“How do you feel about that?”
Rain picked at her thumbnail. She thought it was colossally idiotic. “I dunno.” She darted another glance around the room, noticed a basket of magazines next to the shrink’s desk, a copy of Psychology Today on top.
“How do you think I may be able to help you?”
Rain shrugged.
“Did your mother tell you anything about me?”
She slouched down in the chair. “She said you were a shrink and I had to come here.” Jesus, it must bite big-time to be an adult in such a small body.
“I gather you don’t want to be here.”
Really? Really? How brilliant. “Like you said, it wasn’t my idea. I don’t need to come.”
“Do you have any questions you’d like to ask me? It isn’t fair for me to be the one always asking questions. Is there anything you want to know? I’m open to talking about me.”
This was worse than being with her mother. Why were adults always trying to get you to talk? What’s on your mind, dear? Penny for your thoughts. Always prying and prying. Her mother staring at her like what she’d really like to do is grab a veggie peeler out of the drawer next to the sink and scrape back the covering of her skull and get a good look inside. Not that adults ever really listened even if she did talk. She crossed her arms, hugging her midriff, feeling a meanness rise inside. “So where do you get your clothes?”
“What?”
“Your clothes. I mean, it can’t be easy finding stuff small enough to fit.”
Dr. Mallory said nothing.
“Do you have to shop in the children’s department?”
“Sometimes. Why? Does fashion interest you?”
“Not particularly.”
“I see. What does interest you? Shopping? Music? Do you play sports?”
Rain shrugged. “I dunno.” What really interested her were rocks, not that she’d tell anyone. She liked the way the different kinds sounded, like poetry. Metamorphic. Sedimentary. Igneous. She knew the names of dozens of kinds of rocks. Her granddad told her there was even a name for the study of rocks. Petrology. When she was ten, he’d returned from a vacation in the Southwest and given her a polished rock that hung from a silver chain. It was called an Apache tear, he’d said, and then he told her about the legend, how all the men in an Apache tribe had been driven to the edge of a cliff, and rather than be taken prisoner or killed by their enemies, they had all jumped off the cliff. The women had been hiding in a cave, and when they heard what had happened they wept, and their tears had turned to stone. Rain tried not to imagine it, the women weeping while the men died. It was a kind of obsidian, her granddad told her when he gave it to her. When you held it in your palm it looked black, but when you held it to the light you could see through it. He told her life was like that—sometimes things seemed dark, but if you held them to the light, you could see your way clear. No. She wasn’t about to tell any of this to the shrink.
“What about school? Do you like school?”
“What difference does it make if I do or not? I have to go. Just like I have to come here.” As long as you live in this house, young lady . . .
“What would you rather be doing?”
“Now?”
“Yes. If you had the afternoon to yourself, what would you like to do?”
Rain thought of Christy and Jeannie shoplifting a tube of lipstick or a pair of socks. She recalled the thrill that ran through her body the time she’d taken a scarf and how she had tossed it in the trash on the way home so she wouldn’t have to explain it to her mother. She shrugged again. She was done talking. She’d just sit and wait until the hour was up and she could escape. The silence stretched on. She glanced across at Dr. Mallory, but the shrink didn’t seem to be pissed or frustrated. Unlike most adults Rain knew, she didn’t seem to need to fill every moment with words. Which suited Rain just fine. In the stillness, she listened for other sounds, the ordinary noises a house made—the humming of a refrigerator motor, the click and hum of a furnace or air conditioner, the scratching of a branch against a window—all the ticking, purring, creaking sounds of a house—and then she listened for the sounds from the world outside, a car passing in the street, a plane overhead on approach to Logan, but silence enveloped them. She wondered if this was what it was like before you were born, in the womb. But no, there would be sounds there, liquid, pulsating sounds. Her skin itched just thinking of it.
The dog—Walker—looked from one to the other, then sat up and crossed to Rain’s chair and gazed up at her. “What kind is he?”
“A King Charles spaniel. Would you like to hold him? He enjoys being held.”
Hold him? Seriously? She imagined leaving there covered with hair and smelling doggy. “No.”
“You don’t like dogs?”
“Not especially.”
“Do you have pets?”
“I had a couple of fish once. They died.”
“How did you feel about that?”
“They were just fish. Fish die.” The fish had been another gift from her granddad. Not regular goldfish like you might expect, but two iridescent blue fish with tails twice the size of their bodies that waved back and forth in the tank like fans. She had named them Fin and Min. Her granddad had said that sounded like a vaudeville team and then had explained what vaudeville was.
Dr. Mallory clasped her hands in her lap. Rain noticed a wedding band. She couldn’t imagine who would want to marry such a short person. But maybe the husband was freaky short too. She stared at her knees and plucked at a few gel-stiffened strands of hair. Until she’d chopped it off, she hadn’t realized how much her hair had shielded her from the world.
“I didn’t speak with your mother at length, Rain. She’s not my patient. You are. And what you and I share is confidential. But your mother is concerned for you, just as you’d be concerned for a daughter of your own.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not going to have a daughter.” She wasn’t like those stupid cows at school who were so proud of getting pregnant. “I’m never getting married.”
“Never is a long time.”
Another brilliant observation.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No.”
“A girlfriend, then?”
“What, like a girlfriend girlfriend? I’m not gay, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Would it bother you if I thought that?”
“Whatever. It’s a free country. I’m just saying, I’m not gay.”
Dr. Mallory nodded. “You mother told me you’ve been having a hard time.”
I bet she did. Probably couldn’t wait to tell you what a freak her daughter is.
“She told me a little about your friend who died last fall.”
Rain swallowed the tightness in her throat. Died. Like the true word—murdered—mustn’t be said.
Dr. Mallory leaned forward. “I’m sorry, Rain. Sorry about your friend.”
Her skin felt prickly, tight, and her throat ached. “There’s nothing to say.”