Elise keeps glaring at Hunter.
“Don’t listen to whatever she’s saying,” I say quickly. “This is a good level. It’s fine like this.”
Hunter sighs. “Enough! I’m just going to keep doing what I was doing. Gradually. That’s what Li said to do too.”
Elise rolls her eyes and gets up. She leaves.
“She said she’s going to bring Li back.”
I sigh in relief, but then I feel the blanket become even thinner—thin and loose like a summer top sheet draped so it’s covering the whole bed, but not tucked in. I put my head in my hands. So many things crawling out from the sides and some even passing up through the blanket itself.
I rock back and forth a little. Guilt. I feel guilty about something, or a couple things, or a lot of things, I think. Anxiety. What does Ron think of me, knowing who I am, what I can do, what I’ve done? But what have I done, exactly? Sadness. Something is gone, something was stolen. I did something bad—something terribly bad.
A soft cry escapes from my lips. And then, tears wet my hands.
Hunter puts a hand on my shoulder, lightly, as though it almost isn’t there. “Chrys, it was an accident. You didn’t mean to do it.”
“But what did I do?” I say, my voice muffled from my hands.
“You killed Iris.”
I sniffle. “I couldn’t have done that.”
“I’m pretty sure you did.”
I put my hands down and ball them up tightly in my lap, looking into Hunter’s concerned eyes. “Why would I do that? I’m not a bad person.”
“I think it was an accident. Do you want to remember what happened?”
“Are you going to take it all away?”
“No, I’ll just leave a little bit—a tiny bit. Enough to prevent another panic attack physically. It should keep your body calm at least.”
“Just my body though?”
“Well, the physical symptoms are the worst. Without those, you might be able to process what happened more clearly. So? Should I do it?”
I look up at the ceiling and fiddle with my hands. “Do I have to?”
“If you don’t feel ready yet, then I won’t do it now, but I’ll have to eventually. I’m not going to keep you like this overnight. The longer I keep this up, the harder it’ll be for you to face it. We won’t be ripping off the bandage. I won’t do that again, I promise. It’s gradual. You can handle it. Just let yourself remember what happened.”
I exhale deeply, letting my body and my hands relax. I lean back in the sofa and close my eyes. “Okay, just do it.”
He removes his hand from my shoulder—I had kind of forgotten it was there until now—and then the blanket shrinks, covering just a tiny part of my mind, and everything comes flooding back to me.
The buzzer sound and Carl shouting that I’m gifted. Iris touching me. Me pushing her. The cold energy. Her falling. Hunter coming. Carl frozen.
I shut my eyes even tighter. My heart is speeding up and my breathing is becoming quicker, but my chest doesn’t hurt yet and I can still breathe okay.
“I killed Iris,” I whisper. My hands start to shake.
Hunter holds my hands to steady them.
My eyes fly open and I jerk my hands away from him. “Please, don’t touch my hands. God, I’m going to have to start wearing gloves again.” I wipe my face with my hands.
“Chrys, you don’t have to—”
“I have no control! I just pushed her a little. I didn’t mean to-to do that. I was trying to get her to stop touching me. Carl told her I’m gifted and I freaked out.” I turn to Hunter. “I started to think about everything. All the death—when he said that—and I think because it was at the forefront of my mind, when I touched her, that happened and I…”
Hunter nods, a sympathetic look on his face. “See? You didn’t mean to do it though. You’re not a bad person and you do have control, usually. That moment was a little overwhelming for you, and it made you do something you didn’t intend to do, that’s all.”
The door opens and Li enters. She rushes over and sits down quickly. “Sorry,” she says, trying to catch her breath. “I didn’t realize your gift was that strong, Hunter. I really thought Elise could help.”
“It’s okay,” Hunter says. “Chrys is almost there.”
Li looks at me, noticing my wet face and probably awful expression. She sighs. “I know it’s painful, Chrys, but it’ll be worth it in the end.”
I just nod, that image of Iris lingering in my head. My breathing is still labored but my heartbeat feels like it’s getting slower. It’s getting easier to look at that image. I still feel guilty and anxious and sad, but as those feelings and that image sit with me, without me trying to repel them away, they slowly start to fade.
Hunter and Li are staring at me intently, the air tense with silence.
I breathe out and say, “What’s still under the blanket?”
“Blanket?” Hunter says.
“Yeah it—that’s what I call it. The calm. Because it feels like a blanket, holding things down. I can feel that it’s mostly gone but there’s still like a little corner of my mind beneath it.”
“A blanket. Okay. That’s good to know. It kind of feels that way to me too, but I always thought of it like a hug. Like, I’m hugging you with the emotion.”
I nod. “Sure, a hug, I guess. But I think blanket is more accurate.”
“Okay, anyway,” he says, “I don’t know what’s under there still. Whatever it is, it must be really deep. The kind of stuff you never let in.”
“I do recall having something like that, but I’m not sure what. If you remove the blanket, won’t it go back to just staying stuffed deep down?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t really know. That could happen, or it could all come up to the surface, all at once.”
Dealing with what I
