Page 89 of The Sound of Him

A feelings pie chart.

The center is made out of six bold colored pieces with the words -sad, disgust, anger, fear, surprise,andhappywritten on each. The next circle of slightly smaller pieces is made up of branches of each of the big ones. Words likelonely, dissapointed, anxious,andconfused.The outermost circle is made of even smaller pieces with even more specific words. There’sperplexed, disrespected, devastated, lib-

I pause, stroking my thumb over the word written in pale yellow -liberated.

“I have a second copy of that for us to keep in the box in my office, so you can keep that for yourself. The entire back peels off to make it a sticker, if you want to put it on the inside of a notebook or wherever you’d like. The one we’ll use in here is a little bigger, but that one is more travel-sized. Can you read all of the words okay with that size?”

I keep staring atliberated.

Everyone kept sayingfreewhen we first got here. Everyone but me.

I still can’t now, unless I write it or find a card for it, but I can sayliberated.

I could say it right now.

I wait for that to feel - well…liberating.

It doesn’t.

Or… it does?

It doesn’t and does and doesn’t and does-

I can say things, I can say so many things, I can show Nolan and Bryce and Dr. Singh and Ace how I’m feeling with a single point of my finger. My eyes catch on the word humiliated. The word frustrated. The word ashamed. The word overwhelmed.

I shouldn’t need charts or cards or wipe-off boards. I’m free. I’m liberated.Why can’t my body just go back to normal now? Why can’t happy things just last a little longer?

“Matt?”

Not my name.

That’s not my name.

I’m not here, I’m not real, I’m just a ghost.

Ghosts can’t be happy.

Ghosts can’t be liberated.

Ghosts can’t be free.

“Matt? Do you have your bunny with you? Can you pull out your bunny?”

I’m not real, I’m not real, I’m not-

“There you go. Feel that? Feel how fuzzy he is?”

I’m not- wait.

Fuzzy.

Yeah. Yes. Fuzzy, warm, dry, good, bunny, fuzzy.

“Just breathe. Keep feeling his fur and breathe, okay?”

I concentrate on pulling air into my lungs as I pet my bunny over and over. I hadn’t realized my breathing had gone wrong, but it must have because there’s an ache in my lungs like I hadn’t been getting enough oxygen before. Something prickly-wrong crawls inside me at the thought.

I was suffocating and I didn’t even know it.