“Dr. Steve,” I said calmly. “I came to talk to Dr. Steve.”
Casually, Zach glanced behind him to look at his teacher, and then he turned back to me.
“Well then, don’t let me stop you.” He brushed past me. His voice was a whisper when he said, “Believe it or not, Gallagher Girl, I’m all out of secrets.”
It was all I could do not to turn and watch him walk away, to pretend like I didn’t care—that whatever rift there was between us didn’t hurt. Luckily, there wasn’t time for any of that, not with Dr. Steve walking toward me, saying, “Hello, Cammie. Teenage rendezvous?” he asked, with a glance at Zach and a chuckle.
“No,” I said. “I’m here to talk to you.”
“Oh, very well, then. What can I do for you?”
Dr. Steve’s throat was a deep, crimson red. You could actually see the shape of my fingers outlined in the coming bruise, and all I could do was stare at it.
“I did that?”
It took me a moment to realize I’d spoken aloud. It took a moment more to remind myself it wasn’t a question. “I did that,” I said, forcing myself not to turn and run away from Dr. Steve and the bruise around his neck. I made myself look at it. Think about it. I didn’t want to hide anymore.
“Did you say something?”
“Nothing. I mean…I’m sorry, Dr. Steve. I’m so…Are you okay?”
“Oh, I’ll be fine.” He smiled. “I promise.”
Aside from the ring of red that circled his throat, he looked exactly like he had the day he’d first arrived at the Gallagher Academy, just after winter break in the middle of my sophomore year. He’d seemed in every way the opposite of the boys that he’d brought with him, and knowing the truth about what Blackthorne is—or was—didn’t change that. If anything, he seemed even more out of place.
If anything, I felt even more ashamed.
“I really am sorry.” I heard my voice break.
“I know you are, Cammie.” Dr. Steve reached out as if to pat my back, but then he seemed to think better of it. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t blame him. Even I moved away, unwilling to get too close.
“You couldn’t have hurt me, Cammie,” he said, but that wasn’t true, and I knew it. He already wore the truth around his neck.
“The mind is a vast, complex thing,” he said. “Your memory is a complex thing. No matter what you went through last summer, you couldn’t kill someone. Not in cold blood. It isn’t in you.”
I remembered the way my hands moved, as if independent from the rest of me. I didn’t know what was in me anymore.
He raised an eyebrow, studying me. “You don’t believe me?”
“If Liz hadn’t stopped me…”
“You stopped yourself.”
“No, I didn’t,” I countered.
“Cammie, since when can Liz overpower anyone?”
It probably seemed like a fair point—Liz is the shortest, lightest, and least coordinated of us all. But he didn’t know how truly powerful a great big mind inside a really determined girl can be.
“What kind of doctor are you?” I asked.
“Psychiatry is my area of expertise. My training is a tad more…specialized than that, though.”
I wondered if specialized meant really good at turning teenage boys into government assassins.
“I don’t teach people how to kill, Cammie,” he said, as if reading my mind. “No. The Blackthorne Institute had a tradition of recruiting very disturbed young men and teaching them very bad things. But that, as they say, is history. It is my job to help troubled boys grow into strong young men. Or at least Joe Solomon said he was leading the movement to make that Blackthorne’s new mission. But Joe Solomon said a lot of things he didn’t mean, didn’t he?”
A darkness crossed his face, and I thought, He doesn’t know. Sure, the fact that Mr. Solomon was really a triple agent and wasn’t actually loyal to the Circle was a closely guarded secret, but until then, almost every adult I knew had been in on the secret. It felt so strange seeing a lie at work.
Dr. Steve sighed. “But I guess we’ll never know what Joe Solomon was thinking, will we? I’m sure his betrayal must have been very hard on you.”
“Yeah,” I said, the memory fresh. I absolutely meant it when I told him, “It was.”
I thought about Joe Solomon, about a time when he was alive and well, and the biggest problem in my life was whether or not a boy thought I was pretty.
“What’s really bothering you, Cammie?”
“I don’t remember the summer.”
He gave me a kind smile. “I know. That must be very hard.”
“My mom says I shouldn’t try to remember. She says—”
“Your mother is a very smart woman.”
“Can you help me?” I pleaded. “I need to remember where I went and what I did. I need to know.”
Dr. Steve considered this, then said, “Do you know what pain is, Cammie? It’s the body’s physical response to imminent harm. It is the mind’s way of telling us to move our hand off the stove or let go of the broken glass.”
“Will you help me?”
“The human mind is a miraculous thing. It is designed to keep us safe. Maybe your amnesia is your mind’s way of saying that those memories could be harmful to you.”
He was right, of course. My mother and aunt had said almost exactly the same thing. But there’s a difference between knowing something in your mind and knowing it in your gut.
Through a window at the end of the hall, I saw the moon breaking through a cloudy sky. “It’s been almost a year since the best spies in the world told me it might never be safe for me to leave this mansion.”
“I know,” Dr. Steve said softly.
I could still feel the rifle in my hands, the pressure of my fingers around Dr. Steve’s throat, and so I told him, “Now I think it might not be safe for me to stay.”
There’s a power that comes with silence. I had grown to fear the unsaid thing. So it felt like a release to say it—to admit that the risk wasn’t just inside our walls—it was inside my skin. I was willing to claw, scratch, and bleed until I’d found it.
“Your mother is correct, Cammie. You shouldn’t try to force those memories.” I opened my mouth to object, but Dr. Steve stopped me with a wave. “However, people who have sustained trauma often find it useful to have someone to…talk to. I’ll speak with her, and if she agrees, then you can come see me Saturday afternoon. I’ll be happy to help.”