“For being you,” Rain said. “For being a great friend, a partner in crime. All of it.”
Gillian hung her head a moment, was a little teary when she looked up again. “No, my friend. Thank you. I have to be honest—this last year without you. It has sucked. Big-time. I’m glad to have you back.”
Rain helped her get her stuff together, and they waited on the porch for the Uber.
“Just be careful, okay?” said Gillian.
Rain looked out into the night. No mysterious car drifting up the street. No monster lurking in the shadows.
“Careful?”
“He’s quicksand,” she said. “You know that. You have a life, a good one. Don’t let him pull you under.”
Rain didn’t need to ask her friend what or who she was talking about. Of course I’m going to be careful, she could say. Of course she wasn’t going to let Hank or this story ruin her wonderful life. But she didn’t bother pretending she didn’t know what a dangerous path she was on.
“He won’t. I promise.” It felt like a vow she had no way of keeping.
“I promise,” she said again.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Must be something in the air; my patients are all struggling. My otherwise quiet Saturday is filling up with emergency sessions.
Peter, despondent after his disastrous homecoming date, has locked up like a vault. We spent a silent hour in my office while he sketched the events of the evening. The sketches—charcoal on thick white stock—practically radiate his despair, his feelings of helplessness. In the final sketch, he sits alone, head sunk into his hands. I get it. He has no idea how to be in the world, how to navigate the treacherous terrain of relationships.
“I’m sorry your night wasn’t what you expected,” I tell him, again. “Try not to take it personally. In the history of school dances, I promise that you’re one of a legion whose night has gone horribly wrong. It’s nothing you did.”
Nothing. Not even an eye roll. I’m not crazy about his flat affect. I’ve asked his distraught aunt to call me tonight if he doesn’t snap out of it. It’s been a week. Wallowing like this, sinking further into despair, instead of moving away from it, not a good sign.
Grace has started cutting again. Her mother found the telltale cotton balls dotted with blood in her wastepaper basket.
“It’s my fault,” her mother confesses over the phone. “I let her back on Instagram for an hour. She begged, and I relented. She said that she felt like a freak, isolated from everyone she knew because she wasn’t online. That she was better, stronger. So I gave in.”
“It’s not your fault,” I tell her. “You do your best, we all do. The choice is hers. We can only try to help her make better choices. Give her the tools to deal with her anxiety.”
“We’re the first generation of parents to deal with this,” she says. “I wish I could take all her devices and set them on fire.”
“Kids have always struggled to find their place in the world,” I tell her. “But, yes, social media, the internet in general, is making it harder because their friends can present these fake perfect feeds of their lives, because there is so much information, not all of it true. And it’s so hard for kids to understand that what they’re seeing is not the real thing.”
“It’s hard for all of us,” she says, sounding wistful and lost.
You remember what it was like, don’t you, Lara? To be so unsure of who you were, and where you fit into the bizarre social structure that is teen culture. I think it’s worse now. I wouldn’t want to be a teenager in the age of social media. Try being a real person when everyone around you is an avatar—a multidimensional girl in a world of airbrushed paper dolls.
“Bring her in,” I tell her. “I can meet you at the office at two if that works.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
I’ll be late to Angel’s party, but that will have to be okay.
When I hang up with Grace’s mom, I dial another number. I am still saying dial, are you? I don’t know if they say that anymore. It must mean I’m getting old.
“Andrea Barnes.”
“Hi, it’s Hank Reams.”
“Oh, Hank,” she says. It doesn’t sound like she’s a hundred percent happy to hear from me. I don’t blame her. “How are you?”
“I’m okay. No complaints,” I say. Which is a lie. I have plenty of complaints, as you well know. “How