Chapter 16

I wasn'tsure what hurt worse: the concussion or the first family-based therapy session with Dr. L, or Artem Lukash Ph.D. as he was officially known. Dr. L had a long silver beard, sparkling blue eyes, and tiny glasses sitting on the end of a flat nose. Dr. L insisted on being called Dr. L, his Ukrainian accent subtle, now, after many years of living in the US treating teens with eating disorders. It seemed that Lukash had been a figure skater when he was younger and had struggled with body image issues himself. He explained that, back then, there was little known about such things and far less talked about. Which was fucking tragic.

I'd been home for a week, the concussion still an issue. I couldn't stand quickly, and the sun made my head ache. The knot on my head had gone down, and the scrapes on my face were now scabs that looked fucking terrible. I had draped a towel over the mirror in my bathroom, so I didn't have to see my face. The face of a loser.

Dr. L opened the session with "So, today I would like to talk about the towel over your mirror." I threw a glower at my older brother; Jun shrugged. "Does it make you angry that Jun reported that to me?"

"Yeah, because he needs to just go back to college and pretend I'm not even alive the way he has for years," I snapped, irate at the betrayal. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, and I saw the hurt in Jun's dark eyes, I felt terrible. Guilt. More guilt. So much guilt and shame bubbling inside me made me feel ill all the time. "I'm sorry."

Dr. L leaned up to hand me a box of tissues. Great. We'd not been here ten minutes, and I was on the verge of tears. I was so weak.

"There is no need to be sorry about what you feel, Kenji," Dr. L said as I yanked a few tissues free from the yellow box, then wadded them into a tight ball. "Jun, do you understand why Kenji might feel betrayed betrayal?"

"Yes, I do, but I'm done seeing things, then pretending they're not a problem. We all saw Kenji behaving in odd ways, limiting his food intake, and yet, we all said nothing."

Mom and Dad spoke up. Mom in tears, Dad citing that they had noticed nothing. Then, he started to tear up.

"We should have noticed," Dad coughed, his eyes welling. "We should have paid more attention to you, Kenji. What kind of parents allow this to happen to their child, twice?"

All four of us started talking at once, reassuring the others it wasn't their fault. Dr. L sat back, stroking his beard with one hand, jotting down notes in an old spiral-bound notebook with a puppy on the front with the other.

"Okay, let's all take a moment to recenter," Dr. L broke in when I began crying silently into my ball of tissues. "It seems to me that everyone feels as if they could have prevented Kenji from sliding back into unhealthy eating habits, but in reality, there are more factors at work here than busy family members who turn a blind eye to a potential problem."

"His coach is a prick," Dad snarled, his anger a living thing.

Dr. L sat back and let my father empty his spleen about Ilya. I had nothing to add. I'd been bullied by an adult whom I'd looked up to for a long time. Mom sat beside Jun, her cheeks wet, her beautiful gaze on me as Dad ran out of ire. For the time being anyway.

The silence in the doctor's office was deafening.

"I'm sorry," Dad murmured. "I know anger isn't helping anything, but I just want to pummel that man for what he's been doing to our kid."

"I let him do it, Dad," I piped up to break the silence. I stared at the small plant on the light wooden coffee table, the roots visible through the glass pot. Behind me a tabletop waterfall ran, the sound of the water soothing, I guessed. Jun frowned. "No, I did. I mean… yeah, I knew he was being overly strict. I lied to everyone to cover up for him." I glanced from my brother to my counselor. "Why did I do that?"

Dr. L seemed to be pondering that question. "Perhaps, that is a query for you to work on for our personal sessions, Kenji." Ugh, yeah, here we go. "I will say that it is very easy for a young adult to be manipulated by an adult in a position of power to do things to help shield the abusive adult from discovery."

I sat back, stunned at the word abusive. Throughout my entire time under Ilya, I had never thought of his methods as abusive. Super strict, ridiculously outdated, but abusive? No, that word had never entered my mind. Maybe it should have…

"What can we do now, Dr. L?" Mom asked as Jun shifted uncomfortably in his chair. That he had decided to take a leave from his studies to be here for therapy still amazed me. And it made me feel loved. The amount of attention and care that had been showered on me over the past several days made me cry on the hour. All my friends and the staff from Chesterford, the student body, the skater girls, the Coyotes, and a ton of my fellow figure skaters. Cards, flowers, texts, personal messages, well wishes, just about anything a person could send via the internet had rained down on me like a warm spring shower of support.

And then there was Shaun. My boyfriend. He was my pillar of strength.

He was at my house every day after practice until eleven. Sometimes, we simply napped. Sometimes, we did homework. I had no clue when I would be going back to school, so I was doing my work online, or trying to. The concussion made things rough, and I would need to stop every ten minutes or so to give my eyes a rest. Shaun would feed me cookies or bring me tea from Sobo or rub my temples. Sometimes, we would just lie on my bed, cuddled close, and talk.

I shared more with him than I probably ever would with anyone else. Aside from Dr. L with whom, who I knew I was going to have to come clean, if I ever wanted to resolve my eating disorder.

The rest of the hour was less intense, but just as tearful. Dr. L explained his process, that he was available to me twenty-four hours a day via text or phone, and that his outpatient skills coaching involved several key components we would work on as a family. He was very set on family involvement at all levels of my recovery. We touched on group therapy with fellow adolescents under his care. We discussed field trips that the teen group would be taking to grocery stores, restaurants, cooking classes, meal planning, and a slew of other things designed to help us learn healthy eating habits that would carry us to and into adulthood.

There were a ton of discussions ahead of me in the teen group, as well as in family and personal sessions. Things like being aware of the influence of social media, mindfulness, anxiety management, and medication for depression and anxiety. He suggested I start on antidepressants for a multitude of reasons, and I agreed, as did my parents.

"Will I be able to skate on meds?" I enquired as my brother reached out to grab my hand. Out of nowhere. I threaded my fingers into his. It had been a long, long time since he'd shown me any kind of physical affection. Jun just wasn't that type of guy. Unlike Shaun, who was all about the hugs.

"I'm going to ask you to refrain from skating for a few months, Kenji. Sometimes, adjusting to new meds can be tricky. Also, since so much of your disorder centers on skating, I think we need to let that stressor go until we have you on more solid ground. Do you feel okay with that?"

I nodded. Yeah, that was okay. "Sure, yeah," I said, feeling a lightening of pressure on my shoulders that I hadn't been aware of carrying.

We all rose when the doctor did, shook hands, and went out into the waiting room to schedule about eight million sessions. My life for the next few months was going to be nothing but group therapy, family therapy, solo therapy, school—as soon as I got cleared by my medical doctor—and field trips with a bunch of other teenagers with body issues.

Thank all the gods for Shaun.

"Do you want to stop somewhere for lunch?" Dad asked as we rode down from the fourth floor of the medical building. The March winds were meek today. Seemed the month was going out like a lamb. Warmer weather and spring buds sounded really good. I looked up at my father. "Oh. Should I not do that? Should I not mention eating out?"

"No, hey, it's cool. I'd like to maybe get a milkshake after I get my prescription filled," I said, giving my father a little smile.

"Let's get a vanilla for you and a chocolate for me, then mix them half-and-half like we used to do when we were kids," Jun suggested, shrugging into his jacket as we exited the elevator.

He was tall like Dad, but with my mother's delicate facial features. I was all Mom right down to my small feet and emotional way of dealing with the world. She loved to hug me tight and call me her fellow creative. She with paints on canvas, and me on the ice. Only, not on the ice for a long time now maybe. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. Just another thing to figure out.

"Yeah, okay, let's do that," I replied, my hands in the front pockets of Shaun's letterman jacket. It was far too big on me, but I loved that about it. And him. My phone buzzed in my back pocket, and I smiled. That would be my boyfriend texting me during gym class to see how therapy session number one of a billion went. If he got caught on the phone, Mr. Limon would make him do fifty laps of the gym.

I'd tell him it went fine. Then, I would show him my half-and-half milkshake.

Ten days later,I was sitting beside Shaun in his car, parked in the student lot, chewing on my lower lip. The doctors had given me the all-clear to return to school with the proviso that, if I started experiencing headaches from staring at screens or the blackboard, I was to go to the nurse's office to rest for a bit.

"You okay?" Shaun asked, turning off the engine, but leaving the playlist running. "You can take another day. Your folks will be totally fine with you staying home a little longer."

"No, I'm… I need to get out of the house."

That was no lie. My family loved me to bits, I knew that, but they hovered. Sobo had made me so much tea and baked me so many cookies that I was unable to look at a tea pot without burping plum. Mom was all about healthy eating, and we did some meal planning together, which was nice, but she tended to watch every bite I took, then smiled at me for chewing and swallowing. Dad was all about the veggies, leaping into the mix to toss salads every night, then tell me about his days in the Air Force and how performance was related to the fuel you took in. As if I were an F-15. Also, very cool that he cared, but I wasn't a jet. I was a confused kid with body image issues.

Jun was the only one who didn't flutter around me like a damned neurotic hummingbird. Jun was actually pretty cool. I'd forgotten how much fun he could be when he let himself just chill.

"Okay, sure, I get that," Shaun replied, his voice pulling me out of the light fog I felt I'd moved into all the time. The meds were kicking in now, and they helped with impulse control and my anxiety. "No one will say anything about you, Kenji."

"I know." I didn't know at all. I felt vulnerable. A skinny Asian-American kid in a stupid uniform with scabs on his face like a leper whom the world saw fall on his face at a major competition because he had an eating disorder. Yep. Like that wasn't giggle fodder for the masses. The stigma about eating issues was strong, and for guys who suffered, it was even worse, as eating issues were feminized. "I just wish I hadn't been so stupid that day."

"Hey, you weren't stupid." He took my hand in his bigger one, lifting it from where it rested on my thigh. I looked from the kids filing into classes to find his blue eyes on me. He kissed my bruised knuckles. "You fell and hit your head. Happens in hockey all the time. No one made fun of Tennant Rowe when he had his head injury."

"That's different."

"No, it is not. A concussion is a concussion."

"And my other issues?"

"Are mental health issues that you're getting help with. There are all kinds of athletes who are taking time to deal with their mental health. It's not a dark secret anymore. You're so strong, Kenji, I wish I could help you see that about yourself."

I leaned over the console that held our takeout hot cocoa cups to kiss him on the mouth. A good kiss, one with lots of passion because he inspired me to love, not only him, but myself.

"Wow," he whispered when we parted, his lips bright pink and slick. "That was…" He reached down to push at his crotch with the heel of his hand. "I need a minute here before we go inside."

"Me too," I teased, shifting in my seat to alleviate the boner in my slacks. Dress pants did nothing to hide the darn thing. I sat back down. We sipped our cocoas as our dicks deflated, and then, we exited the car. Shaun came around to clasp my hand. We'd made it nearly to the front door when I realized I'd left my backpack in the car. Ugh, man, my head was muzzy. After running to get my backpack, I met Shaun at the front doors. Soren, Felix, Jonah, and Tyler were sitting on the steps just inside the foyer, smiling at me as I approached them.

"There he is," Soren called, making me blush as other eyes swung from lockers and conversations to me. "Dude, those scabs on your face look cool. Like you got into a bar fight with some rowdy biker guys."

"Yep, that's totally the story that I'm going with. Bar fight with biker dudes. They lost. I won."

Felix laughed as he offered me a fist to bump. Jonah started jabbering at me about an interview with the school paper about my incident on the ice.

"I'm not sure," I replied with honesty, taking, and using one of the things I had learned in group therapy last night. Saying ‘no' is okay.

"He's not ready for that kind of thing yet," Shaun said, his tone kind, but firm.

Jonah stumbled over an apology.

"No, man, don't be sorry. It's cool. Maybe someday, yeah?" I said. He nodded, then peeled off to go to class, Tyler at his side. Soren and Felix also left, leaving us to make our way down the emptying halls. I was nervous as I neared homeroom.

"I wish I could stay with you all day," Shaun whispered as we stood in the corridor, facing each other.

"Like a big beautiful golden retriever psychiatric service dog."

He blushed the prettiest shade of red. "Woof," he said softly, stole a kiss, and then, watched me enter homeroom, closing the door behind me. I could feel the stares of my fellow students.

"Welcome back, Mr. Kelly. If you take your seat, we can do roll call," Ms. Porter said, her smile warm as the spring sun shining in the windows. I nodded and sat down, then glanced at the door. There stood Shaun, waving at me through the tall, narrow window in the door. I wiggled my fingers back at him. He blew me a kiss, then took off just as second bell rang. Yep, he was going to be late to class, no doubt in my mind.

"Hey, Kenji, I saw your fall, then heard people saying you had mental health stuff going on. I take anxiety meds too." Laura Kerston turned at her desk to confide in me.

"Yeah, me too. I have since freshman year," Lance Kilroy told me across the aisle.

"Thanks," I said to the other kids who had reached out to me. Kids I didn't hang out with or spend much time with, but who shared a thing with me. "I totally forgot my backpack in the car this morning. Is that normal?"

Laura told me about her first time on meds and how she had left the trunk of her car open, with all the groceries she had bought for her mom, sitting in student parking for twelve hours. Lance relayed a funny story about how, when he'd first gotten on his meds, he'd slept all day at a picnic table in his backyard until his folks had come home and discovered him sprawled out under the oak tree. They had a picnic that night.

I laughed with them. And they with me. Maybe this was going to be okay after all…