Chapter Five – Mabel
I’m fortunate that my dad is busy finding a job in town to really pay attention to me as the days go by. It lets me do a bit of planning. I want to talk to Dr. Wolf’s other patient, and I need to find out a way to do it without upsetting Dr. Wolf.
Wandering in his house? Can’t exactly do that again.
In the end, by the time my next appointment rolls around, I come up with a plan. It’s a silly plan that may not work, but it’s a plan I can attempt every time I’m there: I’ll excuse myself to go to the bathroom in the middle of our session and try to find the strange, scarred man instead of actually using the toilet.
The next week, when my dad drives me to Dr. Wolf’s house, he’s all dressed up in nicer clothes. Has an interview as a manager of some warehouse in town. We don’t need the money yet, but job prospects in this area don’t seem overflowing—plus, my dad needs something to keep him busy, something other than worrying about me.
“I might be a little late picking you up,” Dad warns me, “depending on how the interview goes.”
I give him what I hope is a supporting smile even though that smile feels like it falls flat. “I’m sure you’ll do great.” I was never huge on smiling, but now… there’s absolutely nothing in my life to smile about.
My dad then says something that he’s touched on before, almost hesitantly, “Have you thought about getting a part time job of your own? It might be good for you to get out there again. Make some friends.”
The sun overhead is hidden by a thick sheet of gray; sunny days here are rare, apparently. It gives everything a gloomy hue. I watch the scenery go by as I sigh and say, “I don’t know how to make friends, Dad.”
“Maybe that’s something you can talk to Dr. Wolf about.”
I don’t say anything to that, instead biting the inside of my cheek. Making friends and getting out there again isn’t high on my list of priorities. Someday I’ll have to, but not just yet. Right now, all of my focus is on finding out more about the scarred man.
Five minutes later I’m wishing my dad good luck as I get out of his car. I’m waving at him as he drives off, off to hopefully start a new chapter in his life. I breathe in deeply before turning and heading inside.
My second time here, I know what to expect as I enter the overly-large house. I’m not as impressed by the grandiose home, although that could only be due to the fact that I’m dying to talk to its other inhabitant.
I decide to seek Dr. Wolf out, and I find him in the office, waiting for me as he scribbles something down on a notepad, his brow furrowed. He wears a black suit today, looking quite sleek for a therapist. The moment I walk into the office, he stops writing and glances up at me, saying, “Mabel. Have a seat. How are you today?”
I go to sit in the exact same chair I sat in last time, the chair that will probably be mine every single time I come here. “I’m okay. My dad has an interview in town, so he might be a little late picking me up.”
“That’s no problem. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need.”
Silence takes over the room, because neither of us talk after that. Dr. Wolf stares at me, and I stare at the wall across from us while I bite my cheek more. I don’t know exactly how much time passes before I say something, but eventually I can’t take the silence anymore. “Aren’t you going to ask me a question?”
Dr. Wolf’s mouth tightens. He’s not smiling. It’s a weird face, like he’s once again peering inside of me and seeing me laid bare. “What kind of question would you like me to ask?”
I roll my eyes. The last time I was here we talked about my guilt, how it’s all my fault—which Dr. Wolf then attempted to assuage said guilt and convince me it’s not my fault, but he doesn’t know the whole story. There are still parts of it I haven’t told anyone, not even the police when they came around, demanding answers.
“I don’t know,” I mutter.
“How about,” he pauses, as if deep in thought, “we talk about your brother today?” His suggestion makes my stomach churn, my heart constrict, and every muscle in my body to turn to stone. “Tell me about Jordan.”
What good memories I have of my brother are now forever tainted. It’s difficult for me to find the words to say, so I don’t say anything right away.
Dr. Wolf cocks his head at me. “You two were close, I take it?”
“Yeah.” My throat is dry. The word is like a knife coming up. It hurts. “He was my best friend.”
“I can still hear the pain in your voice. You sound like you two were closer than most siblings. Do you think that’s a fair assessment?”
I nod once. “Probably. We never got into fights with each other. We never yelled. We hung out all the time. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he had other friends, but… I didn’t have anyone I was really close with. We were twins, so we were always together.”
Dr. Wolf’s next words hit me like bricks: “He meant a lot to you.”
“He did,” I whisper, and I’m thrown back in time, to a sunny afternoon where I laid on my bed and Jordan hung out on the floor just beside it. We were doing our math homework together. Advanced, even though Jordan wasn’t as good at math as me.
Ninth grade. Freshmen. Middle of September. It was the time when boys started asking girls to homecoming in fun, cool ways. But not me.
We were in the middle of problem eight when Jordan suddenly sat up and looked at me. “Are you really not going to homecoming if nobody asks you?” It was a conversation we had before, and it always ended with him telling me someone would eventually ask.
Spoiler alert: no one ever did.
I shook my head, hiding behind a curtain of my blond hair. “No.” I don’t know why, but every time we talked about this I got emotional. Sad. I didn’t want Jordan to know how much it upset me that no boy wanted to take me to a stupid dance.
But Jordan? He had a date. He asked out one of the cheerleaders, a girl who’s in tenth grade—and she said yes. Out of the two of us, my brother was always the more popular one. The more liked sibling. He never had any problems making friends or apparently asking out girls who should have been way out of his league since he was just a freshman.
Jordan made a thoughtful sound as he leaned an arm on the side of my bed. “Maybe I shouldn’t go.”
That made me look at him sharply and give him an are-you-stupid look. “What? No. You have to go. You already have a date. Jenny McMullin will—”
“Jenny McMullin has a whole line of other guys that would take her if I canceled on her.”
“But… why? Why would you cancel?” If anyone’s social life could’ve survived something like that, it was Jordan’s, but still. He shouldn’t. “You can’t. You have to go.”
Jordan’s response came so easily, so quickly, I could tell he really meant it: “I don’t want to go if you don’t go.” His eyes, a gray color like mine, bore into me, like he’s wordlessly pleading with me to change my mind and go to homecoming.
“It’s okay.”
His eyebrows creased as he glared at me.
“What? You know I’d just go and watch everyone else have fun.” I didn’t know for sure if that’s what I’d do, but I could guess. I had friends, I guess, but none that were super close. None that asked me to go with them as a big friend group. More acquaintances, I guessed. I was pretty much a loner.
“Come on! Just come, Mabel. I won’t stop bugging you about it until you agree to come. And if you never agree, then I’m not going. So you pick: you come or we both stay home.” The way he said it, I could tell he already knew what my answer would be.
I didn’t want him to stay home with me and miss out on what would likely be great memories for him, so I did the only thing I could: I sighed and said, “Fine. I’ll go, but I can guarantee you I won’t have fun.”
Jordan gave me a goofy smile and said, “We’ll see about that.”
I ended up going to the dance. Had to sit in the front seat of our mom’s car while Jenny and Jordan got the back. The dance itself was just as I thought it would be: Jordan had loads of fun, constantly surrounded by friends as he danced the night away. I, on the other hand, hung out with the people who took to lounging around the cafeteria instead of in the gym, where the music was so loud you could barely hear yourself think.
I had a miserable time just like I knew I would, but it was worth it knowing my brother had the time of his life. He’d make sacrifices for me, so I gladly did the same for him.
Of course, that homecoming dance was when it started. When Robbie, Ryan, and Davey put a target on my back just because I was a loner and they could. Three popular boys everyone loved, cute, with easygoing smiles; boys who knew exactly what to say to get their way and never get in trouble.
Years later, I’d like to say none of their jokes hit the mark, but… when you’re in high school, when you’re on the outside looking in, even stupid jokes hurt. When you’re a fourteen-year-old girl, wanting to be seen, there’s nothing worse than only being seen when you were being mocked relentlessly.
Maybe things would be different now if I never went to that dance. Maybe I would’ve stayed under Robbie, Ryan, and Davey’s radar.
Or maybe not. Maybe this was always our fate.
Dr. Wolf snaps me back into the present when he asks, “Where did you go just now?”
I blink, slow to meet his eyes. My skin feels itchy all of a sudden, my throat tight. “I… I was just thinking about the time when Jordan got me to go to homecoming freshman year. I wasn’t going to go, but he wouldn’t let me skip it. If I stayed home, he would’ve stayed home, too. But he already had a date with a pretty popular tenth-grade girl, so I went.”
“Why weren’t you planning on going to this dance?”
I shrug as my gaze falls to my lap and I fiddle with my hands. “I wasn’t popular. That was always Jordan. People only really knew me because they knew him. I was always the weird, quiet sister everyone overlooked.”
Dr. Wolf thinks on this. “Would you say, maybe, you lived in your brother’s shadow?”
That suggestion stuns me, mostly because it’s preposterous. “No,” I say instantly. “I didn’t live in his shadow. It’s not that he took the spotlight on purpose. That’s just… who he was, and I was fine with it.”
“Were you?”
I don’t know what to say. My first instinct is to argue with him, to tell him that I was more than fine with it—being in the spotlight, being the center of attention, was never something I wanted—but as the seconds tick by I realize that might be a lie.
What high school girl doesn’t want to be seen?
“Maybe,” I relent quietly, “a tiny part of me wasn’t, but it was easy to ignore. Jordan had that kind of personality.”
“Can I say something that might upset you?” Dr. Wolf asks. When I give him a short nod, he goes on, “He knew you didn’t want to go to the dance, and yet he said the one thing that got you to go. He manipulated you into going.”
“Manipulated?” The word sounds weird coming from me. “No, no, that’s not how it was.”
“Whether you recognize it or not, what Jordan did was a tactic of manipulation: getting you to do what he wanted you to do instead of what you wanted to do. He wanted you to go, so he threatened to do something you wouldn’t like, something he knew you’d do anything to avoid. Did Jordan often do things like that?”
My response leaves me immediately, “No.”
It wasn’t like that, was it? Jordan wouldn’t… no. We were best friends. He would never have knowingly manipulated me like that. It was all in good fun. He just wanted me to go to homecoming, that’s all. No ulterior motives behind it.
Before Dr. Wolf can say anything else, I mumble, “I have to use the bathroom.” I stand.
“Of course. It’s just down the hall. Take your time.”
I don’t even care if he thinks I’m upset over the Jordan talk—I am. Jordan is a sore subject for me in many different ways, apparently. I knew we’d talk about him eventually, but I didn’t think… God, I never thought we’d talk about him possibly manipulating me.
Jordan would’ve never.
Did he?
As I hurry out of the office, I mentally wrestle with that question. Reframing everything now, with hindsight, with everything I know today—everything Jordan was capable of—maybe Dr. Wolf isn’t far off the mark.
Maybe Jordan manipulated me my whole life and I never knew it.
The moment I step out of Dr. Wolf’s office, my legs come to a half as the door swings shut on its own behind me. My heart feels like it’s putting an ungodly amount of pressure on my chest, and all I can do is stand there and wonder if, perhaps, there was a side to Jordan that I was blind to all this time.
No. No way. Jordan wasn’t… he wasn’t like that.
But what if—
I feel like I want to pull my hair out. I can’t think straight. I need some air. Some alone time. Privacy. And so, instead of going to the bathroom, I decide to go outside—only I don’t go to the front, where Dr. Wolf might hear me or even see me out the window in the office. I head deeper into the house, not really knowing where I’m going as I search for a backdoor.
Fortunately for me, the house, though large, is pretty straightforward. I end up finding a back patio just off the ridiculously-huge kitchen, and as quietly as I can, I slip out. Every muscle in my body is upset with me, and I labor to get to the nearest wicker chair, collapsing onto it just in time.
I don’t like talking about Jordan, but more than that, I don’t like the suggestion Dr. Wolf made. It’s upsetting in more than one way. A part of me—the part that’s still loyal to Jordan’s memory, as stupid as it is—is insulted Dr. Wolf would dare suggest Jordan manipulated me. But another part of me is frozen in anxiety as I wonder if, perhaps, it’s true.
I lean forward and place my head in my hands as I attempt to keep my breathing under control. This is not how I thought today would go, not at all.