“I didn’t want to know what everyone was saying about me,” Zoe said.
“Ha! As if anyone would say anything with your resident bodyguard hanging around.”
“My … what?”
A twinkle appeared in Emily’s eye. “Harry?”
“Harry is my bodyguard?”
“He’s been telling everyone that if they said anything about the debate when you come back today, they’d have to deal with him.” She grinned. “Clearly Cameron didn’t get the memo.”
Zoe couldn’t help it, a huge grin spread across her face.
“Does this mean things are happening between you two?” Emily asked coyly.
Zoe felt the heat on her face. But this time, she didn’t care. “He’s a good guy,” she said finally. “Even if he is not very punctual.”
The playfulness drained out of Emily’s face. “So, I guess I’m asking … will you have me back?”
“Of course I will,” Zoe said. But before they could even hug, a commotion erupted down the corridor. Zoe turned in time to see Harry shove Cameron hard enough to make him skid through the puddle of water and land on his ass.
“Sorry I’m late,” Harry said, striding down the hall toward her.
*
“Why don’t you tell me what happened? From the start.”
The school-therapist guy sat with his legs crossed, one ankle at the opposite knee, a notepad and pen in his lap. A coffee table sat between them. After what had happened at the debate, Mrs. Hunt had insisted that she see him and, as Zoe wasn’t especially keen to go to first period, English, she decided to go along with it.
“I peed myself,” she said.
The humiliation at the retelling was nearly as bad as the event. Worse, maybe, out of context. She imagined his thoughts. How revolting, a fifteen-year-old who couldn’t control her bladder! But he just nodded, as if that humiliating, horrific incident were irrelevant.
“Yes,” he said, “but … I’m more interested in what was going on to cause that to happen?”
Talk about getting straight down to it.
Zoe balked at telling him about mother’s cancer. She wasn’t ready for that. But she thought she could, maybe, tell him some other things. Her fight with Emily. The debate.
“Can I close my eyes?” she asked.
He looked surprised, but then he said, “By all means.”
She did, and immediately she felt more comfortable. This guy had a way of looking at her that was a little unsettling, but perhaps that was true of all therapists? When she’d knocked on his door a few minutes ago, he’d seemed busy, but then he’d immediately closed his laptop and said, “Please, come on in.” Now, she suspected, he was regretting his enthusiasm.
“So tell me a little about your anxiety issues,” he said.
He said it just like that, a statement. Zoe supposed she should be impressed that he’d figured her out at a glance, but instead she just felt exposed.
“Well … I have social anxiety disorder. With panic attacks.”
“And yet you were part of a debate,” he said quietly, almost to himself.
“I know it seems weird—”
“Unexpected,” he corrected, like a good therapist.
“The thing is … I’ve always kind of liked the idea of being good at public speaking. Which is crazy, because obviously I’m not even good at, you know, private speaking. But the day I volunteered for the debate it was kind of like … my body took over. My mind told me that if I didn’t put my hand up, something bad would happen. Like a—”
“Compulsion?”
“Yes,” she said. “A compulsion.”
There was something about the way he just said it, without inflection or judgment. Or pity. It was simply a fact. It gave her the courage to continue. “I get these compulsions sometimes. And I can be a bit … OCD. Sometimes I think I’m saying something on the inside but I say it out loud. And regular things freak me out, like eating in public or talking in class.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Sounds like you’ve got a lot going on inside that head of yours. Must be exhausting.”
Zoe nodded. It was strangely validating to hear him say it.
“Can you tell me what strategies you’ve tried to help with these things?” he asked after a few moments.
She told him about her short stint with a therapist and how she’d convinced her mom to let her stop. She told him about the affirmations and the not-thinking-about-it trick that she’d picked up from Kate. If he had feelings about this, he kept them out of his voice.
“Medication?”
“I was prescribed Klonopin,” Zoe said, “but I don’t really take it. I’m scared of getting addicted.”
“And … closing your eyes? That’s one of your strategies?”
“Yes. A friend of mine suggested it. It helps. I don’t worry as much about what people are thinking.”
There was a long silence.
“Is it a bad strategy?” Zoe asked, after a moment.
“There are worse ones. Self-harm, for example. But there are better ones too. And we’re going to talk about them in just a minute.”
Zoe wasn’t sure why, but she felt a burst of optimism. If it was possible that there was something he could do—something that would make her life better—she wanted to know what it was.
“Can you open your eyes now, Zoe?” he said.
She did. He put his notepad and pen on the coffee table. “Okay. Firstly, can I just say what a remarkable job you’ve done holding it together. Social anxiety disorder can be an incredibly difficult condition to live with. Many people with the disorder fall into a serious depressive state. And by depressive, I mean unable to go to school, do homework, perform basic household chores. And you are not only keeping up with your regular routine, but you are actively trying to challenge and improve yourself by taking risks and employing strategies that help you. Honestly, I’m a little flabbergasted. I’ve never heard of anyone with social phobia volunteering to be part of something as public as a debate, at least not without a lot of support and medication. You should be applauded.”
Zoe felt her eyes unexpectedly fill with tears. “I shouldn’t be applauded. I’m terrified all the time. I’m terrified of what people think of me. I’m terrified of my mom dying. Mostly I’m terrified of feeling like this for the rest of my life.”
“What if I told you that you don’t have to feel like this the rest of your life?” he said. “Zoe, have you heard of a treatment called exposure therapy?”
“Uh … is that … like electric shock therapy?”
“Not at all. Exposure therapy is when you actively challenge your fears, one at a time, until you are not afraid of them anymore.”
“Like the debate?”
“Well, yes, but we would start on a much smaller scale. The idea of exposure therapy is that you start by tackling something that is scary, but not so scary that you can’t be successful. Most important, you tackle each thing in a controlled way, with support.”