Authors: P.D. Workman
Dr. Morton nodded. Justine started pacing again, more slowly now. He watched her pace back and forth for a few minutes.
“Do you want to sit down now?” he questioned. “Try and relax?”
Justine stopped and considered.
“No hypnosis,” she warned.
“No. Just you and me talking. Okay? Fully conscious.”
Justine sat down in the chair, breathing out slowly.
“So nothing important happened that day?” Dr. Morton questioned. “When you got your concussion?”
“No,” Justine said firmly, but she felt her lips twist as she said it. Felt the slight grimace as her body betrayed her, giving away the lie. And Dr. Morton, trained as he was, and so familiar with Justine after years of therapy, couldn’t miss it.
“I think you need to talk about it, Justine,” he said softly. “I think that keeping it all bottled up is holding you back.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Justine protested.
“But part of you does. Part of you is crying out, pushing you to talk to somebody about it. Why do you think you feel this way? Why do you think you can’t lie to me about it?”
Justine drew in a long breath, and held it. She watched the pigeons lining up on the roof. Where did they go when they weren’t watching her therapy? Was it like a television soap for them? Coming to watch the next installment each week? What’s new in the life of Justine Bywater? What’s the latest tragedy? Justine opened her mouth to speak, and a shudder ran through her body. She swallowed hard. She wasn’t sure how to start, how to get the words out. How did you just start talking about the most tragic event in your life? About someone who was part of your soul being stripped from you?
“I can’t,” she breathed.
“Maybe I can help. Something did happen that day?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Was it something between you and your mother?”
Justine shook her head, blinking back tears.
“No.”
“Was it something that happened to you? Were you attacked? Did somebody hurt you?”
“No.”
He raised his brows at that, and frowned thoughtfully.
“Hmm. Something you saw, then?”
Justine shrugged. Something she saw? Poor Christian’s broken, lifeless body? His wild, joyful face when he looked back the instant before he hit the car? The policeman and the paramedics working over his corpse, trying to breathe life back into it
…
that wasn’t just something she saw, it was so much more than that.
“Yeah, I guess,” she said, her throat choked with tears.
“Did something happen to someone else?”
Justine nodded, and swept a curtain of hair over her face so that he couldn’t see her expression. Her face crumpled up with the grief she was trying so hard to hold off.
“Christian.”
She forced the word out through unwilling lips. It felt like a betrayal, and also a relief. The floodgates burst. The tears started to stream down Justine’s face. She was powerless to stop them. Dr. Morton ignored the deluge, and kept talking to her quietly, calmly.
“Christian was a good friend of yours,” he divined.
“Uh-huh.”
“Is Christian a boy or a girl?”
“Boy,” Justine gasped and snuffled through her tears, trying to stop them.
“Were you and Christian both in an accident? You were both hurt?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But Christian was hurt worse that you were.”
“Uh-huh.”
He nudged a box of tissues toward Justine. She pulled three out of the box, but just pressed them to her face, not wiping her eyes or her nose.
“Was Christian killed?” Dr. Morton guessed, his voice soothing and compassionate.
Justine nodded, gasping for breath.
“That must have been very difficult for you,” he said, “very traumatizing.”
She nodded in agreement. Dr. Morton couldn’t possibly understand how difficult and traumatizing it had been. Her best friend. Her only friend. A piece of her own soul. Torn violently from her, in a split second. One horrifying, unexpected accident.
“Was it a skateboarding accident,” Dr. Morton questioned, “or something else?”
“Skating,” Justine nodded, and hiccuped.
“Do you want to tell me how it happened now?”
“Going down a hill
…
hit a car crossing at the bottom
…”
“Ouch. Did you both hit the car?”
“No. Just Christian. I bailed.”
“Were you alone? Was there anyone else there to help? You saw the whole thing?”
“There was a cop,” Justine said. “He’d stopped a truck that was chasing after Christian. Christian was still running away from him.”
“The cop came over to help?”
“Yeah. He did CPR and all
…
but there was nothing
…” Justine choked.
“That must have been very hard on you.”
She nodded. That was an understatement.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
Justine just breathed for a while, sniffling, wiping her nose, trying to get calmed down again. Why hadn’t she told anyone? Why had it been a secret?
“You could have told Em, or me,” Dr. Morton suggested.
“No
…
Christian was
…
part of a different life
…
where I was happy
…”
“When you lose someone you are close to, you need support. Did you go to the funeral? Talk to his parents?”
“I didn’t know them. He didn’t get along with his family. They
…
they didn’t take care of him.”
Dr. Morton’s face brightened, and he wrote something else on his file.
“So you shared something other than just skateboarding. You both had problems with your parents. You kind of felt like outcasts together?”
“I guess,” Justine said.
It was true, but it seemed like such a simplification of their relationship. They hadn’t just been outcasts together. That made it sound so juvenile. So
…
normal. What they had shared together hadn’t just been camaraderie. Not just a friendship. They didn’t just hang together. They had something special.
“I’m not minimizing your relationship,” Dr. Morton told her, obviously reading her expression accurately. “It just helps me to understand your connection. What you felt was real. Talking about it and analyzing it doesn’t make it any less than it was.”
“I guess
…” Justine said, “I just wanted him for myself. I didn’t want to share him with you, or Em, or his parents. He was just
…
mine.”
“He was the only one you really felt could understand you.”
“Yeah.”
“But it’s okay. You don’t lose that by talking to me. It might help you to process what happened, but it doesn’t take anything away from your relationship.”
Justine twisted her fingers through the hair that hung in front of her face.
“It felt like
…
the end of the world. I still feel like
…
an emptiness.”
“You went through a very traumatic experience. It has affected your whole life over the past year.”
Justine nodded in agreement.
“Are you having flashbacks? Trouble sleeping?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Harder to control your temper. Distancing yourself from others.”
Justine looked at Dr. Morton through her hair. She pushed her hair back and smoothed it along both sides.
“Not like I didn’t before,” she pointed out.
Dr. Morton chuckled.
“True. But this makes it worse, doesn’t it? You’re suffering from post-traumatic stress on top of everything else. And grieving when there’s no one to support you and help get you through it.”
“Post-traumatic stress,” Justine scoffed. “Everybody has post-traumatic stress these days. Kids that don’t get a cookie when they want one.”
“You do hear more about it these days,” Dr. Morton acknowledged, “and I’m sure that there are those who get diagnosed who don’t actually have it. But that doesn’t make it any less real. You really are feeling what you are feeling. And you are experiencing the after-effects of seeing Christian die. Just because it is happening inside your head, that doesn’t make it any less real. It is very real. And there are no awards for trying to tough it out and pretend you’re a rock. You don’t get through it without help.”
“I don’t want help,” Justine protested. And it was partially true. Part of her didn’t want help. But part of her did. It was a relief to finally acknowledge to Dr. Morton what had happened. Part of her still wanted to protect herself, this tender, bleeding memory. But the other part of her needed this acknowledgment.
C
HAPTER
14
J
USTINE
DIDN
’
T
USUALLY
SPEND
a lot of time working on tricks. Mostly, she was just skating to get away, to enjoy the movement, to feel the wind blow her long hair out behind her. She didn’t want to be at home or at school or at the therapist’s office, and she just wanted to ride away for a while.
But today, her mood was lighter. She felt like a load had been lifted from her. And she was in the mood for tricks. She was working in front of the library, where there was a set of low stairs, a wheelchair ramp, a stone bench, and a curb. Lots of furniture to work with. She had attracted a small group of younger school children, who were naive enough to be impressed at her inadequate jumps and grinds. They gasped at her spills and clapped when she managed to catch some air. A severe librarian had come out a couple of times to tell her to move on and go somewhere else. Each time she came out, the group of spectators would scatter, and then a few minutes after the librarian went back inside the library, they would gather together again. Justine ignored the requests and threats from the librarian, working on her tricks. She had as much a right to be there as anyone else. It was public property.
A police car pulled up to the curb. No lights or siren. Justine jumped her board off of the stairs, managing to hold the landing, and ground the curb as the two policemen walked up.
“How’s it going?” one of the officers questioned neutrally.
“Fine,” Justine said with a friendly smile. “Catching some good air.”
“I think you’ve been asked to go somewhere else.”
Justine shrugged.
“Yeah,” she said, “but I like it here.”
“You can’t stay here after you’ve been asked to leave. You’re trespassing now. The owners are afraid that you are going to damage the property or end up injuring yourself. So you have to leave.”
Justine shrugged.
“I’m not going to sue them if I get hurt. I just want a good place to do some tricks.”
“This is no longer an option. I’m sure you can find somewhere else.”
“If I go somewhere else, you know they’re just going to call you in ten minutes anyway. People don’t like skaters. They’re prejudiced.”
“It has nothing to do with prejudice,” the older of the two cops, graying around the temples, told her. “What you’re doing has an inherent danger, and it damages property. So you’re going to have to move on.”
“What are you going to do about it if I don’t?” Justine questioned, taking a step closer into their personal space and smiling at both officers. “You going to arrest me or something?”
“Is that what it’s going to take before you listen?”
Justine considered.
“Why arrest me? For trespassing? It’s a public place. They’ll just throw it out.”
“Then just leave voluntarily,” the younger officer told her. “This doesn’t have to be a confrontation. You just do what you’re asked. If you did what you were asked when the librarian told you to, then we wouldn’t have to be here.”
“Then I’d miss seeing you. I wouldn’t want that.”
The younger one eyed her.
“Justine
…”
Justine felt a warm flush. She grinned at him.
“You know my name,” she observed. She looked at his name badge. Officer Curtis. “I guess we’ve met before, huh, Curtis?”
“Yes. I’ve met you before. And I really don’t want to have to do this again. So just go.”
Justine shook her head and held out her wrists in invitation. There were murmurs from the spectators who had stayed when the cops showed up, interested in not just the tricks, but the show that followed.
Officer Curtis looked at his partner, and then shaking his head, he took his handcuffs off his belt and put them over Justine’s proffered wrists.
“Come get in the car,” he ordered, and Justine meekly went with him. The police officers took her to the squad car, and put her in the back seat and her board in the front. They shut the doors, and talked outside the car. They turned away from Justine and kept their voices low, so she couldn’t divine the nature of the conversation. Eventually, they got back in. Curtis sat in the driver’s seat and turned on the engine. The other cop sat in the passenger seat. He turned and looked Justine over once, then turned back around and faced the road.
“So, am I under arrest?” Justine questioned.
“No.”
“Where are you going to take me, then?” Justine asked, sitting forward and pressing her face against the grill to be as close to them as possible.
Neither one answered.
“Come on, Curtis,” Justine encouraged. “Where are you taking me? Home? I don’t want to go home.”
They didn’t say anything. Justine watched the roads fly by beside her, wondering what was going on. They weren’t heading toward home. They said they weren’t arresting her. So what was going on? They didn’t say anything to her. Didn’t talk to each other. Justine felt a tinge of worry, but she quickly brushed it away. She trusted the police.
Eventually, the car pulled onto a highway.
“Where are we going?” Justine demanded.
Again, there was no answer. Justine sat back, thumping her head back on the headrest. She closed her eyes. Eventually, the car stopped, pulling over to the side. Justine opened her eyes and looked around. They were out in the middle of nowhere.