Chapter Seventeen

"HOW ARE YOU TODAY, ELLIE?"Dr. Cerise Fischer scrawls a heading at the top of her notepad. Ellie Black, session 2. It's a bright day, and Cerise has closed the curtains, anticipating Ellie's aversion to lights. A single lamp is on in the corner, its bulb casting a warm yellow glow.

Ellie shifts and lifts a shoulder. Her hair is dirty, unwashed. She has not showered, Cerise mentally notes. "The same."

She smiles at Ellie as if she is an old friend. "Do you still feel as if you're wrapped in cellophane?"

Another shrug. "Sometimes."

She jots a note down on her pad. Client notes she still feels physically shut down and detached. "And other times?"

Ellie laces her fingers together, gripping them so tightly that the flesh around her knuckles turns white. "Trapped. Afraid. And that other thing," she slides out. "You know, when you don't know who you are anymore."

"Loss of identity?" Cerise writes another note and underlines it. Unable to render sense of self.

"Yeah, I don't know who I am anymore." Ellie covers her eyes with her hands. Cerise has seen this before with other clients, other victims, a gesture of meekness. Shame, utter despair. "I… I tried cutting my hair the other day."

"And?"

"I don't know… I held the open scissors to my hair and couldn't do it. I just couldn't. I stayed like that until my hand cramped up."

"You mentioned to your mother you weren't allowed to cut your hair," Cerise ventures. "Why is that?" Ellie's jaw works, teeth clenching. She stays mute. Cerise decides to change course. "Your parents tell me you've been seeing more people."

"Just Danny," says Ellie. Quiet ensues once more.

"How did that go?" she gently presses.

"Okay." Ellie pulls the sleeves of her sweatshirt down and fists them. "I mean, not okay. He tried to touch me. But not like that." Ellie's eyes flick, startled, to Cerise.

"Like what?" Cerise carefully controls her expression. She waits patiently for Ellie to elaborate.

"He wanted to hug me, I think. That's all. But I felt totally freaked out." She stops.

"Go on."

"I don't know." A shake of the head. "I want to be touched, but I can't stand it."

"That will come in time. Perhaps you're not ready yet for physical affection." Ellie winces at the last two words. "Be patient with yourself." Cerise pauses to gauge Ellie's reaction.

Ellie squeezes her eyes shut. "New topic, please."

Cerise inhales. "Sure. You haven't seen any other friends since you've been home? Why not?"

Ellie shakes her head and gazes out the window at the endless ocean. The water is calm today. "Um, I didn't have many friends. From before," she qualifies.

"Got it," Cerise says. She sets her notes aside. "I thought you might enjoy some art therapy today. No talking required. Would you be open to that?" Cerise hopes drawing may be easier than speaking. That Ellie will be able to show what she cannot tell.

Ellie pushes hair away from her face. "Sure. I guess."

Cerise beams. "Great."

"You're easy to please," Ellie blurts. Then covers her mouth, horrified. "I shouldn't have said that. Sorry, sorry, sorry," she says, rapid-fire, body tightening as if she's about to be struck.

"Hey, hey," Cerise says. And Ellie calms. "It's okay. That was funny."

"It's just that since coming home, I feel like I'm letting everyone down," Ellie tells her.

"There isn't a right way to heal," Cerise says, and busies herself pulling out art supplies and placing them on the coffee table. Stubby sticks of charcoal, sharp colored pencils, a row of bright oil pastels, a large drawing pad.

"It's nice to feel like I'm doing something right."

"You're doing everything right. I'm going to put some music on, okay? While we listen, I'd like for you to draw something."

Ellie picks up the thick pad, holding it with two hands. "What should I draw?"

Cerise considers for a moment. She thinks about what Ellie said and follows her instinct. "How about what friendship looks like?" Ellie said she did not have many friends before. But what about after? What about those two years she was missing?

"Yeah, okay, I can do that." Ellie takes a jittery breath, picks up a piece of charcoal, and starts to draw.

The hour passes in a blur. Cerise pretends to work on her computer, but she's watching Ellie closely, the way she seems to be lost in memories, almost in a trance. At five minutes till the hour, Cerise clicks off the music, and Ellie jolts upright, pastel loose between her pointer finger and thumb.

"All right, Ellie. Our time is up. Let's see what you've done." Cerise opens her hands, inviting Ellie to show her work. Ellie rips two drawings from the pad and places them on the coffee table.

Cerise uses a finger to rotate the art toward her, careful not to smudge anything. Ellie rubs her hands together, staining her palms with blues, purples, blacks, greens, and yellows from the oil pastels. The colors of bruises and the forest.

Cerise delicately picks up both sheets and puckers her lips. "A field?" She focuses on the drawing in her right hand. Ellie has sketched a line of birch trees, a bloody sunset behind them. "And a…?" Beneath the birch trees is a black void.

"A hole." Ellie scrapes the pads of her fingers. Bits of pastel peel from her skin and fall onto the sage couch.

Unease skitters up Cerise's spine. "This represents friendship to you?" she asks. This picture resembling a grave?

"Um, I guess more love than friendship." Ellie peers down at her knees, then up at Cerise, the word love hanging between them, an empty noose in the air.

"I see," Cerise says. She places the drawing to the side and braces herself for the next. Ellie has used only charcoal on this one. And she's depicted four girls. Three are tall, and one is short. Younger? On the bigger girls, Ellie has drawn a loop around each of their wrists. Chains? Rope? The smaller girl's wrists are bare. The loop noticeably absent. Lastly, all of the girls are depicted with two X's for eyes and a frightened oval for a mouth. Because they are dead? "Is one of these you?" she says, voice low.

Ellie wipes her sweaty palms on the knees of her jeans. "I'm there."

Cerise lets loose a breath. Maybe not dead? But hurt? "And the rest, do they represent real people, too?" A slight crack in Cerise's voice, fear slipping through.

Ellie bobs her head. "They do."

"Will you tell me their names?" Cerise points at the bigger girls.

Ellie's eyelids twitch. She flexes her hands. "I'm… something is happening," she rasps, clutching at her chest. The beginning of a panic attack.

Cerise's clinical training kicks in. "Breathe, Ellie. You are safe. You are here, with me, in this room. Come back to me. Ellie?" Cerise says again.

No use. Ellie shakes her head, won't open her eyes. She is lost in a horrid memory.

"Let's try a grounding technique. Can you follow my instructions?" Cerise keeps her tone even and low, her voice seeking to pull Ellie from the dark water. "Push your feet hard into the floor." Cerise sees Ellie's toes flex through the thin fabric of her shoe. "Good. Feel the couch beneath you." Ellie's hands skirt the couch, and the trembling in her body eases. "That's it. Notice your spine and how it supports you. Acknowledge that you are struggling. Perhaps you are anxious, sad, or reliving a painful memory… but just as you feel pain, there is a solid body around that pain that you can control. Now open your eyes." Ellie does. "Tell me five things that you see in this office."

"Chair, yellow sticky notes, a lamp with a gold base, a silver pen…" Ellie trails off and focuses on the drawing on the paper. Her mouth moves but no words come out.

"What is it, Ellie? What would you like to say?"

"My friends, I see my friends." She reaches out and thumbs the girls' images, sadness on her face. The kind reserved for things loved and lost—people who are gone.

"They were your friends?" Cerise asks.

"No, better than friends." Ellie touches the loops around the girls' wrists, then her fingers skirt to the fourth girl, the shorter girl, reverence in her touch. "Sisters. They were my sisters."