Little Battles (31 page)

“Shit.” Sophie turned around, brushing the hair away from my face that stuck out from under my stocking cap. “Never mind,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. I…” she stopped and drew a breath. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, right?”

Although I nodded, I barely had time to process her question and the fact that she was pulling away from me again, before she was out of the car and disappearing through her door.

She didn’t talk to me for three days, but her eyes were clear.

And that was enough.

It wasn’t like she ignored me. We drove to and from school together and we hung out, once at her house, and once at mine. She even sat with me during Study Hall and at lunch.

She just didn’t talk.

It was okay by me. I respected silence and the need for it. I wished more people understood that sometimes there was nothing in the world worth saying.

We didn’t e-mail either. I seemed to be procrastinating with her questions. I would answer them eventually though, except maybe the Christmas one. I would rather not get into that whole thing, especially when I wanted to be focused on her.
She
needed help right now because even though we hadn’t given proper voice to it, I knew that she wasn’t doing the things she normally did to avoid actually feeling. That had to be difficult for her.

The answer to the question she posed was just more of the same, and I didn’t want to burden her with it. I wasn’t ready to give that to her yet.

In time, she would forget that she asked.

Friday night brought about the regular ritual of therapy and time with Sophie. When Robin let us break off into pairs, instead of going to my room, Sophie and I grabbed our coats and headed toward the greenhouse. I wanted her to see how quickly the plants were growing. Maybe she would be excited that the little buds had started to grow on the stalk, and soon she’d have fresh Brussels sprouts to eat.

We’d been sitting on the overturned buckets for nearly forty minutes before her soft voice broke the silence. I looked up at her in shock, since I’d grown used to the quiet. I’d been content just
being
with her.

But the sound of her voice was lovely, even if it was pained.

“Do you want to hang out this weekend?”

“You haven’t had a panic attack in a while. That’s wonderful.”

I nodded in agreement, though my mind was less on panic attacks and more on the fact that Sophie would be online later and instead of chatting with Robin, I wanted to be chatting with her.

“Why do you think that is?”

I shrugged. It was hard to let myself panic when I was trying to keep someone else afloat. Not that I was the one saving her from drowning. I wasn’t doing much to help her, but I was focused on her, which helped me subdue all of the signals my body threw at me when a panic attack was near.

“SSSophie hhhhasn’t gotten hhhigh f-f-f-for three days.” At least not around me.

Robin smiled and nodded. “That’s an amazing accomplishment. I take it this makes you happy?”

“Sssshe can be hhhhealthy now.”

“Let’s talk a little bit about you though, okay?”

I said nothing, because I didn’t want to talk about me, but she already knew that. It would be a wasted effort.

“Is there anything you want to talk about?”

I shook my head in response.

“I think we should probably talk about your anger.”

“M-m-mmmmy anger?”

“Yes.”

“I’m n-not angry.”

Robin folded her hands in her lap and leaned forward, her eyes narrowed in scrutiny.

“Elliott, you broke another human being’s nose and jaw. Stephen didn’t tell you, but Chris Anderson could very well have some permanent hearing loss in his left ear, in addition to a crooked nose.”

I understood what she was saying, but I couldn’t bring myself to care or have any compassion at all for Chris. I was happy that I hit him, and I was happy that he would have some permanent reminders. He needed to be reminded every day of his life that he was an ass. He needed to be reminded every day of his life that he couldn’t just do whatever he wanted to people.

As sick as I knew it to be, I was happy that he would have some other way of remembering me for the rest of his life other than just the stuttering kid he picked on in school. Now I would be the first thing he thought of when some college girl asked him about his stupid, crooked nose. I would be the thought in his head when his healed jaw ached in the winter, and I would be the one he’d think of when in fifteen years he couldn’t hear his wife and kids out of his left ear.

It was satisfying.

“W-what is there to ssssay?”

“Do you feel bad about what happened?”

“No.”

“Tell me what it felt like to release that much emotion.”

I knew what she was trying to do, and that I could either sit there in silence, which would only postpone the inevitable, or I could just answer her questions and be done for the night.

“It w-was numbing.”

“What did you think about at the time?”

“N-nothing.”

My mind had been pleasantly and uncharacteristically blank. All I remembered thinking about was how much I hated Chris. Hate wasn’t a word I threw around lightly. I usually worked very hard to have compassion for people, even those who were less than deserving.

“Do you feel justified in doing what you did?”

“Hhhhe hhhhurt SSSSophie.”

“From what I understand, he’s hurt you in the past, but you haven’t done anything to defend yourself.”

“Hhhe hhurt
her
,” I said again. Chris could punch me in the gut five times a day, every day of my life, but he hurt Sophie, and that was a different story.

“So you felt numb?”

Actually, that state of emotionless calm had come as a result of an intense expression of anger.

It
was
anger I had felt.

I wasn’t sure that I had ever had that kind of release before in my life.

“Y-yes.”

“And before the numb, you felt…?”

Robin needed validation that she was correct in her assessment. She needed me to say it because she wanted me to understand how I felt. I had known Robin since moving to Damascus many years ago, and our time together had always been about her pushing me to recognize certain things.

Like the fact that I was apparently
too
reserved in my emotions.

She was right. I’ve always known that the first time I met Robin, she’d been onto something. There were very few emotions that I let myself feel, and the violent anger I’d displayed with Anderson was case in point. It had taken seventeen years for me to be angry enough with another person to express it.

Robin would have wanted me to
discuss
it. She would have wanted me to
process
it. Perhaps that might have been a better way, but at the time I could do nothing but propel my fists at him. Speaking would never be something that was comfortable for me. I would never be able to have an easy conversation with anyone, let alone someone whose life’s mission was to mess with me.

“Angry,” I finally answered her. To be truthful, I still felt a small bit of residual anger. It wasn’t fair that I was stuck with all of these feelings that needed to be expressed, but without an adequate avenue to express them.

Processing and discussing went out of the window whenever I opened up my mouth. No one wanted to sit quietly and listen to me stumble around. No one wanted to listen to a five letter word take a full thirty seconds to flow from my mouth. The frustration I normally felt seemed to have morphed into gentle anger.

“That’s a new emotion for you, isn’t it?” It was, but I said nothing. “Do you remember a couple of years ago when David came into your room without knocking?”

My chest tightened just from thinking about it. Of course I remembered.

“It took you three days to be able to verbalize anything. You couldn’t even speak to Jane. But when you did start talking again, you never once said that you were angry that he hadn’t respected your boundaries. You apologized to him for making him upset when you panicked.”

For as much emotional turmoil as I’d been going through at the time, I had realized exactly how much my seemingly illogical reaction had affected David. He hadn’t done it on purpose. He’d forgotten because he wanted to tell me what Rebecca had gotten him for his birthday. At the time, David was still in the habit of trying to engage me in long conversations. It was before he fully realized that I wasn’t capable of being around him all that much.

I hadn’t wanted him as a brother, and had even been uncomfortable with him as a friend. It had
nothing
to do with David. He was about as perfect a human being as there could be. My aversion to him was due to my own problems.

He’d been so upset I’d reacted like that to his simple error, a mistake that to another person might have merely been annoying but had nearly
debilitated
me. David wanted so desperately to be everything everyone needed him to be, and he took my reaction as a sign that he had failed. Last year Jane told me that David had cried and asked Stephen if I hated him.

“That was an unhealthy reaction. You apologized for making him upset, while he should have apologized to you for making you uncomfortable. Your reaction to Chris was probably not a healthy one either. You allowed yourself to bottle up all of your feelings and emotions until the pressure was too much. You need to find something in-between that is both therapeutic and helpful. You can’t keep forcing calm upon yourself, and you can’t beat up the people who anger you.”

“I-I d-don’t…”

When I didn’t continue, she did. “It’s good that you’re experiencing anger. It is a normal, healthy emotion. What you say Chris did to Sophie is inexcusable. It’s upsetting and worthy of a strong emotion such as anger, but it’s new to you and you need to figure out healthy ways of dealing with it.” I didn’t want to deal with my anger. I didn’t have a history of it, and it wouldn’t happen again now that Sophie was safe with me. “There are repercussions to everything we do in life, and what you did to Chris brought about more issues that need to be handled.”

“W-w-what?”

“Stephen not only has to cover Chris’s medical expenses, but he also has to ensure his future safety. Do you understand?”

I shook my head.

“The Andersons are concerned for their son’s safety around you. You aren’t to talk to him.”

That wouldn’t be a problem. Talking wasn’t something I did well, and talking to Chris in the past consisted of nothing more than his taunts and punches. There was nothing I needed to say to him.

“Beyond the class you have with him, you aren’t to go near him. If it happens again, they have assured Stephen they
will
press charges. You’re close enough to eighteen that you’d receive some pretty severe consequences.”

I had no intention of talking to, or going near Chris ever again. “O-o-okay.”

“You will need to start dealing with your anger appropriately. Mrs. Anderson seems to understand that her son was not the nicest person to you, but Mr. Anderson is quite upset. Don’t go in their store. If you’re out and you see them, it might be best to leave.”