I place my hands over hers and she gasps quietly, looking up at me. I keep my eyes on her brown ones as I squeeze her hands softly. Her mouth parts as her gaze drops to my lips for only a second and then back up to my eyes.
“You’re getting too worked up,” I tell her. “You don’t have to be perfect at it on the first try. I would teach you every day if you wanted me to.”
She laughs a little. “You would really do that?”
“Of course, I would,” I say, staring at her until she accepts it. Until she accepts that I'm always here for her. Finally, she nods, and I drop my hands from hers. “Now play it again.”
* * *
After we both had enough of playing, she went to meet Kennedy and I walked home. I needed the time alone. I feel guilty, though. I didn’t know Gio, but for some reason I feel like I’m sharing Scarlett’s pain with her.
When I get home, I pull out my phone to text her.
ME: Thank you. I needed that.
SCARLETT: I know.
The three dots appear and then disappear again. She’s thinking about what to say to me and I let her take her time while I pace my room.
SCARLETT: Me too.
31
Scarlett
I’ve put off going to therapy for so many reasons.
I always thought that my problems were never big enough to receive professional help. There are people with real struggles and I’m just a girl with a slightly dysfunctional family and a need to always do her best. Voicing my fears out loud as well as someone trying to help me navigate it just felt like I was burdening them with my issues. I know it's their job, but I can't help but think I’m taking away space from people who truly need it.
Since Gio’s death, I’ve been trying my best to be strong. I need to move on and continue with my life. I know what grief does to people. I know how it holds people back from their potential and I don’t want that to happen to me. I already showed too much weakness towards Evan, so I cleaned up my act, put on a decent outfit and I went back to school. People talk. They always have. Before, the looks I got were either disgust or jealousy and now its pity.
My family is also trying to move on. When I went to visit them, no one spoke about it and they put their best faces on, acting as if nothing happened. I don’t know which is worse: talking about it or ignoring it. The latter makes me feel less lonely though.
My mom forwarded us all an email of a list of therapists in and around the area. The twins aren’t bothered about going, Hen says he’s considering it, but I actually took the leap. If I’m not going to talk to my friends, the least I can do is talk to a professional. What I wasn't expecting was for her to see right through me.
I’ve been sitting in Dr. Nelson’s minimalist office for almost half an hour, and she’s already managed to figure me out. Sometimes, I feel like I don’t even know myself and the perception I have is simply based on how other people think of me. It’s fucked up and it doesn’t even make sense because I do know myself. I have to, right? I know how I present myself, but what I can’t figure out for the life of me is why. Which is one of the first questions Dr. Nelson asks me.
“Why do you think nobody likes you?” she asks. She reminds me of one of my old high school teachers. She has short light brown hair, owl-framed glasses and is wearing a grey romper. She seemed like the best choice because she’s young and doesn’t make me feel like I’m talking to a professional even though she is one.
I shift in the extremely comfortable seat across from her. “I never said that.”
She shakes her head lightly, glancing down to the notebook in her hand. I had to fill out a questionnaire before arriving, so she already knows what happened and how I’m feeling on a scale of ‘not great’ to ‘fantastic.’ I noted down somewhere closer to ‘not great.’
“No, but you’re thinking about it, right?”
I chuckle a little, brushing my hair that has fallen in front of my eyes out of my face. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything. I’m here for grief counselling.”
“Yes, but that also requires me to get to know you, too,” she explains. I resist the urge to roll my eyes. She’s just doing her job. “Can you talk to me about why you feel like you don’t have many friends other than the ones you live with? You wrote down that high school was particularly difficult. Do you think you could reflect on that time?”
I take a deep breath, trying my best to go back to that time. That part of my life stays with the other suppressed memories of my childhood, locked away in the deepest corners of my brain in a chest labelled ‘Do not open.’ I try not to think about it most of the time because I know that I’ve grown since then.
“I’ve always been confident. Well, I thought I was. I mean, I had to be. I had an image to uphold. I couldn’t embarrass my family and even though my parents dismissed my achievements, it only made me want to work harder. It paid off. I passed every test with flying colours, and I even became valedictorian by the end of high school, but still, nobody wanted to be my friend other than Wren and Kennedy. My brothers teased me about it, saying that it’s because I tried too hard at school and people thought I was stuck-up. But I just didn’t get it. There were so many people who could be pretty, smart, and popular, but just not me.
“Everyone would make groups that I wouldn’t be a part of. They’d plan times to hang out in the bathrooms and no one would invite me. They’d have parties and I would never go. I tried to rationalise it, believing that people were just jealous. It wasn’t until junior year until I finally plucked up the courage to ask someone in my Spanish class what was so wrong with me. ‘We just don’t like you. Your vibe is just off,”she said. They just didn’t like me. What the fuck does that even mean? They just had one look at me and decided they didn’t want to get to know me. And because it was high school, word got around fast, and everyone collectively decided they didn’t want me.”
I take a deep breath, my hands shaking.
“I thought things started to turn around senior year. Everyone wanted to party, and no one was taking anything seriously. I made the stupid decision to host a party, hoping people would come and when they heard how big my house was and the amount of food I was bringing, they did. Suddenly everyone was interested in me and because I was stupid and I got high off being needed and somebody choosing me, I made friends with the wrong people. I got used for my car, my house, my money, my fame. People would make up any excuse to hang out with me and I let them. For a few months, it was bliss. I was trying hard to fit in and it paid off. Then, when one of the biggest parties of that year got busted by the cops for underage drinking at a party I didn’t host, I got blamed for it. Still, that short period where we hung out, I sort of miss it.”
