"Does it ever get better?"

            Dr. Chao was genuinely startled by sudden interruption of whatever it had been that she was rambling on about. I'd long since tuned it out the second I sat down.

            "Excuse me?" she recollected herself and sat upright, setting her laptop on the arm of the recliner.

            "The thoughts." I rubbed my knees. "The urge. The desire. Does it get easier to ignore them? Does it get easier to live with them?"

            Her dark eyes closed for a moment, as if she were battling her demons internally, then opened them and shut the computer. She leaned forward, her thin, boney elbows digging into her legs and examined me from head to toe. I would have done anything to know what was going on inside her head; a psychologist helping a kid who'd gone through the same experience she had once upon a time. Did she relive it every time she looked at me? Every time she saw the loss of hope and all happiness in my eyes?

            "I still have my days." her honesty was a breath of fresh air. "On my bad days I don't want to get out of bed. I'll wrap myself in blankets and just stare at a wall. My husband, he tries to comfort me as best as he can, but there's only so much he can understand."

            Her words brought back the conversation I'd had with Gage at the park.

            "I found that in my recovery, I started to see the world around me differently. I no longer saw just ethnic differences in those around me, but I started to categorize people in my head. There were those I always deemed safe; small children, healthcare workers, my psychologist. Then there were those that I found blinking like a caution sign before my eyes. Many of those were men, my mother, anyone who even glanced at me in the wrong way."

            I bit into the inside of my lip the second it started to tremble. "Did it help?"

            "No, not really. It just made me more paranoid. Though, as soon as I met my husband in college, I came to understand that having a safe person wasn't a bad thing, if anything it made those voices that tried to bring me back down grow silent, even if just for a little while."

            I quickly reached up and swiped my hands under both eyes, but it didn't help as another flood of tears soaked my cheeks not long after the action.

            "But you feel better?" I could barely get the words out. "You don't have flashbacks? You don't want to attempt again?"

            Dr. Chao stood and crossed the room to where I sat crossed legged on her ugly beige couch. "Honey, I feel so much better now. I do have flashbacks, yes, but the drive I have to keep living, to help children, like yourself, cope with what they've been through overpowers the urge that I keep locked away deep inside of me."

            "I just want them to stop." I whimpered. "The voices, the memories. I can't close my eyes without feeling like I'm back there."           

            "The night you tried to kill yourself?"

            I wiped my sleeve under my nose. "The night I was. . . the night of the party."

            "Do you want to talk about what happened at that party, Marley?"

            I diverted my attention to the cushion separating the psychologist from me. "No."

            "Well, I'm always here, even outside of business hours." she touched her hand to my own. "If you ever want to talk about it I'll be right here."

            **

            Having Mom back home was a nightmare. Rodger had let me sit outside on the porch with Gage the last couple days, but the millisecond my mother had dropped her suitcase by the loveseat, she'd hounded me about why I still hadn't been in class. I hadn't bothered to answer, I left the room instead, afraid to face her.         

            I hadn't even sat on my bed when I heard footsteps treading lightly behind me. When I turned around, it wasn't Louis, or even my mother, who was behind me. It was Rodger with Xavier hopping up and down excitedly in front of him. The blonde energizer bunny waved and smiled at me, and though I wanted nothing more than to return it, even just for his sake, I couldn't.

            "Xai, how about you get change into your pajamas. I'll be there in a minute."

            My brother giggled and yelled, "Okay, Dada!" and raced away.

            I think having Mom's scolding in a continuous loop would have beat the concerned look that Rodger was giving me.

            "Marley, sweetheart, are you okay?" he looked over his shoulder as soon as loud footsteps sounded from the end of the hallway. Instead of turning to snap at who I could only assume was Louis, he came fully into my room and closed the door behind him.

            I had hated Rodger from the day Mom had sat me down and introduced him to me. Not because he was an asshole, he was quite the opposite, a really selfless, nice guy. I had loathed him for the sole fact that he wasn't my father and he never would be. He could try until every last star in the universe died out, but he'd never replace my Daddy, my best friend. Sometime during the process of us moving in with him, he must have understood his place, because he never tried to overstep the boundaries I'd laid out.

            "Has Louis done something?" the question earned a sharp intake of breath from me.

            "What?" I exhaled.

            "My son, I know that he can be a lot to handle." he took my response as a go ahead for him to edge closer. "After his mother died, he started to have these violent episodes. Would just black out. I see the way you act when he's around, I just want to make sure he didn't hurt you."

            What Louis had done was far worse than hurt; he'd taken my entire being and stomped me into the ground before setting it aflame. I would have taken a fist to the face or a knife to my back over what had actually happened any day.

            "I want you to know that though he is my son, you are my daughter too, Marley. We haven't always seen eye to eye and I know that I will never replace your father, I'm not trying to do that. But I do want you to know its okay to confide in me, in your mother, about whatever it is that's going on with you."

            I stumbled back, seeing the distance between us close by the second.

            I wanted to tell him, to shout in his face that his son was a monster that preyed on the weak, to make him my safe person. But I couldn't, and he'd stated exactly why as he tried to talk me down. He was Louis' father, not mine. No matter which way this went if the truth ever got out, he would always choose his son over me and that was just a matter of fact.

            "Marley—" he reached for my arm, but I dodged the grasp and turned my back to him so I was in front of my window. "Marley, don't. Please stop running away."

            I climbed out through the window but paused to look back at him, watching his shoulders slowly fall forward and his face crumble. Turning away, I pulled my phone from my back pocket and walked around the side of the house and into the dark night before he could stop me.

            *

            We sat in Gage's car a few blocks from my house for close to an hour before he tried to get anything out of me. He looked as if he'd been through it today too; his eyes were more guarded then usual, eyes hooded, with dark, heavy bags beneath them.

            "What happened?"

            "Rodger tried talking to me."

            He shot me a confused look. "Rodger is?"

            "My stepdad."

            His eyes widened and he muttered, "Oh shit."

            There was a long pause of silence; his eyes trained on the loose thread he was wrapping around his finger, mine on the trailer park at the end of the street.

            "April lives there?" I questioned, uncomfortable with the quiet elephant that was parading along the console.

            He barely glanced up and nodded. "Yeah. Think she's been sleeping in her car though. Saw her climb into the back seat a few days ago after support group and when I drove by the car was still there."

            "Someone beats her." I decided maybe we didn't need so many elephants in the space between us. "The other day, the black eye, obviously someone's hurting her."

            "Yeah, I know. But I stay out of it." he said with a one shoulder shrug.

            I looked ahead again. "Why? If you know what's going on, if we do, shouldn't we report it?"

            "It's not our battle to fight, Mar. And with things like this. . . it'll only make shit worse for her."

            "What can be worse than a failed suicide attempt and being beaten every day of your life?"

            The minute the words left me, I regretted them. Because I knew both Gage and I, however unwilling he was to talk about it, had gone through trauma just as bad.

            "Just leave it alone, Mar." he forced his eyes up and stared at me. "It's not your fight."

            The words were on the tip of my tongue, the curiousity nearly getting the best of me. He must have sensed the change in the car because his eyes found mine again and he shook his head. "I'm not talking about it, Mar."

            "Why? Why do you get to know everything about us but I can't know a single thing about you?"

            "I'm seventeen, my father is the mayor, my parents are divorced because of me." he started rapping off the facts, anger lighting his eyes.  "I'm an only child. I've never had a girlfriend, and I hate your stepbrother for more than just what he's done to you. Is that enough for you, Princess?"

            Being the one on the other side of his bitterness was not my intention.

            "I'm sorry." I whispered. "I. . . I just don't understand how you can act so. . . so over your trauma all the time."

            He looks out his window and into the darkness. "Repeat that to yourself. Act. That's all it is."

            "You're stronger than me. Than April. It can't all be an act."

            "Well it is!" he snapped, then lowered his voice as soon as he saw me flinch. "I'm sorry, I just don't want to talk about this."

            I nodded and stared dropped my eyes to my fingers wrapped around a thermos of hot chocolate. "Why haven't you ever had a girlfriend?"

            "Marley!"

            "Sorry." I looked out my own window, contemplating whether I should just get out now and safe us both the heartache.

            "What happened to me, why I shot myself," he fills the car with his strained words. "that's why. It's not easy. The communication. The. . . the intimacy. I just can't do it. Plus, relationships are shit, look what happened to my parents."

            I peeked at him through my lashes, watching his him try to steady the slight tremble in his hands by shoving them into the pocket of his sweatshirt.

            "I agree." I eventually answered. "They're shit. Don't get the hype with them. I was in like two before. . . before what happened and it's overrated."

            He raised his own thermos and said, "Amen to that."

            "Do you think some day it'll be easier?" I asked.

            "What? Relationships?"

            I gnawed at the inside of my lip. "All of it."

            "Maybe." he said. "But I've always seen it as this. . . this parasite. Its inside of you, eating you alive little by little."

            I leaned back and rested my head against the seat, staring at him. It was obvious he was trying to keep his composure; the anxious tapping of his foot, the locking and unlocking of his jaw, his eyes trained outside his window. Anything to keep from speaking on the topic.

            "Whatever happened to you, Gage, I'm sorry." My voice cracked. "I would never wish this on anybody."

            He snickered quietly. "Yeah, me either. Except maybe your asshole brother, he deserves to feel even a fraction of what you do."

            "Thank you." I wiped at my damp cheeks. "For being here. For being there on my first day back. I. . . I don't know if I would have—"

            "Hey, no, I get it." For the first time all night he smiled. "Us damaged people gotta stick together."

            With the dim light of the moon spilling across the right side of his face and his left hidden in the shadow of the darkness outside the window, I saw Gage for the first time. Not the joking stoner with a attendance record as bad as my own, but as the broken boy trapped and constantly on the run from himself. But most importantly, in those amber eyes I had found, even if temporary, my safe person.

            "Enough of that depressing shit." he pulled one hand from his pocket and turned the keys in the ignition. "You want to have some fun tonight?"