Four
Next Saturday, Lilith was back inside Ms. Longsly's office. The therapist sat in her rocking chair. Lilith perched herself on the edge of the couch, the balls of her feet pressed into the carpet. Thick fibers brushed along her socks, making a rustling sound whenever she moved. Her shoes were gone, discarded to a random corner from when she'd kicked them off.
"I'll be honest, Lilith," Ms. Longsly said as she adjusted the pad of paper in her lap. Not even five minutes had gone by since Lilith arrived. "I was half-expecting for you to not come back."
I was, too, Lilith almost replied. Then she remembered that this sort of thought was rude and she clenched her teeth.
"I know," she said instead. "I must come across as one of those uncommitted types, eh?"
Ms. Longsly blinked in what Lilith guessed was surprise and cocked her head to the side. "Er... Yes."
Lilith winked. "That's the point. Make them think you're not interested." She raised one hand and twirled a finger in the air. "And just when they give up on you, bam. Out of the blue. They never see it coming." She leaned back and sighed, her arms going to the back pillows. Her fingers brushed against glass and she drummed her fingers against the window behind her.
Ms. Longsly bit her lip, staining the lining of her teeth purple as she gave Lilith a look. Lilith arched an eyebrow.
"So, Lilith."
Here we go.
"Let's try this again, shall we?" She set the pad down on her thigh and reached for her mug, which sat on the table between them. The table was made of thick brown wood, lacquered to a near-perfect sheen. Lilith could almost see the reflection of her foot when she extended a leg over its surface.
"Try what again?"
Ms. Longsly's face fell. Her cheeks deflated. "Our..." she paused to flip pages on her notepad. "Our meeting."
"Ah, yes. That." Lilith accentuated this with an eyeroll and hoped that she looked convincingly sarcastic. If Ms. Longsly noticed, she said nothing to signal this. Instead, she focused her eyes on Lilith and waited for several moments, her pen tapping out the seconds.
"Tell me about school." Four. Five. Six.
"It's... It's boring," Lilith replied. Eleven. Twelve. "There's not much to say. I don't have many friends. There's two, in fact, and I got suspended because of one of them. She came to school in a dress once. Got called a faggot."
Ms. Longsly made a noise in the back of her throat. "Er... why?"
Lilith stopped. "What do you mean?"
"Why did she get called... that, and how does it involve being suspended?"
"She's..." Lilith pressed her lips together. "Let's just say she's the sort of person she wouldn't expect to wear a dress. I punched a fucker out for calling her that, though. Our other friend is a video game-obsessed asshole. He hasn't been a reason I've been suspended. Smokes more weed than I do, though. Lives with Jack. You wanna know why?"
Ms. Longsly raised the pen to cut Lilith off. Lilith nudged the table with her foot and pretended to not see the motion.
"Because his mom couldn't take the fact that he hangs out with the 'unusual'. And you know what's worse? That's not the real reason. It's because he's bi. His mom kicked him out and threatened to burn him alive if he came back." Now she was waving her arms for emphasis. "Should've seen her fit, though."
"I see."
Lilith's hands fell to her sides and she gave a direct stare. "But you never heard this from me."
For several moments, there was just the sound of both of them breathing and the ticking of a clock Lilith couldn't see. Finally, Ms. Longsly coughed.
"Do you consider yourself a good friend?"
Lilith widened her eyes before blinking several times. "I'm sorry, excuse me??"
"Are you a good friend?" Ms. Longsly stopped and reached for her coffee mug, giving Lilith time to rise from her lounged position and lean forward.
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"Well, can you be trusted? Can people rely on you?" She bit the tip of her pen before pressing it to her pad and scribbling something down. "If I were to write you a note right now and tell you to give it to someone, would you?"
What kind of question is this? Lilith narrow narrowed her eyes, noting how Ms. Longsly continuously wrote things down. From Lilith's position, the notes looked like a bunch of loops and scribbles.
"It..." She watched Ms. Longsly's hand move, nearly entranced. Then she shook herself. "It would depend on what the letter was and who you were to me. And, of course, who it is I would be taking a letter to. I don't just do favors for no one, you know."
Ms. Longsly stopped writing, looked up at Lilith, and smiled. It was a thin-lipped smile, the kind that made people either sick to their stomach or increasingly guilty. The longer Lilith stared at her, the more she realized that she wasn't sure which reaction it was that she was having.
"Do you think this makes you unreliable?" Ms. Longsly asked. Her voice was light, almost inaudible.
"I think it makes me very smart," Lilith replied.
"Interesting."
"Oh?"
Her notepad hit the table like a slap, hard and abrupt. Her perfectly-manicured nails clinked against her coffee mug when she brought it to her mouth.
"You're very selective," she said.
"Glad you noticed." Lilith's voice shook more than she wanted it to.
"Now." Ms. Longsly set the cup down. "Let's talk about Oliver."
Lilith's heart skipped a beat before dropping to her stomach. No. No, absolutely not. Her teeth ground together and she turned away, focusing on her far wall. Just like last time, it was blank.
Tic, toc, tic, toc.
"You know," Lilith said while biting the inside of her cheek, "you've gotten a bit farther than any other therapist before you. You should feel proud of yourself."
Ms. Longsly opened her mouth, revealing white teeth more uniform than cemetery headstones. "I—"
"However," Lilith pressed, "this doesn't mean you can crack me like that. The only reason I'm talking to you at all today is because my dad doesn't really have any other option for me."
Ms. Longsly's eyes opened wider, this time in what Lilith guessed is shock. Then, faster than Lilith ever thought possible, she closed her mouth again. Her teeth clattered together, the noise vaguely resembling that of broken china. She stuck the tip of her pen into her mouth and bit it.
"Have you ever been suicidal, Lilith?"
"...excuse me?"
Ms. Longsly arched an eyebrow. "You heard me."
Without missing a beat, "No." Lilith swallowed, shifting one leg and tapping it into the ground. One, two, three. One, two, three. She grabbed one of her wrists and ran her thumb over the skin. Not recently, anyway.
"Even though Oliver's gone?"
Lilith snapped her head up. When she and Ms. Longsly met eyes, Lilith conveyed as much of her sudden fury as she could. If looks could kill, Lilith thought as Ms. Longsly wrote something down, the therapist would've been ashes.
But she wasn't. She was, however, still staring.
"Lilith?" she asked. Her voice was the epitome of concern, honey-sweet and cloistering. Lilith brought her knees together and rest her hands on top, fingers laced and arms shaking.
"We don't talk about Oliver," Lilith replied with an icy tone. She felt the cold around her at once. The air vent kicked on the same moment that Lilith had opened her mouth, filling the room with faint whirring.
Ms. Longsly wrote this down. "I see," she said. "Because it's a sensitive topic to you?"
"Obviously." Lilith turned her head to the wall again. "I don't talk about Oliver. You don't talk about Oliver. We don't even mention him as 'the brother', understood?"
"This is a very interesting behavioral shift." Scribble-scribble. Scribble. "Sudden anger. Are you often prone to violence, Lilith?"
Lilith's fists clenched. "No. What makes you ask that?"
Ms. Longsly tapped her pen. Lilith considered snapping it in half.
"It's just an observation I had." She was looking at Lilith then, giving her a once-over. Scribble-scribble went her damned pen. "Considering your track record and all."
"What do you mean?"
"Your being suspended, for starters. And since the first moment you've been here today, you've been nothing but angry."
I shouldn't even be here.
It was the thought Lilith had had for the longest time, one that she'd entertained no matter what the counselling room looked like or how many times they'd offered refreshments. It was the one thing that kept her sane for the entire hour each time. Most importantly, she felt it was true.
Or perhaps it wasn't anymore. Lilith couldn't decide.
Ms. Longsly must've been writing about this awkward silence, too, because when Lilith caught her eye, she was still writing. Half of Lilith felt the urge to reach over and shove her pen into her jugular. The other half wanted to break the window behind her.
"We've been talking for about half an hour now," Ms. Longsly noted. Lilith figured she wrote this down, too. She turned her head away and stare at the blank wall, as if wishing a picture into life would suddenly make one appear.
"Have we? I hadn't noticed," Lilith replied.
"Or you haven't cared."
Lilith swallowed the urge to look over again. Her hands formed a death-grip on the fabric of her jeans.
"See –" Ms. Longsly's pad and pen hit the table. "—What you don't seem to 'get' is that I'm an expert. I've been at this game for ten years. I've met way more patients than just you, from all walks of life. Drug addicts, hobos, schizophrenics. There was one girl I met with... She was raped by a boyfriend. Couldn't go out alone. One time, half-way through our meeting, she started sobbing because she realized she'd left her phone at home, something she never did. You know the first thing she ever said to me?"
Lilith heard her chair creak. She said nothing.
Ms. Longsly's voice cracked. "She said 'oh great'. She said 'you're another one of those privileged white girls, ain't ya'. She was so matter-of-fact... In fact, she was just like you."
"I've never had unwanted sexual contact." Lilith's words felt awkward in her mouth, almost like they were too big to fit.
"No," Ms. Longsly replied. "But you know what? You are just like she was. Direct yet reserved. You'll break, eventually. Even if it's not for me, you'll break. I know how you operate."
"Or rather, you wish you did."
Stunned silence. The temperature of the room dropped, raising the hair along Lilith's arms. A chill rushed through her and she shuddered, her gaze never leaving the wall. The clock ticked from wherever it was. Soon, the tension between them was so thick that Lilith could feel it wrap around her.
"We have fifteen minutes left," Ms. Longsly said after a moment, voice clipped. "I assume you wish to leave early?"
Lilith's gaze fell to her lap. Embarrassment grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.
"Um..."
A sigh. "Right," Ms. Longsly said. "I'll go get the card. I don't think you'll come back, though."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Lilith mumbled. If Ms. Longsly heard, she didn't acknowledge it. Before Lilith knew it, a pink card was being held under her nose. She could see the grime under Ms. Longsly's fingernails as, hand trembling, the therapist tried to offer up the card. Lilith took it, her entire body stiff.
"Thank you," she said. She was unsure if she said it because she meant it or because it just sounded nice.
"Tell me about your sex life."
How are you? I'm great, thanks for asking. Yes, the weather is lovely today. Oh, this week? This week was uneventful, unfortunately. But I didn't stab myself in the face with a fork like I was half-tempted to do. Isn't that awesome?
"...Lilith?"
Lilith shuddered, Ms. Longsly's voice bringing her back to. The therapist was regarding her with her head at an angle, her blonde hair tucked behind her ears. She held her pen poised above her pad, as if she were anxiously waiting for Lilith to speak.
With a cough, Lilith clasped her hands and leaned forward. She managed to stutter out "My... sex life?" before her nerves and growing discomfort became too much for her.
Ms. Longsly nodded, her eyebrows drawing together. "Yes, your activity. Do you engage often? Have you engaged? How many partners, etcetera."
I'm half-tempted to tell you to fuck off. Lilith bit back the urge to vocalize this, her mouth going slightly ajar. The piece of pink cardstock announcing her future visit wrinkled in her grip.
"We have ten minutes," she said as she flipped the card around in her hands. "Surely this can wait."
"Just humor me. Please."
Lilith shrugged against the couch, throwing her head back and staring at the ceiling. Her thoughts spun in her head. Finally, almost reluctantly, "I'm what some would call... promiscuous." Lilith looked to Ms. Longsly with narrowed eyes and almost expected her to grimace. She didn't.
"Go on," Ms. Longsly replied.
"I've... I lost my virginity when I was fourteen. Don't judge me for that. We both knew what we were doing. I'm still friends with the guy, anyway. I've had... Five – no, six – familiar partners since then. I've had sex with three other people as a one-time thing. Remember Jack? My best friend? I've had sex with her."
"Isn't it weird, having sex with your best friend?"
Lilith shook her head. "No. I've had sex with her a few times, though we last hooked up a few months ago. We're not intimate, we just like... having fun."
"I see." Ms. Longsly took a moment to write this down before looking back to her. She gave Lilith a smile, one half of her mouth curled upwards. The way she looked at Lilith almost made her blood rise. Almost.
"Lilith, who is the last person you had sex with?"
Lilith turned away, staring with sudden interest at the wall to her left. When she snuck a glance, she saw the smirk that graced Ms. Longsly's lips.
"I don't know why this is relevant," she replied. A tingling sensation crawled up her neck when she saw Ms. Longsly's smirk fall.
"I was just curious was all." Ms. Longsly's gaze locked on her as Lilith scratched at her neck, just below the ear. One finger flicked her earlobe and Ms. Longsly cocked her head to the side when she saw the pink needles Lilith had in.
Something is not right. Lilith felt it in the way Ms. Longsly looked at her, in the way she chuckled to herself and continued to scribble away.
It's not my own paranoia this time. In the past five minutes I've been in the room, the environment has changed.
"You have pierced ears?" Ms. Longsly asked.
Lilith nodded. "Gauges, actually. Very small ones. Only a half-size up from normal earring sizes... I'm slowly transitioning to bigger ones."
"I see." Ms. Longsly wrote this down.
Lilith considered opening her mouth for only a heartbeat before she shook herself. Then, "The last person I had sex with was this one guy in my friends group. We just have casual sex, but I get the feeling he digs me and I don't know how I feel about that."
A chill ran up her spine. Why did I say that?
"If he 'digs' you in a sexual way, why is this a problem?"
"It's not." Stop talking! "It's just that he digs me romantically and I don't know if I can handle that. Not after Oliver's..." Lilith bit at her lower lip.
I wasn't supposed to talk about him. Why am I talking about him? She averted her gaze, focusing instead on her tattered shoelaces. Only then did she notice the holes in her shoes and the lack of aglets. Have those always been missing?
"So you can't handle attachments."
"I... I guess so." Lilith stopped, shook her head twice, and looked up.
Lilith, stop! something inside her screamed.
"I only keep Jack and Cole close anymore, I guess. Not even Michael gets close enough. He knows, of course. Everybody does. But I don't let him get near enough to talk about it with. Hell, between Cole and Jack, Jack knows more. A lot more. I want to keep it that way."
Ms. Longsly nibbled at the tip of her pen and regarded Lilith for several moments. Then she clicked the top. Once, twice, then again and again until Lilith was certain the noise would fill her brain and make everything vibrate.
"Please stop," she bit out after several moments.
Ms. Longsly blinked – her eyes widening with what Lilith guessed was surprise – and set the pen down. "Does it bother you?" she asked.
"It hurts my head," Lilith replied. Her hands clenched in her lap. A familiar warmth lapped at the back of her consciousness.
Ms. Longsly nodded. "I see." She noted this, too.
God, does she note everything I say?
Lilith narrowed her eyes and stared down at her hands, studying the way her interlocked fingers shook. One foot tapped the ground.
"Well... that's all the time we have for today. You already have the notecard for our next appointment." Ms. Longsly coughed into her sleeve before rising, setting her notepad and pen down in favor of a coffee cup. She looked at Lilith over the top of her mug. "I'll see you next week."
"Yeah, sure." Bitch.
#
The sun shone weak through Lilith's bedroom window that afternoon, already on the verge of setting. Rays of light turned her brown skin varying shades of orange and yellow, while other beams shone in her eyes. She slung an arm over her face and closed her eyes with a sigh. The rest of the house was silent.
After her meet, Lilith had attempted to get ahold of both Jack and of Cole. Neither answered her calls. She tried texting them next, only to get the same result. When she mulled over this, she fought hard to convince herself that they were just busy. But then again, they'd not notified her of any plans when she'd talked to them the day before.
It occurred to Lilith that they'd done this once before – after therapist number four. They'd given her the day to wind down, rather than let her carry on with what was wrong with this one. And, Lilith decided, she didn't want to talk to them anyway. She doubted Jack would take kindly to the fact that, of all the things to talk about, Lilith's sex life had become the object of her therapy session.
Perhaps being left to her own devices wasn't so bad after all.
Almost as if on cue, her phone rang from the bedside table. She reached over with her free hand and brought the android to her face, sliding her thumb across the screen just before she coughed out, "Hello?"
"Lil, it's me."
Lilith sat up. "Hey, dad." Her heart skipped a beat when she heard him. "What's up?"
"Not much, sweetheart. Just working is all. Listen, things are a bit tight here today and I won't be home until late tonight... ten at the earliest."
"Oh." She swallowed, trying to keep the disappointment out of her tone. "I see."
"But Marlene is at the house, so you can do something with her if you want to."
Maybe I don't. "Okay." She brought her knees to her chest, resting her forehead on top.
"And she can probably cook up something for you, too."
Right, because I want to bond with my dad's girlfriend – even if I like her. "Alright."
"I'm sorry I can't be home to see you... I really am. How was the therapist?"
Lilith bit back a sigh. "We made some amount of progress."
"Oh?" His apparent surprise made her chest tighten. "I thought--"
"Yeah, we all thought," she replied. She squeezed her eyes shut. "But we were wrong. I wasn't ready. I did mention Ol—I mentioned the incident though. A little bit." She took a deep breath. "I—I'm working on it, dad. I am, I promise."
Her father didn't speak and for several moments, Lilith scratched at the back of her neck as discomfort grew in the pit of her stomach. The silence was agonizing. Then he coughed into the phone.
"Alright, Lil. I believe you."
"I love you," Lilith said, but her father had already hung up. The phone shrieked in her ear to tell her that they'd been disconnected. She let the phone drop. An idea came to her moments later.
She didn't need to look at the screen to see what numbers she was hitting. Instead, she typed them in and pressed call, staring at the ceiling the entire time. The phone rested at the side of her mouth.
Michael picked up after the second ring. "Hello?"
"Hey."
A heavy, seemingly pleased exhale came through the speaker. "Lil. I was wondering when you'd call me."
His deep voice sent a chill through her body. Lilith curled her toes into the blankets.
"Yeah, I've been awol."
"We've all noticed."
She chuckled. "I would hope so." She raised her head from her knees and stretched out, lying back and looking to the ceiling. "But that's not the point."
"Feel better?" Michael asked.
"I guess. 'Life goes on' and all that fun stuff."
Michael chuckled before taking a sharp inhale. "Any progress?"
Damn, him too? "A bit." Lilith's jaw clenched. Why am I saying this?
"That's good."
She swore she could hear his smile through the phone. "Yeah. Hey, listen, can I come over?"
"Uh... tonight?"
"Yeah."
While she waited for him to respond, she jumped to her feet and spun around the bed, her toes gliding over the floorboards.
"I suppose you could," Michael said after several of seconds. "But don't come over yet. My bro is doing something in the garage and it's kind of mental."
"What's he doing?"
"He built another paraglider."
"Oh, nice!"
Michael snorted. "Not nice. He's trying to convince mom to let him go to the roof and try it."
Lilith stopped in the center of her room and looked around. "Didn't he break his ankle last time?"
"Exactly."
"Shit..." Lilith looked to the floor. "So basically, your mom is trying to talk him down.
"You could say that. I mean, she might as well be... except that he's not on the roof yet."
"Yet."
"Exactly. Oh – hang on. My mom is calling."
Lilith heard the thunk when Michael set the phone down. She raised her free arm over her head and stretched. The joints in her ankles popped.
"Hello?"
"Still here."
"Awesome. Jay finally put the paraglider away – for now."
Lilith chuckled. "Does that mean I can come over?"
"If you want."
"Cool. Can you come get me?"
"Uh... sure. I'll call you when I get there, I guess."
"Thanks. You're a doll."
#
Lilith groaned and rolled to her side as the last waves of euphoria passed through her. She looped one arm across Michael's chest and gave a lazy grin.
"Thank you for letting me come over," she whispered. "I've... I've been having a difficult time lately."
Michael waited a moment before responding, then nodded. Across the room, a newswoman was speaking from the TV.
"I understand," he said. "People aren't easy to deal with."
"Mhmm." Lilith looked to the screen and watched the newswoman's lips move. The headline below her dictated that a supposed serial killer was on the loose. Whatever information the woman could provide was lost on Lilith, though. Her lips moved, but the sound was disabled. Instead, the steady pulse of Michael's heart filled her ears. She closed her ears and inhaled.
"I don't want to go back to her," she said. "I went in today and everything felt wrong. It didn't feel wrong last time; that's why I stayed. But this time... it was like she was some other person entirely. And I don't want to tell dad... not yet."
Michael nodded again and tightened his grip on her shoulder. "Why's that? Couldn't he move you to someone else?"
"He could, yes. But he's also done this five times before. He can't keep doing it forever."
"But if therapy isn't working for you, th—"
"Then he thinks I'm a risk to myself and that I'll follow my brother's footsteps.
"B-but you won't... right?"
Lilith shrugged. "I mean, there's no point in it. Oliver caused enough damage on his own. I don't need to add to it."
Michael's fingers press into her skin. "Is that the only reason why you're not... going that route?" he asked.
"No." She closed her eyes and pressed her nose into his chest. "But let's not worry about it anymore." She closed a hand around his necklace and inhaled. Michael said nothing for several moments.
The scene on the TV changed. Now, the news channel showed camera footage from a helicopter as the aircraft flew over an alleyway. On the ground, an ambulance was parked at one end. The medics around it looked like little ants.
"What's going on?" Lilith asked. Her stomach turned; something was off about the scene. She looked up before reaching over for the remote on the other side of Michael. He grabbed it before she could.
"Turn it up at least, dammit," Lilith said with a pout. Michael complied with a nod.
"...She was found dead this afternoon, in an alleyway by her officeplace. As of yet, no witnesses have stepped forward."
Who...? "Turn it up."
"Already on it."
"Anika Longsly worked in a counselling office just up the street from here, on the corner of First and Perennial. She is survived by her husband Gerard and their son Luke, both of which were unavailable for comment."
Longsly... Lilith bolted upright, searching the floor for her jeans. When she found them, she reached for her the appointment card in the pocket. She nearly cut her finger on the cardboard in her haste.
"What are you doing?" Michael asked.
"Looking at something."
Lilith flipped the card to the front and scanned the crinkled cardstock. Her gaze landed on the name centered at the top.
Anika Longsly – Mental Health Specialist
Lilith's heart skipped a beat. "Shit."
"What?" Michael leaned forward, resting his head on her shoulder. "What's wrong?"
Lilith handed the card to him without replying. He gave a sharp inhale.
"Damn..."
She pursed her lips. "Yeah. Guess I'm not visiting her next week."
"Didn't you...?"
"Yeah."
"Shit."
Lilith lay back and curled her knees to her chest. Across the room, the newswoman continued to talk about the dead therapist – the third one to be murdered in as many months.