2. Chapter 2 #2
I hand him a lie. I just grab a few old pieces, twist them together, and build something interesting enough to keep his pen moving.
I stretch out on the couch, one ankle over my knee, and stare at the ceiling for a second like I’m really considering it.
“No. Different.”
“Tell me.” His pen lifts.
Different is his favorite word with me. Different means progress. Means movement. Means maybe today he gets to feel useful instead of just expensive.
I lean back and give myself half a second to build the thing properly.
“I’m back at my parents’ house,” I say. It’s bullshit already, but I can see him taking it in. “Everything’s wrong with it. Hallways in places they shouldn’t be and rooms that don’t belong there.”
I keep going, spinning it as I move, building each part just far enough ahead of him that he doesn’t get time to look up and question it.
His eyes are glued to the page.
Good.
“There’s something in one of the bedrooms. I know it’s there, but I never see it. I just hear it moving around. Scraping. Breathing. Every time I get close to the door, I can hear it on the other side, like it knows I’m there, too.”
His pen starts moving faster. And that’s my cue.
I sit up slowly, drag a hand over my jaw, and keep talking while I get to my feet, pretending I’m too wound up to stay still. Simon doesn’t stop me. He never does unless he thinks I’m about to put a hole through the drywall.
“I try to leave,” I say, walking over to the little coffee station in the corner, “but every hallway takes me back to the same door.”
There’s a row of paper cups stacked beside the machine, a glass bowl with sugar packets, little wooden stir sticks, and cheap powdered creamer I wouldn’t feed to a dog.
I glance at the cups like I’m deciding whether I want one.
Behind me, Simon says, “And how do you feel in the dream?”
I almost smile.
“Pissed off,” I say. “Then trapped and hopeless. Then pissed off again.”
“Do you open the door?”
“Not in this one.”
My fingers drift to the sugar bowl, and I wrap my fingers around the packets.
“I just stand there listening to it breathe on the other side, knowing it wants me to come in.” I put the first batch in my pocket and reach again.
Simon keeps writing.
“And what do you think would happen if you opened it?” he asks.
“They change every time,” I say. “Sometimes I think it’s empty. Sometimes I think it’s me in there.”
I take the last two sugars and slip them into my hoodie pocket with the rest.
By the time I turn back around, the bowl is empty. I head back to the couch and drop into it.
He looks up and studies me for a second. “That sounds like a variation on the same theme.”
“Everything’s a variation on the same theme with you people.”
His mouth twitches, and his pen starts to move again.
I let him have his fun for another minute.
“Can I get a coffee?” I ask.
Simon glances up over the notebook. “There’s a machine right there.”
“I know. I’m asking you.”
That gets a look. He knows I’m being an asshole. The question is whether he feels like shutting me down.
After a second, he sets the notebook aside and stands.
“Black?”
“Sugar.”
He pauses halfway to the counter and looks back at me. “Since when do you take sugar in your coffee?”
“Feeling indulgent.” I shrug.
He turns back to the machine, punches the button, waits while it sputters to life and pours. I watch him reach for the sugar bowl and stall.
“Hm.” He picks the bowl up and glances inside as though sugar might magically appear. “Thought I had more.”
I say nothing.
“I’ll grab some from outside.” He sets the bowl down.
I lean back into the couch, spread out, and watch him head for the door with the coffee in his hand.
“Sure,” I say.
The door shuts behind him, and I’m moving before the handle settles back into place. I’ve already worked out how long I’ve got. Thirty seconds if he goes straight to the kitchen and comes back. Maybe forty-five if something delays him.
I cross the office fast and go straight to the desk.
Simon’s neat. Always has been. My eyes skim the day’s work, looking for the slot before mine.
There.
I pull it free, open it just enough, and the first thing that greets me is her name.
Lilly Harlow.
A few clipped details I have no time to read, but it’s enough to make her real now. Not the girl from the rink. Not the girl from the hallway. Not Snowflake.
Lilly Harlow.
I take my phone out, snap one quick picture, and put it away.
No lingering and flipping through her file. I haven’t earned the right to know anything that’s in there past her name, age, and address. I want her to tell me, eventually.
The file goes back exactly where it was. I give the desk one last look, checking for anything out of place, then cross back to the couch and drop into the same position I was in before Simon left.
By the time the door opens again, I’m stirring the air with pretend boredom.
Simon comes back in with a few sugar packets pinched in one hand and the coffee in the other.
“Could’ve sworn I had more in here,” he says, shutting the door with his foot.
He hands me the cup and a packet of sugar.
“Sweet tooth out of nowhere?” he asks, half-joking, trying to lighten whatever tension he thinks is still hanging from earlier.
“Go figure.” I tear one open with my teeth and dump it in.
I stir the coffee even though I take it black. The spoon taps against the cup in little, dull clicks while Simon sits back down and reaches for his notebook again.
“Where were we?”
I look at him over the rim of the cup and take a sip. Tastes like syrupy fucking garbage.
Lilly.
The name loops once, then again, slow through my head.
Simon starts talking again, circling back to sleep, anger, the old rot, trying to drag me into the same graveyard we always end up pacing.
My body is in the room, but the rest of me isn’t.
I know exactly what I did. I know what it is. A line crossed with both my eyes open.
But all I can feel is the hum under my skin. The sharp little crackle that’s been dead in me for so long I almost forgot what it felt like. Interest is one thing. Curiosity is another. This is neither.
Lilly.
Her name sits in my head like a secret I stole fair and square.
By the time the session ends, I’ve barely said ten honest words.
Simon would say that I’ve wasted my time and money today. I’d give much more for her name.
He thinks because I’m not baring my teeth anymore, the animal went back in the cage.
We say our parting words, and I set the half-empty coffee cup down, look at him once, and head for the door with her name moving through my head in a steady, private rhythm.
For the very first time, I leave Simon’s sessions feeling more awake than ever. And it has nothing to do with the disgusting sludge I just forced myself to drink.