With Malice (14 page)
Authors: Eileen Cook
Siâ
Every time I talk to you, it just ends up in a fight. I never should have slapped you last night, but you never should have said that stuff about Nico either. Don't you get that I really like him? I'm not stupidâit's not that I think he and I are going to run away together or something, but I really, really like him. Can't you be happy for me? You acted like you wanted us to get together, but once we did, it's like you can't stand it. I know Nico isn't likely a forever thingâ
but I thought you were.
We always talked about how someday after college we'd move to New York together and how we'd be in each other's weddings and work it out so we could have kids at the same time and they could grow up as besties too. And I get that, now that we're closer to graduation, it starts feeling like this is all just a stupid daydream or something, that we might not even live in the same placeâbut that freaks me out. I can't imagine my life without you in it.
I'm thinking we need
My eyes flew open, and I worried that I might have actually made a noiseâscreamed out, evenâbut the room was quiet. I turned my head and saw the vague shape of Anna in her bed, buried under a pile of blankets, one arm thrown up over her head. I held my breath for a beat and could hear her quiet breathing in tandem with the rain that was falling.
The streetlamps outside buzzed, and their light oozed around the edges of the window and down the crack in the middle of the curtains like a crooked lightning bolt. I breathed in and out to a count of five as I did in my yoga class, trying to slow my racing heart. I tried to picture myself relaxed and loose on my blue mat,
savasana
, but it wasn't working.
I had smacked Simone. I remembered it now. The image of it had been enough to wake me up. I concentrated, trying to recall more, but it was like my brain was constipated. My hand streaking out in front of me, and the sharp smack of the slap against her face. The heat on my palm, and how she gasped. Simone reaching up to touch her cheek as if she couldn't believe it. The hurt in her eyes. Surprise. But something else. Triumph, like she'd
wanted
it to happen. I reached for my phone to record the memory, but then hesitated. Could my phone be used in court?
It wasn't worth the risk when I didn't even know if it was true or if I was just imagining what I saw. I hated that I couldn't even trust my own head not to fuck with me. I wasn't sure what it meant if I had hit her. There was a big leap from slapping someone to driving the both of us off a cliff.
A car went by outside, the tires making a whispering sound on the wet roads. I rolled over onto my side and pulled my knees up to my chin. My cast scratched on the sheets. It felt as if my heart was tearing in half. I'd never pictured it possible that I could hurt Simone. And if I had been able to block that memoryâit made me wonder what else I was forgetting.
I wasn't sure what I'd expected. I hadn't thought that Dr. Weeks would gasp in horror, her eyes wide, but I hadn't expected her to yawn, either. Like I was keeping her awake.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “I started watching this BBC show on Netflix, and next thing you know, I binge-watched the whole series. I find that David Tennant so dreamy.” Dr. Weeks made a face like she was biting into something super tasty.
I blinked. Maybe she hadn't heard me. “I was telling you how I remembered hitting Simone,” I repeated.
She raised a finger. “Careful. What you had was an image of hitting Simone.”
“Isn't that the same thing?”
She shook her head. “Nope. We've talked about this. It could be a memory. It could also be your mind conjuring up a picture to go with what your lawyer told you. Right now your brain knows there is missing information, and it's desperately trying to fill in those blanks.” She opened a desk drawer and fished out a paper. “Ever see something like this?”
I looked down. At first the words looked like gibberish, and then they clicked into place.
I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm.
I passed the sheet back to her. “I've seen something like it online.”
“Amazing, isn't it?” Dr. Weeks knocked on top of the model of the brain she kept on her credenza. “The darn things still fascinate me as much as they did when I started in this field. How they can fill in what's missingâfind patterns and create meaning where there was nothing. One of the most primal survival instincts the brain has is finding pattern and assigning meaning. When there is a breakdown, it will scramble to find those patterns again as quickly as possible.”
I wished I could share her excitement, but it was my brain that was misfiring. “How do I know what is true versus my imagination?”
“Part of it comes down to knowing yourself. Does this piece of the puzzle fit with everything else you know about how you act, or react, to situations?”
I stared down at my hands in my lap. A crumpled piece of paper hit me in the head and I looked up, shocked.
“No pity party on my time,” Dr. Weeks said with a smile. “Let's take it step by step. Had you ever hit Simone before?”
“What? No. I never hit anyone before.”
“Even if you did, it doesn't have to mean anything. People get angry.”
“But they're not accusing me of being angry,” I pointed out. “They're accusing me of trying to kill the both of us, some weird murder-suicide thing.” I swallowed hard. “Killing her.” I repeated it again as if saying it over and over might make it seem more real.
“Were you two the kind of friends who had big fights? Screamed at each other? Vowed you'd never speak again?” She must have caught my expression. “It's not that unusual. Friends fight.”
I was about to tell her that Simone and I didn't, but then paused. “Once we had a pretty big argument.” She leaned back in her chair, inviting me to say more. “Freshman year. In junior high, it was always just the two of us, but when we transferred to the high school, Simone made the cheerleading squad and I didn't.”
“Was that difficult for you?”
I rolled my eyes. It was stupid. I was never one of those people who even
wanted
to be a cheerleader. I could think of nothing more boring than standing around the sidelines acting like I cared about the score of a game I couldn't even be bothered to understand. I'd tried out just because Simone really wanted to and she was afraid to go on her own. We both knew I had almost no chance of getting on the squad. I could barely do a cartwheel without falling over, but still, when they'd posted the list of who made it and she was on it and I wasn't, it hurt.
I was happy for her. I squealed and hugged her. Simone bounced around the hall with the other girls who had made it,
teen popcorn
. And at first I didn't think it mattered that much, but then she spent more and more time with the other cheerleaders. It didn't help that they even dressed alike, as if they were some kind of dorky huge family of overly perky school-spirit sisters. The more time she spent with them, the more inside jokes they told, the more I could feel her pulling away from me. So I gave her the cold shoulder. What I wanted, what I expected, is that she would instantly come to my side, wanting to know what was wrong, but the truth was I didn't think she even noticed I was blowing her off.
That was when we had the fight.
It was in the classiest of places, the girls' bathroom. The biggest fight we'd ever had happened surrounded by sinks and tampon dispensers. I hadn't planned to confront her, but when she'd forgotten to meet me at lunch, choosing instead to hang with her new friends, I went to find her. We had it out, screaming at each other, but it didn't last long. It was like one of those freak flash storms. It took forever to build up, but once the storm broke, it was over fast. By the end we were hugging and crying, vowing we'd be best friends forever.
I told Dr. Weeks the whole story.
“It never came to blows,” I assured her. “We didn't even push each other. We said a bunch of nasty stuff, but I didn't mean any of it.”
“It's okay if you did.” I shifted uncomfortably in the seat. Dr. Weeks leaned back. “We can still be good people, even if we don't say or do good things all of the time.”
“So you think I am capable of something like this.”
She smiled. “That's not what I said at all. What I'm trying to tell you is that I imagine your feelings for, and about, Simone are really confusing right now.”
“I
know
she was my best friend.”
“I don't doubt that. But you need to be careful that you don't re-create your relationship with her, editing out any of the negative parts because you're afraid to let yourself see the whole picture. Simone may have been a good person, but I doubt she was perfect.”
I had the sense there were memories just outside of my line of vision, dancing around the boundary of what I could see. It scared me. I wasn't sure I wanted to see everything.
“Let's back up from Simone for a minute,” Dr. Weeks said. “How do you deal with anger in general?”
I shrugged. “I dunno. I don't get mad that often.”
“Does being angry make you uncomfortable?”
Her question made me uncomfortable. “I just don't get upset that easy.”
Dr. Weeks nodded but didn't say anything for a beat. I shifted in my chair. I wished I could get up and pace.
“It's not like every teen has anger issues,” I said.
Dr. Weeks smiled. “I didn't ask you if you had anger issues; I asked you how you dealt with
getting
angry. It's one of the big emotions in life. Love, fear, hope, desire, sadness, happiness, anger.” Her hand waved in the air to indicate there were even more. “It's normal for people to get angry. Maybe someone hurts us or disappoints us, and our response is to be upset. Now, there are people who take it too far. And in those cases, often what's happening is that they're confusing fear with anger. They don't want to let themselves be scared, so they lash out.”
“That's why this whole situation seems so weird. I don't lash out. Yeah, sure, Simone and I have times when we are ticked at each other, but it's no big deal. Stupid stuff, like that she wore my cashmere sweater in art class and got paint on it, or how she would back out of plans if something better came up and leave someone hanging. When Simone and I did have a fight or disagreement about something, I was almost always the one who did the making up, even if it wasn't my fault,” I said. “I'm, like, the peacemaker.”
Dr. Weeks smiled at me. “That can be a great trait, to stay calm when other people don't, but it can also be a way of avoiding emotions that make us uncomfortable.” She leaned forward, and her creaky office chair gave a groan. “Sometimes we don't let ourselves be angry because we're afraid we could lose those people if they knew we were upset.”
“You think that's what I do?” I didn't know why I bothered with the question. As soon as she'd said the words, they rang around the room with the peal of truth. I always backed down. Always. “But, see, that's why I couldn't have done this. Doesn't that prove it?”
“The problem with bottling up anger is that because we aren't used to expressing it in a healthy way, it can come out in a way we don't want. Like self-harm, for example.”
