Hunger

Rory: New Home

Dad's out of town so today it's my job to pick Seth up from his new therapist's office after my dance rehearsal. When I pull into the parking lot of the small brick building, I see Seth sitting on the curb. When he looks up I realize his eyes are puffy and red from crying.

Thoughts of the past seize me and fill me with panic. Why is he crying? What happened? Did that bitch hurt him? Or was it the other way around; did he hurt his therapist in a fit of rage?

"Seth, what's wrong?" I ask breathlessly.

"What do you mean?" he asks. He slides into the passenger's seat like he doesn't have a care in the world.

"You..." I take a deep breath. "You were crying."

Seth absently touches his cheek, as if realizing this for the first time. He laughs.

"What's funny?" I demand.

Seth stops and shakes his head. "Rory, don't you know what happens in therapy?"

"No! Why-"

"Because we talk about it," he says flatly.

"Oh."

I am an idiot, a Grade A Idiot. Seth isn't crying because something is wrong. He's crying because he's healing. The moment humbles me.

"I'm sorry," I say.

Seth shrugs. He's still grinning. "It's okay, Rory."

"So you like Dr. Thomas?"

"I like her. She's cool."

Dr. Thomas is not someone I would describe as "cool." She's about sixty, short and dumpy with long gray hair and cat fur on her clothes. Seth flatly told me "she smells like cat piss" after his first session. But if she's gotten Seth to open up about his pain, she is indeed very cool in my book.

"So what do you guys do?" I ask.

"She just asks me things, and we talk."

"What things?"

"We talk about what happened to me," he mumbles.

"Is that hard?"

"It was at first, but it's easier now. She said she knows a lot of guys who had this happen to them, and it's okay. Like, I'm not a freak."

"Of course you're not!"

"Well, I felt like one. That's why I tried to die, and I didn't know that, but she helped me figure it out," he says.

I'm in shock that he's being so honest with me and so introspective about himself. He's only been seeing Dr. Thomas for six weeks.

"I'm really proud of you," I say sincerely.

"It's hard to talk about sometimes..." he says softly, staring out the window. "Because it makes me remember, and sometimes I remember things I forgot."

Austin has told me about this. It's called memory repression. It occurs when something so bad happens to you, your mind can't handle it and buries it deep in your subconscious. It's a survival technique to keep you from breaking. I'm not surprised it's happened to Seth after what he suffered.

Sometimes I wish I could do the same thing with the memory of the police chase or watching Austin get shot, but my brain remembers those things in crystal clear HD, the movies replaying over and over even when I sleep. I don't mention it. Austin, Seth and Pixie are the ones who need help right now. They have been through circles of hell I cannot even imagine, and my pain seems laughable beside theirs, a mere sugar ant standing next to Godzilla.