The Valley and the Flood by Rebecca Mahoney (10 best books of all time TXT) 📗

Against your will, you laugh, too. “Okay, yeah. He probably didn’t think like that in his head.”

“Tone is hard to gauge over email,” Maurice says gently. “This might be the kind of thing better suited to a phone call.”

“Maurice.” You grin. “Only monsters use the phone.”

You found Maurice Martin, LICSW, on the internet. He had a nice bio, he was close to your apartment, his listing offered an email as well as a phone number. And when you looked at his specialties, Grief counseling is there, right next to Trauma. It’s what you could point to, when Mom asked.

You told her about the appointment. It’s her insurance; you couldn’t not. She was so relieved it was hard to look at her.

You told Maurice Martin about Gaby first, and you expected stony, clinical acceptance. You watched it wash over his face instead. God, he said, I’m so sorry.

It’s weird to see that empathy, that understanding on the face of someone you don’t know. He still looks at you like that sometimes.

You’re not sure how you feel about how nice it is.

“Maybe I just won’t go,” you say.

“You were excited for this, weren’t you?” he says.

“I mean, yeah. I kind of fell out of Astronomy Club—after,” you say. “But I’m not taking a bus out to the desert.”

You made a choice, before that first appointment, not to use those four letters. To catalogue your basket of symptoms like you had no clue. You told yourself it was so you wouldn’t bias him. But he didn’t need your guesses. Looking back, he diagnosed you in ten minutes.

It’s not like I was in the accident was your token protest. Though even then, you wondered.

He didn’t—doesn’t—know that part of it. But he still smiled sadly and said, That doesn’t matter.

You made another appointment with him. You looked up whatever information you could with your halfhearted search terms. Less-terrible PTSD. A casual users’ guide to PTSD. PTSD for Dummies.

And the summer went on. The worst of it isn’t sudden, exactly, because it was already there. You just noticed it, that’s all.

“I have to ask, Rose.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “Did you tell him why you wanted to drive? Or just that you wanted to?”

You don’t need to answer. Your tight smile tells him everything he needs to know.

“It sounds ridiculous,” you say with a laugh. “Doesn’t it?”

And it is ridiculous. It’s totally fucking absurd. Nobody puts trigger warnings on passenger’s seats and screeching tires and ringing phones. But he’s Maurice. So he says, “Of course it doesn’t.”

“I guess I’m kind of like . . .” You chew on the words a long time. He waits you out. He always does. “Can’t people just . . . guess?”

“That’d be easier, yes.” He laughs. “But people have short memories, Rose. They’re not going to know unless you tell them.”

You won’t go stargazing in the desert with the Astronomy Club. But you’ll do your homework. You’ll map the patterns of your adrenaline, you’ll chart the highs and lows of your pulse, and you’ll talk to yourself. You’ll talk to yourself in the mirror, you’ll talk to yourself in writing. You’ll stop telling yourself to shut up and start telling yourself that you’ll be okay.

It’ll scare you a little, how normal you can look. How cheerful you can sound. How you can get text upon text of prom dress pictures and dating rants and respond to every one. How you can take call after call from Flora Summer in the middle of the night, sobbing that she needed to hear your voice. You’ll keep going. You’ll twist, you’ll dance, you’ll sidestep the panic as it comes, even when all you want to do is sleep.

But there’ll be time for sleep later. You need to apply to colleges. You need to eat something. You need to stop saying you like you’re talking to some other girl.

And if you feel like you’re still spinning on that dark, wet road, well then, what’s changed? A body in motion, et cetera.

Twenty-Five THE THIRD DAY

IT’S POSSIBLE THAT hanging up on Maurice wasn’t my best idea. If I left a message, I could have played it like nothing was wrong. He knows something’s wrong now.

Rose? Did you call earlier?

The text stares me down much like Maurice himself would do if we were face-to-face. I start a reply. Mom always says not to text and walk, but it’s not like there’s anyone around to bump into. The streets are emptier today. The signs of life come from the houses: blurs of movement and suitcases in the open garages. Sometimes I catch, out of the corner of my eye, faces at the windows. But whenever I look, the curtains snap shut.

Yeah sorry, I say. I mean to expand on that, but nothing comes to me.

Is everything okay? he asks.

It should be easier to lie when he can’t see my face. And yet I type, I don’t think so.

There’s a long pause before he types again. I have appointments until five, he says. But I can call then. Would that help?

I laugh quietly. It depends, Maurice. I don’t know what I’ll be doing at five. This disaster I started doesn’t have a timeline I can follow.

But I write back, Yes please.

The school stands, waiting, just a few feet ahead.

Felix and Alex are collapsed on a couple chairs in the lobby when I open up the double doors. Neither of them lighten up a whole lot at my arrival. I have to imagine I’m making a similar face.

“Get ready for a lot of unhappy people,” Felix says, by way of greeting.

“We’re taking a break,” Alex says. “But you can go on through.”

I nod and do just that. As I leave them behind, I catch Alex slide his head onto Felix’s shoulder.

I pass through the entryway, cast in that murky, unnatural sunlight, and turn deeper into the building. I don’t need to ask where I’m going. There are plenty of voices