Final Girl by Michelle Schusterman (beach books .TXT) 📕

“Ready?” He directed the question at Oscar, who suddenly looked nervous.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I asked Roland if I could talk to him about . . .” Oscar waved his hand vaguely. “You know. The Emily stuff.”

“Oh!” I felt a rush of guilt. I’d been so wrapped up in my own problems lately, I’d completely forgotten about Oscar’s. “Right. Um. I’ll just . . .” I started to stand, but Oscar grabbed my arm.

“You can stay,” he said quickly. “I mean, if you want.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Roland took a sip of his coffee. “So. The ‘Emily stuff.’” He made air quotes, and Oscar sighed.

“Right.”

For the next fifteen minutes, I sat quietly as Oscar told Roland all about how jumpy and paranoid he’d been lately, about how he kept replaying what had happened back at Daems in his mind like a waking nightmare.

I’d had vague unsettling dreams last night, like I did most nights now. The only detail I remembered was seeing words scratched into the bathroom mirror, just like the Thing had done back in Buenos Aires. Except it was slightly different. The words weren’t I got out, but I couldn’t quite recall what they were.

Also, in my dream, I was the one scratching them into the mirror.

“And I keep thinking I should’ve reacted faster,” Oscar was saying. “I just . . . I saw her coming out of the cell, and I didn’t react fast enough because I was so focused on Aunt Lidia. I should’ve . . . ducked. Or, I don’t know, hit her.” He rolled his eyes, as if even he found the thought of him physically fighting a stalker armed with a knife ridiculous. “Or . . . I could’ve at least warned Kat in time. I mean, Emily just dragged her off, she could’ve killed her, and it was my fault.”

Surprised, I immediately opened my mouth to argue. But Roland touched my elbow, and I pressed my lips together. I hadn’t realized Oscar had been feeling guilty about what Emily had done to me.

“I know you know this, Oscar,” Roland said. “But everything Emily did was Emily’s fault. Not yours, not anyone else’s.”

Oscar sighed. “Yeah, yeah. Aunt Lidia’s said the same thing to me a million times. You didn’t do anything wrong. Doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t do anything right, though. If I’d moved faster, Emily wouldn’t have knocked me out. I could’ve run for help, or just . . . done something.”

Roland raised his eyebrows. “I thought you said you hadn’t talked to Lidia about this.”

“I haven’t.”

“So her saying you didn’t do anything wrong is about . . .”

“Oh.” Oscar shot me a mildly panicked look. “Um. Something else.”

An awkward silence fell. Roland took another sip of coffee. “Okay, well, you don’t have to tell me,” he said lightly. “But generally speaking, the more a patient discloses in therapy, the more he gets out of the session.”

“It’s just . . .” Oscar swallowed. “It’s not relevant.”

Roland grinned. “Ooh, I love when patients say that. They’re always wrong.”

I stifled a giggle, and Oscar shot me a dirty look. “Fine.” He glanced around, then leaned forward and took a deep breath.

“Last year I told my best friend I had a crush on him and he freaked out and told everyone and they did a bunch of mean stuff and we got in a fight and I punched him and got expelled and yeah I know he’s the bully not me and I know it’s his fault not mine but that doesn’t change the fact that if I hadn’t said anything to begin with he wouldn’t have bullied me and I wouldn’t have punched him and I wouldn’t have been expelled.”

Oscar finally stopped, breathing heavily. He and I watched Roland carefully, but his expression hadn’t changed.

“And when that happened, did you replay the situation?” he asked. “Like you’re doing now, with Emily?”

“No.”

“Oh, yes you did,” I blurted out. “You kept the mean notes Mark wrote. To read them.”

Oscar scowled. “Like you did with that troll’s comments on your blog, you mean?”

“Okay,” Roland cut in just as I opened my mouth. “One patient at a time.” He rested his coffee cup on the armrest between Oscar’s chair and mine. “Oscar, you said you know what happened in Brussels was Emily’s fault. You said you know Mark’s the bully. But I kinda think you don’t fully believe that. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be punishing yourself like this.”

“Punishing myself?” Oscar repeated.

Roland nodded. “By imagining all the different things you could’ve done—or have not done. You know what Emily could’ve not done? Violently attacked a couple of kids. You know what your friend could’ve not done? Made your life miserable instead of being supportive, like a friend should.” He drummed his fingers on the back of my chair, studying Oscar thoughtfully. “I’m wondering if this could be a pattern. Coping when someone mistreats you by blaming yourself.”

Oscar shifted uncomfortably. “What? No, I—I just need to stop being all paranoid. I thought you could just, I don’t know, give me antianxiety pills or something. So I can sleep.”

“I can’t prescribe anything until I have a diagnosis.” Roland squinted at Oscar. “Antianxiety pills? Have you taken those before?”

I watched as Oscar became suddenly fixated on untying the knot on one of his hoodie’s strings. “Yeah, a long time ago.” Roland said nothing, just waited expectantly. After nearly half a minute, Oscar sighed. “When my dad went to prison.”

“Ah.” Roland leaned back, looking like someone who’d just found a missing puzzle piece. “I see.”

I looked from Roland to Oscar and back again, my whole body tense. I’d talked to Oscar enough about his dad to know how this went. Push too hard, ask one too many questions, and he’d get all irritated and shut down.

But Roland didn’t push or ask questions. He didn’t even look at Oscar. He just . . . sat there. Sipping his coffee, watching people walk past our gate, looking all calm and disinterested like he wasn’t in the middle of an intense conversation.

So I followed his lead, gazing at the TV hanging under our gate number but watching Oscar