She seemed to digest that information and when she spoke again, she seemed almost afraid of the answer I might give.
“Did you ask him to stop?”
“Yes. He did, after I pushed him. I ran out and called you. He didn’t try to come after me.”
She reached out then, touching me for the first time, her fingers slipping against my palm and gripping tightly onto my hand.
“You did the right thing, Grey.”
The right thing. “Who decides that?” I suddenly asked, snatching my hand away and taking the balled-up tissue from the top of the pile, throwing it into my bag. I began to peel off the tissue strips, throwing them into the same pocket. “Who gets to decide what’s right and wrong?”
“I don’t know how to answer that question.” She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, and I felt disappointed.
Nicholai would have known.
“It’s okay.” I reached out to her then, my hand shaking. “Thank you for picking me up. I’m okay now. I just needed …” I drew back, fumbling for the right word—suddenly unable to maintain the contact that I had with her hand.
“You needed to feel safe,” she finished for me. “You should know, Grey. You always have a safe place with me. Always.”
“You don’t even know me,” I replied. My tone was accusing, slightly suspicious.
She put the car back into gear and started pulling out of the parking lot, turning over her shoulder to see behind her.
“No,” she agreed.
I waited for more, for an explanation, but it didn’t come.
“Why?” I eventually pressed. “You don’t know me, so why are you giving me unconditional support? Unconditional safety?”
“Do you know how long it’s been since my daughter laughed?” The question was surprising—not only because I considered it a change of subject, but also because Jean hadn’t struck me as a particularly happy person.
“She does laugh.” I was defending her. I wasn’t sure why.
“She does. Now. Occasionally.” Alicia seemed to be having trouble forming the words. They were being squeezed out through clenched teeth, her eyes stubbornly fixed on the road as she drove a few miles above the speed limit. “Only since you, Grey. She hasn’t had a real friend in years. And I know—” She lifted one hand from the steering wheel and displayed it to me in a stop motion, as though I had been on the verge of interrupting her. “I know she has friends. Those girls are around her all the time. They’re with her at school, they train with her, they even come over to the house sometimes. It’s like she’s trying to prove to me that she’s normal, that she can have friends. It’s like she’s trying to prove that to everyone.”
She paused, and I could see her fists tightening on the steering wheel. This was the most emotion that I had ever seen Alicia display, and it suddenly all made sense. She was worried for her daughter and she thought that I would be able to help.
“She surrounds herself,” Alicia continued. “Friends everywhere, and nobody that she actually talks to. They don’t notice, either. They’re all too self-involved, too glad to have someone who only listens, who only wants to hear about them. She’s the best friend they’ve ever had, and they’re the worst friends she’s ever had.”
“So she had better friends, once?”
“When she was younger. Before high school. She knew a few good girls, but they moved away and she lost touch with them.”
“But that’s not why you’re worried. You’re not worried that she doesn’t have good friends.” It wasn’t a question. I was certain that Alicia was trying to recruit me to solve her daughter’s issue—meaning that she was sure that her daughter had an issue.
“No …” Alicia hesitated over the word, before clearing her throat and continuing. “That’s not why I’m worried.”
I could feel it coming, then. The numbing, tingling fear. It was back, creeping up the length of my legs until I couldn’t sit still any longer. My feet started to bounce, my knees bobbing up and down slightly. I was itching to dive out of the car and start running. Alicia was about to be honest with me; the veil was about to come up and I wasn’t ready for what was underneath. I wasn’t ready to be realistic.
She didn’t care about me—none of this was about me.
This was about Jean.
“I don’t understand what’s happening with her,” Alicia told me, her voice so soft that it was almost inaudible, only a mumble. “She doesn’t spend any time with us anymore, but it’s not like she’s spending that time with anyone else, either. She’s alone. She skips breakfast and takes the bus to school so that she doesn’t have to wait around for Marcus. She spends all afternoon in the library or at track, and then skips dinner most nights to eat out. I ask who she’s with and she says nobody, says she ate alone at the diner, or got a sandwich and took it back to the library. She’s spending as little time with me as possible and I don’t know why.”
“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t understand what she was asking of me.
“Listen, Grey.” Her voice had suddenly gained strength again. She stopped the car at a red light, freeing her eyes to seek out mine. “I’m going to be straight with you. I think you care about Jean. I think you’re a good person, and I know you’re going through a lot right now. I want to help you, I want to be there for you, because I can. All I’m asking is that you be there for Jean, because you can. That’s all. Keep an eye on my daughter while I’m keeping an eye on you, because she won’t let me, but she’ll let you.”
I felt sick and I didn’t want to think about why. I opened the door and quickly stepped out of the car, grabbing my backpack and swinging it over my shoulder.
“Grey!” Alicia jerked on the emergency brake, leaning over to stare out of the passenger side window as I slammed the door. A car rolled up behind us and the light turned green, but she didn’t budge.
She yelled out my name again and I stopped walking, turning slightly to glance back at the car. I fished my phone out of my pocket and wrote a quick text as the car behind her beeped angrily again.
Thank you for inviting me to stay. I will be nice to Jean.
I paused, my finger about to hit the send button before I quickly added my name at the bottom of the text. I wasn’t sure why, but it seemed like the proper thing to do. Even though I was standing right in front of the woman, causing an angry traffic pileup.
I sent the message, turned away from her, and didn’t look back.
So many things left unsaid, but I preferred it that way. I didn’t want to waste words—and I wasn’t very good at speaking in the first place. Words were funny; you could say something positive and a person would find insult in it. You could acknowledge a comment and a person would extract a promise from it. Words might have been weapons, but I was a weak shot.
I will be nice to Jean.
I won’t spy for you.
I will do this for her.
You hurt me.
You were my last hope.
So many things left unsaid.
16
Demented
I slept in the RV that night, ignoring the note that Duke had stuck to my screen door. It was folded on my kitchen table in the morning, still unread. I knew it was from him because it was a used envelope, folded in half. He’d written his message on the back of it and then spilled beer over the front of it. I could even see a tiny scrap of tissue stuck to the paper, where he had tried to mop up the spill. I swept it into the trash can with my banana peel from breakfast.
I avoided school that day, and the next. By the time I woke up on Friday, I had a few missed calls from Alicia, but she still hadn’t replied to my text message.
There was also a message from Jean.
Mom said to give you some space. I say fuck mom. What are you doing?
I thought carefully about how to reply. Or … I tried to. The pros and cons and predictions kept slipping through my fingers, leaving a muddled mess of indecipherable emotion behind. Ins
tead of answering, I headed to the shower, staying in there for longer than usual. Afterwards, I wrapped myself up in an oversized t-shirt and carried my cell outside. There was a tiny square of concrete right outside the RV, an awning stretching above and a small garden edging it. Upon further inspection, I found a fold-up chair tucked away in a compartment at the back of the RV, along with a camping lamp and some mosquito repellent.
In the interest of doing things to avoid answering the message, I pulled back the awning a little so that the sun could hit the little concrete platform, and then I sat in the fold up chair and waited for the sun to finish drying me off. Gradually, my wet hair sprang up into a wild mess of curls, and I couldn’t ignore the message anymore.
Eventually, I dragged myself back inside and typed out a response.
Your mom was worried. Asked me to keep an eye on you. I didn’t feel comfortable staying there anymore.
I sent the message, and then stared at the screen before quickly typing out and sending another.
I will still keep an eye on you, but not for her.
A few seconds later, the phone buzzed in my hand. Jean was calling. I continued staring at the screen, making no move to pick up the call. Another message flashed across the screen while it rang.
Jean: Pick up, asshole.
I accepted the call. “That was rude.”
“You were sitting there staring at your phone, ignoring my call. That’s rude.”
“No, that’s just indecisive.”
“Why are you indecisive about talking to me?”
“I thought you might be angry,” I admitted, an odd feeling starting to turn in my stomach.
“Well, I’m not. If I had been you, I would have done the same thing. I appreciate it. What are you doing today?”
“What day is it?”
“Friday.”
“I’m not going to school.”
On the other end of the phone, Jean scoffed. “Yeah, I get that, since I’m at school and you’re not here. Again. Why are you skipping?”
Because I can—who the hell are the teachers going to call? My parents? “Because I have an appointment.”
“Doctors? Are you sick?”
“In the head,” I replied tonelessly.
“Me too. Maybe I should make an appointment. Who are you seeing?”
“Nic—Mr. Fell.”
“But he’s at school, and you’re not at school.”
“He quit.”
“And you followed him?”
“I don’t want to repeat all my shit to a whole new person.” That feeling in my stomach was getting stronger, twisting and turning and becoming something else.
“That makes sense.” Jean was accepting my answer, thankfully dropping the subject. “Do you want to train after school? We could run to the beach? Do some drugs? Kidnap a baby? Experiment with grand larceny?”
“So many options.”
“That’s a yes, then?”
“Okay. I’ll see you after school. You bring the net, I’ll bring the baby food.”
“I’ll come to yours.” She ended the call, leaving me to pick up right where I had left off: standing there staring at my phone.
Eventually, I set it aside and shuffled to my closet. I wanted to put on battle armour, but in the end I settled for my bikini beneath running shorts and a loose black tank. It was my standard training attire, since I didn’t like changing my clothes at the beach. The shorts were tight, short, and highly inappropriate for a counselling session. The tank was just plain tacky. There was a small tear in the front, along the bottom hem.
I closed the closet door and combed out my hair with my fingers, pulling it into high ponytail. It had dried curlier than usual, a little too wild for me to properly tame, but I did the best I could before stepping into my sneakers. After that, I declared myself ready.
And then I changed.
Suddenly, I was wearing a sundress; the straps were thin, stark white against my bronzed shoulders. I was halfway out the door—backpack slung over my shoulder—when I decided I was going to change again. I swapped the dress out for a pair of jeans, and there was a sweatshirt halfway over my head when my phone buzzed with another message from Jean, reminding me that I was supposed to be going training later. I flicked the sweatshirt away and changed sluggishly back into my original outfit. If I changed one more time, I was going to be late, so I quickly grabbed my things and escaped the RV.
I walked into town because I didn’t have any other options. It was ten o’clock on a Friday, so the traffic had settled down, leaving some of the roads bare for me to meander on. Not that I was meandering. That would imply a lack of purpose when purpose was suddenly all I had. I walked with a heavy motive for nearly two hours, the sun beating down against my back and the road roasting up through my shoes. My motive was him. Nicholai Fell was the only undecided factor in my life, the only thing I was unsure about.
Duke was both a tool and a user—that, I knew.
Jean was a friend. I could admit that.
Marcus was a good person.
Smith was a kid.
Alicia was a mother.
My family was gone.
I was ticking away, nearing the end of something. Ready for the final hour, waiting for my time to finally come and for time itself to finally stop.
Nicholai was … here. I couldn’t finish the thought, because his office building was suddenly looming before me. I approached the doors without a second’s hesitation, pulling them open and climbing the stairs. I announced myself to the receptionist, took a seat, and waited.
I could feel the ticking again, those seconds passing with a foreboding that everyone around me seemed to be unaware of. Maybe it was just the way time passed and I had gotten confused along the way, too tainted by my experiences to count passing seconds without fear. Maybe I wasn’t a time bomb after all. Maybe I was the fallout, already arrived, a mess to be sorted through. Maybe that was why I was there, in the waiting room with the lazy blades of a rotating fan collecting dust in the corner. I was waiting for Nicholai to sort through me, to salvage me from the rubble.
“Mika.”
I glanced up toward the voice. He was wearing his professional face—no indication that he knew me outside of our current setting, no indication that he cared about me more than a passing hour before his lunch break. I wondered how he managed to hold down a job. He didn’t exactly fill the room with empathy.
I stood without a word and his eyes flicked down to my feet for a moment. Heat flooded into me without warning, and I stopped moving. The moment confused me, so I rejected it. He seemed to reject it, too, turning and walking back down the corridor. I followed, already knowing the way to his office. I hesitated when he opened the door of the little room with the yellow couches, standing a few steps into the room to allow me to pass. I was nervous and I didn’t want to be. I slipped past him and sat down, dropping my hands uselessly into my lap.
“How did you get here?” he asked me, moving to sit in the armchair facing my couch. He had pulled his phone out of his pocket, but his eyes were still on my face, waiting for an answer.
“I walked.” My mouth was dry.
“From Summer Estate?”
I nodded, suddenly realising why I was nervous as he thumbed something into his phone and held it up to his ear.
I was waiting for retaliation.
I had done something wrong … something I hadn’t yet wanted to admit to myself.
“Hi Abby, I need you to cancel my next appointment—it’s my last for today.” He paused, listening to whatever Abby had to say in return, his stare still fixed on me. His eyes were colder than usual, a deeper blue, darker than I was used to. “Yes, whoever is on call,” he replied, “personal emergency. Thanks, Abby. I’ll email everything to Francene tomorrow morning, I’m going to need to leave after this appointment.”
He hung up the call and seemed to send a quick message before slipping it back into his pocket. I didn’t want to meet his stare a
nymore, but I forced my chin up. I wasn’t going to back down.
“Why did you use a fake name?” he finally asked, sitting back in his chair, laying his arms down the lengths of the armrests, his fingers splaying over the ends. He was too relaxed for the question.
I had done something wrong.
“I wasn’t thinking. I was filling out the form online to get an appointment with you and … it just happened.”
“You didn’t think I would see you?” He was too blank, too expressionless. Far too relaxed.
I stared to get angry, or maybe I was afraid—I didn’t care which it was, I just needed him to show me something.
“You quit.” I stood, shoving my hands against my hips, taking two quick steps closer and looking down at him in the chair, even though standing up had only gained me a couple of inches over him. “I thought … I thought you wanted to help me.”
“I did quit,” he admitted. “I was contracted to that school temporarily, I designed a new mental health scheme for my dissertation and for the last year I’ve been putting it into practise at that school. I was only contracted to work there for six months, while they searched for a permanent councillor.”
He sounded so professional. So grown-up. “How old are you?” I asked.
I was starting to feel uncomfortable; not because he had kissed me, but because being so close to him made me desperate for him to do it again.
“Twenty-seven.” I could see him tense, could sense how even the air around us grew still, not daring to stir as I did the math in my head.
It wasn’t a huge gap, not really, but I had lost a year of my life. I felt like the rest of it was lost, too. Not even the number of years between us would be able to carry me to where he was in life.
“How is that possible?” I asked. “You’re …” I gestured around at his office. “All of this. Are other doctors as young as you?”
“Some, yes,” he replied, a frown on his lips. He hadn’t liked me calling him young. I was poking at one of his barriers. “I finished my doctorate a few months ago and I’m able to practise as a licenced psychologist now—my supervisor at Stanford organised for me to continue my work here.”
I Am Grey Page 15