Session 5
“A lot changed for both of you after your first intimate experience with Hadley,” she said.
Her eyes scanned the iPad in her lap, then up to my fingers drumming on my notebook. That sound drove her nuts, which was why I kept doing it.
“For you it was the panic attack,” she said. “What happened after you left her house that night?”
“I almost didn’t make it home in one piece. Between the shaking and dark spots clouding my vision, I lost control of my car and wiped out in a ditch, inches from wrapping my car around a tree.” Convulsing, I had thrown myself from the driver’s seat and collapsed in the mud. Vomit splashed around my hands and knees, soaking into my clothes. There was no voice to my screams as I had fought the vivid memory of that man—his hands on me, even the smell of him coating my skin.
No panic attack since has matched the same level of severity as the first, but that was like talking about the difference between being mauled by a bear or a tiger. Did it really fucking matter? The outcome was the same—an unrecognizable heap of human meat in the dirt.
“When I finally dragged my ass home that night, I stood in the shower until the water ran cold, then crawled into bed to stare at the ceiling until the sun came up.”
“When did you find out about what happened to Hadley?”
“The next morning. Hadley’s godfather, Tom, called my dad. He’d gotten home to find Hadley asleep in their attic. She’d hidden there after hearing glass shatter downstairs. She swore someone had broken into the house, that she’d heard voices and footsteps. So she’d stayed in the attic all night, terrified.”
Tom had called the police to take an incident report, but it was more for Hadley’s peace of mind than anything. There was no sign of forced entry. Nothing stolen. All the police came up with were a couple of broken beer bottles outside her bedroom window. Rowdy neighbors had partied too hard. Maybe some kids passing through the neighborhood had thrown the bottles at the house. Case closed.
But not for her. Hadley never again slept a full night in that house.
“It got to the point where Hadley couldn’t stay at Tom’s anymore. She’d have nightmares and jump at the slightest sound. Too many mornings he would find her hiding in the attic. We had a spare bedroom at my house, so my dad invited her to stay with us as often as she liked. By senior year of high school, she was living with us full-time.”
“And you were okay with this?”
“What could I do? It was my fault. I’d left her there alone. If I had been there...”
“But your relationship didn’t improve,” she said. “Even after your mother—”
“Don’t.” My ears stung with a sharp, shrill ringing. All the blood was sucked from my extremities. I wasn’t ready to talk about her. I hadn’t been for four years.
Just once, she took pity on me. “You had the opportunity to get away from Hadley. To, as you said, move to New York with your father and try to escape the memory she represented for you. But you didn’t.”
“I couldn’t. She was being stubborn. A couple weeks before high school graduation, she turned down her acceptance to Emerson and said she wasn’t moving to Boston. Hadley wouldn’t admit it, but I knew she was too afraid to face living in a new city with a strange roommate. She was terrified. So I declined my acceptance to Columbia and talked her into enrolling with me close to home. She was going to college if I had to drag her to classes myself. I didn’t want that night, what I did, to ruin her life.”
So I stayed behind while Hadley continued to live in my house, and we existed under an excruciating agreement to never speak of that night again.
“What about your friends? Corey and Trey. From what you’ve told me, it sounds like they wanted to help.”
“They don’t know.”
“About that night?”
“About our foster home. They don’t know what happened to me. I don’t want them to know. As far as they’re aware, I’m just an asshole who slept with his best friend and then ditched her.”
“Why haven’t you told them?” she asked.
“Would you want people to know? That kind of information changes the way people see you, how they look at you. Suddenly you’re not the same person anymore. Now you’re...”
“What?”
Dirty. Weak. Damaged. “Different.”
“Is it difficult for you to trust people? Even the ones closest to you?”
“Who are we talking about?”
“Tell me about Corey,” she said. “Why is he your friend?”
I rubbed my hands over my face. For fuck’s sake. “I don’t know. I guess he’s fun to be around. Corey’s one of the few people I know who is never in a bad mood. It’s almost impossible to wipe the smile off his face. I mean, he’s a fucking child, but he seems to enjoy himself, so who am I to shit in his cereal, right?”
“That must be nice.” Her tone took on that taunting inflection. The one she used to lead me around by the nose. “To go through life with such optimism. To feel so unburdened.”
“Sure. Ignorance is bliss, or whatever.”
“And Trey? What special quality does he possess?”
“He’s a fucking snowflake. What do you want me to say? Trey’s probably the least complicated person I know. Dull, but happy. You’d love him; he’s freakishly well adjusted. Born with a perfect understanding of the universe and his place in it. So of course he finds constant fault in every other thing I do.”
She contemplated me for a moment that stretched on until I began to fidget in my seat, tapping at a rhythm with the barbell against my teeth.
“What?” I said.
“We tend to make friends with people who possess personality traits we covet. Just something to consider.”