Perfectly Flawed

by Nessa Morgan

  “Nice to see you, Joey,” she begins, grabbing the legal pad from the table separating us. The first page I see is blank except for the date written in the top left corner. Moving the notepad reveals the tape recorder with the green light on. We are officially recording. “How are you doing today?” she asks. There’s no hint of kindness in her voice. She’s in business mode. I remember the brief time when she said everything with kindness.

  Dr. Jett should know how I’m doing, or at least have the faintest idea—the smallest of guesses, maybe. I last saw her on Monday, three short days ago. This is my first twice-a-week since I was around nine years old. That was when I started showing signs of good improvement with my situation. I still never spoke about it but I did sleep through the night back then.

  “You know I have nightmares,” I state. I don’t even trying to hide the obvious, stating the fact that we’ve exhausted time and time again throughout our sessions.

  My nightmares.

  When the nightmares started, at least as far back as I can remember, I was eight and new to Washington. That really is all I can remember. My aunt had started taking more classes that scheduled at random times during the day or night so she could complete her degree in a shorter amount of time, she started letting me stay over with the Kalivas’ family nightly. The nightmares weren’t too bad in the beginning, I wasn’t thrashing around or kicking the covers from the bed, but they were scary enough to leave me wondering what was going on inside my head. I thought that there was something about me well hidden, something about my mind that I just couldn’t handle, and that was the reasons the nightmares started. I never remembered one. Not even the tiniest blip.

  Throughout the years, they just got worse and worse.

  It got to the point where I couldn’t stay with Jamie anymore; I was too scared that I would wake her up one night with my screaming. I started staying up later and later, sometimes falling asleep in class until a teacher finally called my aunt to tell her about my daily naps throughout history lessons.

  When Dr. Jett realized how poorly I was sleeping, she signed me up for a sleep study. I had to stay a few nights—I can’t remember how many—in a sleep clinic in Seattle with electrodes stuck to my head. It was hard to fall asleep when I knew that someone was watching me. It was even harder to stay asleep with all the equipment beep, beep, beeping throughout the night.

  When I finally fell asleep, the results were inconclusive. Like I knew what that meant at such a young age. I still don’t, not in the psychological sense, but I didn’t have nightmares for a while. It was as if I was cured of something. But they started up again little over a year later. They started slowly, and just like in the beginning, I wasn’t screaming and thrashing through the night, I didn’t wake up covered in sweat missing the blankets from my bed because they were piled in a heap on the floor. I didn’t feel like I was drowning. No, all that started up around six months ago.

  Six long months of trying to stay awake through the night, finding any reason for a shot of espresso, a Monster energy drink, I even tried 5 Hour Energy to see if that would keep me awake through the night.

  It didn’t.

  None of it worked.

  Everything just seemed to get worse, and I don’t know what changed, what made everything get… worse.

  “Yes, nightmares that you can’t remember,” she continues with a slight nod of her head in understanding. I doubt that she understands any of what this actually means. For me, for my life. She doesn’t get that at all.

  My hands, almost by their own will, wring and wrench together in my lap, clasping and unclasping, my fingers threading and unthreading together, as I endlessly fidget. I’m not sure how to begin, how to let her into my nightly terror, but I have to say something to make this meeting—this session—worth it. I mean, I called her—scared, terrified—practically begging to see her. But how do I start?

  Well, like any other story, might as well start from the beginning…

  “They started so long ago,” I begin slowly, feeling the rush of the memory take over, that first night flashes briefly in my mind, filled with fear and anxiety, before I continue with, “that I just thought they were a part of life. A milestone for everyone to overcome, that whole Pass Go, Collect Two Hundred Dollars thing.” Dr. Jett, like usual, starts her notes, but hesitantly, taking occasional glances at me. From her eyes, her usually steely gaze, I can tell that she’s in disbelief, as I am, because I’ve never been this open during our sessions. “After a while, I knew it was wrong, I knew that something was wrong with me. People would tell me about their dreams, delving into vivid descriptions, leaving me with something beautiful from them. And I began to think that something was wrong with me.” I bark out a little laugh. “What wouldn’t be wrong with an attempted murder victim?” I mutter quietly with a shrug of my shoulders.

  My hand reaches, searching for the platinum chain around my neck, clutching the locket in my hand until my palm goes numb from the pressure. I take a deep breath, pausing to gather my scattered thoughts, collect my words, and remember the days when the sensations conquered.

  “There is nothing wrong with you, Joey.” She repeats the familiar mantra, something I’ve heard time and time again from her, my aunt, Zephyr, all my friends. But how can they know, how can they, or anyone, understand what’s in my head? “You suffered a traumatic event at the hands of someone that was supposed to protect you, not hurt you.”

  “I know that, Doc,” I practically shout, my voice turning shrill. I already know that I should have grown up playing hide-and-seek with my siblings rather than praying to them every night. “Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think that I’ve come to that understanding in my own mind?” I’ve never been aggressive during my sessions. I rarely talk, but for some reason, that just lit a fire beneath me. Of course, her Pilot pen moves frantically, still bouncing gracefully, along and across the page. “Poor little Joey, someone tried to kill her. Poor little Joey, her mother’s dead. Poor little Joey. Poor little Joey! I’m tired of being Poor little Joey.” I stop before I can continue on my rant, mentally trying to compose myself before I lose what little temper I have left. “I used to think that dreams were supposed to be untainted and pure and good, a world within which you could escape, but that’s not what I got, that’s not the hand I was dealt.”

  “What do you mean?” Dr. Jett stalls, lifting her head to connect her cadet blue eyes, warm with flecks of gold and honey throughout, with mine.

  “I don’t remember that night,” I quietly mumble honestly, the fact shared between us. As much as I remember about our sessions together, I never just bring it up. I choose to leave it in the past where it should remain. “I don’t remember anything before that night.” That, she also knows. “I’ve never remembered a dream—or nightmare, whatever—I’ve only remembered the feelings; the feeling of fear and the feeling of drowning, of suffocating in this dark place that I can’t even see.”

  That leaves us in silence when I can’t bring myself to continue, when I leave off and let my mind wander through the bits and pieces that I can remember. One of the first early sessions when I couldn’t speak and Dr. Jett would just stare at me, tapping her pen against her legal pad. The first night of nightmares when I woke up sweating and crying. They run like water through my mind, flowing through moment after moment, memory after memory.

  The air around us quickly descends into a thick silence.

  “Why are we here today, Joey?” the doctor asks, disrupting the silence, filling it with sound. “Why schedule this time with me?”

  My eyes peer up through my lashes, above the frames of my glasses, seeking out her gaze from across the room.

  “Because,” I pause to take a breath before I say, “I finally remembered one, a dream. Or nightmare, night terror, whatever the correct term is.” I close my eyes, suddenly feeling the need to cry, and I’m right back there. I see the man with the bloody knife standing before me, his body large, tall, and looming over
me as I cower on the floor, unable to move. I remember the name Josie; remember how he called me Josie.

  Before I can stop myself, I spill the entire tale, everything that I saw and remember from my nightmare. Although, it’s a short story, I omit how I woke up, how Zephyr could hear me screaming in his room in his house. I don’t want to hear what she’ll have to say about that. Omission never hurt before.

  “What do you think Josie means?” she asks once I finish. I didn’t know that was the main focus of the tale. I raise an eyebrow but she smiles like we might be on to something, like Josie holds whatever information I need, like it’s the key I need to unlock my secrets.

  “Well, I was hoping that you could tell me,” I answer, crossing my arms along my chest, feeling exposed and vulnerable, common and unwanted feelings in this room. I also feel a wave of anger wash over me, another feeling not uncommon in this room.

  “You know that’s not how this works, Joey,” she explains, clicking her pen twice as she stares at me.

  “I don’t know, then,” I answer in exasperation. My eyes travel to the window and the world outside, watching the puffy clouds glide along the bright blue sky overhead. The nice weather is a shock these days when it should be raining and chilly, when we should be waking up in frosted windows. “I’ve thought of Josie and the Pussycats,” I joke, pathetically, “but that’s it. The seventies cartoon,” I hastily add, “not the movie with Tara Reid. That was just awkward and weird.”

  “Give it some more thought,” Dr. Jett requests. “Maybe you’ll think of something, maybe you’ll remember something.” She smirks to me, expecting me to figure it out.

  That’s it? I almost blurt that out, yelling it to the psychiatrist sitting across from me flaunting her wealth in designer clothes but not her brains with helping me figure this out. That is all the advice that she’s going to give me. I’ve been to hell and back and she just wants me to think about it. Maybe I’ll come to some miraculous conclusion, encounter my own Aha! moment, maybe I’ll remember something helpful? Hopefully, I feebly say to myself, she is right.

  “You have more faith in me, Doc.” I tell her, deadpan, as our session ends, just before I’m walking out the door to the car to speed home.

  I walk through the front door, nearly hitting my aunt in the face as she stands behind it, slipping into her thick, black coat. Hilary looks at me suspiciously, briefly, before attempting to button her peacoat. “How was your appointment?” she asks as she pulls her hair from the collar.

  “Okay,” I answer vaguely, handing over the keys to the SUV.

  “Really?” she asks skeptically, eyeing me as I step by her, heading into the living room. I can see the worry, the doubt, in her eyes. “You see her monthly, Joey,” she begins, trying to understand. “What’s up, honey?” She grabs her bags and dangles them from her arm as she studies me closely as I turn away from her.

  “Nothing,” I lie, avoiding her eyes. I want to hope that she’ll let it go, move on, and head to work, but part of me wants her to sit down with me so I can unleash what’s in my head. Once I do that, once she knows the demons inside my brain, she’ll cut back on her hours at the hospital because all that she’ll do while she’s away is worry about me, and I can’t do that to her. She loves her job, so I lie a little more, “I promise.”

  What’s another little white lie?

  Her eyes narrow slightly; she leans forward a bit because she knows I’m lying.

  “All right,” Hilary murmurs, letting me keep my demons to myself, letting me keep the monsters hidden beneath the bed a little bit longer. She absentmindedly pulls her orange hair from the collar of her jacket again, her eyes still nervously glancing to me.

  It’s not too long before I am alone in the house and Hilary is in the car driving to Seattle. It’s not too long before I text Zephyr telling him to head over, and it’s certainly not too long before we are surrounded by notes, open textbooks, empty soda cans, and large amounts of candy and junk food while trying to study for tomorrow’s quiz.

  Three

  “I hate history,” Zephyr growls an hour into our study session. His pen repeatedly pokes the page in the same spot, making an annoying rhythm against the hardwood of the table beneath. I wonder what he’s thinking as he does that. Maybe he’s picturing Mr. Cheney’s head, metaphorically stabbing the teacher over and over. Thank God he doesn’t believe in voodoo dolls, or better yet, has no idea how they work. Not that I do or anything.

  I push all thoughts of murder from my mind—or all thoughts of magistricide from my mind before I comment on his statement.

  “No you don’t,” I respond, looking over my notes for the day Mr. Cheney discussed Franz Ferdinand—not the band, but that was setting the scene, lightly playing from the portable speakers attached to my iPod next to a tipped over can of Cherry Pepsi—Thankfully, it was empty before it tipped to its side.

  Zephyr is just over exaggerating, like usual. I’ve grown used to this over the years..

  “I think I do, Jo.” Zephyr throws his pen on top of his notes before linking his hands together behind his neck, leaning back in the creaky, wooden dining room chair Hilary got from my grandparents when we moved out here, the ones that she keeps saying she’s going to cover with new padding but ultimately blows off when something else comes along.

  The downside to AP European History is the teacher: Mr. Cheney. He designs quizzes like the other classes design final exams. He designs regular tests like collage exams. At least the quizzes didn’t ask for essay questions. While I would do very well on those—I’m used to Cheney’s tests, I’ve had him as a history teacher for the past two years, and I’m confident—or cocky, take your pick—in my abilities—Zephyr would probably start hyperventilating at the sight of the first question. “Why the hell must we know all this?” He doesn’t bother to censor himself when we’re alone in the house.

  “‘Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it,’” I quote, still staring at my notes. The pages I’m looking at have green ink covering them. I look up to Zephyr’s confused expression. “George Santayana,” I explain, stating the source.

  “When did you become a talking bottle of Snapple?” he asks, rolling his eyes in annoyance. “Never mind, don’t answer that, but, for the sake of argument, is that supposed to mean something to me?” he asks indifferently, his face expressionless as his eyes bore into mine.

  I snort loudly. “It should mean everything to you, Mr. I’m Greek and Proud.”

  “Only half Greek,” he rebuts half-heartedly.

  I drop my hand onto the page before me in exasperation. “Would you like me to start rehashing every piece of Irish history I know off the top of my head?” I ask a little too aggressively. I am a little annoyed that he wouldn’t show more interest in learning about the past, about how this country went to war. “I know a lot, dude,” I continue, remembering the report I did last year about Ireland and Irish immigration to the United States.

  I got an A.

  “Not really,” he answers, standing up. “I’m grabbing another drink—”

  “Code for raiding my fridge.” My eyes fall back to the page in front of me.

  “—want me to grab you something?” Zephyr finishes as if I didn’t just interrupt him. If I were looking, I know I’d see him shooting me a pointed glare. That’s the beauty of our friendship.

  “Another Mountain Dew, please?” I ask sweetly, facetiously batting my eyes for him, as my phone rings, singing Black Sheep by Gin Wigmore in the center of the table beneath my textbook. I check the number on the screen, I don’t recognize it but the 425 lets me know it’s local. “I don’t recognize the number,” I mutter to myself.

  “Then don’t answer it,” Zephyr says to me with his focus on the contents of the refrigerator. I expect to see him carrying as much food as he can hold in a moment.

  I don’t listen to him, thinking it could be something important, I answer with a polite, “Hello?” as I absentmindedly tap my pen agai
nst the notebook in front of me.

  “Joey?” the voice on the other line asks. It sounds vaguely familiar, it’s a guy, but I can’t place it—or him, I should say.

  “This is her,” I reply, politely, hearing my voice ascend an octave, the way it normally does when I speak into my phone.

  “Ah, I didn’t think you’d answer.”

  Didn’t think I would answer? Why wouldn’t I answer my own phone?

  Wait a minute… crap!

  “Ryder?” Surprise fills my tone. I drop my pen, nearly dropping the phone as well by accident. “Now I really wish I hadn’t answered my phone,” I whisper, trying to be sarcastic but meaning every word.

  “Harrison?” Zephyr asks loudly, letting the door to the fridge close behind him. He’s holding two cans of Mountain Dew in one hand as he makes his way over to me, setting one in front of me before taking his seat at the chair across from mine.

  I nod to him.

  “Yeah, I got your number from Kennie after school today,” he explains, the smugness obvious in his voice. It’s almost as if he’s trying to tell me, You’ve been waiting for my call, just admit it. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I do mind, actually.” How could Kennie, one of my best friends, give out my number without telling me? I would need the warning! I’d need to give her permission, damn it. Well, now I have a reason to lose my temper tomorrow.

  “What does he want?” Zephyr asks louder, trying to get my attention, trying to be heard.

  I shush him, waving my arm frantically to keep him quiet. I’m not above hitting him. “What do you want, Ryder?” I’m beginning to sound like a broken record with this dude.