08 | tara carpenter

CHAPTER EIGHT | TARA CARPENTER

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The first forum post I've ever made is anonymous, but it's still easily traceable. It's vague yet specific enough for the Final Girls to know I wrote it, that I went through that. I'm desperate enough to beg them for validation, to beg them to believe me that the words pouring out into the message board end up being far more personal than I intended, but then the comments come flushing down.

Thank you for your bravery. We have your back. #FG

Final Girls stick together, right?

You were just defending yourself. It was proven (I read all about it, watched every news report on your case) and I don't think you should be dwelling on that. Protecting yourself against someone who made it clear they wanted to kill you doesn't make you a bad person. It means you fought back. #FG

I spent a few summers at Camp Comet when I was a teenager myself. Never in a million years did I expect something so terrible to happen there, but I'm glad you made it out.

You did what you had to do, baby girl. You're a survivor. #FG

Some Final Girls were so disillusioned with a world that failed to protect them that they took it out on other people, bitter and traumatized, but I understand them. I, too, was angry at first, so furious that no one was looking out for us, for me, and then I had to be the one to step up and do it. That night, I saved myself. I fought back. They want me to believe I was in the right, that I had no choice but to hit Him with the baseball bat, and I sleep with the knowledge that I have no blood on my hands. I didn't kill Him.

Even though some of them are downright mean, the ones that aren't, the ones that have left me messages of encouragement have no idea how brighter they made my day. I still refuse to regularly check those forums, but it's a moment in time I can't erase. It's a reminder that not all of them are teenagers, not all of them are in their early twenties. Some of these Final Girls are well into their adulthood, some of them married, some of them have children, and yet there we are, finding comfort in each other because no one else in our lives will ever come close to being that strong pillar.

If anything, it terrifies me. I'm terrified to hit twenty-five, thirty, forty, and still be thinking about this every day, still being haunted by ghosts and memories, and it's exhausting just to consider a reality where I'm still carrying all this heavy baggage with me.

Sitting in front of me, legs firmly crossed, Doctor Albott listens to my monologue in complete silence. Her facial expression remains calm and collected, like she has done this countless times, and I don't know why this relationship feels different than that I had with my previous therapist, but it does. Perhaps it's because I'm here by my own will, because this is something I've chosen, because she doesn't try to act like she completely gets me.

Because she doesn't pretend to be someone she's not, I don't, either. I don't try to act stronger or braver than I am, and I don't get the feeling that she's asking me to be, like my old therapist used to. In Chicago, people told me I have to be strong, I have to keep my head up at all times, I have to look on the bright side (hey, at least I'm not dead, right?), but Doctor Albott begins the session by telling me all masks stay outside of her office, and that it's okay to admit I'm struggling.

I don't expect to start bawling halfway through my explanation about what brings me to her office, but there I am, staring at the golden details marking the fabric of her jeans around her calves. I can't look anyone in the eye while I'm crying because I'm vain enough to care that I look ugly and ridiculous, so this will have to do. In my head, this is yet something else she understands and doesn't judge.

(If she does, she doesn't make it obvious.)

"You didn't ask if I'm okay," I tell her, accepting the box of tissues she hands me. It's single-handedly the most embarrassing thing I've had to do in Alaska.

"Did you want me to?"

"No. I really didn't."

"I guess we're on the same page then."

She sits so quiet in front of me that it makes me even more aware of the random noises I make—the creaking of the armchair I'm sitting on, with a leg beneath me, every time I shift to be more comfortable, the scratching sound of my nails scraping against the fabric of my jeans—and it only makes me feel extra inadequate. It's yet another of those things that are probably just in my head and aren't bothering her at all, but I don't know how someone can be so still and patient.

"So, let me ask you," she continues, crossing her legs. Until now, she kept her ankles crossed. "What do you think we can do here together, if anything at all? Do you think this will be good for you? If you're not comfortable with me, if you'd rather see someone else, I can refer you to one of my colleagues, no problem. I don't charge for the first session, if that worries you; we're just testing the waters with each other, and it wouldn't be fair to charge you for what I like to call a test run."

"I . . . I don't know. I think you can help. It's just . . ." I shake my head. "I haven't had the best experience with therapy before. It was mostly me sitting there in silence, listening to someone else ask questions I couldn't find an answer to. They tried to put themselves in my shoes, giving advice I couldn't follow. I hated it. I know it's what therapy is, but it made me think for a second that . . ." I swallow the lump in my throat. She leans forward almost imperceptibly. "It made me think that I'm the problem, that this isn't for me, that I'm bound to never get past what happened. I clearly can't do it by myself and, if therapy didn't help—"

"Look. I understand. There's no cookie-cutter formula to recovery and no one expects you to immediately bounce back from what happened. You went through an extremely traumatic experience most people will, thankfully, never go through, and there's a difference between being empathetic to your situation and trying to guess and dictate how you must be feeling or how you're living through it all. I don't tend to badmouth my colleagues, even those in other parts of the world, but I know it's hard to separate the two things sometimes. Sometimes it makes the patient feel like they're being lectured, and that's not what we want to do. There are things we can teach patients, but we're not an authority figure. Does that make sense?"

I slowly nod. "I think so."

"It's okay if your first attempt didn't work. We will find something that works for you, no matter how long it takes." Her eyes drop down to my hands, watching me fidget with a loose strand of my cardigan. "I know how cliché it is to say that time soothes all wounds, and I know you're particularly worried because the other people you know that have been in a similar situation don't seem like they've moved on, but people are works in progress. Your trauma is something that will be with you for a long time, possibly forever, but what changes is the power you give it and the way you let it affect you. With work, it's something you can learn how to deal with. It doesn't mean you'll be a slave to it for all your life."

I want to believe her with every fiber of my being, I truly do, but she doesn't get it.

She doesn't get that it's not something I can simply gloss over and pretend it means nothing to me a few years down the road. I'll go to high school reunions and they will all look at me with pity and sympathy, like I care about those things when all my friends are dead, and I'll be there the entire time wondering if our class wishes I were dead, too.

It's always "hold on to the good memories", but no one ever tells me what to do with the bad ones or how to stop them from overpowering everything I've ever known. I've turned into the people I've criticized, reducing my friends and Zach to one single moment of their lives—their last, even—but focusing on the good memories won't bring them back from the dead. Nothing will, and no number of positive affirmations or coping strategies ever will.

They're all still dead, and I'm the one left behind. It's no wonder the other Final Girls never really move on.

I don't tell her this, even though I should, with it being a central, key feeling and mental blockage of mine, but I don't. At this point, I don't expect anyone else to think this is an okay thing to think or feel—I can already picture the confused look on her face—and I know there will be people who will understand what I'm trying to get at, just not here.

They're all quasi-anonymous people on a message board I swore to myself I wouldn't use often, but I went back on my word and found myself sucked into the vortex of post. They've identified me as one of them with the FG hashtag, a scarlet letter of some sort, and it's the most rewarding thing to have your peers admit they get you and that you're welcome in their circle.

They're the only ones who will ever get it. At least they're alive. Most of them are alone.

I wonder if that will be me, too, unable to fully trust someone.

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As the month goes by, I decide to give Doctor Albott a chance and force myself to push away my general distrust around therapists. I'm certain she sees right through my bravado and can sense my hesitation from a mile away, but she doesn't try to push the subject.

There aren't many subjects she tries to push, really; most of the time, she lets me choose what we're talking about in every session, saying that things are supposed to feel like a conversation instead of an interrogation, but I do the majority of the talking. It's not much of a conversation in my eyes, but at least I'm speaking because I want to do it, not because I feel like I'm being forced to, and it all just flows naturally.

Recently, we've been discussing attending UAS, which is, coincidentally, her alma mater. Things would be far more different if this was my freshman year, but I already feel seasoned enough to deal with the demands of sophomore year, even if I have to do so in a completely foreign environment. Xavier's reaction to my acceptance was a grunt, a comment about how he always knew I'd get in—how he knew, considering he's been absent from my life for a few years now, is unknown to me, but maybe it's his blind faith in me speaking—which is good enough coming from someone who's not much of a talker. Doctor Albott wants to know if this has demotivated me somehow, if I expected a different reaction.

"Not really," I reply, sipping from my citrus and ginger kombucha, courtesy of Odette. "I'd be more concerned if he started jumping around the house and wanted to throw a party to celebrate. Showing excitement isn't really Xavier's thing."

"And do you feel like that affects you in other areas of your life, not just this?"

I shift in my chair. "Sometimes I wish he'd show some emotion. It would make him feel more . . . human. More like my brother, not just this person I'm living with."

She looks at me with those big eyes of hers, the faint sunlight peeking through the blinds of the window behind her illuminating her head like a halo. Today, her hair looks light brown, almost blonde. "You mentioned he didn't fly home for the funerals of your friends."

I chew on my bottom lip, pulling down the slaves of my sweater so they cover most of my hands, down to my knuckles. Xavier and I don't talk much about that, and I know he knows me well enough to be fully aware of how bad that one stung. Out of everyone else in my life, he was the one who should have been there. "He didn't. I'm sure he had a good reason not to, and I don't feel like I have the right to question his motives, but . . . you know. It hurt not having him there. He had known those people . . . my friends, Zach . . . for years. He even was kind of a big brother to some of them, so I just don't get it. I keep trying to come up with explanations as to why he didn't go, but they always fall flat. I don't understand why. I don't know if flying back home was so painful that he couldn't do this one thing for them, for me, but he had his reasons. It's not up to me to decide how valid they were or were not."

She furrows her brows, lips twisting into the faintest of scowls. "Have you spoken to him about this?"

Sighing, I look up. It's usually a helpful way to keep the tears from rolling down my face. "I've tried to. Those conversations never amount to much. He doesn't like talking about it, and I don't want to pry. I don't want to drive him away any further; it's been hard enough trying to reconnect with him when—"

"When?"

"It's not important."

She closes her notebook, setting it aside on the mahogany coffee table separating us. "Do you feel like your feelings and reasons for having wanted him there are less valid than his reasons for not having been there?"

My chest tightens.

When she puts it like that, it makes me sound like a selfish, ungrateful brat who's taking advantage of family ties and Xavier's hospitality. If the past two months should have taught me anything, it's to be more understanding, to be more patient, to not question the motives that have led people to do certain things. Sometimes, it really is better to not know.

To me, it's not a matter of whose feelings and reasons are more valid. It has never been a competition in my eyes, but the deepest parts of me scream to be heard, scream to be understood. No one ever hears a thing and I'm just screaming into the void, my own voice echoing around me, and I drown in my problems without anyone to talk to them about. It's my own doing and I've dug my own grave, with my insistence on refusing help because it's not perfect, because it doesn't come from someone who truly gets me, and all it's done is drive people away and bring me no comfort.

The worst part of it all is that I know all of this is happening. I know it's my fault and I know I actively make decisions to support that thesis, but it hasn't been nearly as beneficial as I expected it to be. The odds of me meeting one of those other Final Girls aren't that high and seem to be stacked against me anyway, so it would be just me, lying in therapy, pushing my family away, and turning traumas and bad memories into some dumb competition that can't actually produce a victor. Even if I were to meet a Final Girl in person, who's to say the same thing wouldn't happen? Would we compare ourselves to each other, try to figure out which of us has suffered the most, which of us deserves the most sympathy, which of us is more deserving of the ultimate Final Girl status?

Hearing my own words come out of my mouth is an odd experience.

They don't feel or sound like mine at all, so I can very well be a passive subject in my own life, watching it play on a screen without any personal intervention, and I don't have a choice but to accept whatever happens to that version of Wendy Collier. She sits there, recites a monologue about Final Girls and jealousy and impostor syndrome—like you can even call it that under these circumstances—and Doctor Albott, as always, listens, quiet like a mouse. Therapists that are able to simply go quiet, not letting their mental judgments be so transparent they get reflected on their facial expressions freak me out, and she's no exception.

"Do you feel like you have a good support system?" she asks me, tucking a lock of perfectly straightened hair behind her ear. The golden hoop dangling from her earlobe glistens with the light reflecting on its surface. "I'm not referring to your family exclusively. Do you feel like you have people around you that can properly support you during a time like this, or during another rough period of your life?"

I sniffle. "I don't really have anyone else but them. It was mostly me and my dad, but then he had to start working less to make sure I wasn't by myself for too long, my mom had to postpone her wedding planning because of me, Xavier had to change all his routines and place his life on hold because I had to come here—"

"It sounds like they've been trying to make you feel comforted. When you care about people, sometimes you have to sacrifice some things to properly be there for them."

"Yes, but these are their lives. I didn't ask for any of this to happen, I didn't ask for them to stop living their lives just to make sure I'm barely living my own, and I can't let go of this gnawing feeling that everyone resents me for it." My bottom lip trembles so hard it doesn't stop even when I carve my teeth into it. It's miserable and pathetic, but it matches me perfectly. "Other people would know what to do. They would be moving on with their lives, making progress in therapy, and then there's me. I've stagnated. I can't move on. I'm scared all the time. Whenever I leave the house, I'm constantly looking back over my shoulder to check if I'm being followed, I have to check every corner and nook to make sure no one's hiding there to ambush me, and don't even get me started on noise. They all put their lives and careers at risk for my sake, and I can't even repay them. I can't even heal, so all of this has been for nothing." I lean forward, resting my forehead against the heels of my hands. My elbows dig into my calves, a pinching pain shooting up my nerves. "I should have just died that night as well. It would save everyone from having to watch the trainwreck that is my life."

I didn't mean to say that last part out loud, but it's out there in the world now and I can't take it back. If this were a movie, I could just erase that line from the script and everyone would go on their merry way, but real life doesn't let me take things back and act like I didn't say anything.

The words linger there for a while, with me weeping in my seat, with her watching me do it, and, for a split second, I find myself wishing she could be a bit more comforting and warmer. Maybe she'd be blurring the lines between our patient-doctor relationship by squeezing my shoulder, or something, so I don't ask her to.

"It's not my job to decide whether your feelings are valid or not," she says, quietly. "However, I do think that's quite a concerning thing to say and think. Your family doesn't wish you'd died. I understand you're in a lot of pain right now and you don't think there's a way out from this dark hole, but there is, even if you can't see the light right now. No matter how long it takes, you have to allow yourself to see the light. You owe it to yourself to at least try. After all you've gone through, you deserve that kind of reward."

"Is that what this is all about, then? Saying my trauma made me stronger?"

She shakes her head. "No. I think you've always been strong." When I finally dare to look her in the eye, her lips hint towards a genuine smile. "This is where that inner strength comes in. It comes in when you don't think you can do it, when you think you can't live to fight another day. The fact that you still choose to do it shows a lot more strength and bravery than you think."

I wipe my face with my sleeve, staining it with black blotches of mascara. I don't even want to think about the state of my cheeks. "Fighting is hard. I'm not much of a fighter. Never have been."

"Living is hard, but it's so much more rewarding than merely surviving. One day, you'll see it, too."