The Fall of Troy Read online

  I glared at him before letting the expression drop and walked out of the coffee shop, ignoring his laugh as it followed me and not looking for my Melancholic Mystery Man again.

  “You can go right in, Miss Troian,” Dr. Shelly’s receptionist, Lucy, instructed. Her flat smile said that my perpetual lateness was expected—a last meager show of defiance for how I didn’t need to go to therapy anymore.

  I nodded, pushing my hood back down and running a hand through my brown waves. Shit. They were getting frizzy and I’d forgotten a hair tie.

  I liked Dr. Shelly’s office. It was one of the first things that we talked about when my mom had brought me for my first session almost six months ago. In addition to the year-long mandatory parental supervision, extending beyond my eighteenth birthday, for the incident that was neither attempted nor suicidal, I was also required to have bi-weekly meetings with a therapist, transitioning to once a week as she saw fit. All of this given as an alternative to a stint in a psychiatric treatment center.

  It was the price I paid for letting my emotions consume me—one I wasn’t going to pay again.

  Everything in her office was white. Neat. Crisp. Clean. It calmed me because I appreciated all of those things. I was now comfortable in spaces that felt devoid of anything except what was necessary for a purpose. Like the hospital. Like this room. Like me.

  Of course, Dr. Shelly would read into it that I was looking for a fresh start, at which point I would’ve told her that maybe it was because she was driving me insane and they always reserve the nice, white rooms for the crazy ones.

  “Troian,” she greeted me with a smile and kind, pale green eyes behind small, chic glasses.

  Dr. Shelly Goldner was the complete opposite of the Registrar, Ms. Williams; the close proximity of both my appointments leaving them open to comparison. Dr. Shelly looked like a Scandinavian model—long and lean with perfectly straight blonde hair. In the six months that I’d been coming to her, I think I’d seen her in pants less than five times. And flats? Never. Always low heels in spite of her height which had to be at least five-foot-nine, towering over my five-foot-two. However, she only rose from her white leather throne to greet me before returning to her less-imposing seated stance.

  Professional. Calming. Soothing. Everything about her, just like her office, was perfectly put together. I assumed because people with messy minds were enticed to bare their souls by coordinated cleanliness.

  Too bad I didn’t have a messy mind. But I did appreciate the cleanliness.

  “Sorry I’m late.” She knew I wasn’t really sorry. Just like I knew she must plan on my lateness each week after this long. We’d fallen into this easy and slightly subversive power play as the months had dragged on. I rebelled in the smallest ways and she pretended to give me the victory, hoping, in that sense of safety, I’d open up more to her in return. That moment of weakness had yet to come.

  I’d say that the hard couch I always sat on came from Ikea, with its minimalistic and modern style, but knowing Dr. Shelly, it was probably purchased from a store where it came already assembled for about ten times the cost.

  “How are you doing this week? Did you sign up for classes?” she asked. Her pleasant smile never left her face. I wondered if she took mental notes on this part of our discussions. Her notebook and pen sat on her lap—both also white—but remained untouched.

  I nodded and briefly recounted my morning—leaving out my mind’s attempted murder and the mystery man whose eyes still haunted me. Her office would be nice if it were painted the deep sea blue of his stare. Then, instead of calm, I could just sink into it and disappear.

  “Good, very good. And what about your new job?” she continued down the list of questions that she started with each time.

  Our discussions had slowly become less hostile than when I first started coming. I still didn’t believe I needed a shrink and that would never change, but since I couldn’t avoid it, we’d slowly waded into conversational waters that were acceptable to both of us; depths where she thought she was making progress and ones where I knew I could still stand and keep my head above the surface.

  “I start Friday morning.” I let her think I picked up a second part-time job at RISD’s art supply store because she’d suggested it. Mostly, it was because I wanted another legitimate excuse not to be in the house with my mom and her boyfriend for more than was absolutely critical. “It’s only one morning a week right now but they might add on a Tuesday or a Thursday as the semester continues.”

  “I think it will be good to have something at the school in addition to your other job. It will probably be easier for you to make friends with some of your classmates at the store, too.”

  My first part-time job I’d stumbled into about two months ago. Wandering around Providence on a Saturday night after dinner with my mom and Paolo, I found myself in a hole-in-the-wall, hipster poetry bar: No Rhyme or Reason.

  And when I said stumbled, I meant it.

  I walked in, tripping over the old doorframe right into Gertie, the owner of the literary and libation-promoting establishment. I guess it was the way my hands shot out to catch the two glasses and empty liquor bottle that she was carrying that had her offering me a bartender position on the spot. The place was dark, sorrowful, and ninety-nine percent of the time, brimming with wanna-be poets lamenting the sad state of the human condition. It was perfect for me.

  “I’m not interested in making friends, Dr. Shelly,” I told her for the millionth time.

  “And why is that?”

  Aside from the gaping hole the size of Texas in my back where my last friend had betrayed me, I wasn’t interested in making friends because I had nothing to give them. Just like I had no answers to give her.

  The real crux of the problem was I had nothing to give anyone.

  I had nothing because I no longer knew who I was.

  Troian Milanovic was the science nerd who’d wanted to follow in her famous father’s footsteps and become a chemist. Troian Milanovic, I realized morosely, had only chased that dream because she thought it was what he wanted, that it was something he would notice and be proud of. I worked and studied and did it all to be the daughter he’d want.

  Without him, without that drive… I realized the person I’d worked so hard to become was not the person I wanted to be. And now, without knowing much of anything about who I really was, I’d become the very nothing I was always afraid of.

  “I’m still trying to figure everything out,” I admitted nonspecifically. That was the key—to give her enough to appease her.

  She took a patient sip of her tea, like silence would motivate me to say more, while I braced myself for this inevitable shift in the conversation. Sometimes, she talked about menial things for a good part of the session before we got to the mindfuck part. Other times, she jumped right in. Every time though, she always had the same expression she wore now—like when you suck in a giant breath because you are about to swim underwater. It was a clear indicator that we were about to dive into something deeper.

  “No one expects you to have everything figured out,” she said calmly. “You’re only eighteen. Surely, a smart, rational girl like yourself can’t expect that you’d have everything figured out before your brain has even finished forming completely.”

  My eyes flicked sharply up to hers. I had to give her props for the way she tried to use science to convince me.

  “I would find it hard to believe that any of your classmates even have themselves figured out at this point in life…” She mused with a lightness that belied her incredibly irritating ability to listen beyond what I said to hear what I felt. “Have you thought about what I said last week?”

  ‘I think you are doing really well, Troian, but I also believe that you won’t be able to move completely past this without speaking with your father.’

  “I’m not talking to him,” I answered the question she was really asking. “Or her.”

  He’d given up the daily calls aft
er three months. He’d given up calling and asking my mom to talk to me after five. Now, he’d call once a week, knowing it would be ignored, and then proceed to check in with my mom to see how I was doing. That was what I called progress. And Lil? She knew me better than to call. So, I deleted all of her messages until they stopped coming.

  “I understand your anger,” she said softly.

  No, she didn’t. In fact, she couldn’t. She could understand that Lilith had been there for me since my parents’ divorce; she’d been like the sister I never had and she was the best friend I always wanted. We’d been two peas in a pod, focused on school rather than boys, friendship rather than flirting. When my mom moved up here and my dad threw himself into his work, sacrificing his father role for the sake of science, I’d had to grow up quickly, which could’ve put me on a very lonely path if Lil hadn’t been there.

  No wonder she acted older than our age. She wanted to fuck someone who was old enough to be our father. Or my father, to be exact.

  No, Dr. Shelly could understand a lot of things. What she couldn’t understand was coming home early from my high school’s award’s ceremony, hating how I’d won first place in the whole school for my scores in AP Chemistry, to find him dick-deep, fucking my oldest, best, and arguably, only friend. His hands and mouth in places…

  I pretended to cough as a wave of nausea surprised me, making my stomach want to spill its monochromatic contents all over the nice white surroundings.

  “Troian.” Shelly’s eyes narrowed on me. She knew I was struggling. Dammit. “Would you say your brain looks at the world as a science equation or a piece of art?”

  Her question startled me from a quickly derailing train of thoughts.

  “I… uhh… I guess a science.” It wasn’t a question but it wasn’t an answer either. I chewed on my lip as I slipped my short rain boots off and pulled my legs up onto the couch. I watched her pen move over the notebook. “Unless I’m very… emotional. Then I don’t see science at all.”

  She peered up at me over her narrow frames and then quickly scribbled some more.

  “In science, how would you describe the process of discovering a new fact or theory?”

  “You mean like the scientific method?” What was this? Fifth grade?

  “If you want to call it that, sure.”

  I took a sip of my coffee. I hated those placating answers and I wanted to hate her. I tried really hard to in the beginning. But she wasn’t simply placating me when she said things like that; she wasn’t just trying to get me to do what she wanted. She really did care and I appreciated that honesty even if I wasn’t going to listen to her.

  “Well, like most things, it starts with a question—one that there is no answer to. You see something—a problem or observation—and wonder. You come up with a question and hypothesize an answer. Then you experiment and analyze the results and come to a conclusion.”

  I didn’t move a muscle, waiting impatiently for her to get to her point.

  “Would you say that when you first came here, trying to understand what your father and your friend did was a question that you didn’t—don’t—have the answer to?”

  So that was where she was going…

  “Sure.” With a shrug, I played along.

  “So, we have our question and I would venture that over our time together, since you are an exceptionally smart girl” —I almost snorted at the compliment. I wasn’t smart. If I was smart, I would’ve seen this coming—“that you have thought about potential hypotheses for why they did this. Why they didn’t tell you…”

  I nodded, chewing on the inside of my cheek.

  Because they are fucking careless, backstabbing liars who didn’t give a shit about me.

  “Unfortunately, when it comes to people, Troian, sometimes we don’t have the luxury of experimentation. Other times, we have the fortuity to be able to ask directly and get the answer we are searching for.” In the things we loathe become—“If you have a question, why wouldn’t you use the tools you have to answer it?”

  I stared at her. “I’m not talking to him because I’m not searching for answers—for his answers. I just want to move on.”

  “Not searching isn’t the same as not wanting, Troian.” She pushed her glasses up higher on her nose as she tried to downplay the seriousness of what she was suggesting.

  Dammit. My lips thinned. I usually picked my words more carefully than that. Taking a slow sip of my coffee, I blamed the man with the deep sea eyes who’d dragged my thoughts twenty-thousand leagues under and threw me off my game before coming here.

  “Maybe it’s hard to move on because you know you want those answers and because you know he wants to give them to you. Why don’t you tell me what is holding you back from asking? From searching?”

  I swallowed slowly, putting every ounce of effort into keep my next words on a completely even keel. “At this point, Dr. Shelly, I think it’s better to just forget all of the questions. There are just some things in life that are not meant to be understood but to be forgotten.”

  Like me.

  “I disagree, Troian. You can’t forget them, you can only ignore them. And ignoring them is what got you in my office in the first place,” she said firmly, her irritation starting to show at the thought that I preferred to go back to square one.

  Square one involved alcohol, scissors, and pills.

  “We agreed that trying to harm yourself wasn’t the right answer, correct?”

  “Of course,” I clipped. She’d made progress too over the past several months—no longer referring to the incident as me trying to kill myself, opting for ‘hurt’ or ‘harm’ instead.

  The incident.

  God, that night was so overplayed.

  It looked bad. I get it.

  But I hadn’t been trying to kill myself. Not with the scissors. And definitely not with the meds.

  But it looked bad. And sometimes, looking bad is all it takes.

  “Your anger is understandable, Troian.” Dr. Shelly’s reassurance brought me back to the present. “But the answers you want are nothing to be afraid of and nothing to punish yourself over. And just remember, having those answers doesn’t have to change how you feel about what happened, but it might change how you feel about yourself, and that, I think, is what’s most important to the both of us.”

  I let the silence drone on for a minute as my feet fell back down into my boots and I drained the last of my coffee.

  “Okay,” I finally responded as I stood. I knew she wanted more. She always wanted more words. But I didn’t have them.

  “I’ll see you next week, Troian.” Her serene voice washed over me as I tugged my parka back on.

  I threw her a wave over my shoulder without looking back and waited until I was outside the door of her office to start jogging for the exit of the building.

  “Shit.” I gasped as soon as the cold air hit my face. I gulped down air like it could help me swallow the bile that rose from her suggestion.

  I closed my eyes as I began to walk away from the building and the falling snow whipped cold kisses onto my face. Once again, I saw the sea-deep gaze that swelled with an internal torture as twisted as my own. My Mystery Man was just as lost and angry as I was. I froze, causing someone behind me to curse and bump into me, but I ignored it, realizing why I was so enamored with that stare. For the first time since I’d lost myself, I realized that I wasn’t alone, that there was someone else out there struggling with my particular blend of anger and sadness.

  It made no sense to find comfort in a stranger. I didn’t know him. I didn’t even know his name. But like the wind, I didn’t have to know any of those things to feel the push and pull of his turbulent emotions as they blew through me.

  And then it hit me. I hadn’t been bothered at all by the way he was a complete disheveled mess. His hair looked like it been styled by its own personal jet stream: a giant mane of rich brown waves. And his clothes? His jacket hadn’t even been a winter one. Black
blazer over a white button-down that was half-untucked and, even with the tie on loosely, unbuttoned at the top.

  He looked like a frat boy who’d had a little too much fun the night before and hadn’t had the chance to change. But he wasn’t a frat boy. He was definitely no boy. And it appeared to have been a bit longer than one night since he’d put on fresh clothes.

  Not only hadn’t it irked me, but I’d been attracted to it—to the melancholic mess. And it left me with far too many questions and answers that I wanted to search for. I chuckled as I wrapped my arms across my chest to try to stop the bitter cold from seeping through my clothes, wondering what Dr. Shelly would have to say about that—about all the answers I wanted from a man I didn’t know. Maybe that would get her off my case about talking to my father.

  I shivered as I began the walk home, the realization still disturbing my mind.

  I clung to these kinds of things, the kind of quick judgments and forced solitude because they wouldn’t betray me like parents… friends… people would. Clinging to them was easier than facing the alternative.

  I was a coward. And I was fine admitting to it because the truth was it hadn’t failed me yet.

  “Troy! Honey!”

  My mom rushed into the hall from the kitchen as soon as I walked in the front door to the modest two-bedroom Cape Cod that she and Paolo had bought when they’d moved up here. It wasn’t anything grand, but my mother had made it their own and it was conveniently close to the school since they were both tenured professors there, my mother in the art department and Paolo in Italian.

  “Yeah.” I shrugged out of my jacket and wiped my face dry on my sleeve. The snow had really been coming down by the time I made it onto our street.

  “I tried to call you earlier.” She quickly took my coat from me and reached down to grab my boots before giving me a thorough once-over.

  “I had an appointment with Dr. Shelly this morning… just like I do every Tuesday morning.” I couldn’t hold back the bit of sass in my tone.