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I feel the sting of my own tears, and she stares, watching them flood my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. Not now. Not in front of her.
“I swear to you, Taylor. I fucking hate you.”
She nods her head and moves her hand from mine. Slowly she stands up, slumps over to her room and closes the door, leaving me in the hallway.
* * *
I spend the rest of my evening in my room, staring at my ceiling. I ignore ten calls from Mom before I finally answer and let her know the whole thing. For some reason, I leave out the part where Taylor was the guilty one, claiming someone must have put a camera in my room during the party. She sounds so disappointed, as if she wasn’t the one to suggest the pills in the first place, as if I wasn’t the one who got my privacy violated.
The next morning, I wake up to an email from Coach telling me he moved all my classwork online for the rest of the semester. Now I have no excuse to leave my room for the next few months. I download the online coursework app and learn how to submit my assignments online to my professors.
I roll out of bed, deciding to forgo showering or changing from my sweats and sweatshirt. Before I walk down the stairs, I look down the hallway and notice that Taylor’s door is shut. It’s Friday morning and she’s not at school. Her shadow elongates through the small crack under her door, shuffling back and forth. I’m tempted to kick her door down and take away any semblance she has of privacy just so she can know how it feels. She barely cracks open her door, as if she knows I’m watching her shadow. I can barely make out her face, but I can see heavy bags under her hazel eyes, and her hair in knots around her face. She slowly closes the door.
Grabbing my keys, I head to the Jeep. Driving to therapy always makes me tired. It makes me tired to think about spilling my guts out and leaving them in some office in the city. Although, I think if anyone in this universe could understand me it would be Dr. Kathleen. Not that she’s anything like me, but she’s been my therapist for as long as I can remember.
As I arrive and knock on her office door, I already feel my emotions welling up inside me. She opens the door, the familiar scent of vanilla and fresh flowers wafting my way. She stands a whole foot and half shorter than me, but she still holds so much power. I lean into her and give her a hug like she’s my grandma. She practically is. My therapist grandma.
She guides me to the small leather couch and sits in front of me in her office chair, crossing her legs as she settles. Her hair is a little bit grayer now, her wrinkles more prominent.
“Let’s start with how you’ve been, Elijah,” she says, pulling down her reading glasses to look at me. I wonder if she’s seen the news. I doubt it, but I can never tell with her. The couch creaks under my weight as I adjust my posture, leaning against the back and sprawling my legs out in front of me.
“I’ve been better,” I grumble.
She leans forward and takes her glasses off, really looking into my eyes.
“What are you hoping to get out of today?” she asks.
My lips tremble as I fight tears. “I don’t know… I don’t know what to do.”
“Tell me what’s going on? How have your nightmares been?”
“They’re coming and going, but really, that’s not the issue,” I say, looking past her eyes to the window beyond her overlooking the skyscrapers of the city. I fidget with my hands, not knowing where to start.
She’s silent as she waits for me to finish my sentence and I rub the stubble on my chin as I think. “It’s Taylor…” I utter. “It’s Taylor.”
“Taylor? High school Taylor?”
“Yeah, she lives with us now.”
“Oh,” Kathleen says, her face frowning. “That must be very difficult for you.’
“It’s horrible,” I say, grinding my teeth. “She just…she just gets on my fucking nerves, and she went too far, she went too far. I’m going to be kicked off the team.”
“Let’s back up. Can you tell me what happened?”
I grip the cushions beneath my hands, trying my best not to rip the leather from the foam underneath. “She posted a picture of me taking my Xanax. She put a hidden camera in my room and posted me taking it and it made news outlets in under thirty minutes. I’m currently not going to campus. I’m not playing hockey. I’m nothing. I’m nothing because of her.”
“Wow,” she says, taken aback. “Taylor, the Taylor you were madly in love with, Elijah? How have things changed? I’m curious what leads to such an invasion of privacy and animosity.”
“She’s fucking ruined me.”
“How do you feel about her? Would you describe it as hatred or maybe something else? Was this invasion of hers perhaps prompted?”
“I told her I hate her.”
“And you do?” she asks, putting her glasses back on and looking down at her notepad.
“I don’t know.”
