Chapter Eight – Mabel
Dad got the job, which means he won’t be home to watch me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The hours are a little weird, halfway between third and first-shift, so he’ll still be around to drive me to my appointments with Dr. Wolf. He’ll crash early, which means once night falls, I won’t have him constantly looking over my shoulder, making sure I’m not doing something I shouldn’t be.
He was so excited about getting the job, and I was happy that he finally will have something else to occupy his time with, that I never told him that Dr. Wolf wanted me to go to the local coffee shop and sit there for a while, in public.
Honestly, for a few days I didn’t even think about my homework, if you want to call it that. I helped around the house, finished unpacking all the random boxes full of things we don’t use often, and every night I cleaned up the kitchen after dinner so my dad could shower and go to sleep.
I tried to keep myself busy so I wouldn’t think about Tristan and the fact that he’s not a man I should give any more thoughts to.
It’s common sense, really. Tristan is bad news. Dr. Wolf pretty much said so himself.
But it’s funny. The more you try not to think about something, the more you end up thinking about that one thing in particular. It’s like your mind doesn’t want to cooperate. You tell it no, and it smacks you upside the head and says, emphatically, yes .
The hard truth is I can’t get Tristan out of my mind. I spend a lot of my time alone wondering what he did to be labeled as violent, what kind of terrible deeds he committed. Surely if he was that bad, he should be in prison? Or in a mental hospital of some sort? But he’s not, so surely he can’t be that bad.
Curiosity killed the cat. At this rate it’ll kill me.
Or Tristan will. He’ll be Jordan’s hand extended beyond the grave.
Soon enough, my next session with Dr. Wolf looms overhead, less than twenty-four hours away. It’s that very same night that I finally decide I should just do it. Maybe it’ll help me realize that Dr. Wolf is right and I can push myself a bit—and that I shouldn’t pay Tristan a single thought more.
After dinner, while my dad is helping me clean up, I ask, “Can I take the car into town?”
My dad nearly drops the plate he’s currently scraping off into the garbage when he looks at me. In fact, he does a double-take, as if he has to make sure I’m still his daughter. “You want to go into town? For what? Are you feeling all right?” The last question is spoken in jest, but I can tell he kind of meant it.
I open the dishwasher and load our stuff in, and my dad hands me his plate while giving me the side-eye. “It’s just something Dr. Wolf wanted me to do before our next session. He wants me to go to a place called The Drip, order a coffee, and sit there while I drink it. I thought it was stupid, but…”
“No, it’s not stupid,” my dad quickly says. “Take the car. Go. See the town for yourself. It’s a quaint little place. I think you’ll like it.” Over the weekend, he did try getting me to go out with him, but I just couldn’t.
Literally I’ve been to Dr. Wolf’s house and that pizza place after our first session—and that’s it.
“Just be careful,” my dad says. “And text me when you get there. And when you leave—”
I roll my eyes. “Dad, I’ll be fine.” That reassurance means nothing, but it’s all I can do. We have to learn to trust each other, I guess, otherwise nothing will ever change. Unlike Tristan, I still have my own freewill. If I want to leave the house, I can. Nothing my dad can do or say could stop me, if I really wanted to go.
In fact, the only reason I’m still alive is because of him. For him, I should say. If I didn’t have him, I don’t think I would’ve cared enough to resist the urge to end it all—and as bad as it is, that urge still lingers in the back of my mind sometimes.
It would be so much easier to end my story now.
But I’m here, and so I might as well go to the stupid coffee shop.
We finish cleaning the kitchen together; I think my dad wants to see me off. After dinner is cleaned up, he comes with me to the garage door and plucks his keys off the small hook he hung beside it.
“Remember,” he starts.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll send you a message when I get there and when I leave,” I say, already knowing that’s what he was about to say. As if I’d forget. I’m already wearing a hoodie—a pretty much permanent fixture on my body since we moved here—so all I have to do is slip on my shoes. I reach out my hand, palm up, waiting for the keys.
This is a momentous day. The first time I’ve gone out by myself in a long, long time, and I know my dad probably doesn’t want me to go, even though he’s supportive. He worries too much… or maybe he worries just enough.
It takes him a moment, but he drops the keys into my hand with a sigh. Before I can turn away and, you know, leave on my mission, he pulls me in for a hug. “Be safe, kiddo,” he whispers, and then he lets me go.
Ironic that we only became huggers after we lost everything. We never hugged before it all went to shit.
“Bye, Dad.”
“Bye. Love you.”
The last words out of my mouth before I leave are “I love you, too.” I know why he’s extra huggy and sentimental: it’s because he regrets not saying it more to us as kids. Maybe, just maybe if he would’ve, Jordan never would’ve done what he did.
My dad doesn’t know, though. He doesn’t know the whole truth.
I’m out the door and in the car in the next moment, pulling out my phone for directions to this coffee place. My phone is basically a useless accessory now; I had to change numbers and get rid of all my profiles on all the social media sites—it wasn’t that I used them lots, it’s more that people kept finding me and sending me hate messages on them, after the shooting.
The Drip is seventeen minutes away. The perks of living in the middle of nowhere mean nothing is close. It also means the roads are pretty empty as I drive along—and that’s something I won’t complain about. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve been behind the wheel.
It feels… too normal. Like everything is fine when I know it’s not. Honestly, I don’t understand how we’re supposed to go on acting like life is normal when everything is still so topsy-turvy. It doesn’t feel real.
I turn the radio up and try to find a station that plays songs I recognize that are from this century. My dad loves the nineties, but I just can’t do it.
The roads are dark thanks to the lack of streetlights. No sidewalks, the houses are pretty far apart. So not what I’m used to. The days are getting shorter, the nights longer; the air itself is getting a bit too cold for just a hoodie, but I’m one of those people that hates big jackets and refuses to wear them under any circumstances… but then again, that could be just because I never really had to wear them growing up.
I nearly miss a turn thanks to not knowing how to drive these roads. I have to slam on the brakes to make it, and let’s just say I’m glad there are no other cars around to witness the terrible turn. I’d describe the drive as interesting, but I make it to The Drip in one piece.
The Drip is indeed a small coffee shop on the main road in town. It looks like it was taken straight out of the movies or something, with a full wall of windows and old-timey architecture beyond. It has parallel parking in front of it, but it also has a small parking lot behind it—that’s where I park. No way in hell will you catch me parallel parking in public.
Once I pull into a parking spot, I turn the car off. I don’t get out right away. I sit there for a while, hyper aware that, while the parking lot isn’t jam-packed with vehicles, it’s still full enough. People around here don’t have many places to hang out, so I bet some of them frequent The Drip regardless of what hour of the day it is.
This is the first time I’ve been in public without my dad at my side. The first time that I’m alone. I honestly don’t know if I can do it.
But I’m here. I said I was going to attempt it, so let’s just get it over with already.
I heave a sigh before getting out of the car, and I lock its doors as I walk away. My feet take me along the sidewalk that wraps around the outer edge of The Drip, and soon enough I’m standing before the glass door.
Here goes nothing.
Gathering myself, I push inside. The door swings shut behind me on its own, loud enough to make me jump out of habit. Stepping into The Drip is like walking into another world, a world that I never saw myself in before. There are maybe half a dozen or so other people scattered amongst the seating areas in the front of the shop. Most are in pairs, but there are two individuals sitting by themselves, one working on a laptop and one reading some book while sipping on an iced coffee of some kind.
I’m slow in walking to the counter, my eyes wide as I take in the menu. I’m not really a coffee drinker. I don’t like the taste. Maybe I’ll just get a pastry.
A young woman stands at the ready, a dark brown apron covering most of her clothes. Her brown hair is drawn into a tight ponytail, and she gives me an easy smile as she says, “Hi! What can I make for you tonight?”
I take a tiny step forward as I pull out my wallet from my hoodie—no purses, ever. Not my kind of thing, kind of like coffee. “Could I just, um, get one of these?” I point to some chocolate-filled pastry that actually looks yummy. “Oh, and can I get a cup of water with that, please?”
The girl doesn’t blink at my request. “Of course!” She sounds peppy. Happy, even. As she grabs a piece of wax paper to grab the pastry, she says, “I don’t recognize you. New in town?”
Talking to a stranger: yet another thing I’m not used to, let alone a stranger that sounds so stupidly happy just to exist. I have to force myself to speak, “Yeah. My dad and I just moved here, actually.”
She slides my pastry into a bag and folds the top down. “No way! You guys moved into that house on… oh, where was it? Over on Elk Creek?”
This really must be a small town, because how the heck would she know that?
I’m so caught off-guard by her knowing where we live that it takes me a moment to mumble out a “Yeah.”
She practically bounces as she fetches me a clear cup and fills it with water. “How do you like it here so far?”
“Um, it’s nice, I guess. Not what I’m used to. I do miss seeing the sun more often.” I try to joke, but it just sounds lame, so I end my rambling there. I was weird and quiet before everything went to shit. My quirks just got ten times worse afterward.
The girl doesn’t miss a beat. “You’ll get used to it. It’s not so bad.” She pushes my cup and my pastry bag toward me, saying, “Don’t worry about this one. It’s on the house.”
“Are you sure?”
She nods. “Yep! Newcomer’s special.” The girl gives me a dramatic wink.
“Oh, um, thanks?” It comes out sounding like a question, mostly because it is one. A part of me thinks she’s going to change her mind or that the owner of The Drip will come walking out of the back door and yell at her for giving something away for free. Just to assuage my guilt, I open my wallet and stuff the only cash I have—two whole dollars—into the tip jaw near the register before I grab my stuff and head to an unoccupied corner table.
I sit down and focus on my breathing. In my chest, my heart beats a little faster than it should, but I can handle it. I think. As long as it doesn’t get any worse.
I don’t look at the other people in the coffee shop. I unroll the small brown bag and pull out the pastry, setting it on top. I’m not really hungry, but I should pick at it so I don’t look too weird. No one else in The Drip is paying any attention to me. They’re all immersed in their own lives, chatting with their friends, typing away, or with their nose in a book.
I’m just a faceless, nameless person to these people. Dr. Wolf was right. The thought is comforting to someone like me.
Someone like me. Who am I, exactly? A broken girl who thought she knew her brother… but in reality, Jordan hid his true malice from me just like he did everyone else. I mean, he’d make jokes about certain things, but who doesn’t?
My throat gets dry when I think about him, so I take a small sip of water before tearing off a tiny piece of the pastry and sticking it in my mouth.
The person who was reading must’ve decided it’s time to head home. They get up, pack their book in their bag, and toss out their empty drink before heading to the door. They leave, and the door swings shut behind them. The sound of the door closing is louder than it should be—maybe because the coffee shop is relatively quiet, save for the hushed conversations of the two small groups of people on the opposite side of the open space.
But that slam… it’s enough to take me back to a place I keep finding myself in, a memory I’d rather forget but one that refuses to be ignored.
At first everyone thought it was just a drill. We do those a lot, and they never tell us it’s a drill so we’ll take them seriously. Never mind the fact that those drills give handfuls of students mini panic attacks, but better to have those and know what to do in a life-or-death situation than the opposite.
But then we hear the sound. It’s not close, but the sound is far from faint. It seems to echo in the air, a bang that anyone would recognize even if they’ve never heard it before in their life. The only ingrained response is fear.
Robbie breaks the silence of the computer lab, saying, “Shit.” He quickly gets hushed by our teacher and the librarian.
It’s a waiting game after that. When you sit there, waiting for the unknown to happen, wondering whether you might die, your heart feels like it’s going to explode inside you. Your lungs push against your ribcage like they’re not getting enough air. You feel liminal, like you’re out of time and standing in the middle of crossroads, with no knowledge of where to go.
No one should die like this. No one’s last moments should be so full of terror. But we don’t get to choose how our last moments are. Fate decides them for us, and oftentimes fate is not a kind master.
I don’t know how many shots we hear. In the moment, as time stretches on toward infinity, it feels like thousands. Every second that passes feels like an hour, and every minute is an eternity. Bam, bam, bam.
You never think it’s going to happen to you. You never think death will come for you before your time, especially when you’re young.
It’s not right. None of it is right, but that doesn’t stop the fact that it’s happening.
Someone rattles the main library door, like they’re trying desperately to get in. We’re off to the side, in the adjoined computer lab, but if they get in, all they’ll have to do to see us is walk deep into the library.
And then we’re well and truly fucked.
Some students are texting their parents, their friends, their loved ones, telling them goodbye. Others are so scared I think they’ve left their bodies, like me. I can’t do anything but focus on my breathing and wonder why it sounds so loud—seriously, my breathing sounds as loud as the library door rattling on its hinges.
This is it. We’re all going to die here.
The door eventually gives way, and we collectively hold our breath. We’re sitting ducks, and though this is technically something we’ve practiced since first stepping foot in elementary school, you can’t really prepare for the real thing.
I’m on the outer edge of the group of students huddling in the corner of the computer lab. I’ll be the first to die, and there’s nothing I can do but accept it. The next time I breathe out, it’s a slow and steady exhale of acceptance.
But everything I thought I knew, everything I was expecting… none of it matters the moment the shooter walks around the corner and reveals himself.
An invisible hand wraps itself around my throat, and all I can do is stare, wide-eyed, at the face I know more than my own.
I don’t see the big gun. I’m too busy staring into his eyes—a more bluish gray than mine—and at the blood splatter on his lower right cheek.
“Jordan?” I can barely say his name thanks to the pressure around my throat. Out of everyone in this school, my brother was the last person I ever thought would…
I can’t even finish the thought, because Jordan gives me a slow smile and raises that big gun. And then, finger on the trigger, he gives that big gun another workout. Bang, bang, bang. Sounds I would hear every time I close my eyes.
I wasn’t the first in the room to die that day, because the shooter would never have pointed that gun at me. I survived, and everyone hated me for it. No one trusted me. No one liked me. Jordan was my brother, my twin, and only one of us died that day.
My skin itches, and I want to tear it all off. Cut it off, gut myself of the memories that refuse to go away. Cut deep enough that I’ll become a different person and be better.
But that’s impossible, isn’t it?
One of the groups leave the shop, and the door slams again—and just like before, it’s like a gunshot. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck stand straight up. My chest feels like it has bricks on it. My mind spins. Everything feels topsy-turvy and I can’t quite get ahold of anything. I want to be sick, and at the same time I want to pass out.
I can’t be here. I need air. I need… I need to go back in time and change everything.
I get up, barely able to gather my stuff. I practically stumble to the nearest garbage can, and I dump my stuff in before hurrying out, tripping on nothing as I go. I’m far enough away from the door that the bang that accompanies it as it closes doesn’t reach me. Fumbling for the keys to my dad’s car, I get in and turn it on. My hands shake as I try to steady them on the steering wheel.
Though I don’t know my way home, I don’t stop and type in my new address on my phone. I just go.
My head spins. Every time I swallow it’s like knives in my throat. I don’t understand how I’m supposed to go on like this, how I’m supposed to pretend everything is fine when it’s not. Why bother living when living feels like this?
I turn the car away from the main street in town and within a few minutes I’m surrounded by trees and the falling darkness of night.
Intrusive thoughts find their way into my head as I drive aimlessly: it’d be so easy to jerk the steering wheel to the right and hit any one of the big pine trees lining the road. So easy to unbuckle my seatbelt and let it all go. My dad would get over it eventually, wouldn’t he?
My hands tighten around the wheel as my foot presses down harder on the pedal. It wouldn’t take much. Just a quick jerk of my muscles, and then, just like that, it would all be over. The pain, the misery, the regret and the guilt; I wouldn’t feel any of it anymore.
It’s tempting. God, it’s so tempting. I want to do it more than I’ve ever wanted to do anything. The urge is almost impossible to ignore.
I don’t know how, but I manage to do just that: ignore it. My foot slams on the brake, and the car skids to a halt. It’s a good thing no car’s behind me for that. I pull out my phone and search for an address.
Not home. I can’t go home right now.
So, because of that, I go to the only other place I can: Dr. Wolf’s.