She’s quiet for a few seconds. “I want to protect her from everything. I want to keep her safe from the world and everything that can hurt her.”
“We all do. C’mere, baby, let’s try to sleep.”
The light extinguishes, and the sound of sheets rustling follows.
I don’t go to Maverick’s room. Instead, I head back to River’s. My parents’ conversation makes me uneasy. I don’t like it when they talk about the night at the carnival.
I crawl back into bed and try to sleep, but the dark makes me feel alone, even with the sound of River breathing close by.
All I want is for things not to change. But they always do. And every time, I lose something. Pieces of memories disappear, and new fears creep in and live in those holes. I can never get a handle on things. I can’t keep up. And no matter how much I wish time would stand still, it keeps moving forward, pulling me and everyone else along with it.
Chapter Eight
Misinterpretation Nation
Lavender
Present day
“HOW WAS YOUR first day of classes?”
I adjust my laptop monitor so my therapist isn’t looking at my rack and neck. “Clusterfuck would about sum it up.”
Queenie nods slowly and folds her hands in her lap. As a kid, when I used to see her, I’d stay busy with my hands, working on some kind of art project while we talked. But now that our sessions are less frequent, I try my best to stay in the moment, even if it’s uncomfortable sometimes. We’ve been working together since I was four years old. Even though she’s still in Seattle with her family, she’s always made time for me.
There have been times when I only needed to talk once a month, but we decided since I’ve moved away from home, we’d start my first month with weekly sessions and adjust from there. This is the one relationship in my life no one is worried about me being too dependent on, myself included.
“Would you like to tell me what made the clusterfuck?”
I give her the abridged version—Maverick taking my car, breaking my glasses, Kodiak driving me home and being a giant dick, him being a dick again at the school café, and me basically holing up in my room after that.
Queenie’s expression shifts ever so slightly at my mention of Kodiak being a dick. I never told her what happened two years ago, not the real story. But the way her jaw tics tells me she’s unhappy with this news.
I run my finger in a figure eight around my knee, needing to keep my hands busy. “You know what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately?”
“What’s that, Lavender?”
“That time I got locked in the closet. I’m sure it’s symbolic, or some living metaphor for my deep-seated trauma or whatever—like the closet symbolizes my powerlessness and the feeling of being trapped.” I stare up at the ceiling for a moment, bits of memories filtering in—ones that aren’t related to the time I got locked in the closet. I always recognize them when they come. Sometimes it’s a sound and sometimes a smell, like dirt and metal and gas and watermelon Jolly Ranchers. “I felt like that today,” I continue, “when I was trapped in the car with Kodiak. Powerless and insignificant.”
“How did he make you feel insignificant?”
I sigh, debating how much truth I want to share. “He said I hadn’t changed at all.”
Queenie tucks her hair behind her ear, wedding ring glinting in the sunlight from the window behind her. “And how would he come to that conclusion during what you’ve said was a five-minute drive home?”
I keep my hands clasped in my lap to hide the damage to my palms. The upside of a video session is that she won’t see what I’ve accidentally done to myself. I don’t want it to raise red flags, or for my parents to come to the conclusion that this is already too hard for me. “I refused to speak to him and told him he didn’t deserve my words because all he’d do was twist them around.”
She chuckles softly and smiles. “Well, that doesn’t sound anything like the Lavender who was locked in the closet, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t.” I’m definitely not the helpless little girl I used to be. But the state of my palms tells me she’s still inside, and I don’t want to go back to that.
“Maybe Kodiak is projecting, and it’s not you who hasn’t changed, but him.”
“Maybe.” I don’t really know if that’s true or not.
I’ve learned a few very important things since the night Kodiak found me trapped in the closet when I was nine:
The path of least resistance might be more alluring, but it certainly isn’t always the best choice.
Dependency goes both ways, and I developed a very strong, very unhealthy dependence on my brother’s best friend.
That event triggered a savior complex in Kodiak that only got worse over the weeks and months that followed.
I didn’t realize at the time how destructive that would prove to be, or how much damage needing one person could do—not until I was forced to relearn how to manage my own fears.
____________________
Day two is slightly better than day one, primarily because I’m able to avoid Kodiak. And I have a three-hour evening class I’m excited for.
I had an opportunity to pick an additional elective, and there were lots of cool courses, so I chose an English course that focuses on myth and folklore. I’ve always loved fairy tales, and I figured a semester reading about gods and spirits would be awesome.
I climb the stairs, confused that the class is not in the Arts Building. But maybe they ran out of room or something. I find the classroom and search for one of the left-handed seats. It’s really annoying when righties sit in them, because there are so few available in most lecture halls. Luckily I’m able to grab one in the back. I hate sitting near the front because I feel like the professors are more likely to call on you. Even if I do know the answer, I always end up stumbling over my words.
There are still about fifteen minutes before class starts, so I pull out my laptop and log into my email account. I had some issues with it because they’d used my middle name instead of my given name for my email address, but I finally managed to get it sorted out yesterday. This means I haven’t had a chance to connect with professors yet, but I have my schedule and most of my textbooks, so I’m feeling pretty okay about things. Was it stressful getting it sorted out? Sure. But I managed all by myself without having any kind of panic attack, so that’s a win.
After a few minutes, the professor ambles in and sets up his laptop. The screen at the front of the class lights up and the course code appears, along with the name of the class. And it’s not an English class at all. I pull out my schedule, feeling suddenly hot because it’s obvious I’m in the wrong building, or something has gone incredibly awry.
I check the code on the screen against the one on my schedule. They match. I quickly log into the course calendar, positive there must be some kind of mistake, even though it’s clear there is not. I assumed that anything starting with an E would be an English course, but I see now that I botched the registration, and I’m sitting in Intro to Macroeconomics—which is basically another form of math, and my least-favorite subject in the entire history of the universe.