several ball players.
And Keith.