Brick

"How are you doing today, Evie? I like your hat."

A teenaged girl on a couch fussed with her hat and drew her legs up to her chest. "Thanks. I'm...okay. Things could be better."

Light laid across the floor through the half-open blinds behind Dr. Beatrice Harper as she wrote a few quick notes and looked across the small room at Evelyn. "What things? Be as specific as you need to."

Drawing her hair away from her eyes, Evelyn took a deep breath and offered, "I was thinking about Dr. Peck and about how tired I've felt lately in classes."

Dr. Harper leaned back and asked, "What are you thinking, Evie?"

"He gave me the highest dose of Paxil they let you have after talking to me for just ten minutes, and...and...when my mom called about me falling down dizzy and vomiting, he said she was acting like she was a doctor and that she should just figure it out on her own."

Evelyn's hands gripped her knees as she spoke, every word tumbling over the next like an avalanche accelerating down a mountain, hunting for something to collide with. When her words met serenity and silence from Dr. Harper, she let her hands droop and caress her heels.

Dr. Harper reminded her that they had discussed this since they first met three months ago and it had come up in every weekly session since. "You've journaled about Dr. Peck and I've filed official complaints about him. He is forbidden from writing prescriptions and lost his privileges at the local hospital. He is irrelevant. Why let him take up any more of your thoughts?"

Evelyn shook her head and fussed on the couch before admitting, "You're right. It's just...I found my old junior high yearbook. The one that some assholes vandalized. I was flipping through it and I found this girl. Nancy Hollins. Only, that's what I remembered her name as. It was actually...Nancy 'Hollins', in quotes like a nickname. Her real last name was Peck. Peck. You understand?"

With a nod, Dr. Harper followed, "You think this girl is related to Mr. Peck. It's possible. But does it matter?"

Head quivering, Evelyn asserted, "Yes. You have to understand, Nancy was the queen of our school. Like the most popular girl and then some. Beautiful, charismatic, and she could even get adults to do what she wanted whenever. She made you want to hang out with her."

Adjusting her glasses, Dr. Harper added, "She made you feel good to be around her."

"No. Just the opposite. But she still compelled me to be around her."

Evelyn explained how drained she felt around Nancy. "It was like she sucked the life out of you and added it to herself. She gave me a rather backhand compliment of my earrings once and I immediately got an ear infection so bad I almost lost my hearing. Same with her mentioning my singing. I lost my voice for weeks."

Sighing, Dr. Harper sat up. Evelyn scratched around the scars on her wrists as she muttered, "I know it sounds crazy. But there's more. Her voice was deep. Not like boy deep but like movie actress deep, seductive and alluring. We were in the library and she was talking and I thought that her voice sounded like this one actress in this movie but I couldn't remember the movie or the actress and...she glanced over at me and said the movie is this and the actress is that one. I didn't say anything and it hadn't come up in conversation. SHE JUST KNEW...what I was thinking!"

"Evelyn...I have several questions and concerns. I don't want to step over your thoughts but we've discussed productive thought processes. It's easy to associate someone from the past with one's problems. But how does that association help you...moving forward?"

Staring at her fingers, Evelyn had no words to counter. "I'm sorry."

Leaning forward, Dr. Harper shook her head. "This is your session, Evie. It should be about you. If you really want, we can talk about Nancy. Perhaps...she's a vampire who can read minds and whatever else. But where does that leave you and where you want to be tomorrow?"

Evelyn always wore a pale-pink dress with rows of sunflowers on the sides to their sessions. She once remarked that it reflected the kind of girl she wanted to be, bright and happy. But Dr. Harper noticed that Evelyn found excuses for why she wasn't that kind of girl, external excuses. She suspected Nancy was just her newest one.

Cupping her forehead, Evelyn sniffled. "I want tomorrow to be better than today. I'm okay but just being okay sucks. But I can't get over Nancy. And it wasn't just me. Her best friends suffered too. Especially this one girl, Sabel. Her mom had this aggressive cancer. And there's more. So much more!"

Evie remarked that, at a fundraising prize announcement, Nancy didn't behave like anyone else. She wasn't talking to her friends or wondering if she might win. She was locked in a trance of concentration. And, when her name was called, she didn't even bother to act surprised. She just got up calmly, as though she'd been expecting it. Then, there was her older brother, Mason.

Gazing off, she said, "I felt bad for Mason. He was in high school and he was smaller than most junior high guys. It was like, if you take two plants and one gets all the sun, that was Nancy. And then Mason was the plant in the shadows under it, wilting and stunted. People called him 'Brick' and 'Quasimodo' because he was kinda lumpy-looking and ugly and stuff. Nancy never trash-talked him but also never did anything to stop the insults."

Dr. Harper scooted up in her chair and posed, "What would you say to Nancy today, if she were in this room?"

A shiver passed through Evelyn. "Oh, I wouldn't want to be in the same room. Not with how our friendship ended."

"How it ended?"

Wringing her hands together, Evie slipped her hat off and set it beside her on the couch. In the light of the room, Dr. Harper noticed she had dyed her hair a brighter color than normal. Before she could compliment her on it, Evelyn admitted, "I did something really bad."

Evie's expression made her think of old black-and-white photographs of prisoners of war. Clutching her pen, Dr. Harper lightly-pressed, "Go on...if you're willing. No judgments."

Silently, Evelyn shivered and swallowed, her hands balled up over her mouth. She shut her eyes. After a long inhale, she let her hands go slack in her lap and said, "People around school called Mason 'Brick' because of a story that Sabel mentioned once soon after her mom died. She talked about how, when Nancy and her brother were little, Nancy liked to play in the old, brick school auditorium, before it was remodeled. Sabel came with them and was stomping after birds. Nancy was picking flowers around this brick wall and happened to lean on it, Sabel said. Next thing, Nancy was screaming as the wall came down on top of her. Mason wasn't far away. He put his arms around her and they were totally covered in a rain of bricks. Sabel wanted to run screaming for help but Mason yelled at her." Dr. Harper noticed that Evelyn mimed Sabel's actions when recounting them but no one else's.

Evie continued, "Sabel staggered back as she watched Mason pull himself out of the pile of rubble. She said there was not a mark on him. He held Nancy and she told me...there were these like vines or ropes of sky-blue energy passing between them."

"...What was that?"

Dr. Harper's pen rolled out of her hands and slipped behind her chair. Clearly flustered, the doctor apologized and inquired about a few further details. Sabel had pointed to a particular girl's dress when describing the color but it was like a patch of sky near the sun and it only happened for a few seconds.

With concern, Evelyn asked, "Does that mean anything?"

Composing herself, Dr. Harper waved a hand. "I was just thinking about Scheerer's Phenomenon with the color. Likely, Sabel witnessed a momentary visual hallucination, due to fear and anxiety. Please continue."

Hesitantly, Evie collected her thoughts and concluded, "Well. She was scared because it seemed like Nancy was really hurt but, after the light, she was fine. But she said that was when Nancy stopped feeling like she used to. Like, I remember reading how after someone has a...traumatic brain injury they can change a lot in their personality and everything. I read about and remember about this guy, Phineas Gage."

Clasping her hands, Dr. Harper directed, "While the consequences of damage to the frontal lobe are serious and uncertain...and I don't want to discourage your enthusiasm...I'm more curious about what happened between you and Nancy."

Gently touching her forehead as she swallowed, Evie told her, "When I listened to all this, I had a lot of different thoughts. I thought bad things about Nancy when she wasn't around. As captivating as she was, I had this sneaking feeling she was bad. That she might even be evil. I watched a lot of shows as a kid, especially the one we talked about last week. I got it in my head that someone, like a hero, had to stop Nancy."

"So what did you do, Evie?"

Draining the water on the table nearest her, Evie took a long pause before she found the words, "I was by the stairs leading to the roof of the main school building. A custodian had left some bricks for a new wall out front. And, out the window, I saw Nancy. She usually ate lunch with a group but she was over by the steps with her brother. He was a little ways away. I picked up one of the bricks in the pile and....I threw it right at her head."

Dr. Harper held a hand to her mouth. Evie shook her head. She fussed and sighed. "I looked away for a second. Mason...he caught it in mid-air...like it was nothing. His eyes met mine and I ran away. I threw up in the bathroom. I tried to tell myself that it was a mistake. That a brick slipped and I tried to catch it. I had so many different stories running through my head."

"When I saw Nancy next, it was just after school. I started on a well-practiced story. She stared at me like she was a human knife, her expression cold. She told me, 'We're not friends. You will not talk to me. You will not talk to any of my friends. You don't exist. It would be better if you just vanished.' And that was the last thing she said to me. I was a ghost at school. Even teachers treated me coldly. Friends abandoned me. And I was sick almost every week. My first...attempt happened soon after that." Evie held her wrists.

Releasing a breath, Dr. Harper nodded. "But Nancy is out of your life now. She has no power over it. It's been all those years since junior high. You're going to graduate from high school soon, with honors. You have a bright future ahead of you, Evie. Don't let yourself get trapped by the past."

Evie acknowledged that. "I know. She transferred to the private, Catholic school on the other side of town. But I could run into her again. Any time. Any day. And what if she...still wants me to pay for what I did?"

Folding her hands after writing several notes, Dr. Harper remarked, "You might see her again but...who's to say she would be the same person? Besides, others only have power over you if you willingly give them that power. The human spirit. One single human spirit, is full of potential, power, and will. You are strong, Evie. You are stronger than any person you thought had control over you when you were younger."

Evie repeated some of those words and her mood slowly lifted. She showed off bits of her writings and aspirations for journalism. She dipped into speculation that she "knew" when people like Nancy and Mason were "different" but Dr. Harper steered her away.

"And! I had an idea for like a stage name. Madelyn. Madelyn Oates, reporting!" She flashed a bright smile and held her hand up to my mouth like it was a microphone.

Dr. Harper praised her and encouraged her to continue journaling for next week as they wrapped up their session.

Once, Evie's mother picked her up, Dr. Harper gazed down at her notes and over at the phone on the table. She mused quietly, "Sky-blue vines of light....Well, it looks like we have some new prospects."