Page 36 of Starve
There’s nothing I can do now, and it’s not like she candoanything to me. I hope. No more getting committed. No more Bluebone Ridge. No moremonstersexcept the one in my woods. Going up the stairs also helps me focus on rehearsing the same story I told the cops in the hospital, when I pleaded innocence and amnesia instead of admitting that I saw monsters in the sanitarium, for all the good that did me.
By the time I reach her door and find an old-fashioned wooden frame with frosted glass, I’m out of breath and regretting my decision to take the stairs. Clearly, I overestimated myself. And my stamina.Especiallymy stamina, given the way I have to lean on the wall and pant for almost a minute before I can breathe like a normal person again. When finally I feel like I don’t look like as much of a mess as I am, I tap lightly on the door, just as her text instructed.
Maybe she won’t answer,I think to myself, crossing my fingers behind my back. But my hopes are dashed only seconds later when the door opens to show Dr. Radley standing there in a dark pantsuit, her hair pulled back into a bun and her glasses on a chain around her neck. “I was scared you got lost, Fern,” she greets, a small smile curling over her lips. “You’re late.”
Surreptitiously, I check the clock on her desk as I walk in, surprised at her comment when I see it’s literally two after four. “Oh, umm…sorry,” I apologize, unsure. “I, uh, tripped outside. It was stupid.” That’s not the whole story, but I’m not about to tell her a weird woman stared at me and it freaked me out, and I needed to take the stairs to shake it off.
That seems like a stupid, fanciful excuse that she won’t believe. Dr. Radley doesn’t reply. She gestures for me to sit on the leather, overstuffed couch that looks more aesthetic than comfortable. But I’m not going to complain. I sit on it and scoot to the back, fighting the urge to use it as a Slip ‘N Slide since it would be way too easy to just whip around on the leather.
Dr. Radley sits in an armchair that’s just as structured and uncomfortable looking as the one from her Bluebone Ridge office. Looking around, I find that much of the decor is similar, and a bit dated. There are pictures of a family on one wall, kids smiling in the snow in front of a large lodge built in the woods. The family changes, kids getting older, until finally the two girls become one unsmiling blonde, who glares at the camera like she’d rather be anywhere else.
“That’s me,” Dr. Radley states, noticing where I’m looking. “I stopped liking pictures being taken of me when I was a teenager.” But she smiles fondly at her wall of memories. “That’s our lodge up in the mountains near here. My grandparents bought it dirt cheap, and my family spent all the time we could up there.”
“That seems nice,” I respond, wondering why in the later pictures, the family never seems together. But it’s not my business, and I don’t ask. “Were you born around here, then?”
“In Seattle, actually. My mom moved there for school, where she met my father. What about you?”
“Tacoma,” I say. “My parents both lived there. Then my dad died and we moved. Not here, though. I bought a house out here just a couple of years ago.”
There’s the notepad again, appearing in her hands just like it had every time at Bluebone. She scratches down something in her quick handwriting, giving an interested nod. “Why all the way out here?”
“Because I like the quiet. I don’t do too well in cities. I get, uh”—my smile becomes a small grimace—“overstimulated really easily. So, I like being alone out here. It’s nice.” My fingers tap my opposite palm, and my curiosity grows when she writes down more in her notepad.
“Did you ever go up into the mountains as a kid? A lot of the locals spent their summers in lodges or finding trouble in the Cascades,” she inquires, giving me a small, familiar smile.
“No, Dad and I went hiking a few times a long,longtime ago. I think maybe once or twice those hikes were in the Cascades? But…” I shrug my shoulders, unsure. “Dad died when I was twelve, and he wasn’t doing so well for a year before that. I don’t remember many of the hiking trails he took me on. Just that a few were cold and steep, and I could see what I thought was all of Washington at some trailhead when I was like, eight.” I can’t help but smile at the memory, and the way my dad was the opposite of my mom in every way.
A pang of sadness goes through me, and my heart twists like a washcloth being wrung out in my chest. Imissmy dad, and that emptiness has never once gone away, only lessened a little with time, giving me so many other things to worry about.
If Dad were here, I never would’ve ended up in Bluebone Ridge.
“What?” Realizing she’s asked me something else, I blink up at Dr. Radley with a frown. “Sorry. I’m a bit out of it today.”
“I was just asking if you wanted to tell me what happened that night at Bluebone. The last night,” she clarifies, as if she needs to. My shoulders stiffen, but I force myself to relax with a sigh. I knew she’d do this, so I can’t be unhappy or surprised now. What other reason would she have to take an interest in me, when I’m sure insurance companies or some legal team is breathing down her neck just to make sure I don’t sue for something? Though I don’t know what I would sue for. Emotional trauma?
The words come out of my mouth like a monologue I’ve memorized, and I’m able to detach from the story to see when Dr. Radley writes anything down. I mention finding Sam’s body, and Hattie being in my room. Just like I had to the police. I mention running outside, of course, and tell her how I yelled and screamed in the parking lot, which is obviously a lie. I don’t say a word about Moro, either. If anyone could get her taken away from me, it would be an employee of the sanitarium. In the end, I explain that something hit me, and I fell onto the asphalt, hitting my head hard enough to knock me out.
“There are some parts I just don’t remember.” I sigh, putting my head in my hands. “I keep trying. I want to remember what happened to Hattie, or what was doing that to Sam.”
“And you didn’t hear anything? A certain kind of animal, maybe? Or a person?”
The question makes the hair at the back of my neck stand up, and I glance up at her with genuine confusion. “A person? Well, I mean, I heard people screaming?—”
“Anything else? Weird voices?” She’s paused in her writing now, and her attention is fixed on me. “Nothing strange at all?”
She’s pushing me for something, and I try to scan my words to make sure I didn’t say anything I shouldn’t have. My hands twist in front of me, fingers pushing into the fresh scar on mypalm. I watch Dr. Radley carefully, and then just shake my head. “No? I don’t think so. Just a lot of screaming.”
Her pen taps on the notepad in her lap, but my therapist doesn’t look upset. She looks interested, though I can’t figure out what about my non-answer could serve to interest her, if she was looking for some other answer. I end up tapping my fingers along with her, copying the movement without a pen. Something about her silence puts me on edge, giving me the slightly hazy feeling I got the day I dramatically rammed scissors into my palm.
Suddenly, the room feels like too much. Every little sound between the walls, the hum of electricity, and even the soft whirring of the fan beats against my temples like machine-gun bullets. I want to leave. But more than that, I don’t want her to see. She doesn’t know me well enough, and I’m not quite bad enough for this to be obvious, but I know it will be if this goes on for much longer.
“I’d like to see you every week.” I tune into her words, nodding along with them, my fingers still tapping even though her pen is now writing. “If that fits into your schedule?”
Again I nod, but when she looks up, I realize she’s looking for a verbal answer instead. “Sure. Umm…yeah. Whatever you think. I want to move past this.” My voice sounds hollow even to my ears, and I check my phone like I have some place to be.
Which I do. It’s just anywhere but here.
A few more words of small talk filter in and out of my ears like a bad radio broadcast, and when Dr. Radley stands, I’m quick to lunge to my feet as well. That earns me a quick look, and I offer her an apologetic smile and an escort to the door while she asks, in her friendly and calm way, if I’m all right.
