Love Me Like You Hate Me (Edited Version)

Chapter 10

I rested my chin on my knees and sighed. "I don't know why he hasn't told anyone yet," I said.

Dr. Tharn shrugged. "Maybe he doesn't want to tell anyone. What has his attitude been like recently?" she asked.

"Distant. Rude. Harsh." I listed off the number of moods Zack had displayed since the locker room incident from a week before. "It's obvious that he's mad at me, but I don't know why."

Dr. Tharn wrote something down before continuing. "Is he more hostile than before or less?"

"He's not as hostile as he'd been, but it's getting worse every time I see him," I said. "I don't understand what I did and it's so confusing. I just wish I could make it all stop..."

Dr. Tharn noticed the train of thought I was spiraling down and she quickly changed the subject to keep my mind away from such things. However, the subject she changed to wasn't much better. "Your father called me the other day," she said.

I knew what was coming and turned to stare out the window. "What did he want?" I asked.

"He said your becoming more withdrawn at home," she said. She waited for me to refute the accusation, but when I didn't she went on. "He said you hardly stay for breakfast and that you've been skipping for the past couple weeks," she said. I didn't respond. I knew this would come up eventually. Ever since the fight with my dad I had been avoiding contact with him. Unfortunately, he seemed to be overly conscious of me recently and it was getting harder to avoid him.

Observing the slouch of my shoulders, Dr. Tharn sighed and stood up, crossing the small space between us and sitting down next to me. "He's just worried about you, you know?"

She attempted to comfort me, but I kept my body facing away and my eyes trained at the window. "So, what?" I said quietly.

She looked disappointed in my reaction, but rubbed my shoulder encouragingly. "Let's leave that topic for another session," she said as she stood up and went to her desk. She moved some papers. "Has the medication been helping you sleep?" she asked.

I shrugged. "I guess... I can get more than an hour at a time now when I take it," I said.

"That's good," she said. There was a silence as Dr. Tharn came to sit across from me again. "When did you stop taking it?" she asked. I looked up shamefully, frowning at her. Dr. Tharn smiled at me. "I'm a therapist, Erik. I'm trained to observe."

I pulled my legs up and sighed deeply. "Yeah..." I said. I wasn't really surprised. It had probably been obvious when I walked into the room with dark bags under my eyes once again. "I stopped a few days ago," I admitted.

My therapist wrote that down for use in later sessions. "Why did you stop taking it?" she asked.

I hugged my knees tighter. "They were giving me nightmares," I said.

This didn't seem to surprise her, but she did frown. "When did you realize this?" she asked.

"A few days after I took it the first time... It took me a little bit to realize it since it's not weird for me to have nightmares," I said. I often woke screaming when I was living with my mother, a morning that usually resulted in a beating from my stepdad for waking him up.

"Are you going to keep taking it?" Dr. Tharn asked.

I didn't know how to answer "no" honestly, so I just shook my head. "I don't know. Maybe," I said.

Dr. Tharn probably saw through the lie, but she didn't mention it. "Just keep it if you need it in the future," she said. "But let me know if you start taking it again so I can prescribe some more if you need."