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I sank down into the laundry basket and then plopped my laptop on my lap and began feverishly typing words. I didn’t care how they sounded. Didn’t care whether I followed any of Meghan’s advice. My fingers found the keys like two magnets attracted, typing away as if my hands had a mind of their own. Brain disconnected from my physical body, soul floating above my computer as if I watched someone else typing. My mind drifted into a blur, numbness hanging over my entire body. Just as had happened to me years ago at Stony Point, on the day when the white sky lit up the grounds and Jamie and I shared our very first kiss.
I lifted above myself. Except, this time, this year, this moment, I stared down at my computer screen, not up at a blank sky.
Three hours later, after my self-lockdown, I stared back at the computer screen in amazement. Combing through sentences I hardly connected with or remembered writing.
3200 words down. 16,800 to go.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Therapy
“I’m scared I’m going crazy.” Dr. Wiig repeated the words I’d left on his voicemail, studying a legal notepad as he sat on the other side of the coffee table. His tone remained professional, monotone, as always. “Those were your words from Sunday night,” he said.
“Yeah… that night…” I paused and inhaled deeply, giving myself the time to think through my options. My index finger and thumb tugged at the opal bracelet I wore, one of the few pieces of jewelry I possessed. A hum drew my attention to behind Dr. Wiig, where a rectangular aquarium mounted across the back wall in a way that perfectly utilized that real estate space. I watched a medium-sized rose-gold fish swim from one end to the other. Two separate silver-plated awards hung n opposites ends of the aquarium.
“Tell me about that night,” Dr. Wiig said. He stretched one leg over the other, the legal pad covering his lap. As he asked the next question, his glasses dipped along the bridge of his nose. “Why did you think you were going crazy?”
I tugged on the bracelet once more and then dropped my hands to my side. The truth was, I wanted to tell someone about what had happened to me. Two days had passed since I’d seen Jamie—Jamie’s ghost, that is—and though it had only been a couple of days, I already questioned whether or not any of it had truly happened. Had it been my brain imagining things?
I internally shook my head, pushing that away. It had felt too real.
However, if I were to tell the doctor of all people, I wondered if he would sit here, write his notes, and then decide that I needed to be committed.
On the one hand, the idea of a long rest in a psychiatric ward didn’t sound too bad.
On the other hand, I had a book to finish.
So, priorities.
I figured this much: I could mention Jamie to the doctor without yielding a potential stay in the insane asylum. But discussing the ghostly visit itself was going to have to be a thing I handled on my own.
“I’ve just been… thinking about my ex-boyfriend a lot recently,” I said. After all, that part wasn’t a lie, and Dr. Wiig had heard me say this before.
“The one who passed a few months ago?”
“Yeah. Eight months ago, actually… last week.”
“You’ve been writing him the letters, right?” he asked. “Have you been keeping up with my assignment?”
His assignment. The reason I’d started writing Jamie the letters to begin with. Dr. Wiig suggested that I write to Jamie—as if he were alive, his spirit, or however else I saw him—to get all my unresolved feelings off my chest. I’d written a letter a week, every week, for eight months. Ever since I mentioned Jamie after attending the funeral back in the winter.
“Yeah. I’ve been keeping up with it.” I shrugged. “It isn’t the same as if he were here.”
Ain’t that the truth.I couldn’t help but think of how isolated I had felt writing all those letters, never receiving any response. How tragic to address something to a person who no longer existed. To a person who I had lingering issues. To a person who remained a mystery.
Now, Jamie was back. Or so it seemed. I had the opportunity, if I so chose, to get all the answers I’d never gotten back in the day.
If the visions were real.
“I understand,” Dr. Wiig said, breaking me from my thoughts. “He was a serious boyfriend. You dated him for how long?”
“Almost a year. But… we were friends for longer than that. Closer to a year and a half.”
He glanced down at his legal notepad. “You met him right after your father passed.”
“Right after. Dad killed himself that summer. Jamie and I started talking at the beginning of the following school year. We finally got together as a couple that winter… but the relationship was never easy. I feel like… we never really knew each other.”
I took a deep breath.
