Letter Seventeen #2
“No.” Hot tears sprung to my eyes. “I don’t want to go back.”
I’d been so good—good at not being caught, at least. I’d gone over a year without seeing Dr. Goldstein. A new record for me.
“You’re going.” Nic lifted his phone from the pocket behind his lapel. “I’m leaving him a message.”
“Daddy,” I said, clutching the island counter with both hands. “Daddy, please. Don’t make me go.”
Michael rubbed a hand over his face while you watched us, confused.
“Don’t pull that daddy shit on me,” Nic said, jamming his finger at me again. “You hurt that girl, Elliot. You’re not supposed to hurt people.”
“But she’s a bitch,” I said.
“I don’t care what she is. It’s never okay to deliberately hurt a person. There is never an excuse. You could’ve caused permanent damage to her eye. You’ll go to Dr. Goldstein, you’ll write the letter, and you’ll apologize to her.”
“No.” I frantically shook my head. “I won’t.”
“You will, Elliot.”
“I won’t do it,” I said shakily. “You can’t make me. I refuse.”
“You will,” Nic said, in a voice that was the total opposite of mine: eerily calm and steady. “Or I’ll admit you to a psychiatric hospital, where you’ll complete a treatment program for teens who like to hurt themselves and others.”
“What?” I cried. “You wouldn’t do that.”
“I’ve had the paperwork sitting in my desk at work for quite a while now. Fucking try me.”
While I stared at him in shock, Michael clutched his forehead. “Nic,” he said, “I take full responsibility for this. It’s my fault.”
“Oh, really? Are you the one who hurt Sienna?”
“No, but I shouldn’t have started bringing her back here. She’s mean to Elliot. She says shit to mess with her. She is a bitch.”
“So you’re saying she deserved it?”
“Well, no. Of course not. But—”
“You’re not taking responsibility for this, Michael.”
“But I want to,” Michael said. “Please, Nic. Punish me instead.”
Nic peered at him. “Punish you how exactly?”
“Tell my parents what I did to those guys. Tell them the police had to get involved. Forbid me to hang out over here. I don’t know.”
Nic shook his head. “Elliot did this, and Elliot will pay the consequences. Tell you what, though, Michael. She owes you an apology, too—for hurting your girlfriend. So you’ll also need to be here when it’s time for her to apologize.”
You drew back at the panic on Michael’s face. The question written all over yours was: What the hell is going on?
“Upstairs,” Nic ordered. “I’ll text you when it’s time for dinner.”
“Let me apologize to her the normal way,” I begged.
“Upstairs,” Nic repeated, still clutching his phone. “Right now. I’ve got a call to make.”
You asked if I felt remorse, Casey? Well, right then, at that very moment, I did. With the painful certainty of what was to come, I wished I’d never messed with that bitch.
“I’ll be good from now on,” I said to my dad. “I promise I’ll be good. Please.”
Nic rounded the island, slammed my English books shut, and shoved them into my bag. “I’ve heard it all before,” he said, yanking out my stool, then thrusting my backpack at me. “Get upstairs.”
“Daddy.”
“Hurting people is never okay!” he yelled—so loud all three of us jumped. “Hurting people is wrong, and there must be real consequences. You are not crying your way out of this, Elliot. Upstairs. Now.”
At dinner that night, I pushed food around my plate, avoiding your gaze, unable to bear the questions—or the disappointment—on your face.
The entire meal dragged, painfully quiet and awkward.
Until the considerably more awkward moment when my dad said, “Casey, where were you while Elliot spent time at Michael’s apartment yesterday? ”
You shifted uneasily in your chair. “Here,” you told him. “With Michael.”
“But she told Hal not to pick her up from school,” Nic said, “which means you should’ve been there to pick her up. So why were you here? Rather than waiting outside the school?”
“Well—she had a—she was staying late to meet with a teacher,” you stammered. “Or so I thought. So I…planned on leaving a bit later than I normally do.”
“From now on,” Nic said, “I want you waiting outside at 2:45. No matter what she says. If she’s really staying to meet with a teacher, so be it. You’ll wait until the meeting’s over. Understand?”
You nodded. “Yes, sir.”
The following day, Nic left work early to take me to Dr. Goldstein. He’s this partially bald man who wears thin-rimmed glasses and dresses like Mr. Rogers. He wears cardigans like you do, but the old man kind—in muted shades of puke—that he buttons over his protruding belly.
Every time I ever sat on the couch in Dr. Goldstein’s office, my dad sat there, too. Right beside me. Just listening. Just taking it all in—the why behind my actions.
It’s like I told you. All that darkness and rage had to be purged out of me, where it could be sifted through and examined, made sense of.
Where my dad could understand my actions for what they were and not what they looked like.
Without the why, he might be tempted to think they were the actions of a person who enjoyed hurting people, a person who might be cold and callous.
The why had to be hauled out of me so Nic could feel better about what I’d done.
The sessions weren’t only for me—they were for him, too.
For me, those sessions were a slow form of torture. Imagine a parent making you read something as personal as your diary aloud while some old guy listens. And when you’re finished, that guy forces you to dissect your innermost feelings. For hours.
It went something like this:
How did it feel as you carried this out to completion?
Let’s talk about why you couldn’t let this go.
Let’s talk about how you justified your behavior.
Let’s talk about why you need to retaliate.
You had the power to stop. At any point, you could’ve stopped yourself, and you didn’t. You chose to hurt another human being. You knew it was wrong and you did it, anyway. Let’s talk about the opportunities you had to walk away from this.
Now, let’s talk about how you’re going to handle a situation like this next time.
It felt like being interrogated. Like having teeth pulled. Like having the badness slowly excised from my body until there was no badness left.
During the first couple of sessions, I refused to talk, so Nic took away my phone and TV privileges until I decided to open up to Dr. Goldstein.
Nic also took away the time I typically spent with you, no longer allowing you to drop me off at school or pick me up.
He did those things instead, forgoing his regular working hours.
After each of our therapy sessions, he made me do my homework on the leather couch in his office while he answered emails and made important phone calls.
From experience, I knew the quicker I gave Nic what he wanted, the sooner the sessions would end, so I finally broke down the reasons for my hatred of her.
Sienna was smart, pretty, and—worst of all—free. She wore what she wanted, went where she wanted, dated who she wanted.
Meanwhile, I had little more freedom than a child.
I leaned into my lack of freedom heavily during those therapy sessions, making sure my dad understood just how much I resented the control he exerted over me, how much I envied girls like her. The only upside to therapy was that Nic had to sit there and listen as I listed my grievances against him.
As for why I attacked Sienna, I gave Nic and Dr. Goldstein the same explanation I’d given Michael.
She came onto you, you turned her down, and she refused to take no for an answer.
But Dr. Goldstein pushed harder. He said I hadn’t retaliated only because she’d refused to respect your answer.
While Nic listened, Dr. Goldstein drug the truth out of me: my tangled feelings for you, how much I despised your history with her, the jealousy I felt at the thought of you being with anyone, but her especially.
You have no idea how exposing it felt to admit those things in a room with two men, even if one of them was my father. Talk about humiliating.
Of course, I left out the part where I’d known the truth about you for months, and therefore I also knew how conniving Sienna was. I left out all the real reasons I’d tampered with Sienna’s stuff. Me knowing your secret was our secret, and I wanted to keep it that way.
After nine sessions, Dr. Goldstein gave me an assignment. Write three letters: one to my dad, one to Michael, and one to her.
You see, the letters weren’t only an exercise.
They were a guide. A way of keeping me on course, so I didn’t stray from the task at hand and say any of the nasty thoughts that might pop into my head.
My apologies were first discussed with my dad, because they had to be pre-approved by my dad.
In the case of Sienna’s letter, I intentionally neglected to mention how jealous I was of her romantic involvement with you, but he still approved it.
I guess he and I were on the same page about one thing: certain truths were better left unspoken.
In my letter to Nic, I apologized for sneaking off to Michael’s after school. For lying and hurting someone again. For disappointing him. He forgave me like he always did—with a hug and a kiss on the forehead.
Then, one overcast day after school, Nic arranged for Sienna and Michael to come over to the house.
They sat together on one sofa while Nic and I sat on the sofa facing theirs.
Michael couldn’t sit still, his leg jostling up and down.
Sienna, on the other hand, sat casual and relaxed beside him, her bright red lips upturned into a satisfied smirk. She loved this.
I read Michael’s letter first. When I asked for his forgiveness, he gave me a small smile and said, “Yes, Elliot. Yes. I forgive you.”
Sienna rolled her eyes—well, the eye I could see, anyway. She wore a patch over the other one.