The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer - Hodkin Michelle. Страница 24

Dr. Maillard grinned back. “Aside from that.”

The conversation could play out a hundred different ways. Dr. Maillard was being paid to listen to me—it was her job. Just a job. When she went home to her family, she wouldn’t be Dr. Maillard. She’d be Mom. Becca, maybe. Someone else, just like my mother. And she wouldn’t think about me until I saw her next.

But I was there for a reason. The flashbacks—the dreams—I could handle. The hallucinations, I could deal with. But the burn upped the ante. I thought of Joseph, looking so scared and small and lost in the hospital. I never wanted to see him look that way again.

I swallowed hard and went for it. “I think something’s happening to me.” My grand declaration.

Her expression didn’t change. “What do you think is happening to you?”

“I don’t know.” I felt the urge to sigh and rake my hands through my hair, but resisted. I didn’t know what kind of signal it would send, and didn’t want to send the wrong one.

“All right, let’s back up for a minute. Why do you think something is happening to you? What makes you think that?”

I struggled to maintain eye contact with her. “Sometimes I see things that aren’t there.”

“What kinds of things?”

Where to begin? I decided to go in reverse chronological order. “Well, like I told you, I thought the earrings my mother lent me fell in the bathtub, but they were in my ears.”

Dr. Maillard nodded. “Go on.”

“And before I went to the party last night, I saw one of my dead friends in the mirror.” Zing.

“What kind of party was it?”

If Dr. Maillard was shocked by my revelation, she didn’t show it.

“A—a costume party?” I didn’t mean for it to sound like a question.

“Did you go with anyone?”

I nodded. “My brother, but he was meeting someone else.” The room started to feel warm.

“So you were alone?”

An image of Noah whispering to the fairy girl flashed before my eyes. Alone, indeed. “Yes.”

“Have you gone out much since you’ve moved?”

I shook my head. “Last night was the first time.”

Dr. Maillard smiled slightly. “Sounds like it could be stressful.”

At that, I snorted. Couldn’t help it. “Compared to what?”

Her eyebrows lifted. “You tell me.”

“Compared to having your best friend die? Or moving away from everyone you’ve ever known? Or starting at a new school so late in the year?”

Or finding out your father is representing an alleged murderer of a teenage girl? The thought appeared in my mind without warning. Without precedent. I pushed it away. Dad’s work was not going to be a problem for me. I couldn’t let myself be that damaged—if my mother noticed me stressing about it, she might make him drop the case, his first one since we moved. And with three kids in private school now, they probably needed the money. I’d screwed up their lives enough already. I decided not to mention it to Dr. Maillard. What we said was confidential, but still.

Her face was serious when she spoke. “You’re right,” she said, shifting back in her chair. “Let me ask you this: Was last night the first time you saw something, or someone, that wasn’t there?”

I shook my head, somewhat relieved that the focus of the conversation had shifted.

“Do you feel comfortable telling me about other things you’ve seen?”

Not particularly. I picked idly at the thread in my worn jeans, knowing how crazy I would sound. How crazy I already sounded. I said it anyway.

“I saw my old boyfriend, Jude, at school, once.”

“When?”

“My first day.” After I saw my Algebra classroom collapse. After Claire first appeared in the mirror. I bit my lip.

“So, you were already pretty stressed out.”

I nodded.

“Do you miss him?”

Her question caught me off guard. How did I answer that? When I was awake, I barely thought about Jude. And when I dreamed—it wasn’t exactly pleasant. I lowered my eyes, hoping Dr. Maillard wouldn’t notice my burning face, the only evidence of my shame. I was a bad person.

“Sometimes these things are complicated, Mara,” she said. Guess she noticed after all. “When we lose people who were important to us, there’s a whole range of emotions we might experience.”

I shifted in my seat. “Can we talk about something else?”

“We can, but I’d really like to stay with this for a little while. Can you tell me a little bit about your relationship?”

I closed my eyes. “It wasn’t much of one. We were only together for a couple of months.”

“Was it a good couple of months?”

I thought about it.

“Okay,” Dr. Maillard said, moving on. The answer must have been written all over my face. “How about your relationship with your best friend? You saw her since she died too, right?”

I shook my head. “That was Claire. She only moved to Laurelton last year. She was Jude—my boyfriend’s—sister. She was close with Rachel.”

Dr. Maillard’s eyes narrowed. “Rachel. Your best friend?”

I nodded.

“But she wasn’t close with you?”

“Not so much.”

“And you haven’t seen Rachel.”

I shook my head.

“Is there anything else? Anything you’ve seen that you shouldn’t have? Anything you’ve heard that you shouldn’t have?”

My eyes narrowed. “Like voices?” She definitely thought I was crazy.

She shrugged. “Like anything.”

I looked at my lap and tried to stifle a yawn. I failed. “Sometimes. Sometimes I hear my name being called.”

Dr. Maillard nodded. “How do you sleep?”

“Not so great,” I admitted.

“Nightmares?”

You could call them that. “Yes.”

“Do you remember any of them?”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “Sometimes. Sometimes I dream about that night.”

“I think you’re pretty brave to be telling me all of this.” She didn’t sound patronizing when she said it.

“I don’t want to be crazy,” I told her. Truthfully.

“I don’t think you’re crazy.”

“So it’s normal to see things that aren’t there?”

“When someone’s been through a traumatic event, yes.” “Even though I don’t remember it?”

Dr. Maillard raised an eyebrow. “Any of it?”

I rubbed my forehead, then pulled the hair off the back of my neck into a knot. I said nothing.

“I think you are starting to remember it,” she said. “Slowly, and in a way that it doesn’t hurt your mind too much to process. And even though I want to explore this more if you decide to see me again, I think it’s possible that you seeing Jude and Claire could be your mind’s way of expressing the unresolved feelings you have about them.”

“So what do I do? To make it stop?” I asked her.

“Well, if you think you’d like to see me again, we can talk about making a plan for therapy.”

“No drugs?” I figured my mother had taken me to a psychiatrist for a reason. Probably figured she needed to bring out the big guns. And after last night, I couldn’t exactly argue with her.

“Well, I do usually prescribe medication to be used in conjunction with therapy. But it’s your choice. I can recommend you to a psychologist if you don’t want to pursue medication just yet, or we can give it a try. See how you do.”

The things that had been happening since we moved—the dreams, the hallucinations—I wondered if a pill could really make it go away. “Do you think it will help?”

“On its own? Maybe. But with cognitive behavioral therapy, chances are higher that you’d feel better sooner, although it’s definitely a long-term process.”

“Cognitive behavioral therapy?”

Dr. Maillard nodded. “It changes your way of thinking about things. How to deal with what you’ve been seeing. What you’re feeling. It will also help with the nightmares you’ve been having.”

“The memories,” I corrected her. And then a thought materialized. “What if—what if I just need to remember?”

She leaned forward in her chair slightly. “That could be part of it, Mara. But it’s not something you can force. Your mind is already working on it, in its own way.”