Don't Try to Find Me: A Novel (24 page)

What part of that narrative will make me appropriately human? How do I make people—make Marley—want to forgive?

I need to talk only to Marley. I think of what Dr. Michael told me (well, what I coaxed out of him) about Marley’s perceptions of me when she was in treatment. She probably still feels like I worry instead of doing anything and let Paul make the decisions. I’m still no one for her to respect.

The press conference could be a chance to change that, if (and it’s a big if ) Marley watches. But I need to grab for every if, with both hands. If we can’t get a court order to help us track Marley, if the law isn’t on our side, then I’ll appeal to her directly. I’m not going to let
Paul or Candace choose my approach. Because they don’t understand the goal, which is to win back Marley’s respect and trust. I need to look strong. Well, I’ll fake it till I make it, as the saying goes. At some point, maybe I’ll actually be strong for Marley.

That might mean doing something radical. If I need to be out from under Paul’s thumb to earn Marley’s respect, then that’s what I’ll do. If it means announcing the divorce in the press conference, then so be it. I can’t worry about how Paul will feel. This is about Marley. And besides, as Michael’s pointed out, Paul never worries about anyone’s feelings except his own.

Brandon Blazes

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Brandon Blazes Duke University

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I’VE GOT TO GET
out of here.

I told Brandon—no point in protecting his identity anymore—that I had a “stomach thing” and locked myself in the bathroom. It was supposed to be a quiet place to plan my exit strategy, but he loitered outside the door. He kept apologizing for getting so mad. It’s only, he says, because he loves me so much. He’d die if I went back to my parents: “You know how I need you, Mar.”

I won’t let him get through to me. He’s a convicted felon. He’s violent. It’s like a proven fact.

I remember being at my mom’s work once. It was too uncomfortable to look around at the women, so I read a pamphlet while I waited for her. It talked about the cycle of abuse. First the tension builds, and then it gets released when the guy does something violent, and after that is the honeymoon period where he acts sweet and promises he’ll never do it again. But, the pamphlet said, they always do it again.

Brandon and I are in the honeymoon period. It might feel like something else, like something more, but it’s not. I’ve been living in fear for a while now and pretending it’s otherwise. Maybe I always knew Brandon was something other than he was portraying, even when we first met online. Like how he didn’t have many Facebook friends, and the same few people were tagged in all his pictures; when I clicked on their profiles, they had all the exact same photos
Brandon did, plus solo pictures of themselves that looked funny in some way I didn’t want to admit.

Now I realize what it was: They all looked professional, like modeling pictures. And their posts all sounded kind of like Brandon. That’s because I’m like 99 percent sure they WERE all Brandon. He must have created all of them, a cast of supporting characters. He probably put his head on someone else’s body for those group pictures, or put their heads on other people’s bodies. I’m not sure how he did it, but I know he did. It seems so obvious now.

All this time, I’ve convinced myself that he’s for real: He loves me and thinks I’m special. That’s what he said, right? That’s what I wanted to hear. I was easy to fool because I was so needy. But I don’t need this.

He hasn’t hit me yet, but it feels like a matter of time before he does that, or worse. I just don’t understand why he tricked me, what’s in it for him. It scares me to think of the possibilities.

I keep telling myself I can handle whatever’s coming. I’m stronger than I think. But I don’t know that I believe it. Would a strong person have fallen for this whole scheme? There were so many red flags. I was such an idiot.

At least I’m not alone. I’ve got you here in the bathroom with me, hidden in a box of tampons. Guys wouldn’t look in there, would they?

I keep thinking about Dr. Michael and what he’d tell me to do. Despite everything, some part of me still thinks of him as—I don’t know what. But I wish I could forget the last time I saw him.

It was after I had my first panic attack in years. Trish, Sasha, and I had gone to Berkeley to hang out on Telegraph Avenue. We came out of the BART station and started walking down Shattuck. I paused to browse in a bookstore window, figuring they were waiting for me, but when I looked up, they were gone. I’d forgotten my phone so I couldn’t call or text them. I decided to stay where I was. They’d have to come back for me, right?

Wrong.

Later, after I got home, I saw all the angry texts from Trish on my phone. She kept updating their location, like, “We’re in Amoeba Records now, douche!” It never occurred to them to double back and find me. They hadn’t even noticed when I stopped walking. That’s how important I am to them.

So I’m sitting there in front of the bookstore, thinking about how it doesn’t matter to their day whether I’m with them or not. No one’s going to come for me. I’m all alone.

I can’t breathe and my chest hurts. I’m going to die right here, where it smells like a mix of urine and Peet’s coffee, as a parade of students and homeless people and seeing-eye dogs passes me by. This is it.

But then this UC Berkeley girl dressed in her soccer uniform saw me. She squatted down and talked to me quietly. Her voice was really calming. When I could breathe normally, she offered to walk with me for a while to make sure I got back to the BART station. That’s the kind of friend I needed. Someone older, someone aware.

But the panic attack scared me. It brought some things into focus, like how unhappy I’d been for a while. I thought how lucky I was to have just the right person to talk to about it. His door was always open, that’s what he’d said instead of good-bye.

The next day, I cut school so I could wait outside his office. It was first thing in the morning, and I was literally hiding in the shrubs. He smiled like he was happy to see me and invited me in. We sat in the office where he talked to adults—the one where he’s behind a desk, instead of on the floor surrounded by toys and stuffed animals and puppets and art supplies. So it seemed different right away. More adult, I told myself, because I’m an adult now.

“I want to come back and see you,” I said, “but I don’t want my parents to know.”

“Oh?”

It meant, Go on. I knew him so well. Or I thought I did. “It should be between us, like totally between us.” I didn’t need my mom having conferences with him and taking up my time.

“Are you worried that I’d tell your parents our conversations? Because you know I never have.”

“It’s not about them.” It wasn’t, at that point. It was me. I didn’t like my friends anymore, and Brandon had appeared in my life from out of nowhere, saying just what I wanted to hear, almost like he could read my mind, or my journal, if I kept one back then. It’s a little scary to have someone give you your heart’s desire. Too good to be true.

For a while, I’d had this feeling things were slipping away, important things, and the panic attack was like a big blinking arrow, pointing it out. I was losing control again.

Dr. Michael was so good at helping me realize that I didn’t need the control; I needed to be able to adapt. But I didn’t know how that lesson applied anymore. I could still hear his words, but they didn’t seem to help. I needed his voice.

I would have told him all that, but he didn’t look like he wanted to hear it. “How would insurance cover the sessions without your parents knowing?” he asked.

I stared at him. He was thinking about MONEY?

Later, I realized he wasn’t thinking about money at all. He was stalling. He must have been thinking about my mom.

“It’s a moot point anyway,” he said. “I’m semiretired. I don’t have as many slots, and I have a full caseload.”

He couldn’t add in one extra slot for me? It would, like, cut into his busy golfing schedule?

I couldn’t speak. I was that shocked and hurt. That rejected.

I guess he still cared about me a little, because he added, “I might be able to fit you in, but we’d need to talk to your parents about it.”

I didn’t want him if he only cared about me a little. I always thought I was special to him. We spent all those hours talking, with me telling him things I never told anyone else. It hadn’t occurred to me that I was just another one of the kids he sees, that he told every single one of them there was an open door. Then when I tried to walk through, he slammed it in my face.

“You don’t need to fit me in,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“I can handle things on my own. I’ll be okay.” I told myself I had Brandon; I still had one person who thought I was special.

As I stood up to leave, I had this sense like Dr. Michael was relieved. I was letting him off the hook. He never even asked me what was going on, why I’d been hanging outside his office instead of being in school where I belonged.

He told me it was nice seeing me, that I was growing up to look more like my mother. I could tell he meant that as a compliment.

“You should talk to your mom,” he said. “I know she loves you a lot, and she’ll get you any help you need.”

How do you know that? I thought, and left.

For the next couple of days, I felt so messed up inside. It was like he’d turned on me, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what I’d done, or hadn’t done. What was wrong with me?

Then I thought maybe something had happened in his life to mutate him into some other kind of person, someone uncaring. I got this idea to wait outside his office on my bike and to follow him when he left. It wasn’t stalking, exactly. For one thing, stalking takes a while, and in this case, it was only two days.

I saw him with my mom at Starbucks. My first thought was that he’d arranged to meet with her to tell her about my visit. But why wouldn’t they have met at his office? And there was something really familiar about the way he greeted her, kissing her on the cheek, and the way they leaned into each other as they talked and laughed. They’d obviously been meeting for a while. That’s when I got it: He’d chosen her over me.

He must have told her that I came to see him, but she never said a word to me. So not only did he let me down, she did, too. She could have asked me what was going on, or better yet, told him to start working with me again. Instead, she kept him for herself.

I can’t blame him for it. He was so in love with her, you could
see it through the window. She was eating it up, all his attention. I’m pretty sure he had a thing for her back when he was my therapist. That’s part of why I got annoyed when I saw them walking down the hall together after one of their fifteen-minute meetings, which were often more like twenty. They never told me what was said during those, by the way. They both assured me that they didn’t talk about me, not in any detail, as if that was a good thing. If they weren’t talking about me, why was she taking up MY time?

I don’t care if my mom cheats on my dad. But to pick Dr. Michael, of everybody in the world? And for him to pick her right back? And then for them to choose each other over me, when I needed help?

It’s part of how I wound up here, with Brandon. When I went to see Dr. Michael, I wanted to talk to him about guys and how they’re supposed to treat you and what you’re supposed to get from them and what you’re not. I was feeling lost, like I couldn’t connect with my old friends, and there was Brandon, telling me how great I was.

My gut said something was off about him, a college guy pursuing an eighth grader who’s all the way across the country. But after we talked about Dr. Michael and my mother meeting at the Starbucks, Brandon was so completely on my side, when I needed that the most. Who else did I have, really? Not Trish or Sasha, who could so easily forget me, or my mother and Dr. Michael, who had each other. There was nothing for me in California anymore.

When I was planning my getaway, I kept thinking of a conversation I had with Dr. Michael. He said, “You want to hear a secret that all adults know but think kids can’t handle?” I nodded, excited. “This will be proof that you can handle anything,” he added. Which made me want to hear it even more. “The truth all adults know is that sometimes we’re better off without our parents. Depending on the parents, of course.” He looked at me meaningfully. “Do you know what I’m saying?” I did. He was talking about my dad, but even Dr. Michael doesn’t know everything. Because it’s turned out that it’s not only my dad I’m better off without; it’s my mom, too.

Dr. Michael let me in on the fact that sometimes it’s okay—healthy, even—to sever your love for a parent. He showed me how to do it. But it’s been tougher with my mom. It’s like the ropes are thicker, harder to cut through.

In the months before I left for North Carolina, I just kept returning to that secret. Brandon couldn’t have agreed with Dr. Michael more. It was like they were working together. It gave me confidence that I was doing the right thing.

But now everything’s fallen apart, and I really have nothing to go back to. So I need to move forward.

I’m stronger than I think.

Fuck you, Dr. Michael. And fuck you, Brandon. I’m stronger than either of you think.

I have to keep telling myself that so I don’t lose my nerve and wind up staying here or going back to my parents. Brandon must know I’m planning to leave. He said, “Maybe I caught your stomach thing. I’m not going to school today.” I’m under house arrest.

Then he got up and started, of all things, cooking. He was making homemade chicken soup. I guess it was supposed to seem sweet and homey. But all that love talk and making me soup—it’s textbook honeymoon period. He is totally an abuser, there’s no question.

I’ve got to get away, but it’s almost the weekend. I feel like I might go crazy if he doesn’t leave me alone soon. Since there’s no beer anymore, I took a few giant swigs of Robitussin. It helped, a little.

I’m trapped here, and I don’t know what Brandon’s capable of. He was convicted of two assaults, but that’s what I found in the five minutes I spent Googling him. There could be more. Crimes he committed that didn’t come up in a search, or times he didn’t get convicted, or victims who never came forward, or—I try not to think this last one—bodies that were never found. If he did this whole elaborate scheme to get me here, to make sure no one in my life knows we have any connection at all, I might not be the first.

Earlier, he ran his hand up my body and gave me this supposedly sexy smile, and I just about lost it. He watched me really closely, like he was daring me—to say no, to physically resist? I remember when I first got here and I was dying to be with him and he held back. He said it was because he didn’t trust himself to stop. I wanted to think he found me irresistible, but now I think it might have meant that he hadn’t been able to stop before, with other women.

Tonight, he stopped. But I feel like he wanted me to know he was doing me a favor by stopping. He was sending me a message. Sometimes people exercise control by what they don’t do.