I put the sponge into the bucket, then squeezed it out and lined it up beside the pail. I turned to her and saw the worry in her guarded expression.
“What are you doing?”
I blew out a breath. “Just cleaning.”
“Honey, you’re sixteen. Boys don’t clean when they’re that age. Hell, your father didn’t clean when he was in his thirties.”
I wanted to laugh, but my gaze kept straying to the bucket. I inched a little closer to it, until Mom reached out and grabbed my wrist. I flinched and pulled away, then saw how hurt she looked. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“No, I’m sorry. Matt, do you think… maybe we should see about getting you to talk to someone?”
After a few moments, I understood what she meant. “A shrink.”
“A psychologist, yes. What he did to you wasn’t right, and maybe you need someone who will help you understand it wasn’t your fault.”
Agitation welled within me, and I started stalking around the room, throwing my hands up as we talked. “But it was,” I protested. “I mean, he thought I wanted it. He said so. So maybe deep down I did, and he noticed.”
“Stop that!” Mom screamed, her face a mask of pain. “Just….” Her voice and expression softened. “Please, stop.”
She tried to make me go to school, but when I got there, all I could see was the disarray. Nothing in the place it belonged, everything dirty. The kids were the worst, with their weird hair and their grungy clothes. Who could live like that? It struck me at that moment. He’d grabbed my hair, held me by it. Any one of these people I went to school with could do the same. Anyone could use my hair against me. The thought stayed with me throughout the day, as I ran my fingers through my blond locks. When I got home that night, I went to the bathroom to shower. After, I pulled out one of the safety razors Mom had bought me to shave with, and I cut off all my hair. It took several tries, and a lot of razors, but eventually my head was smooth.
When Mom saw me, she burst into tears. Clay found the whole thing hilarious.
Life changed for me after that. I stopped going to school, and eventually Mom quit begging me to go. I started to spend more and more time in my room, where order reigned. Mr. Jackson’s lawyer got a plea bargain for him. He agreed to not fight the charges, for which we were grateful. It turned out that Mr. Jackson had received several reprimands from the school district but had never been formally disciplined. Our attorney went to court, saying they were culpable in the situation. Knowing they didn’t have a leg to stand on, they paid the sum of three million dollars, which would be deposited in an account for me to collect when I turned eighteen. So Mr. Jackson went to prison for three years, and I started my lifelong sentence.
MOM WORRIEDas my attitude swirled into depression. She made an appointment for me with a doctor, then dragged me to his office. At first I resisted, because the outside world was in such a sorry state. I could see so many places where it could be better. When we got to the doctor’s office, she introduced me to Dr. Robert Treadway. When he ushered me inside, a sense of peace prevailed.
I liked it there. For the most part, he had everything neat and organized, even if I saw a few places that could be better. When he saw me reaching to straighten something, he smiled and indulged me, allowing me to rearrange things to make more sense. Every week for the next three months, he’d let me come in and put things back the way I’d had them. I got comfortable in his office, as it seemed like an extension of me.
Our conversations were kept light. How was I feeling? How were things at home? Just surface stuff that I knew he was using to try to get into my head. Finally he got down to the big question.
“Do you want to talk about what happened with your teacher?” the doctor—“call me Rob”—asked.
“Not really, no.”
I didn’t want to even think about the man, but he lived in a corner of my mind and wouldn’t go away. And to talk about it with the doctor? That would simply be reliving the whole mess again. Definitely not something I wanted to do.
“You know, it’s not going to get better if we don’t work on it together.”
And wasn’t that the crux of the situation? It wouldn’t get better if we didn’t talk about it, but talking about it would make me feel worse than I did because the memories would overwhelm me. I straightened the items on his desk, moving the penholder with a beautiful pair of gold Cross pens to the far corner of his desk.
“Why did you put it there?” he asked. “Last week you had it on the left side.”
And I had. My hands started shaking when I reached for it again, but it looked right, even if my mind told me it wasn’t.
“Matthew?”
No one called me that unless I’d done something to piss them off, but Rob said it in a nonthreatening kind of way, and I found it soothing.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “It seemed like it should be there.”
“That’s a good enough answer. Sometimes when something feels more right in one place, it’s okay to move it. Nothing needs to stay as it is forever.”
But it did. Or at least it should. There could only be order if nothing moved after I put it in the proper place. But I hadn’t lied; it did seem like it belonged more where I put it than on the other side of the desk. I’d noticed Rob was right-handed, and it seemed foolish to have it where he needed to stretch all the way across the desk to reach it.
He started again. “So. Your teacher. He changed his story quite often. Why do you think he said the first time you’d gone willingly?”
My gaze darted around the room, the feel of him being in the enclosed space with me nearly overwhelming. I could smell the stale sweat, hear him panting, feel his grip on my hair. My breath began to quicken and my body shook. In my mind I could hear his voice telling me that this was what I’d come for.
“It wasn’t!” I shouted, pushing up out of the chair. “I didn’t go there to have sex with him. I thought… I thought I was helping him out because his car didn’t work. He lied to me, and I won’t trust him again. I won’t be stupid enough to trust anyone ever again.” I turned to run for the door, but Rob’s voice cut through the haze.
“Matthew, please sit down.”
Sit down? Screw that. I wanted to run and never stop. Get away from the voice, from the memories that assailed me every night. Away from the nightmares that were my constant companions until I turned eighteen, gained the money that had been put aside for me, and bought my property, built a house, and removed myself from society.
Familiarity brought me peace, even if it took my mother and brother away from me.
A small price to pay, though, I told myself. Every night when I lay there, unable to sleep.
