I’ve never dreamt of my mom before, and it’s left me a little shaken.
The gas station isn’t very busy, and after I’ve gone to the restroom, I spend a few minutes walking the aisles to see if there’s anything I’d like to eat. Maybe a treat I’d like to get for Elliot to say thank you for just … being himself. There’s a large display of mega-sized Rice Krispy Treats on an end cap, and I grab one, bringing the wrapper to my nose and inhaling to see if I can smell it.
It’s faint, but the aroma is there, and for a moment, my heart clenches as memories of Patrick bringing plates of them to our little hideout in the backyard come rushing back. Cline could never have just one. He always had one in each hand like his mom could catch him at any moment and he’d have to shove them both in his mouth in a desperate attempt to have one last sweet before going back to the land of juicing and dehydrated fruits.
I don’t even hear him approach. I can feel him standing behind me before I open my eyes to acknowledge that he’s there. “Do you remember the last time we had these?” I ask.
Cline reaches over my shoulder and takes one of the packages in his hand, turning the bright blue wrapper around. “Probably when we were twelve. My mom found out your dad had given them to me because they were stuck in my hair.”
I turn and regard him with a laugh. “Were you trying to save some for a snack later?”
The look in his eyes is anything but amused. He’s sizing me up like he’s deciding whether or not to ask a question. I’m hyper aware of everything in that space in time. The smell of the store. The crinkle of the wrapper in my hand. The buzzing of the fluorescent lights. How unfocused my eyesight is as I become lightheaded waiting for him to speak.
He clears his throat and looks down at his hands and then back up at me, a tick in his jaw alerting me to the seriousness of the situation. “Did you run away because of me? Was it my fault, Byrdie?”
Every last thing that I’ve ever wanted to say to him builds up inside of my throat, and the pressure in my chest expands until I’m sure I’m going to pass out. This isn’t the time and place for it, though. I have a plan, and it does not involve standing in front of the beer refrigerator of a Chevron gas station. I wait a few seconds and gather my thoughts before I speak, even though I can sense that my silence is giving Cline more of an answer than a simple yes or no would.
“I didn’t run away. So, no.”
He holds my gaze, our eyes locked and bodies only inches apart for what feels like the first time in eons. He’s so familiar and yet the most foreign thing in my entire life right now. “Why would your dad lie about that? Tell everyone you ran away if you didn’t?” He asks, his voice low and a little shaky.
I shrug and look away, grabbing another treat before I sidestep him. “Some lies are easier to say out loud than telling people the truth.” There’s no reason for me to turn around and look at his face as I walk away. There’s confusion and hurt there that I’ve seen so many times before, more than I could possibly keep count of. Part of this trip is making that right, but I’m forcing myself to take my therapist’s advice and stick with the plan I have in my head. Ignoring the impulse to tell him everything in the here and now is overwhelming. and that’s exactly how I know it’s not right.
It’s not time.
The first day I met Dr. Stark. she didn’t look at me with pity or like I was some kind of miracle. She didn’t treat me as if I were some sort of hopeless thing that couldn’t be cured. She treated me like a person, and I didn’t know how to respond to that.
The first session began with the question, “What brings you here?” And I answered with a name, so she cut me off. It wasn’t who brought me there. There was no one person that caused me to end up in her office. No two people were responsible for my time spent in the hospital while Patrick and Miranda played damage control and lied that I’d run away. I half expected to hear the therapist tell me no one can make you feel inferior without your consent, but she stopped just shy of that.
She asked for a complete history. A full rundown. So I told her everything, down to the very last moment I could remember, and she wrote her notes all the while. She would cross and uncross her legs, nod and stop writing at particular intervals if something of note would come out of my mouth. Otherwise, she was nothing but professional, and by the end of that first session, I think I had told her everything I could think of, starting from the moment I was born until that very second I was in her office.
There was blame and guilt everywhere, almost as if I could see it piling up on the ground around me. The more I spoke, the more carnage, the higher the body count, there was. Everyone had a hand in my misery and owned a bit of why I was sitting in front of this slender woman with honey colored hair and a blank expression as I bared my fifteen-year-old soul.