“You seem to be in good spirits today,” Dr. Bernhardt remarks.
I sit across from him in my living room. Today he has a clipboard and a thick folder. “I’m in a good mood.”
His eyebrows climb toward his receding hairline. “I can’t remember the last time you’ve said that.”
I shrug. It’s true. Over a week has passed since that night with Stanley, and the whole time, I’ve felt strangely light—euphoric, almost. But I’ve avoided mentioning that to Dr. Bernhardt. After our conversation outside the apartment—after he warned me that I was becoming codependent—Stanley is the last thing I want to discuss with him. “What’s in the folder?” I ask instead.
“Ah.” He consults his clipboard, then pulls out a stack of papers. “I just wanted to go over a few things. When you meet with Judge Gray, obviously, you’ll want to present yourself as professional and mature. She’ll probably ask a lot of questions about your job, your living situation, that sort of thing. Let’s do a practice run—I’ll pretend to be the judge, and you answer my questions. So, Alvie. How do you like living on your own?”
“Fine.”
“It says here that you work at a zoo. . . . Do you enjoy the work?”
“It’s fine.”
“You can’t answer every question with ‘fine.’ Elaborate a little. You like the animals, don’t you? Talk about that. It’s important to be professional, but you also want to come across as . . . warm. Human.”
“That I’m human should be obvious. Do you think she’ll assume that I’m an android. Or an alien.”
“You know what I mean. Make her sympathize with you. Make her like you.”
“She’s there to decide whether I’m fit to live on my own. It shouldn’t matter if she likes me or not.”
“You’re right. It shouldn’t. But it does.” He smiles, lips thin and tight. His gaze shifts away. “You know, a lot of people don’t like social workers. It’s a necessary job, but we’re seen as fussy, moral busybodies, telling others how to live their lives. And when people don’t like you, it makes things harder. It isn’t fair, but that’s how the world works.”
I shift in my chair, not sure how to respond. He doesn’t usually talk about himself like this. I don’t exactly like Dr. Bernhardt, myself. But then, I don’t like very many people. And I must admit—with the exception of our last encounter, he has generally been one of the more tolerable adults in my life. “I don’t dislike you,” I say.
“Well, I’m pleased to hear that,” he says. “It’s hard to tell, sometimes.”
It never occurred to me that Dr. Bernhardt might care about whether I liked him.
“How are things going with your friend?” he asks. “Stanley, was it?”
I freeze. Now that he’s asked me directly, I can’t avoid the subject—not without lying. So I give him my usual response: “Fine.”
“You’re still seeing him, then?”
When I’m silent, he averts his gaze. “I realize that I expressed some reservations about your friendship with him. But I might have spoken out of turn. I meant what I said—it’s your decision. I won’t try to interfere.”
Is it possible? Did I misunderstand him, before? Maybe he wasn’t threatening me—maybe my state of mind affected my perceptions. I want to believe him, but I’ve been betrayed in the past.
I decide, on impulse, to take him at his word. “Good. Because Stanley is my friend, and that’s not going to change, regardless of what you think about it.”
He looks me in the eye. “Maybe it’s none of my business, but . . . is he just a friend?”
Even if I wanted to answer that question, I wouldn’t know how. The truth is, I’m still not sure what kind of relationship Stanley and I have. We haven’t kissed since the night he broke his arm. We haven’t talked about it, and he hasn’t tried to do it again. Maybe he’s waiting for me to take the initiative. Given my boundary issues, that makes sense. I keep thinking about it, replaying the moment in my head. A part of me wants to try it again. But a vague anxiety always stops me, a whisper of warning from inside the Vault.
“We’re friends. That’s all.” It’s starting to feel like a mantra. “I would prefer not to discuss him.”
He lets out a small sigh and glances down at the clipboard. “All right. Let’s continue.”
As we go over the questions, his words echo in my head: When people don’t like you, it makes things harder. Judge Gray, based on my limited memories of her, is a severe, no-nonsense woman. A bit like Ms. Nell, but without the eye-abrading fashion sense. And I am not the sort of person who easily inspires sympathy in others.
If Dr. Bernhardt is correct—if the judge’s decision will be based on whether she finds me likable—I’m in big trouble.
“So this is Chance,” Stanley remarks.
I nod.
Chance preens his wing and shifts his weight, claws flexing and clenching on the branch.
“He’s beautiful,” Stanley says. “You said you feed him by hand?”
“Yes. He’s grown more comfortable around me. I still have to be careful, though.”
“Is he dangerous?”
“Only to those who don’t respect him. I’m the only one he’ll tolerate inside his cage, but I don’t have any special secret. It’s just a matter of moving slowly and being patient.” Common sense. But many people don’t seem to have that kind of patience.
Stanley glances at me, blue sclerae flashing. They’re especially striking in the sunlight, as if the vivid azure of his irises has seeped into the whites. I wait for him to ask what happened to Chance’s amputated wing—everyone seems to ask that—but he doesn’t.
I start to walk. “This way. I’ll show you the other animals.”
We follow the curving path past the hyenas, the river otters, and the pair of gibbons. Buttercup, the lone cougar, is curled in the sun, her head resting on paws the size of dinner plates.
I glance over at Stanley, my gaze focusing briefly on his lips. With an effort, I look away.
Since the night we kissed, it feels as if we’ve stalled; as though neither one of us is quite sure where to go or what to do next. It has occurred to me that maybe I should invite him to my apartment—but I haven’t, and he hasn’t brought it up. Perhaps he senses my reluctance.
It’s not that I don’t trust him. True, the idea of allowing someone else into my space is uncomfortably intimate, but the larger reason is more straightforward: my apartment is objectively disgusting. I’ve grown accustomed to it out of necessity, but I don’t see any reason to subject him to the oppressive cheesy smell or the earwigs lurking in the bathroom.
“You said your lunch break is at one thirty?” he asks.
“Yes. I just need to clock out, then we can meet somewhere and eat together.”
“How about the dolphin exhibit? The map says there’s an underwater viewing area. It could be a nice place to sit.”
I stop walking.
I avoid the dolphin exhibit when I can. It’s a very large pool, almost fifteen feet deep, and being near any deep body of water tends to trigger feelings of unease and anxiety. If I suggest a different meeting place, however, I’ll have to explain why, and I really don’t want to explain this. I’m not even sure how I could.
“Alvie?”
I close my eyes briefly, collecting myself. My lunch break is only a half hour. I should be able to endure it for that long. “I’ll meet you there.”
I clock out, grab my lunch from my car, and walk to the dolphin enclosure. A long, curving cement path leads into the underwater viewing area. It’s dark, with rough pebble-textured walls, like a cave. Stanley is already sitting on the low stone bench, bathed in blue luminescence. He looks up at the sound of my footsteps.
I sit next to him, clutching my paper lunch sack.
“What’ve you got?”
“Bologna on white bread.” My usual. Affordable and filling enough, if not terribly nutritious.
Beyond a sheet of clear Plexiglas lies the expanse of the dolphin pool. With its smooth, curved white walls, it looks like the inside of a giant egg. The two dolphins, Charlie and Silver, glide smoothly through the blue. They’re Ms. Nell’s favorite animals, probably because they bring in the most guests.
He watches them. “Dolphins always look so happy, don’t they? Like there’s not a thing in the world that bothers them or makes them angry.”
I swallow a mouthful of sandwich. “Bottlenose dolphins can be very aggressive, actually. Males will band together to attack and kill porpoises. No one knows why. Porpoises don’t share their diet, so they aren’t competitors for their food supply. Killing them doesn’t give the dolphins any obvious evolutionary advantage. Apparently they just don’t like them.”
His brows knit together.
Charlie glides close to the glass, one dark eye staring out. His smiling mouth opens, showing rows of tiny, sharp teeth. Faintly I can see my reflection sitting next to Stanley’s in the Plexiglas. Just an inch of solid material between us and all that . . . water.
A lump of sandwich sits in my mouth, dry and tasteless as paper. I force it down my throat.
Stanley rests his forearm across the top of his cane. “You don’t idealize them, do you? Animals, I mean.”
I lick a drop of mustard from my finger. “They’re no more inherently good or evil than humans. They’re a lot like us, actually. We all eat, we all mate, we all struggle to survive. We all kill, though we humans try to hide that fact from ourselves. This bologna was a living creature, once. Well, probably several.”
“I guess so. But killing for food is different.”
The dolphins swim past again, followed by a flurry of bubbles. It’s my imagination, I know, but it seems that I can hear the water—a dull rumble in the center of my head, a vibration in my marrow.
Silver lets out a high-pitched call—eh-eh-eh-eh-ee! Like mocking laughter. The water makes rippling patterns on the concrete floor. I move my foot away from the dancing spots of light.
“Alvie?”
The rumble in my head grows louder, drowning out my thoughts. The pressure builds and builds inside me, and suddenly it’s too much. When I close my eyes, a vision explodes in my head: I see the Plexiglas cracking, then shattering. Water pours out, flooding the viewing area. Water sweeps over my head. The world is blurry, and when I gasp, water rushes in. It presses in around me, cold and dark. My head breaks the surface, but a wave bears down on me, roaring, and drags me under again, into blackness—
Stanley touches my arm, and I give a start. My eyes snap open. The Plexiglas is intact, the water blue and placid behind it.
“Hey,” he says. “What’s wrong?”
My own ragged breathing fills my ears. The half-eaten sandwich slips from my hands and lands in several pieces on the floor. “I have to go.” I stumble up the curving cement path, into the sunlight. I huddle in a ball on the ground and rock back and forth on my heels, cradling my head in both hands.
When the brain haze clears, I hear Stanley calling my name over and over. I hear his slow, unsteady footsteps coming closer and closer. His shadow falls over me. I don’t want him to see me like this. Panting, trembling, I lurch to my feet and turn away.
His hand comes down on my shoulder. I’m not expecting it, and a sickening jolt of pain goes through me, like an electric shock. My body reacts automatically: in an instant, I’m on my feet. In another instant, I spin toward Stanley, and my fist sails toward him, independent of my volition. Time slows, stretching. I see his eyes grow huge. I see him flinch back and duck his head, squeezing his eyes shut.
I’m going to hit him. I’m going to hit him, and I can’t stop myself.
No!
The signals from my brain finally reach my arm. I freeze, my fist an inch from his face. He stands, hunched, breathing hard. Slowly his eyes open. There’s a flat, glassy sheen on them; the word dissociation floats through my mind. “Alvie?” he whispers.
I back away and slump against the nearby wall of the reptile house. The world blurs and tilts. When it comes back into focus, Stanley’s expression is dazed, but that weird glassy look is gone. I swallow. “Stanley . . . are you . . .”
“I’m fine.”
I hug myself, fingers digging into my biceps, and bow my head. “I’m sorry.”
He hesitates. I can feel his gaze on me. “What happened?”
I take a deep breath. “Meltdown,” I mutter.
As a child, whenever I lost control of myself at school—whenever I kicked over desks or hit bullies or hid in the janitor’s closet—that’s what teachers and doctors always called it. A meltdown. Like I wasn’t just an angry and frightened girl but a nuclear power plant spewing radioactive waste. Maybe it’s not an inaccurate metaphor.
“But why?” Stanley’s voice is low and calming, but the question still makes me flinch.
I hate telling people this. But I don’t see any alternative. “I don’t like water.” My face burns.
“All water?”
“Not all.” My gaze remains fixed on my shoes. “I’m not bothered by water from the sink, or in toilets, or anything like that. The duck pond in the park isn’t bad, because it’s shallow. But I don’t like being submerged in water, and I don’t like being near so much of it. It—it makes me feel like I’m drowning.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
My ears burn. “Because being afraid of water is stupid.”
“It’s not. Not at all.”
I give him a skeptical look.
He shrugs. “I saw this talk show once about a guy who was scared of pickles, and a woman who was scared of buttons. You know, like buttons on people’s clothes. As a little kid, I was terrified of carousels.”
“Carousels.”
“I mean, I’m fine with them now. But when I was five years old, my dad took me to a carnival and tried to get me on the carousel. It was this huge thing, and it was spinning really fast—or at least, it seemed fast to me—and something about the combination of the movement and the weird calliope music and those horses going up and down just freaked me out. He had to buy me some cotton candy to calm me down. Compared to that, being afraid of water isn’t so weird.”
There’s a knot in my throat. I swallow, but it won’t go down. “I almost hit you.”
“But you didn’t. You stopped yourself.”
“Barely.” And if I hadn’t . . .
In my head, I see my fist crash into his jaw. Bones crack and crunch. He’s on the ground, contorted in pain. He’s back in the hospital, having surgical pins inserted into his jaw to hold the bone fragments in place. Months of agony, because I didn’t stop myself in time.
I shudder. “I could have hurt you.”
“In the future, I’ll be more careful. This won’t happen again. Okay?”
I look into his blue-within-blue eyes. “I don’t understand why you’re not afraid of me,” I whisper.
“I’ve spent most of my life being afraid, Alvie. I’m tired of it. I’m not going to avoid you because of one little mistake.” He smiles and rubs the back of his neck. “Though if you don’t like water, I guess my plans for tonight won’t work out.”
“What plans.”
“Oh. It’s nothing. It was going to be a surprise.”
“But it involves water.”
“Well, sort of. Frozen water.”
I consider this for a moment, trying to remember if ice has ever negatively affected me. “Frozen is all right.”
“Well, in that case . . . you want to meet in the park?”
I’m tempted to ask him exactly what he’s planning—but then, he said he wanted it to be a surprise. I wonder if I’m being reckless. Lately I’ve been taking a lot more chances. But I know what Stanley means when he says he’s tired of being afraid. Maybe surprises aren’t always a bad thing.
“Yes,” I say.