“Yes,” I say, after a moment’s thought. It never occurred to me that I might be normal. “It helps a lot.”
“Tell me what it does feel like, not what you think it should feel like,” he says.
“It’s a story someone told me,” I say. “About a girl who went to camp and came back different. I feel bad for that girl, because something awful happened to her, but it’s not empathy. Empathy means you understand someone’s pain. Sympathy means you feel bad about it, and that’s what I have. Sympathy for myself. This disconnect. I know it happened. I just don’t remember it. Unless someone reminds me, I feel like the person who got on that bus, who went to that dance. But I don’t usually remember on my own.”
“Do you want to remember?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. I drop my gaze and worry the seam on the arm of the stuffed chair I’m sitting on. “I don’t know if that would make it better or worse.”
“Your parents say you’ve been running a lot,” he says. “You know that’s a classic coping mechanism, right?”
“That was about the abortion,” I say, looking at him again. “That I remember.”
“Did you feel disconnected from the fetus?” he asks.
“Yes,” I admit. “I did. But I don’t think that’s denial either. I didn’t get morning sickness and I never felt any differently about myself, even once I knew I was pregnant.”
“So to be sure I’ve understood you, you feel like you are not reacting properly because you don’t remember what happened?” he says. “And if you don’t remember how you changed, have you really changed at all?”
“Yes, exactly,” I say. I can feel myself leaning forward, and pull back. It’s just been a while since anyone talked to me in a way that entirely made sense. “Well, almost. There is that moment whenever I wake up. And the first day back at cheerleading, not knowing for sure if one of my own teammates had raped me, that was awkward.”
“You don’t think they did?” he asks.
“I’ve known most of them all my life,” I say. “And I think I’d be able to tell if they were hiding something that big. Maybe that’s the one part I am in huge denial about. The DNA test will clear them, I’m sure, but I have been coping by telling myself it couldn’t have been them.”
“While we’re talking about your teammates,” he says, “I understand that you and Leo McKenna were dating? In your questionnaire, you only said that you had broken off the relationship. Why did you?”
“If I have to be honest, I should tell you we kind of dumped each other,” I say. “Loudly and in public. And then I kind of slapped him across the face in chemistry in what probably looked like an unprovoked attack.”
“Good to know,” says Dr. Hutt, and makes a note. “Why?”
“I missed the first week of school, and there was a particularly bad rumour circulated about me,” I say. “Leo could have set everyone straight, but he didn’t. He was jealous.”
“Jealous of what?”
“My time.” It sounds so stupid when I say it out loud, and yet it meant so much to Leo. “He thought I was hanging out with too many other guys at camp. He’s acting like it’s my fault, if not because I was asking for it, then because I wasn’t with him, so he couldn’t protect me. After we broke up, I found out about it, and then I just . . . slapped him across the face.”
“Did you slap him really hard?” Dr. Hutt asks, showing a remarkable lack of professionalism.
“He had a red mark through lunch,” I admit. It does make me smile. “But I didn’t loosen his teeth or anything.”
“In the long run that’s probably for the best,” Dr. Hutt says.
“If you don’t mind me saying so, you’re a very strange psychiatrist,” I say.
“What, because I took the sofa and didn’t ask you to pour out your life story?” he says. “That’s a very old-fashioned approach.”
In spite of myself, I laugh.
“It has its merits,” he continues, “but you’re mostly correct in your assessment of yourself. You’re not acting like a person who was raped. You’re acting like a person whose close friend was raped. At some point, if your memories resurface, you’ll break. That doesn’t make you weak. That’s just how it goes. And when it happens, I will already know who you are and how you think, and therefore be in a position to help you heal.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I think.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” he says. “You’re a very interesting case. Most of my colleagues like to deal with flameouts because they don’t require a lot of professional patience. You require me to sit here, learn as much as I can, and wait to do my job when the storm hits. I’m pretty close to retirement, so I’ve got time. Some other doctor, or at least some other doctor with my qualifications, wouldn’t have that time, not for a fair price and certainly not in a town that doesn’t have proper coffee.”
“I tell you,” I say again, “you are going to love Alma.”
“That’s beside the point,” he says. “I’m going to drive here on Wednesdays, and your parents are going to come up with an excuse to leave the house, and we’re going to talk for an hour. We might end up doing your calculus homework, but we’ll talk. And someday it will all pay off.”
“I hope so,” I say. “I need calculus to get into nearly every university program I want to.”
“When I asked you to be honest, I wasn’t anticipating this level of sarcasm,” he says. He doesn’t look mad though. More that he’s heard everything I could ever come up with before and has no interest in re-treading the ground. That’s just too bad for him, I decide. It’s my party, and I’ll be overly sarcastic if I want to.
“Sorry,” I say. “It’s the one part of being a teenager I’m still really good at.”
“Do you still go to parties and the like?” he asks.
“There hasn’t really been one yet,” I say. “The first few weeks are usually pretty quiet. Commencement is in a couple weeks, though, and there will be something that weekend.”
He pauses, holding his mug mid-sip, and I realize he’s trying to process commencement in October. I think he’s also weighing whether another quaint-small-town-customs joke would be unprofessional. “Are you planning to go?” he finally asks, and I’m grateful not to have to explain. He can figure it out at Alma’s.
“Probably,” I say. “I mean, there’s usually a cheerleading demo that night. All the graduates coming back for one last routine, and so on, and then we all go to someone’s farm and everyone smuggles beer into the drive shed. If I didn’t go, people will assume I’m fragile and I’m kind of over that.”
“Fair enough,” he says. “But you should be prepared for your memories to trigger. It could be something that makes you associate with the night of the dance at camp.”
I think about the smell of pine that drove me off the country roads when I was running. It could be the smell or the dark or the pulse of the music. It could be anything.
“I don’t want to be afraid,” I say.
“You might have to be,” he says. “But I have faith in you. You seem like the type who eats fear for breakfast.”
“I’m really not,” I tell him. “But I’m pretty sure my friend Polly does, so I usually lean on her.”
“Find those people,” he says. “I’m sure you already have, but keep doing it. People will say you’re coping wrong, but really there’s no wrong way. Anything that lets you keep going is the right thing, as long as it’s not damaging. You need to find the way that works for you.”
“You are definitely a very strange psychiatrist,” I say.
“That’s what makes me so good,” he says. “Now, before I die from lack of culture, where on Main Street is this coffee shop you were talking about? I’d like to be home before I start dropping my h’s.”
I give him directions (he rolls his eyes because those directio
ns are mostly “drive down Main Street and it will be the only store that’s still open”), and then show him to the door. Mum and Dad will be home in fifteen minutes, so I heat up the oven for one of the pity lasagnas we’ve been saving for a night when eating one won’t traumatize me too badly. I think now that I have a psychiatrist, I can deal with it. If nothing else, it might give us something interesting to talk about, after we’ve done my calculus homework, of course. I need all the help I can get.
CHAPTER 20
I ADOPT MY NEW LIFE as normal. I weather the stares and the pity, and I do my best to shrug them off. The kids at school have stopped whispering about me, at least where I can see them, having moved on to other, more current gossip like the rumours of who exactly went naked under their robes at commencement, and what happened at the party afterwards. I can tell you that the party was pretty boring. It’s been a cold October, so mostly we huddled near the fires behind the drive shed and listened to grads tell stories about university frosh week that were almost certainly not true. I don’t mind though, because it finally gets everyone’s attention away from me.
My teachers act like it never happened, which is fine because that’s kind of how I act. Every now and then, I’ll get a tiny flash—a smell or a hand on my arm—but now that Dr. Hutt has told me that I’m reacting in a semi-normal way, I stop trying to pretend otherwise. He continues to come on Wednesdays, and we do talk about my thoughts and feelings, but mostly he teaches me all the calculus shortcuts I’m apparently not supposed to learn until second year of university, which really pisses off my math teacher.
“I could profile her for you, if you like,” Dr. Hutt offers, when I tell him for the fourth or fifth time that, yes, his way does make sense but I have to show my work.
“I need to be able to take her seriously,” I tell him. “But maybe after exams?”
And there is cheerleading, which progresses the same way until three weeks after my abortion, when Officer Plummer drives all the way from Parry Sound to tell me the results of the DNA comparison. She knocks on the door on Friday night, the week after Thanksgiving weekend. Mum and Dad are both home from work, and I’ve asked Polly to come because I need her.
Officer Plummer has changed since I saw her last. When we met, she looked like a new officer, all edges and potential. I am the case that shaped her career. She had to learn new procedures and protocols to deal with me, and now she’s working towards being a specialist. It sits well on her. I fight off a surge of resentment, but I’m getting used to it; that feeling of knowing you’re the reason someone else has found herself, even though it’s a crappy reason. It doesn’t set my teeth on edge as much as it used to.
“Coffee, Officer?” my mother asks, and Officer Plummer nods. It’s been a long drive, and for all I know she has to turn right around and go back when she’s done talking to us.
“Hey, Hermione,” she says when Mum goes into the kitchen where Dad is setting up the tray. She sounds tired. Her poker face is better, and I can’t read her this time. “How is everything going?”
She’s asking if school is okay. If I’m having nightmares. If I can look at boys without wanting to wrap myself up in a sheet. Her concern is genuine and professional. In that, she hasn’t changed.
“I’m doing really well,” I tell her. It’s pretty much the truth, after all. “School is good. I don’t want to hide in the bathroom every time a guy walks past me; cheerleading is going really well; and it turns out that my psychiatrist doubles as a calculus tutor.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she says, and again, she is entirely genuine. I wonder whether she has come here to crush me or to make me whole.
Mum and Dad come back in with the tray and settle down on the chesterfield. They are barely holding it together. I don’t know when I got to be so good at reading people. I took teenage indifference very seriously back when it was an option. Now, though, I have to consider every person: how they’ll react and what they’ll do. I have to have escape routes or a plan of attack. I didn’t know I was capable of thinking so many thoughts at the same time. It’s very annoying.
“Sorry I’m late!” shouts Polly from the back door. She hasn’t knocked here since grade seven. “Mum was late home from work, and I couldn’t leave Sylvia and Eddie till she got home.”
“It’s fine, dear,” Mum says as Polly settles herself next to me in the chair. It’s not really built for two people, but that doesn’t usually stop us. “We’re just getting started.”
“I’ll just get right to it,” Officer Plummer says, after taking a long sip of her coffee. “The lab techs ran all the samples against the fetal DNA, and none of them were a match.”
Mum makes a sound like a kicked dog and Dad puts his arm around her. I don’t move, but Polly hugs me anyway.
“This could be for a couple of reasons,” Plummer continues. “Fetal DNA isn’t always the best source for sample comparisons. It’s also possible that one of the boys who volunteered a sample somehow switched his out. All the officers were supposed to collect the samples themselves, but sometimes people aren’t as professional as I wish they were.”
“It has to have been someone from Camp Manitouwabing, though,” Polly insists. “Can’t they just test again?”
“We don’t have enough of the fetal sample to run the whole thing again,” Officer Plummer says. She sounds oddly heartbroken. “We have the initial results, of course, and if there was a match, that would be enough. We’d have to have a suspect.” She takes another sip of her coffee. This is how she builds her nerve, I know now. “Have you remembered anything at all?” She looks at me when she says it, and I look straight back.
“No,” I say. “I haven’t.”
“I know it’s probably terrifying,” she says, and for the first time, she sounds like a disinterested official, “but if you can bring yourself to relive it, it will give us our best chance to get the guy.”
“It’s not a matter of reliving it,” I say, a bit sharply. “I feel like I never lived it in the first place. I know it happened, because there was some pretty incontrovertible proof, but it still feels like it happened to someone else most of the time.”
“I’m sorry, Hermione,” she says, and she’s the same officer from when I woke up after the attack. “I really am. There’s a procedure that I’m supposed to follow, but it always seems cold. I’ll just talk to you from now on.”
“I appreciate it,” I say.
“There’s really nothing?” Mum has recovered enough to speak. “I mean, there has to be something.”
“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Winters,” Officer Plummer says. “But DNA isn’t the magic bullet everyone thinks it is. It’s very fragile a lot of the time, and it works best in concert with witness testimony. I would suggest you consult with Hermione and her psychiatrist.”
“Thank you for driving all the way down here in person,” my father says. “I know it’s a long way.”
“It’s my job, Mr. Winters,” replies Plummer. “I can see myself out if you need a few moments.”
“Thank you,” says Mum.
The four of us sit there, staring at one another or the floor as Officer Plummer closes the door behind her. A moment later, her car starts, and then she is gone. Polly’s heartbeat is steady, her chest wedged against my back in the chair. It’s comfortable.
“You’re very quiet, Hermione,” Mum says. “How do you feel about all this?”
“I’m kind of relieved,” I tell her. Polly tenses. “I mean, I want him caught and punished, but the idea of getting up on a witness stand and having to testify about something I don’t remember . . . that was scary.”
Dad is nodding, and behind me, Polly relaxes. She still wants to light the guy on fire, but my fear is something she can understand.
“I think,” I say slowly. “I think, though, I’m going to ask Dr. Hutt if there’s a more active way to work on recovering my
memories. Hypnotherapy or something. If he says it’s a quack, I’ll let it go, but if he can help, I do trust him enough to do it. And, you guys, of course, will be there if it’s too much.”
“Of course, honey,” Mum says. “Polly, are you staying for dinner?”
It astounds me that she can turn on a dime like that, but I suppose we both have our ways of coping.
“Yes, please,” Polly says.
“Let’s go upstairs until it’s ready,” I say, and we duck out before Dad can suggest we set the table.
“We’re good, right?” I say, once we’re safely in my room with the door closed. “I mean, you’re not mad because I’m not mad, right?”
“Yes,” she says. “I hadn’t thought about the testifying part. That would suck a lot if your memory was fuzzy. Hopefully Dr. Hutt will help you recover something useful.”
She’s not sitting down. Usually she sits on my bed and fiddles with the pillows while we talk. I have a double, which we’ve shared on many occasions, whispering long into the night. Polly has always been comfortable up here, but now she’s on edge and I don’t know why. I don’t like it.
“What is it?” I ask. “What do you need to tell me?”
“I was trying to find a good time,” she says, her tone desperate. This is not the Polly I’m used to. She’s unsure and nervous, and it’s making me feel unsettled. “But then things kept happening.”
“Just tell me,” I say.
“Amy has been wanting to come and visit for a while,” she says. “She wants to see you. She still feels bad about losing track of you at the dance.”
“She can come and visit whenever she wants, you know that,” I say.
“It’s not just that,” she says. “She also wants to come and visit me.”
That makes no sense at all. I mean, it makes perfect sense that Amy would visit Polly. It makes no sense that Polly would feel awkward about it.
“I don’t get it,” I say.
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