Chapter 4

Alice

I ride my bike to my shrink's office. Mel tried to convince me to get my license, but after the accident, driving a car was the last thing I wanted to do. The world's full of enough scary shit, thanks very much.

Dr. Pamela Overton's office is usually closed on the weekends, but I'm what you call an overflow patient. She was booked solid during the week, but Mel has a way of getting people to do what she wants. She's just like that, all calm and decisive. She makes a plan and people can't help but go along with it. And Mel wanted me to see a shrink.

After what I did, I kinda don't blame her.

I actually like Dr. Pam. She has a soft southern accent and white-blonde hair she twists into a neat bun. She always wears soft sweaters and floaty, colorful scarves.

I turn down Sunshine Street, where Dr. Pam's office is located. Maya thinks it's hilarious that a psychologist's practice is located on Sunshine Street. I lock my bike in the rack in front of the old redbrick building and go inside.

I sign in using the touchpad and sit in a hard plastic chair. The front door dings, and a woman enters. She's pretty, with long, espresso-colored hair pulled into a tight ponytail, sharp cheekbones, quick, dark eyes. She unzips her coat and stomps snow off sturdy biker boots. She limps across the room, her cane making loud thunks as she walks. There's something about her, a sort of restless, edgy vibe.

She jabs at the touchpad with sharp, impatient movements, then sits across from me, her good leg jiggling against the floor. I can feel her gaze, heavy on me. She's probably trying to figure out where she recognizes me from, which makes me uncomfortable. I meet her eyes defiantly.

"You okay?" I say pointedly.

Before she can respond, Dr. Pam peeks her head out of a door.

"Oh, hello, Jess." Dr. Pam motions for me to wait, drawing Jess back into her office.

I'm annoyed because I was here first, and am about to leave when Dr. Pam waves me in. Jess must've gone out the back.

"Apologies for the delay," Dr. Pam says.

She escorts me into her office. It's decorated like a living room, all overstuffed furniture with fluffy throw pillows, a glossy walnut desk, soft watercolors on the walls, a shelf of books, a strangely twisted bonsai tree, its growth stunted by the tiny pot.

Like me, I think. Stuck in a static life in a small town, unable to move on or move past.

Dr. Pam's made me tea, my favorite market blend, and it waits on the table in front of a low cream couch. I sink onto it, wishing I could lie down and pull one of the blankets over me.

She sits in her chair, ankles crossed, calm, patient. That's all I ever get off her, just total serenity. "How are you feeling, Alice?"

Lonely. Abandoned. Like a total freak.

"Okay," I say. "My grades are up."

I lift my mug, inhaling the cinnamon-orange scent. It's hot and sweet, just the way I like it. "Thanks for this."

She nods, waiting for me to continue. I'm not good at talking. Not anymore. But like I said, therapy is sort of nonnegotiable now.

I look down at my forearm. The gnarled F R stands out, ropy pink scar tissue against skin so pale I can see blue blood vessels pulsing.

It was all a big misunderstanding. I wasn't actually trying to kill myself. It happened a few weeks after I'd gone back to school. I was sitting in math class when I just sort of ... detached. Like there was a skin separating me from everybody else. And suddenly I wasn't sitting in class.

My vision went black. The shrieking of metal on metal filled my ears. Glass cracking. Footsteps crunching. The hot metallic scent of blood in my nose. And fear. So much fear. An iron band tightened around my chest. The air had turned gooey and viscous, like peanut butter. I tried to scream, but only a strange, gurgled moan came out.

And then my eyes had snapped open and I was back in math class, everybody staring at me. I wasn't sure if I'd fallen asleep or if I'd had a flashback or what.

Later, after my next class, I went to my locker. A message was painted across it in red.

Freak.

I did pretty much what you'd expect. I ran away.

I got my bike and cycled to Killer's Grove. I sat next to the tree where our car had gouged a scar into its flesh and gouged my own scar, using a compass from my backpack to carve F REAK into my forearm.

Except I only got to F R before I passed out. Blood kinda grosses me out. And that's where the school principal and Mel found me, covered in blood at the side of the road.

She thought I was trying to commit suicide, but I wasn't. It's not that I don't think about dying. I think about it pretty much every day now. Cancer. Drunk driver. A wall falling on me. A gunman. My problem isn't that I'm scared to die. It's that I'm scared to live.

I guess I just wanted to release some of the pain, and that word— FREAK —made sense to me. Because why am I the only one left? Why are they gone and I'm still here?

That was the only time Mel brought up That Night.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she'd asked. "Tell me how you're feeling?"

I didn't know how to answer. I've learned that it's better to swallow your voice than to speak the truth.

"I know it must be so hard," Mel said. "Let me help you."

I didn't answer. Maybe silence is a sort of superpower.

Dr. Pam interrupts my thoughts. "Are you still having problems sleeping?"

"Sometimes." I hurry to add: "Better than before."

"How are the new pills working?"

Dr. Pam changed my depression meds a few weeks back because I started getting fat. I heard some of the kids at school laughing about it behind my back, so I asked to change.

"Fine," I lie.

I don't tell her how tired I've been or that I feel more anxious than ever, that my head constantly aches. And I definitely can't tell her I've started seeing my dead dad.

I need the chemical numbness of these pills. I can't go back to the place I was last year.

"You're being careful not to drink, right? No recreational drugs?"

"I don't do drugs," I say, horrified. The pills I swipe from my aunt are so I don't feel so anxious. They're totally legal, not recreational.

Dr. Pam tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. On her desk, there's a picture of a square-jawed husband, two grown children with the same soft features, intelligent eyes. They're standing on a patio overlooking a beach with palm trees. Hawaii, maybe.

My dad talked about going to Hawaii once. It was maybe a few weeks before That Night.

Maybe we should move somewhere new, he'd said to my mom. Hawaii or, I don't know, Fiji. Somewhere tropical.

"How's school?" Dr. Pam asks.

I laugh, but it sounds hard and bitter. "School is school."

She gives me a sympathetic smile. "That bad?"

"You have no idea. Everybody looking at me, talking about me behind my back, like I'm some sort of shit magnet."

My hand goes to the locket at my throat before I remember I took it off last night. It's in my purse, which is still at the party house.

"Experiences like yours naturally leave behind a latent fear of abandonment, especially coming up on the one-year anniversary. There's a lot of uncertainty in missing, presumed dead cases."

I make a sound at the back of my throat. The phrase missing, presumed dead makes me low-key furious. Like there's any doubt. The police know it. I know it. Their bodies were never found, but there was blood, hairs, clothing fibers.

They aren't missing. My family died that night in Killer's Grove.

Nobody seems to really know what happened. I was basically unconscious, so it's not like I'm much help. It's been a year, and every lead has gone cold. There are no suspects. No new information.

The case is still officially open, but that presumed dead part, that's the cops saying unofficially they're done looking.

The problem is, without their actual bodies, there's always this cruel little sliver of hope.

"I just wish I knew where their bodies are." The words are out before I can stop them.

"I understand," Dr. Pam says quietly. "Closure is an important piece of a complicated puzzle. We've spoken before about ambiguous loss. When we don't have all the information, we lose any sense of control, and we go to the wildest places in our minds to fill in the blanks. Closure provides us with a way to process what's happened."

"Well, there you go," I say snottily. "I can't get any closure. No wonder I feel like I'm sinking."

"Is that how you feel?"

"Sometimes."

"Closure is important in grieving, but it can mean different things to different people. Perhaps your version of closure isn't just about getting answers but in learning to feel grateful that you lived. That you can take a deep breath when you walk in the sunshine. Sometimes there's no closure, exactly, but there is what's called reconciliation, and that means integrating your new reality of life without your family there. Not just surviving but thriving. Connecting with those who love you here and now is an important part of that."

I tell her about my phone call with my grandma. "She asked me to move to Florida with her."

"That's a big step, Alice. What do you want to do?"

"I don't know. We're supposed to talk about it more when she comes up for Christmas, but ..." I shrug.

"You don't want to leave Black Lake?"

"I do, I just . . ."

It's hard to explain. Here, I'm a freak. The girl left behind. I feel like I'm frozen in time. But ... it's all I know. I guess I'm scared. Maybe that's why I'm seeing my dad.

"You're seeing your dad?"

I didn't realize I'd spoken out loud, but Dr. Pam's response surprises me.

"They're called grief hallucinations. Hearing your loved one's voice, catching a glimpse of them, it's part of bereavement. You aren't alone, Alice. It means you need something from him."

"Like what?"

"Like closure."

I frown. It didn't feel like a hallucination. My dad is bloody, injured. I can hear his voice clearly, like he's standing right there. "You don't understand."

"Why don't you explain it to me."

And so I do. We talk about the accident and survivor's guilt and how hard it's been and how I feel when I see my dad. The hour passes quickly until she's standing, announcing our time is up for today.

And then I'm outside. It's bitterly cold, but the sun has burned away the fog, and it's a beautiful, clear day. I call Maya while I unlock my bike.

"Hey, I left my purse at the house last night," I say when she answers.

"My house?"

"No, the party house. Any way you can bring it over to mine?"

"I can't, soz. I have to go clean up so I can get the keys back to my mom before she notices they're missing, and then we're supposed to have some family dinner or something. Meet me there?"

I swallow hard, bile edging up my throat. It's impossible to explain exactly why I don't want to go back there, the memories it rakes up, the feelings.

"Okay. Sure," I finally say.

I hang up and get on my bike, cycle through town toward the party house. I pass the café, the post office, the beach, the church with its white steeple, pedaling harder and harder until my chest burns and my lungs feel like they're about to explode, trying to outrun the memories shoving at me.

But as usual, I'm not quite fast enough.

Like tennis balls, they keep bouncing back. Dad teaching me to ride my bike, his hands strong and steady on my back. Ella crying when she tipped her ice-cream cone onto the sand. Mom laughing and sharing hers. And then another: eleven years old, the school Christmas concert in the park. I was supposed to sing "Joy to the World," and I froze. But then Dad was there, pushing his way through the crowd, his big, warm hand in mine, his rich baritone singing, so all I had to do was join in.

There's no way he did what they said he did. My father was a gentle man. He loved photography and the Red Sox and Greek history. He had a calm voice and a cheerful demeanor. He couldn't be a murderer. A—what do you call them?—family annihilator.

But who killed them? And why was I left?