The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves by James Han Mattson

Author:James Han Mattson [Mattson, James Han]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503942486
Publisher: Little A
Published: 2017-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

MARK MCVITRY

After Claire’s call and after I drew her, I felt better. Not totally, but better than I had in a long fuckin’ time. I guess that needs some clarifying. Before I started drawing her, I didn’t feel sick, just nervous all the time. Kinda like when you’re watching some creepy horror movie and you know the killer’s gonna strike, but only music is playing, or maybe it’s just dead silence. Or if you’re on a roller coaster and you’re going up real slow, you know, the anticipation shit. Well, before Claire’s call, I was feeling that all the time, scared of the next time I’d see the ghost-Ricky again. The drawing helped a little bit, but just a little. Maybe like when you’re at the very top of the roller coaster but haven’t gone down yet. It was like Claire’s call was the killer jumping out or the plummet down the coaster, and afterward I was still terrified but felt okay, like it wasn’t all completely unknown anymore.

So during my next appointment with Dr. Huntington, I told him about her. First, I told him that she was never a big part of my life to begin with. Then I told him it was strange that she’d called and made me feel better. After that, I told him about the roller coaster–slash–horror movie thing, and he nodded, said it was interesting. After that, he told me I needed to start thinking about the incident more, that I was avoiding. And that made me wicked pissed, ’cause I’d just told him about a breakthrough, this after just one day of seeing him, and all he cared about was me reliving that night, which was stupid. Like was that some sort of thing in psychology? Like if you had something that affected you so bad you were supposed to relive it? Seemed to me that if you were trying to get over something, you should do the opposite, like forget it. But he pressed on and on, so what could I do.

“I’ve gone over it a million times,” I told him.

“Make it a million and one then,” he said.

“You know what happened.”

“You need to discuss specifically. Close your eyes.”

I felt like he was really impatient, but I had no idea why. We’d only had that one session, and he’d told me I didn’t have to say anything I didn’t want. But whatever. I closed my eyes.

“It’s February,” he said. “Unseasonably warm, yes?”

“What? It happened in Mar—”

“It’s February 28,” he said, and his voice was stern, like my dad’s. “It’s unseasonably warm. It’s Saturday night. You’re at the Meadows.”

Oh fuck. That. I opened my eyes.

“Close your eyes,” Dr. Huntington said.

“What for? You wanna blame me for it all too?”

“Let’s just do this. Humor me.”

“Humor you?”

“It may not seem like it, but I’m trying to help.”

“I thought I just talk about whatever here. I wanna talk about Claire.”

“After,” he said. “Let’s just try this. Yes?”

“I really don’t wanna talk about that.”

“Just for a bit, okay? Just a little while.

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