I felt stupid for kissing him and ashamed and like I had betrayed Marxy and Gert at the same time.
I punched my leg a few times, really hard, and told myself how stupid I was, thinking that someone normal and beautiful like Hendo could actually fall in love with me. He had defeated me by making me think I am a normal person.
He was a villain.
On the way to Dr. Laird’s office, we did not talk about the break-in. Gert’s brain was not really working. He was like a robot. We drove in quiet. Gert didn’t put on the radio or his music.
Gert held the bottom of the steering wheel with one of his fingers. His other arm hung out of the car window and swung on the outside while he drove.
He sipped his coffee. I sipped my coffee and tried to forget that something bad had happened, and that more bad things would happen in the future because of the first bad thing, and that all of those bad things came from the fact that I had tried to have sex with someone who wasn’t Marxy, and was a slut, a word that Gert sometimes used with his friends, and that men call women sometimes in porno films.
It means you try to have sex with too many people. It was too much of a fuck-dick word to be one of my Words of Today.
When we parked he turned to me.
“I don’t want to lie,” I said.
“It’s not lying.”
“Telling part-truths is lying when someone wants to know the whole truth.”
“Look. Just say what I told you to say—that you were asleep, someone came in, and we’re going to be talking to the police.”
“Are we going to be talking to the police?”
He crumpled up his coffee cup and threw it on the ground of the backseat. “We’ll talk after.”
He got out. I was supposed to follow him out but didn’t want to.
“Gert,” I said.
“What? We’re going to be late.”
“I don’t like this.”
“What’s the rule you’re always saying? Tribe comes first? Well, this is all about the fucking tribe.”
He slammed the door shut.
It was so early that the security guard at the front had to call up and get permission before opening the door for us and letting us get into the elevator. We got off and went to Dr. Laird’s door, the one to his waiting room, which was locked. Gert knocked twice.
Dr. Laird opened the door. Hanna the Secretary wasn’t even there.
“Jesus, Gert,” Dr. Laird said, seeing Gert’s face. “Have you seen a doctor?”
“I’m fine,” Gert said.
Dr. Laird practically pushed us into the room.
He had a lot of energy. I wondered how he could have energy when Gert and I didn’t. The air-conditioning robot wasn’t on. The office was in between being hot and cold. Usually it was very cool. Now it felt like neither, and I felt my armpits getting wet.
Dr. Laird walked around his desk and picked up a cup of tea on his desk. His fingers picked up the little dangling string and made the bag inside the cup bob up and down. It was Earl Gray and had been sitting so long it had started to smell like wet feet.
“So,” he said.
“So everyone is okay,” Gert said. “Let’s just get that out of the way.”
“Okay,” he said. He took out his notebook and asked for the story of what had happened. Gert told it, even though he wasn’t there. Dr. Laird listened and then asked if Gert was home during any of this.
“Zelda was at home,” Gert said.
“Alone?” Dr. Laird asked.
“Since she’s an adult, and you’re always saying she should have more responsibility.”
Dr. Laird put his tea down and held his hands up. “Nobody is saying anything different. I’m just trying to get the facts of things straight. So someone broke in by pretending to be someone else. Is that right, Zelda?”
I nodded. My mouth felt sewn shut. I dug my fingernail of my thumb into one of the other fingers.
“So if Zelda was home alone, and you weren’t there, why is your face bruised?” Dr. Laird asked Gert.
“Unrelated.”
Dr. Laird looked at me and I nodded a second time. “Gert was not there.”
He wrote something in his notebook. Then Dr. Laird asked me for my version of the story, which I had been practicing at home since I knew Dr. Laird would ask me. I took a deep breath and remembered where to start.
I said that one of the neighbors had knocked on the door, or I thought it was one of the neighbors. “It wasn’t. And it was dark in the hallway outside the door so when I looked through the hole thing I couldn’t really tell who it was.”
Gert was frowning, his eyes staring at me.
I continued telling the story. “When I opened the door he came in and took me to the bathroom and locked me in there.”
“He had a gun,” Gert said.
“Gert,” Dr. Laird said. “Please let her talk.”
“Stop shouting,” I said, and they looked at me and I realized nobody had been shouting.
Dr. Laird wrote something in his notebook. When I tried to look at the words he cleared his throat.
“Zelda,” Dr. Laird said. “What’s our deal?”
“I don’t care about our deal,” I shouted. “I care about the world being filled with shit-heels and fuck-dicks who hurt people.”
Taking a breath, Dr. Laird looked serious, more serious than I had ever seen him. “Did you call the police?”
“I did,” Gert said.
There were so many lies flying around that even I was confused about what had happened. I was lying about Hendo, and Gert was lying about calling the police.
“And what did they say?” Dr. Laird asked. “Do they have any clues?”
“I think it’s important we focus less on playing detective and more about how Zelda is feeling. It must have been scary.”
Gert sounded like Dr. Laird, who always talks about feelings.
“Sure,” Dr. Laird said. “Of course.”
I was having trouble figuring out what to say. I felt bad about what had happened, and I felt bad about having lied to both Gert and to Dr. Laird. I picked up the stress ball and started squeezing it, trying to make all of the explosions in my brain go from my hands and into the ball.
“I did not know he was going to be a robber,” I said. “He said I was pretty and we kissed and—”
Gert looked at me.
“I thought we were hearing the truth,” Dr. Laird said.
“Zelda,” Gert said.
“Let her talk, Gert,” Dr. Laird said. “You kissed a person at the door?” He looked at his notes. “I’m not sure I understand.”
I remembered a video I had seen on the Internet. It was supposed to make you into a better person. The man on it said that lying is cancer. I know that Mom died of cancer, and the last thing I want is to get cancer and die like her, so I didn’t want to lie to Dr. Laird. Cancer isn’t contagious, meaning it doesn’t get passed from one person to another person, but the video on the Internet says lying is contagious. The more you lie to people, the more people will lie to you.
“Honesty is like a sword you can use to cut through all that,” the bald man on the video said, and since I am a Viking and I know how to use swords, I saw that he was saying that the truth can make you powerful and strong if you use it right.