CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE | TREE GELBMAN

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          The thing about Betty St. Germain is that she'll do whatever the hell she wants to do and, when she sets her mind into something, it takes a goddamn miracle, some divine intervention for her to even consider rethinking her decisions.

          Though I didn't take Odette's request to convince Betty that Callum is not nearly as bad as she paints him out to be seriously, along with knowing it's not my responsibility to change a mindset that has been set in stone for years at this point, there's still a tiny, hopeful voice in the back of my brain that still believes things can always change. Believing in the best of people has historically had disastrous consequences for me, but stubbornness always wins.

          I'm also certain she can tell something's up. By the time mid-November rolls around, just before we all go home for Thanksgiving, I know she's getting progressively more annoyed by the feeling there's something I'm not telling her.

          "Do I have something on my face?" she asks me, freeing her hair from her fishtail braid and running her fingers through it to undo any knots. Odette purposely looks away then, the traitor, and hides behind a copy of Crime and Punishment, leaving me alone to face Betty. "Well?"

          "You look wonderful this morning," I tell her, stirring my mocha. Her blue eyes narrow, but I know she knows I'm not lying. If anything, she looks radiant, even after a considerable drop in temperature; while I'm sitting here, freezing under the heavy weight of my knit sweater and a coat, she's fresh faced. My heart flutters just by looking at her.

          "Go on."

          "No, that's it. I honestly don't know how you do it."

         "Wendy, I'm not stupid." She picks at the sesame seeds coating her everything bagel with her perfectly manicured fingernail. One of the corners of her mouth is stained with creamed cheese, but she rushes to wipe away at it with her napkin. "I know there's something the two of you aren't telling me. I think it's great you're good buddies all of a sudden—no, really, I do; it was exhausting trying to balance things when it looked like you two secretly hated each other. I just wish you wouldn't freeze me out and keep secrets from me for the sake of your budding friendship, that's all. Plus, all this staring is really getting on my nerves, so, if you have anything to tell me, just do it."

          "It's really nothing."

          Odette shoots me a pointed look. "Are you sure about that?"

          "Yes. Are you?"

          Betty huffs, cheeks flushed almost as red as her hair, and it could be a comical sight if I was able to properly handle other people's anger. Unfortunately, I'm not, so what's supposed to be a completely innocent conversation makes my heart pound and the lights in the Lakeside Grill flicker, though I'm not sure that last part isn't just in my head.

          I take a deep breath, glad Betty has taken the bait and is focusing on getting information out of Odette instead, and grip the leg of the table with my free hand in an attempt to ground myself as my world spins out of control, sucked into the eye of an invisible hurricane. They don't appear to notice my behavior or the shaking table and, if they do, they're simply too used to it—like Odette said, I retreat into myself, lock myself in a bubble.

          They bicker, Odette refuses to say a word, and I sit there in agonizing silence, chest burning and aching like flames have erupted in my lungs. Refocusing should help, Doctor Albott says, keyword being should, but it never actually does; it either goes away by itself or it takes my entire energy supply to stop it. The table shakes so hard its feet stomp against the floor, opening cracks on the wood and craters into the ground, and I excuse myself before I run out of the little oxygen still left in me.

          Smart people would hide in the bathroom while they attempt to catch their breath and steady themselves. I'm not smart, as evidenced by the way I stumble out of the Grill, turning towards the woods in search of fresh air, but there's only Auke Lake in the distance, glowing bright blue.

          That, and a hard brick wall I walk straight into.

          "Maybe watch where you're going next time," a voice advises.

          I sniffle, look up, and find Callum himself standing right in front of me. "Sorry."

          "I was joking. I walked right into you. Are you okay?"

          "Huh?"

          I step back, my breath getting stuck halfway up my throat as I try to inhale deeply, and finally notice he's wearing a trucker jacket not that different from the one I kept from Zach. That realization sends me over the edge and I have to bend forward, hands on my knees, and he immediately jumps back, probably scared I'm about to vomit all over him.

          Wouldn't that be ideal?

          Every time something happens, I'm reminded Zach is truly gone, no matter how often I wear his clothes like a proud girlfriend or don't interact with other guys just so I can pat myself on the back for being faithful. It's times like these that remind me every moment I've ever had with him has to stay in the past and I won't ever get an opportunity to make new memories. My future with him is non-existent, and being with him was all I ever wanted.

          Whether I like it or not, whether I choose to live in delusion or in reality, Zach has been torn away from me and from everyone who loved him—all thanks to someone else's choices, made in the heat of the moment or not, I don't fucking know.

          Not just someone else. Not just a random person. Jake. My friend, Jake.

          "Wendy," Callum insists. A soft pressure on my shoulder brings me back to campus—Juneau, Alaska. I'm in Alaska, far away from mortal danger. Far away from everything I've ever loved. "Can you try to take a deep breath? With me? Come on. Inhale"—it takes everything in me to do it and it's shallow, but I succeed—"and exhale. Good. That was good. Do it again. Inhale. Exhale."

          I don't know how long it takes me to return my breathing and heart rate to adequate levels, but it happens eventually. I can see Callum clearly now, shorter, leaner, and paler than Zach, and embarrassment hits me like a tidal wave, suddenly aware this is the first time he's witnessed me having a panic attack. The fact that it was triggered by seemingly nothing makes it so much more excruciating to process.

          "I'm so sorry," I mutter. Before apologizing to him, I should be apologizing to myself for putting my body through that, like I've ripped myself into shreds over and over again. "I'm sorry. I just needed some air. I don't know what just happened; everything was fine, and then it wasn't."

          "You didn't do anything wrong," he points out, hands now tucked into the pockets of his jeans. "It happens. Panic attacks are more common than you might think."

          "It happened out of nowhere, though. We were just talking inside, but then something in my brain snapped and I just had to get out of there. I ran into you, and it looked like you're wearing this jacket Zach used to wear and—"

          "Zach?"

          The love of my life. "My boyfriend."

          His face falls. "Oh."

          I hope I'm not sounding too antagonistic, like I'm trying to get rid of him when all he wants is to meet up with Odette, but staring at him reminds me of Zach and I'm bound to get my foot in my mouth. I exploited his life, his memory, his death just to get into UAS, something that will haunt me for the remainder of my college career and beyond, and no amount of making up for it will make it okay.

          I don't know how to not miss him—how to not miss all of them, even the Jake I used to know. Going through life with the knowledge all I have left of them are years-long memories that slice through my chest over and over and over again until I choke on my own blood is torture. It's torturous getting nothing in return for remembering besides a punch to the gut to assert their absence, that I won't ever stop remembering.

          Life becomes a whole load of nothing but remembering, even when you're doing nothing, even when you have no reason to be thinking about that. You sit there in silence, overwhelmed by the sudden flush of memories you won't ever get back—spending summers by Lake Michigan with Emma, visiting New York with Zach, throwing joint birthday parties with Cecelia—and you realize all of it has been for nothing. They play like a film reel in your head, like they happened to a different person in a different life.

          "I know this is none of my business and I can't possibly relate to what you've gone through, but you'll fall in love again," Callum tells me, already with a hand on the door handle, and I find myself staring at the back of Betty's head. The wind whooshes around us, stronger the closer we get to Auke Lake—definitely not Lake Michigan—and I step towards the Grill because I have nowhere else to go, nowhere else to belong. "You'll meet someone at some point, maybe even when you least expect it. You'll meet other people, make new friends. Life goes on. I mean, you have us. We're good company."

          I have plenty of things to say about that, about being willing to meet someone and trust them enough to allow them to hold a thing as fragile as my heart in their hands, about not being ready to do it, but I don't. It's not an appropriate topic of conversation, especially when I'm standing in front of someone I've had two or three conversations with, but I still appreciate the sentiment.

          "You ought to stop fighting with Betty, though," I tell him. "Odette is tired of it."

          "Yeah, well"—he holds the door open for me—"I'm certain we can all behave like civilized fucking people."

          He all but struts towards our table, with Odette shooting us a curious glance and Betty making a massive deal out of trying to walk away, cowering in disgust when he plants a dramatically loud kiss on her cheek. The anchor weighing down on my chest is a bit lighter as I return to my seat, allowing myself to believe his words for once in my life—it does, indeed, go on.

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          I've somehow convinced myself Doctor Albott is mad at me.

          Of course, she doesn't outright state it and doesn't let it show in her facial expression, but it's a nagging feeling I've had for a while and can't quite ignore, so I allow it to completely overwhelm me every time we see each other.

          It's hard to avoid her in her own office, which is why I suspect it's as small as it is, even with her personal belongings scattered around like excuses for someone to get distracted. I know she's staring at me, though I pretend not to notice, and I'm running out of things in the office to inspect instead of daring to look her way. Everything about these interactions—or lack thereof—is so awkward I feel about to explode, but I can't bring myself to act like a normal human being.

          "You know, you have every right to stay silent, but this is still a forty-five minute appointment, so we'll sit here in silence for almost an hour," she eventually says. "I'm sure you have other things to do, other places to be."

          I don't, which is humiliating, but I also don't want her to feel like I'm a burden for wasting precious time she could be devoting to her other patients—ones with actual bright futures ahead of them, ones who don't let online forums dictate their worth or the validity of their grief and suffering.

          "So I can go," I add, after telling her exactly that.

          "You're still paying me for a full session. You're the one who chooses how to spend that time."

          I cower away, wrapping an arm around my torso just so I can hold all the guilt inside me instead of allowing it to spill out in front of me. A loose thread of string hanging from my sweater sleeve is a good enough distraction so I tug at it to refocus my brain, urging it to not give into what it thinks are the implicit meaning and intent behind Doctor Albott's words.

          I know she didn't mean to imply I'm wasting my family's money by coming here and not talking to her like I'm supposed to, but that sure is what it felt like to me. I know it's problematic, I know it's contradictory to expect the best from people and still assume they have the worst intentions possible and are looking to hurt me and my stupid feelings whenever they find an opportunity, yet I still find myself in the same situation. Repeatedly, at that.

          It's the one thing I don't tell her.

          To my credit and hers, I've been more honest with her than I ever thought I'd get to be with anyone after June, when I lost the two people in my life I told everything to, and she has been nothing but helpful and insightful, so there's no valid reason for me to be sensing this much hostility. The fact that both this sensation and my panic attacks are triggered by nothing is frustrating, like I'm losing the little control I'd gotten back since the first time I had the courage to say I felt better.

          "You look exhausted," she comments, like a friend attempting to make small talk. I have to remember we're not friends, even if she's like the cool older sister everyone wants to have—she cares about you and your well-being, but doesn't hover. With Xavier being so distant, constantly giving me the cold shoulder whenever I try to bring him back to me, I could really use someone who does hover and gets involved, though.

          "I've been really busy with school."

          "How are things going?"

          I shrug. "Fine. My classes are a bit more demanding than I assumed they would be, especially when everyone kept telling me the professors aren't too strict, but I guess we're all buried in coursework. I can keep up fine, but sometimes I just wish I had a few moments to lie in bed and do nothing. Worry about nothing."

          She nods, clicking her pen. "I see. Is studying and working on school stuff easy for you? Have you had any difficulty focusing?" I shake my head. I doze off during lectures sometimes, mostly during anything that has to do with Philosophy and doesn't capture my interest, but I find I'm relatively quick to get back on track. My mind has been feeling less hazy, too, though I wish it would stop hyperfocusing on things I don't want to think about. "Is Zoloft still helping? Do you feel like you'd benefit from a change in dosage or medication?"

          "It's fine."

          She scowls almost imperceptibly. "As long as you don't drink while taking them." I grimace, regretting ever telling her about that. She was pleasantly surprised to hear about my conversation with Julie and how I was open to hear her out, even if she wasn't impressed by the circumstances that lead to us being alone in that bedroom. She thinks it provided me with valuable insight no one else would be able to give me, and I found myself agreeing. "The nightmares are still frequent, and so are the panic attacks. What do you do to recover from a panic attack? Do the breathing exercises help prevent them?"

          "They mostly come out of nowhere, so I . . . I never get a chance to stop them from happening. I'm more used to stopping them after they start. People help me refocus. They help with my breathing." 

          We talk and talk about trivial therapy things like it's our very first session, an introductory one, like she doesn't know almost everything about me, every dark corner and nook of my brain. We discuss coping strategies—healthy coping strategies, obviously—and how to move forward, how to deal with grief. She emphasizes one doesn't get rid of it, they just learn to live around it, mold their lives around that gnawing feeling until it becomes comfortable and they barely think about it anymore, which is both an echo of what Julie said and a lot easier said than done.

          She even asks me the dreaded question, if I've ever thought about harming myself, if I've ever thought of ending it, but my answer remains negative to both.

          I've been relatively neutral about living once it was settled I had, in fact, survived a traumatic massacre. People kept talking about the miracle of life and how lucky I was to be alive, which initially would send me into a rampage—I've never yelled at people as much as I did the days following the Incident—but I'm quieter now, even if the reminder that I survived at the cost of the lives of so many other people scorches my body from the inside out. Living, at this point, is something I do out of stubbornness, because I can't let Jake or those trolls win, because I chose to fight back. Survival instinct kicked in that night, but there's something that has made me keep going—it's the one thing I can trust.

          "Does Xavier help when you're in a crisis?" she continues, voice softer this time. Like she knows about the party, she also knows about the argument that exploded in the house the days before—and how it's been eating at me, how Xavier and I never talk about things.

          "He does his best, you know. He's not like you."

          One of the corners of her mouth raises. "Good. I think you only need to deal with one of me at a time."

          I inhale, tuck my hair behind my ear. "He keeps saying he doesn't want either of us to get too involved in the other's personal life, which I get because he's always been super private and secretive, but sometimes I wish he would get involved. It just makes me feel like he doesn't care."

          Doctor Albott eyes me carefully, leaning forward. "How do you wish he'd get involved? In what aspect?"

          "I feel like he doesn't trust me. He doesn't think I'm strong enough to handle the truth." I stare down at my knees, pulling my sleeves down until they cover my palms. "I keep saying I don't need to know the whole story about why he left Chicago and why he didn't go back after what happened, but I also feel like if he wanted me to know, if he felt I could handle it, he would've already talked to me. We never talk about anything, like there's this empty period of time in our lives where nothing happened, but there's so much to unpack, so many things we never told each other, but he refuses. I don't need to know the whole story to be upset. I know it's not fair to him, but no one ever asked me about how I felt about it, either. No one cares that I was the one to hear him say he thought I was dead and that's why he didn't want to go. He'd rather deal with the dead version of me than the one that survived. The one that's literally living with him right now."

          Silence falls in the office and, this time, I'm desperate for it to shatter. It's strange how talkative I get when I'm upset, instead of doing what Odette says I do and retreating, closing myself off from the world, and I'm repeating my behavior from June—I never know when to shut up and snap at people.

          Vilifying Doctor Albott for the hell of it was never funny to begin with, and she's not the one I'm upset at, but she doesn't avoid me like Xavier does. We don't pay her to put up with my melodrama, and Xavier has made it very clear he wants nothing to do with it—his lack of involvement is proof of that, as clear as a summer sky.

          "People surprise you sometimes," she tells me. "Even when you think you have them figured out, there's always something new to discover."

          I huff. "Your point being?"

          "You have your version of events. You've experienced them in a certain way, felt certain emotions, interpreted them in your own way based on what you've been through. That's okay. That's valid. What I'm trying to say is that Xavier has seen it all unfold through a different lens, and will never be able to have that experience, even if it had been him surviving Camp Comet. You're different people with different outlooks in life, different pasts, different ways of handling what has happened."

          "Yeah, but—"

          "Even if you think his actions had a particular intent behind them, give him a chance to explain. You have every right to be upset, but be open to what he has to say and be understanding. It's a step towards closure, closure both of you need." She uncrosses her legs, massaging the back of her knee—the bad knee, the one she injured during her cheerleading days, the one that gets worse the colder the days get. "You fight for the people you love, especially those who are willing to fight for you, too."

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another day another drama drama