Hold Onto Me 'Cause I'm a Little Unsteady

Chapter Twenty-Four

Peter doesn't hate his sessions with Sam, building Lego sets and talking. He wouldn't say he hates them; hate is a strong word. He just strongly dislikes them. He doesn't like thinking about what happened. He wants to just move on from it. He wants to just forget.

But he knows that's not how it works.

He knows he can't just forget and be the person he was before it all happened.

Peter kicks his feet anxiously under the dining room table, taking a sip of water as the silence between them suffocates him.

Sam's just watching him build the model, it's the CN tower today, not making any move to start the conversation first.

"I'm fine," Peter says. He says it a lot. But no matter how many times he says it, it doesn't just magically become true. The bandage over the cut on his forehead from when he fell out of the shower the day before says a lot about the lies he tells. "I don't get why I have to talk to you about this if I'm fine."

Sam takes a deep breath through his nose, handing Peter the next piece in silence.

Peter waits to be called out on his lie, but it never comes.

"I'm fine," Peter repeats. There's another moment of silence before he can't handle it. "Yesterday was just an accident. It was fine. I'm fine."

"You had a mild concussion, Peter," Sam states. Not an argument, it's a fact. "You had a panic attack just a few hours ago over something you saw on TV. Is that really fine?"

Peter closes his eyes. He doesn't want to have to look at the disappointment or the anger that'll show when he says it.

"I'm not fine," Peter admits. He knows that's what Sam wants, the truth. "I'm not fine but I don't know how to be fine."

"That's where I come in," he explains. "That's where talking helps and your family supports, and I can try my best to recommend ways for you to get where you wish you were. That's what these sessions are for."

Peter's shoulders slump, not moving to continue making the tower. It seems intimidating all of a sudden.

But Sam has a smile on his face. "Think of people as Lego sets. We're all made up of all these little pieces, but sometimes, Lego sets break, right? Right now, you're just a bunch of Lego pieces. We just need to put the pieces back together to make the puzzle complete."

They'd only made a little bit of progress, no more than a dozen pieces put together, but Sam's metaphor makes sense when he knocks the structure over and the pieces scatter across the wooden table. That's how Peter feels.

"You have all the pieces, you just need to put it back together, but since there's so many pieces to do, I'm going to help, and your family is going to help, okay?"

"Okay," Peter agrees quietly.

*

The first piece of Lego Peter he finds is at his desk in his bedroom.

It's what he was doing the night before he was taken.

His Biology textbook is open to page two hundred and twelve, diagrams filling the pages more than words do. A red notebook sits next to it, open to a full page of scrawled notes in black pen, highlighted in yellows and pinks and blues for important pieces.

His textbook has green sticky notes sticking out of the pages with messy notes like Due Thursday and For Test on 14th. There's a pencil lying in the middle of the book, little notes written in the margins of the pages. Questions he has, answers to those questions, reminders for what to study.