happening again.”
“It won’t,” I said.
He smiled, his eyes disappearing again behind his striped glasses. “I’m not a cop,” he said. “You don’t have to give me the answers you think you should be giving. What we talk about in this room stays in this room. The only time I would ever break confidentiality is if I believe you’re going to harm yourself or someone else. I’ll need to let your case manager know that you’ve kept your appointments with me, but not what our sessions are about. All right?”
He had to have some hefty psychological problems himself to be so fat. I couldn’t see how someone like him could help me, but I nodded. I would just nod my way through these sessions.
“What’s it been like for you since Monday?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Being out of prison? Being free?”
“Okay.”
He waited for me to go on. I stared out the window with its view of the parking lot until my eyes watered. Then I looked at my ragged fingernails. He wasn’t going to talk until I did. It was like a standoff. A war, but I had the feeling he could take the silence longer than I could.
“The reporters are everywhere,” I said finally.
“Ah,” he said. “What’s that like for you?”
I shrugged. “I hate it,” I said. “It’s not fair to my family, either. If it was just me…well, that’s bad enough, but I get why they have to be after me. I’m the story. But I want them to leave my brother and mother alone.”
“Tell me about your family.”
“You probably know all about them already. You know about Andy, for sure.”
“I know what everyone else who followed the news about the fire knows, Maggie,” he said. “But even when I listened to the news back then and heard all the details, I couldn’t help but wonder…It’s being in this business, you see.” He smiled. “I couldn’t help but wonder what it was like for you. For the young woman at the center of it all. So, yes. I know about Andy as he was presented by the news media. I want to hear about him—and the rest of your family—from you.”
I sighed. “Okay,” I said, giving in. “Andy’s very sweet and cute and a perfect brother. He’s…You know about the fetal alcohol syndrome?”
He nodded.
I twisted my watchband around and around on my wrist. I was thinking, I almost killed my baby brother. But I wasn’t going to give this guy that much of a peek inside me. “So,” I said, “Andy’s learning to drive and he’s got a girlfriend. He’s really grown up while I’ve been away. And my mother…she’s nice. She looks older than I remember her looking. She and my uncle Marcus…He was my father’s brother—”
“The fire marshal.”
“Right. He and my mother have gotten together.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Good.” I nodded. “Really good. He still has his own place. One of the Operation Bumblebee towers.”
“Ah.” He smiled. You couldn’t think about the houses made from the old towers without smiling.
“Yeah.” I almost smiled myself. “But he stays over our house sometimes. I guess he’s been there a lot this last year.”
“And how do you—”
“Feel about it?” I finished the sentence for him. “I told you. Good. Especially with the reporters around.” I thought again about Andy walking to the school bus that morning, maybe trying to make sense of the reporters and their questions. Struggling to figure out how to answer them. Before I knew what was happening, my eyes filled with tears.
“You love your family very much,” Dr. Jakes said.
I nodded.
He motioned to the box of tissues on the table next to my chair and I took one and pressed it to my eyes. I did not want to cry here. I didn’t want to give this old sloppy fat man the satisfaction of making me cry. But suddenly, that was all I could do. I cried, and he let me. That’s about all I did for the rest of the session. He said that was okay. Good, even. I had a lot of pain inside me, he said, and we’d have plenty of time together to talk it all through.
“Our session’s nearly up,” he said when I’d gone through half the tissues in the box. “But before you leave, I wanted to ask what your plans are for community service. You have three hundred hours, is that correct?”
I let out a long, shivery breath. I needed to pull myself together in case the reporters had tracked me here and were waiting in the veterinarian’s parking lot.
“My mother…she’s a nurse at Douglas Elementary in Sneads Ferry,” I said. “I’m going to help one of the teachers there. I start Monday.”
“Did you arrange this or did your mother?” he asked.
“My mother,” I said.
He looked like he wanted to say something else, but just nodded. “Okay then.” He pushed himself out of the chair with his hands. “We’ll be meeting twice a week,” he said.
“Right.” Mom had scheduled appointments for me into infinity. I didn’t want to have to cry my eyes out twice a week, but it wasn’t like I had a choice. I stood up and gave him what felt like a dopey smile as I walked past him to the door.
It would have been going too far to say I liked him, but I could have sworn he didn’t look as fat when I left as he did when I arrived.
Chapter Eleven
Andy
I HATED POLICE CARS. MOM SAID I WAS JUST SCARED OF THEM because one night a police car took me to jail. So when the police lady wanted me to ride with her to Wal-Mart, I said no. Mom told her I should practice driving, so we’d take our car instead. Mom was being a quick thinker!
I had a cushion thing I put on the driver seat so I could see good through the window. I kept waiting to get taller but it wasn’t happening. Kimmie was taller than me, but she didn’t care. Some girls cared about that but Uncle Marcus said who’d want a girl who cared about something so trivial? Which meant not very important.
I was an excellent driver. We were supposed to follow the police car, so I tried to keep looking at it, but I had trouble.
“You’re losing her, sweetie,” Mom said.
My speedometer thing said thirty-five. “She’s going too fast.”
Mom laughed. “You’re right. You take your time. We’ll catch up to her at the Wal-Mart.”
We came to the corner I hated. There was no light but a lot of cars. I had to look a lot of different ways and wait and wait. A car behind me honked.
“Take your time,” Mom said.
The car honked again. I didn’t know whether to stay stopped or go.
“Brain,” I said. “You gotta stay focused!”
“That’s right,” Mom said. “Ignore that silly horn.”
Finally, when I was really, really sure it was safe, I drove across the street. Then we were at the Wal-Mart, where I got to practice parking between the lines. I was good at that, except for Mom couldn’t get out and I had to do it again.
The police lady leaned against a brick thing with her arms folded. “Thought I lost you,” she said. She was pretty old. She had on a hat, but I saw her gray hair underneath it.
“You went over the speed limit,” I said.
She laughed. “I probably did. Better write myself a