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“I know it makes you feel better when you do it. ”
Marah glanced at Dr. Bloom, who sat perfectly still, her sharp nose hooked out over her thin lips. “But when you’re done, and your razor blade or knife is full of dried blood, I bet you feel worse. Ashamed, maybe, or afraid. ”
Seventy-eight … seventy-nine.
“I can help you with those feelings, if you’ll talk to me about how you feel. It’s not uncommon, how you’re feeling. ”
Marah rolled her eyes. That was one of those tarry lies adults told kids to make the world prettier.
“Well,” Dr. Bloom said later, closing her notebook. Marah wondered what she’d written in it. Probably, Whack job, loves plants. “That’s all the time we have for today. ”
Marah shot to her feet and turned for the door. As she reached for the knob, Dr. Bloom said:
“I have a teen grief group meeting that might help you, Marah. Would you like to join us? It’s Wednesday night. ”
“Whatever. ” Marah opened the office door.
Tully lurched to her feet. “How was it?”
Marah didn’t know what to say. She glanced away from Tully and saw that there was someone else in the waiting room: a young man dressed in skin-tight, torn black jeans that disappeared into scuffed black boots with the laces falling slack. He was thin, almost femininely so, and wearing a black T-shirt that read BITE ME beneath a smoke-colored jacket. At his throat, a collection of pewter skulls hung like keys on a chain, and his shoulder-length hair was unnaturally black, tinged here and there in peacock streaks of magenta and green. When he looked up, Marah saw that his eyes were strange, almost golden, and heavy black guyliner accentuated the color. His skin was pale. Like maybe he was sick.
Dr. Bloom came up beside Marah. “Paxton, perhaps you’d tell Marah that our therapy group isn’t such a bad little gathering. ”
The young man—Paxton—stood up and moved toward Marah with the kind of grace that seemed staged.
“Tully?” Dr. Bloom said. “May I speak to you for a moment?”
Marah was aware of the two older women moving away from her, whispering to each other.
Marah knew she should care what they were saying, but she couldn’t think of anything except the boy coming toward her.
“You’re afraid of me,” he said when he was close to her. She could smell spearmint gum on his breath. “Most people are. ”
“You think I’m scared of a little black clothing?”
He lifted a pale hand and tucked his hair behind one ear. “Nice girls like you should stay in suburbia where it’s safe. The group isn’t for you. ”
“You don’t know anything about me. But maybe you should stop playing in your mom’s makeup. ”
His laugh surprised her. “Fire. I like that. ”
“Hey, Marah,” Tully said. “It’s time to go. ” She strode across the waiting room and took Marah by the arm and led her out of the office.
* * *
All the way home, Tully kept up a stream of conversation. She kept asking Marah if she wanted to go to Bainbridge Island to see her friends, and Marah wanted to say yes, but she didn’t belong there anymore. In the year and a half of her absence, the old friendships had degraded like moth wings; now they were tattered bits of white that couldn’t possibly fly again. She had nothing in common with those girls.
Tully led Marah into the bright, elegant condo and turned on the fireplace in the living room. Flames flowered up, zipped along a fake log. “So. How was it?”
Marah shrugged.
Tully sat down on the sofa. “Don’t shut me out, Marah. I want to help. ”
God, she was tired of disappointing people. She wished there were a handbook for children of the deceased, like in Beetlejuice, so that she would know what to do and say so that people would leave her alone. “I know. ”
She sat down on the stone hearth, facing Tully. The fire warmed her back, made her shiver. She hadn’t even realized that she was cold.
“I should have made your dad put you in counseling when Kate died. But we fell apart, your dad and me. I asked about you, though, and talked to you every week. You never said a thing. I never heard you cry. Your grandma said you were handling it. ”
