“I don’t.”
“Don’t you? Doesn’t a part of you think you’re making a big deal out of not very much? That if you were somehow not so weak, you could be happy and free just like everyone else?”
“…Kind of.”
“You came to me because you wanted my help, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then here’s my help. One, your anxiety is a genuine and very painful problem, not one you’re making up. Two, you’re not morally responsible for causing it. It’s nothing you did or failed to do that makes it happen. Three, medication will help treat it, so that four, you and I can talk about ways to help make life bearable, even liveable.”
“Will I have to be on it forever?”
“Not if you don’t want to. The decisions are entirely yours.”
“…I hate myself, Dr Luther.”
“But not so much that you didn’t come asking for help.”
CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH, in which Satchel doesn’t know who to trust, so she follows her police officer uncle to see if she can find the source of the blue energy on her own; she enters the basement of the high school while the prom – which Satchel is completely not interested in except in an ironic way – is going on above; while the music plays and people dance, she stops her uncle from opening a fissure that will swallow the whole gym and everyone in it; she knocks off his unattached head in the process and the blue light fades from his body; she weeps at her actions and bravery, but the Prince arrives, terrified, saying they have to run, as fast as possible.
“You look amazing,” I tell Henna at her door on the night of the prom.
“Thanks,” she says, shyly. “I kind of know I look amazing. How weird is that?”
Her dress is, I guess, custard and burgundy, but that really doesn’t begin to describe it. Most prom dresses I’ve seen are either puffy to the point of cloudiness or cut so short and sheer you keep wondering if the girl is cold.
But Henna.
There are no gimmicks with her dress, but then there never are with her. She isn’t trying to be ridiculously fashionable but she’s not ridiculously old-fashioned either. She looks like a grown-up, that’s what it is. A really beautiful, beautiful, serious and beautiful grown-up. Even the cast on her arm looks like she got it from lifting a car off a refugee child.
“You look … amazing,” I say again. “I mean it.”
“You’re not so bad yourself.”
I’m just in a tux.
But, okay, maybe I do look good in a tux.
“Very handsome,” her father says, coming up behind Henna with her mother.
“Hello, Mike,” her mother says. She holds up her phone. “Picture?”
“Yeah,” I say, and Henna slides up next to me while her mom snaps us. We look for all the world like we’re going to the prom as dates. Which is what her mom and dad think. They also think she’s staying over with just Mel out at the cabin as a kind of we’ve-almost-graduated treat. They have to know Henna’s not that boring, don’t they? They must know that the rest of us are going out there, too, and maybe just this once they’re overlooking it? Or maybe in Finland this is perfectly normal, even for the devout.
“Have a good time,” her mom says, kissing her on the cheek. Her dad does the same. They’ve always been this formal, like royalty. Solemn in a way that makes everyone else feel slightly ridiculous. They stand together, his arm around her shoulders, watching Henna take me by the elbow and walk down to the waiting limousine.
“Oh, my God,” Henna says, seeing it.
“I know.”
The limousine turned out to not quite be what we ordered. Those were “all out”, it seems, to other prom nights, maybe even at our own school. So despite a regular black limo being available when we made the booking and paid the non-refundable deposit, that’s not what showed up at my house to pick up me and Mel. I texted the others to warn them, but that still doesn’t prepare you for seeing it in person.