Chapter Five
The school week is dragging on and it's hard to believe it's
only Wednesday. But on the other hand, I've been in a much better
mood than I have since returning from Miami. I could pretend it has
nothing to do with Sam, but I've come to learn that lying to myself
rarely does any good.
I still don't understand
why he spent weeks so careful not to touch me. I understand even
less why he decided to hug me like I freaking belong to him again
after that disaster of a brunch. But I wasn't surprised that he
recognized exactly what had upset me.
His stupid cousin bringing
up Robin attacking me in Miami came out of nowhere. It stunned me,
made my pulse skip. But his next words were what sliced straight
through my chest, cracked open my sternum and flayed my
heart.
Is she really that hot
that guys can't control themselves?
I was already on edge when
Daniel referenced some hot chick
that Sam had mentioned the last time they spoke.
I don't know why I assumed they spoke often, maybe because Sam and
Thea seem so close, but that's where my brain went. It presumed
that Sam had met someone, or taken an interest in someone
new.
And so I was already
desperately unsettled when Daniel brought up Miami. His words
smacked me in the face. I was instantly assaulted with images from
that night. Images of myself. My short, white sundress, my done up
face and tousled hair from the night before.
All the words of the men
who betrayed me rung through my mind, about how I'd asked for
Robin's abuse—how the way I'd acted and dressed had led him
on.
I breathed and counted and
breathed some more. But it wouldn't do.
How's a man supposed to
behave himself?
Robin's words were the
last ones to crash through my head before I made my hasty escape to
the bathroom where I thanked God out loud that I'd had the
forethought to keep a pill in the small mini pocket above the front
pocket of my jeans. Somehow I knew I was likely to need it, though
I couldn't have anticipated Sam's socially inept cousin.
But I'd do it all over
again. Go through that awful brunch, socialize with fucking Chelsea
Printze, even nearly panic, because it got me my best friend back.
Not just this hands-off version of himself that Sam's been ever
since Miami, but the old Sam.
I don't know what made him
hold me. Maybe it was just because I was so upset. Maybe he would
have hugged anyone like that if they were practically breaking down
on his doorstep. After all, he does have superhero tendencies. But
either way, I don't care.
All I care about is that
when we got our calculus quizzes back on Monday, he high-fived my
ninety. That he elbowed me when I teased him about something or
other at lunch on Tuesday. That he put his hand on the small of my
back to lead me out of the diner at lunch today.
I know it doesn't mean
anything. That we're still just friends, and that I asked for it to
be this way. But it's like I've gotten something back. Something
I'd lost. Some level of comfort that I desperately needed for my
own sanity.
And now that I have it
back—that crucial inherent support—I feel different.
Don't get me wrong, I
don't feel better. I'm still miserable and lonely. I still miss Cam with every
fiber of my being, and miss being with Sam. Miss belonging to him.
I still feel perpetually unsettled, as if something is always
wrong, everything is always wrong, and there's no way to make it
right.
I still wake up screaming
or crying nightly, never managing more than a few hours of sleep.
I'm constantly exhausted. I'm still having trouble focusing in
school, except of course for calculus, which is the only subject
that is ever granted my full attention.
But having Sam so distant
was fucking painful. And the new path my dreams have taken since
Miami makes them even more unbearable than before. And now… it's
better to be exhausted than to try and go back to sleep. So yeah,
I'm freaking miserable.
But I feel like if I at
least have him as a friend—a real friend—then maybe I can learn to
live with it.
In some ways, having the
old Sam back, even through something as simple as friendly touches,
has helped me regain some of the headway I lost in
Miami.
I took Sam's advice and
created a new Facebook page. It's pretty bare-boned. It doesn't
even use my real name, and the photo I chose was a group picture
from our first night out in Miami, so no one who didn't know me
would be able to tell which of the six girls in the photo is me.
But I didn't delete my social media accounts for fear of strangers.
No, I'd been hiding from those who knew me. But I'm hoping that
setting my profile to private will keep it hidden from anyone from
my former life who might be searching for a way to contact
me.
I joined the incoming
freshman groups, not that I’ve made any effort in actually
socializing, but at least I don't have to find a
roommate.
I head straight home after
school, do my homework and spend some time looking through the NYU
course catalog. I don't realize I've dozed off until I startle
myself awake. God, I'm tired.
I drive to Dr. Schall's
office half in a daze, blasting the cold air and slapping my own
cheeks to try and retain some semblance of wakefulness.
It's a fairly uneventful
session, as was this past Saturday's. After the debacle with my mom
I think Dr. Schall is hesitant to push me. But I do suspect he's
noticed the small change the return of friendly physical contact
with Sam has brought with it. It's in my demeanor, my mood. I'm far
from confident, but I'm not huddled in a nervous ball practically
trembling with anxiety either, so there's that.
Dr. Schall is pleased with
me today. My report of attending Andrew's party and Sam's family
brunch wins me points for effort, and I soak in the
approval. Daddy issues, indeed.
We talk a bit about Sam's
cousin's stupid comment, and I regret even mentioning it, or my
reaction, when Dr. Schall repeats his lecture about my
"understandable responses" and goes into his speech about PTSD, and
how my father and Robin essentially brainwashed me into accepting
blame for something I was innocent in. That I could have walked
around stark naked and it still wouldn't have given Robin the right
to presume that I'd wanted anything, or that he had the right to
take it.
And I understand what he's
saying—I get the legal argument of consent. But that doesn't mean
that I hadn't been sending the wrong signals, and that if I'd just
handled things differently, it would have led to a different
outcome. Perhaps to one in which Cam was still alive.
Dr. Schall changes the
subject to a less loaded topic when he notices I'm more or less
tuning him out and we end the hour with me promising again to try
and remember anything different about my dreams, and anything out
of the ordinary that could have precipitated them.
But my dreams haven't
changed. So there's no point.
I smell the Chinese
takeout as soon as I walk in my front door and I salivate at it. I
haven't eaten a thing since lunch, and I was too tired then to have
much of an appetite. I'm not much more awake now, but I'm hungry
enough that it doesn't much matter.
I take pause when I hear
my mother's voice, obviously her end of a phone call.
Immediately I know it's
her. Michelle. Cam's mom.
My mom doesn't see me yet,
or she'd be making some excuse to get off the line and pretend it
was no one important on the other end.
But it is someone important. Michelle is
family, and I realize that I miss her terribly. It's a sentiment
that, admittedly, has been overshadowed by the many other
overwhelming emotions I've been processing over the past year. Or
not processing, as it is. And it's unfathomable why it's taken
until this moment to realize it.
Because Michelle Foster
wasn't just Cam's mom, she was like a second mother to
me, and I realize that
avoiding every reminder of my past has cut out someone who just
didn't deserve it. In fact, she deserved a hell of a lot better
after losing her only son.
God, I just cut her out of my life like the rest of the people
from back home—people who hurt me or let me down. But she didn't do
any of those things. She was already dealing with the worst pain of
her life—and that after she'd already lost her husband some years
before.
A fresh wave of guilt
washes through me.
In my cloud of depression
and anxiety, it never occurred to me that someone might need me.
That the world was still full of other people, also dealing with
life crushing loss, and who I could have helped in some way. And in
my emergence from my fog, I was so focused on just making it
through school, and then so caught up in Sam, that I told myself
that my mom's keeping in touch with Michelle was enough. But I
realize now that that was a selfish lie.
Still, the thought of
getting on the phone, of hearing her voice, utterly terrifies me. I
know my strengths and weaknesses, and up until very recently, any
real reminder at all of my past life could have been a precarious
trigger to a panic attack. And, even now, I can't be sure how I'll
react to hearing Michelle's voice.
But, I decide, with no
small amount of uncertainty, I'm about to find out.
My mother's back is to me
so she doesn't see me approach. She startles, and I can see the
cogs in her head turning—she's about to make up some reason to get
off the phone. But I stop her.
"Can I say hi?" I ask, my
voice timid and tremulous in a way that would have been
unrecognizable a year ago. Now it's one I'm fairly familiar
with.
My mother's hesitance
tells me she herself isn't so sure about this, and I wonder how
confident she was about bringing up Cam a week ago. I consider that
perhaps she was nervous about it, and maybe even regretted it.
After all, she hasn't brought him up since.
My mom recovers quickly,
though. After all, she has the poker face of a practiced litigator.