Page 209 of Wicked Angel
In that moment… it probably happened so fucking fast anyway. She was probably in shock. For all I knew, he forcibly pulled her out of the car and tossed her aside. I really didn’t remember. I didn’t see it all happen that clearly.
From what Rory and I pieced together, he figured I’d either been asleep in the backseat and woke up after the man got in, or I’d blocked the details out. The first theory would explain why I didn’t scream or call out to my mom or make any sound. Though maybe I was in shock.
So many fucking questions… questions maybe I thought someday I’d get answers for, from my mom… when I was brave enough to actually ask her. When I thought I could ask her, have a conversation with her about it, without melting down in rage at her or hurting her by making her remember. I didn’t want to do that, so I never had that conversation with her.
And now I never would.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Angeline asked me when I remained silent.
“I don’t know how to talk about it.” I laughed bitterly. “Every time I think I’m finally ‘healed,’ I end up having a resurgence of symptoms because I’m triggered or stressed, and it’s not always the same trigger or the same symptoms. So I don’t even know, at first, that it’s happening all over again. It fucks with my head. It’s maddening. It just never ends. And after all these fucking years, all the hours in therapy… all the hours spent talking about it… I still don’t know how to.”
Angeline held my eyes. Hers were soft with sympathy. “All you have to do is tell the truth.”
Yeah. She made that seem so beautifully simple.
I thought about all the things I could say. But there were literally thousands of words, between all those hours of therapy. Which were the ones that would explain to her what it all meant to me, without dragging her, or myself, through every painful detail?
What were the words that would help her to understandme?
“So, here’s another truth,” I said carefully. “After it happened, I couldn’t talk for a while. That was why they kept me in the hospital so long. And then when I did talk, I stuttered. So then I avoided talking. For years. And talking about what happened… that’s the scariest conversation to have. Because what if the stutter comes back? What if I spiral into depression about it or start snorting lines again?”
Angeline’s arms tightened around me, like she wanted to comfort me. Nothing I said ever seemed to repel her. I couldn’t imagine how that was possible, but it was.
She was like Rory that way, maybe. Both of them cared enough about me to stick around and talk it through, even when it got ugly.
I looked into her beautiful, sympathetic eyes, as hard as it was. “It was Rory who gleaned my interest in music and recommended singing lessons. Maybe that’s why I’ve always loved him so much. He fucking saved me. But more than that… he saw me,me, better than anyone else ever did. Better than I ever did.”
“Wow. I love Rory.”
“You will when you meet him, I’m sure.”
“So… it was Rory who basically nudged you into becoming a musician?”
“It was more than a nudge. When I took to the singing lessons so well, he bought me a guitar. What psychiatrist does that?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never actually been in therapy or anything. My life has been mercifully trauma-free.”
I squeezed her gently. “I’m glad. But believe me… it’s not common to have a doctor take that kind of interest, or that kind of risk. He did a lot of things that were probably frowned upon by his peers. But that was why I connected with him, maybe. He was a rule breaker.”
“Like you,” she mused.
“Maybe.” I shook my head, remembering how my dad told me, when I was seventeen, that it was Rory who bought the guitar for my thirteenth birthday and gave it to my dad to give to me. Rory didn’t want credit, and he didn’t want it to seem inappropriate. But he’d seen what even my dad hadn’t picked up on right away: that music was bringing me back to life.
“Singing was the thing,” I told her, “more than speech therapy, even, that helped me get over the stutter. It still comes back every once in a while when I’m really stressed out. I just kind of choke and can’t get the words out. And I shut right up to try to hide it. That’s why I hate singing in front of people. I’m afraid it’ll happen when everyone’s watching. So I do everything I can to avoid that. Record my vocals alone in the studio. I’ll sing backup onstage, but only because the pressure isn’t on me to carry the vocals.”
“That’s wild,” Angeline said, her eyes going wide. “We need to get you singing, then.”
“Of course you would say that,” I teased her. “You love my voice.”
“I’m serious. You have to face your fears, baby. It’s like the song you play over and over. You have to desensitize yourself. You need to fully immerse yourself in the thing you’re afraid of in order to diminish its power over you. I think it’s called exposure therapy or something.”
“Uh-huh. I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had a degree in psychology.”
“Actually, I might have. If I didn’t flunk out.”
“Seriously?”
She shrugged. “A few semesters in, I decided it was too much work. What can I say. I was young and lazy.”
