My face feels how Botox abuse looks. ‘I might be in a little over my head.’ I abandon my chair, stand up, and start pacing, which usually helps me think, but today it’s just making me dizzy. I grab the hem of my shirt, search for a loose thread, and pull at it.
‘Norah, we’re just talking right now. Who knows, I may even be able to help you figure this out. At least let me try.’
It’s like smashing down a dam, opening floodgates, dropping a flame into a box of fireworks. My mouth opens and the words keep on coming.
‘It’s my fault. I watched him a couple of times and he saw. And then the groceries got left on the porch, but Helping Hands was closed, and so he passed them to me. So he must be nice, right? And then he wrote me some letters. Not love letters; stupid stuff. He’s funny. And I lied about going to the same school as him. And about having a cold.’ Imagine Hamlet sauntering about the stage, hand to heart, delivering an epic monologue. That’s about where I’m at right now.
Dr Reeves just lets me talk, doesn’t even attempt to slow me down or stop me. She does this thing where she pushes a thumb up under her chin and strokes an invisible goatee with a hooked finger.
At first, I thought it signalled her tuning out my incessant ramblings, but then she explained that she was taking mental notes. She says she doesn’t like to interrupt my stream of panic because she knows my mouth is directly quoting my mind and she wants to hear exactly what is going on inside my head. I think she’s brave.
‘I can’t tell Luke why I lied. Can I? How can I be his friend? I’m afraid he’ll laugh at me. He came over to talk to me about France.’ Dr Reeves always smiles broadly when I mention France. ‘I couldn’t tell him I can’t go there. But when he talks, he doesn’t think about the things that are wrong with me because he doesn’t know. Which is bad, but I like it. I think I’m his friend. I think we’re friends. And then he goes and invites me to this party. Obviously I can’t go to that either, but not that obvious because I think something inside me wants to go to the party.’ I slap a hand down over my heart and clutch at the skin because that’s where I’m hurting right now. ‘I’m curious. And not just curious because my mind is trying to compute the millions of ways everything could go wrong. This is different. Persuasive. Powerful. It convinces me to leave my room. My room. My fortress. It talks me into getting closer to the music. And then he’s at my door. Luke is. He writes me more notes. And suddenly he wants to come by today. He seems interested. So why does he leave when Queen Amy wants to talk to him? She’s everything, and she’s not hiding, so it makes sense that he would want to talk to her. She is probably normal. I’m so afraid he’ll mock me.’
And then silence. Eardrums everywhere rejoice.
I’m shaking. I don’t cry, but I want to. Instead, I take a breath, suck all the air right out of the room and fill my depleted lungs with it. It feels good. Cold, the same way eucalyptus does when you inhale it deep. And freeing, like my entire torso has been wrapped in a bandage that has suddenly unravelled.
‘I’ve spent all night losing my mind. Can you please help me?’
‘Of course, but first, let’s get you something to drink,’ she says, clip-clopping over to the fridge.
I watch pearls of condensation roll down my glass of orange juice as Dr Reeves takes a sip of her coffee. If it tastes bad, I can’t tell. Beyond the slurping sounds, I can hear the wheels of her mind turning. I can’t look up and meet her eyes because I feel all kinds of naked right now.
‘You remember when we talked about neural pathways?’ She draws on the table with her fingertip. A tree with squiggly roots sprouting off in all different directions.
‘About how the brain learns and how it ties instances together so those things then become associated?’ It’s no coincidence that she’s still drawing roots on the tree that I’m pretty confident we can now label Norah’s Brain.
I nod. I remember this conversation. I remember breaking out in hives after hearing the conclusion. It’s about changing the way I think. Which sounds so simple, but whether I like to admit it or not, anxiety has become my best friend. It’s a crutch that helps me hobble through life. It’s the brassy bitch at school that I don’t like, but being her BFF makes me popular. Or the school bully that I don’t really want to be around, but being his friend means I don’t get beaten up. I don’t know how to be safe without it. We’re buddies. It’s like they say: keep your friends close, your enemies closer.
‘We said we were going to try and change those pathways, right? Norah, the thing about cognitive therapy is, it relies on repetition. It would be fair to say that we can’t create these new pathways, these new associations, if we’re still clinging to the ideas that created the old ones, right?’
Of course she’s right. Her brain’s so big it’s a wonder she can fit through doors that aren’t double.