dad, what about mom?” My throat closed a little bit, and my nose burned. Again, Nicole held up her hand. “I’m sorry. Maybe talking about parents is too sore a subject.”
“She’s dead. Killed.”
“I’m very sorry, Nathan,” she said. “For how long?”
“Is it…February?” I asked, and Nicole quickly scribbled a note on her paper. “Three months.”
“Oh, it’s new. Let’s leave that one alone for now, then.”
For the next forty-five minutes, Nicole asked me questions that didn’t seem specific to me, but they all seemed to lead to discussing deeper subjects. I kept clamming up on things that made me the most uncomfortable, like Cherri, The Royal Court, and my family, but Nicole still seemed to be getting to the grit of who I was. When the clock on her mantle rang, I jumped, not realizing the whole hour had passed.
“Well, Nathan, thank you so much for talking to me today. It may not feel like it to you, but we got a lot of good work done today. I hope you continue therapy, whether with me or someone else. I really think it could be good for you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I feel a little better.”
She smiled at that. “Good. There is something I have to tell you, though, and I think this could be hard to hear.”
“Okay?”
She crossed her legs and set her notebook flat on top of them. “I believe you may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.”
13
Nathan
“This is perfectly normal,” I said aloud to myself. “Lots of people use these. It’s perfectly normal.”
Somehow, I’d left the therapist with prescriptions for not one but two medications, one for PTSD and one for depression. My father used to tell me all the time that taking meds was a sign of weakness, but I had seen my mom taking some on a few occasions. I hadn’t managed to make my way back into the main house on our property since I went in there to have my mom cleaned up and carried out, but maybe once I did, I could see if hers matched either of the ones I’d been prescribed.
No, I was not ashamed of the medication I had, but I was well aware of the associated stereotype. The very last thing I needed was a rumor buzzing around school that I was on meds now, so because I had to collect them on my way to school that morning, I was sitting in my car, taking them without the risk of prying eyes.
I dumped the allotted number of each pill into my hand and then tossed them into my mouth and swallowed them dry. Just as I was about to twist the top back on the second pill bottle, there was a knock on my car window that made me jump so hard that the pills flew out and scattered all over my car.
“Fuck!” I hissed and looked over. Jaxon was standing outside my window, and fortunately, he had his back to the window and hadn’t looked in, so I quickly rolled down my window. “What do you want?”
“Jeez,” Jaxon said, barely glancing back over his shoulder at me. “Is nice Nathan gone now?”
I cracked my neck and took a deep breath. “No, but you scared the hell out of me.”
“I have to talk to you about something. It’s important. About Cherri.”
The car was covered in the small white pills that would need to be picked up, but Jaxon wasn’t one to classify something as important if it wasn’t. “Get in the car.”
As Jaxon walked around to the other side of my car, I started to collect the spilled pills, but I didn’t have them all gathered by the time he was opening the door. He stuck a foot in, then noticed the chaos and stopped. “Uh.”
“I’ll explain. Just get in. Pick some up on your way.”
Jaxon did as I asked, picking up the pills he could get to and then handed them over to me, and after making sure they were free of any hair or debris—I was grateful that I regularly had my car detailed—I dropped the pills back into the bottle and put it and the other bottle in my backpack.
“You’re taking meds?” Jaxon asked. “For what?”
“Nikki convinced me to go see her therapist this weekend,” I said. “She diagnosed me with depression and PTSD. Now I take pills for them. It’s not a big deal.”
“You’re right. It’s not,” Jaxon said. “Avery and Colette have been taking antidepressants, and, well, I’m sure you know Nikki takes them