The Secret Life of Inanimate Objects

Chapter Eight

Sunday, April 1;

11:13

I was starting to learn that avoiding people was a 24/7 job.

I was walking on eggshells at home trying not to get in my father's way and upset him. It wasn't that I was afraid of him... It was just that, OK, I was afraid of him. I knew that that was stupid. Despite Michael Martins' huge size, he wasn't a scary-looking person. And he was a stationer, for Pete's sake! What was he going to do, stab me to death with sharpened HB pencils?

And then there was Marco. Marco, my supposed best friend, who had kissed me without explanation, and who was most certainly hiding something. I knew him like the back of my hand. I knew when he was lying. His healing black eye was a reminder of his deception. But perhaps I was overreacting. Even so, he stayed away from me, especially at night. He hadn't slept over for a couple days, and I was fine with that. I had taken to sleeping in the bathtub, and sleep had become much easier. But perhaps -

I stopped myself right there. I had come out here to forget everything, not to overthink things.

I skipped a stone across Tobin Bell Lake, something that reminded me of my early childhood. The air was pretty chilly, but that was OK. I was slowly getting used to it.

Someone cleared their throat behind me. I spun around.

"This place is spectacular," Dr. Steinbeck said in awe, shoving her hands into the pockets of her bright pink parka. She smiled at me. "How are you, Terra?"

"What are you doing here?" I spat, folding my arms across my chest.

The smile quickly fell off her face. "I don't appreciate that tone, young lady. You don't know who I am."

I let my arms fall to my side. "Well, I'm leaving. There goes a perfect morning," I muttered, trying to get past her.

She grabbed my arm. I looked up at her, astonished, and tried to shake her off.

"What the hell are you doing?" I screamed at her. "Let me go!"

But her grip tightened. "I'm trying to help you, Terra. Listen to me!"

"Help me? I'm not your patient anymore! You're hurting me!" I hadn't seen her since our last disastrous session. She couldn't be this desperate to 'cure' me!

She released me. I rubbed my sore arm and threw her a dirty look.

"I guess I don't know my own strength," she said apologetically. "But I need you to listen, Terra." She paused. "You have to run. Leave Grimley. Go someplace. Anywhere. Just run."

I stared at her in disbelief. "What?"

Dr. Steinbeck took her hands out of her pockets and placed them on my shoulders. I noticed that her usually immaculately painted fingernails were chipped and bitten to the quick.

"Are you... are you OK?" I asked uncertainly.

She nodded. "I'm fine. But you won't be. You need to leave," she said evenly. She removed her hands and put them back into her pockets.

I shook my head. "Are you threatening me?"

Her eyes widened. "Of course not! Look, just listen to me, Terra. I have to go." She turned to leave. "Oh, and Terra? Those things I said? 'Off record'?" She paused. "It was bull. All of it. And... and I'm sorry."

Moving quickly, she disappeared into the forest, leaving me alone, shivering in the cold, goosebumps prickling my skin.

*

Three days later, on page four, the Tobin's Bell Times reported that Dr. Rita Steinbeck, PhD, 53, had "shocked everyone she knew when she had suddenly displayed signs of madness". She had been immediately carted off to a mental asylum. The paper didn't say where, seeing as our town had no sanitarium. It did say, however, that her practice had been shut down.

I read the article in shocked silence. I was going to be late for school, but I didn't care. Dr. Steinbeck? Mental? I bit my bottom lip.

My mother glanced at the page over my shoulder and sighed heavily.

"I always suspected that Rita wasn't entirely normal," she said brightly, biting into a cookie. She went back to the stove.

I folded the newspaper up, thinking. Steinbeck might have been a female dog, but, until the last time I saw her, she had been one of the sanest people I knew. It didn't make any sense.

I leaned back in my chair and listened to my mother frying eggs on the stove and singing old ABBA songs off-key.

Run, Steinbeck had said. Just run.

I could still hear her gravelly voice.