“What about Dr. Bender?” I stopped to wrap my sky-blue cardigan tighter around my shoulders, but it was useless. All my clothes were falling off by then. It had been that way for a while, months before anyone noticed. And it was hot. Stifling, but I didn’t want anyone to see how skinny I was that first day—really see—or I thought they might do something even more drastic. Like, send me to a real hospital with doctors and nurses who looked like what they were. Who put tubes down your nose and held therapy sessions in cold rooms that smelled like bleach.
“I’ve never been brave enough to try.”
I almost laughed when I first met Diana Porcella. She looked like a college student, and from what I could tell, she was the only person on staff who believed in closed-toe shoes. She smiled big when I walked into the parlor-turned-office and said it was nice to meet me as she gripped my hand in a firm shake.
Her questions started out simple enough but it was clear she already had some type of file on me. Despite the toothy grin plastered on her face that first day, I knew she was feeling me out, trying to see how far she’d be able to push me. She nodded as I told her about Ashland Hills, like she was already familiar with my life, down to the name of my best friend. I could have lied when she asked if I had a boyfriend. I didn’t have to tell her about Trent.
About how he made me feel wanted. How I always felt I had to prove myself to him because he was older, because he was putting himself on the line with our relationship. (“Five years isn’t a big deal to us, but other people care,” he’d said to me the first time we kissed. I was still in a daze, a haze of bliss and disbelief that his lips had been on mine. “We can’t tell anyone, Theo. I want to keep doing this”—he’d grinned at me, kissed my nose, caressed my cheek—“but we have to keep it a secret, or I could get into a lot of trouble.”) And then, how when we started having sex, I wanted to show him he wasn’t making a mistake, so I pretended I was always into it—always wanted him—so he wouldn’t get bored and choose someone more experienced. Someone older, who didn’t have to be a secret.
During our first couple of sessions I was too nervous to talk about Trent. The counselors were adamant about the fact that, except for cases where they were concerned our lives were in danger, everything we told them was confidential. But something changed the first time I mentioned him by name.
I felt a release so beautiful, I could have cried.
I’d never spoken to anyone about him before. Donovan knew, but we had a sort of silent agreement that he wouldn’t ask what Trent and I did when he wasn’t with us, and I wouldn’t say anything about it at all.
I never stopped looking over my shoulder that first day, afraid someone would burst into the room and take me away now that I’d finally said Trent’s name. Each day after that, it became easier to tell Diana Porcella about how he called me Pretty Theo and the tender note in his voice when he talked about growing up a half hour outside of Detroit. Or how after we had sex, he would burrow his head into my shoulder and doze off instantly, how it made me feel special that he could fall asleep so easily with me.
I couldn’t tell her how old Trent was, though. If she had known he was eighteen, that would have trumped any confidentiality agreement. What if they tried to find him, tried to press charges against him because of something as stupid as a five-year age difference? Or worse, what if he came back but they’d found out and said I couldn’t see him?
So to Diana Porcella, Trent was fifteen and he moved away suddenly when his father got a new job and that is the guy she thought I missed. I didn’t trust Vivian, either, so I told her the same story and that is the guy she thought I was crying about when she woke in the middle of the night to my tears, when I hiccupped out how much I missed him.
The really hot nights were worse than the ones when I couldn’t stop wondering why he’d left. The restlessness worked its way through the bones of the house; you could practically hear the rustling of the other patients trying to get comfortable in their rooms down the hall. I knew Vivian was awake on those nights just as she knew I was lying there staring at the ceiling. But we never said a word to each other. We simply lay on top of our covers, breathing around the tick-tick-tick of the rickety ceiling fan in our celery-colored room.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WHEN I WAKE UP MONDAY MORNING I IMMEDIATELY TURN ON my laptop and type in Chris Fenner’s name. Then I stare at his face and wait for his features to rearrange themselves so his eyes are not that gorgeous amber color, so his lips aren’t the same ones that kissed me all over my body.
I did the same thing yesterday. All day. I told my parents I was studying for a big chemistry test, but instead I spent hours up in my room, covertly nursing a weak stomach and mind-numbing headache as I scoured the same articles about Donovan and Chris, trying to see if I had missed something.
Chris. Yes, Chris. I’m not going to call him Trent anymore. I’m not going to call him someone he never was.
Nothing has come out about the suspect besides his name. Maybe Chris didn’t take Donovan. There could have been a misunderstanding. Maybe the lawyers and reporters and police officers were confused when they found them, jumped to conclusions because the waitress who called them was so frantic after she recognized Donovan. Maybe Donovan agreed to go with him. They used to be friends. Friends.
Unless there was something going on with them the whole time and I was too stupid to see it. Did Chris make me his secret so he and Donovan could keep an even bigger one?
Mom always says the most effective way to take your mind off something is to stay busy, so I convince myself that this sick, sick feeling will go away once I start getting ready and drive to school and get on with my day.
Except I puke in the shower. My stomach is knotted with shame. I’m not safe from thoughts of him, even standing in the steam with needles of water pricking my skin. It’s as if he’s here in this room, as if Chris Fenner can somehow see me standing here naked. No matter how hard I scrub, I still feel his fingers on me. In me.
I take too long in the shower and then too long deciding what I can choke down for breakfast without getting sick again, so by the time I pull into the student parking lot I’m already late for homeroom. It’s not that big of a deal; homeroom isn’t a real class. But now I’ll have to stop by the office to get a late pass and that always takes forever and if I had somewhere to go I would pull right out of this lot and not look back.
I close my eyes as I think about getting out of my car and walking into school. I remind myself that only two other people in the entire world know about this; one of them is certainly not telling and the other one isn’t talking at all.
Unless he does.
So I whip out my cell phone and before I can really think about it, I’m calling Donovan’s house.
The phone rings. And rings. And with each one, my palms sweat more, slipping around the phone as I pray for someone to pick up. At first, I wish for Donovan, think maybe he’ll see that it’s me calling, recognize my number after all these years. But soon I’m desperate for anyone to pick up, even if it’s Mrs. Pratt, even if she uses her defeated voice, the one we all heard in press conferences and interviews after Donovan had been gone too long to hope.
No one answers. Not Donovan, not Mrs. Pratt, not a voicemail telling me my call will be returned. I know they must be ignoring everyone—he’s only been back three full days—but for some reason I thought Donovan might come to the phone if he saw it was me. Talk to me, because he must know I’m freaking out.