AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I had to fight the grin. “You want answers or not? I’m just trying to help here.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. The OCD one and the… the anxiety one.”
“Which one is stronger?”
“I mean, Grayson’s a little taller and bulkier—”
“No, I mean which thingin youwas stronger before it turned into your monsters? OCD or anxiety?”
She shifted in her seat. “Anxiety. Anxiety for sure.”
I felt a pang in my chest. “Then he’ll always win against the other one in a physical fight.”
She was quiet as she swirled her coffee, pensive. “Are you saying Grayson can—the anxiety—he cankillthe OCD?”
“Nope. Remember what I told you before? They can kill each other, and ink gets everywhere when they do it, but they always come back.” I closed my eyes and the memory washed over me. “I’ve even seen one of them get hit by a car, but she came back the next day as if nothing happened. She should’ve been dead.”
Grace looked up, frightened. “Did she… did she remember? How did she react?”
“Acted like it never happened. She was so sure of it too—I felt like I was taking crazy pills or somethin’…”
“But… was she… did she have broken bones or anything?”
“There wasn’t a scratch on her. She had some new tattoos, though.”
“Tattoos?”
I nodded. “They get tattoos when you try to get rid of them, or if they get hurt. It comes out in the color of the ink you used when you wrote them.”
Grace went quiet. Then asked, “Do they just… not notice getting more tattoos?”
“They act like it was always there. Shit, they convince you that ithasalways been there, and they’re so fucking deep in your head that you believe it. It’s weird as shit.”
“I feel that,” she said, meeting my eyes.
Another shiver crawled up my spine.
“I mean, when I’m around Grayson, it’s easy to think that there’s nothing wrong between us. It’s… it’s like I’ve got some mind-control thing going on—”
“Because that’s exactly what it is,” I said. “They’ve got a hold on you. Because theyareyou. You get it? I don’t know how long you’ve been seeing Dr. Silk, but she told me some shit today that really stuck with me. And it’s that if you’ve had these mental issues long enough, they bury themselves into who you are as a person. I was asking her how long it would take to get rid of… ofsomething,and she said I gotta un-learn some shit.”
Grace stared at me.
For a minute I thought she shorted out or something, but then she said, “Just like working through real anxiety and depression and OCD and… and everything else.”
I nodded. “Seems like it.”
“Which brings me back to my main question… how do you get rid of them, specifically? Besides making peace with them and everything.”
I shrugged. “As for the specifics? I don’t fucking know. I just worked through them, worked with them, accepted them, fucked them one last time and then they’d go away. But what Dr. Silk told me today… it has me thinking.” I rested my chin on my finger and thumb. “Maybe I “un-learned” them accidentally, from being around them a while. It’s easier to work through them when you can talk to them face-to-face than it is when they’re stuck in your head, calling you a piece of shit and all that.”
Grace seemed to relax a little, because she started to poke at her cinnamon roll with the plastic fork. “So… to get rid of Ink-Grayson, I need to spend more time with him? But he makes me feel so shitty—”
“Yeah, they do that,” I said, thinking of Summer. “They’re the worst things about you. They’re the thing that circles in your mind when you’re trying to go to sleep at night. They’re everything that haunts you, everything that makes you feel guilty. You can ignore them to keep them away from you for a little bit, but they’re tied into your memories. They’re woven into you, so they’ll always come back. At least, until you make peace with them or something, I don’t know. Sorry I don’t have all the answers.”
“You’ve learned a lot on your own,” Grace said softly. “I’m… I don’t know what I would do without someone like you to talk to about this. I can’t imagine how alone you felt, how no one believed you if you tried to tell them—”
“Well, I’m a dude so I’m used to it. We’re not allowed to have feelings, remember?”
