Prologue

The voice is still in my head, its mechanical tone taunting my poor brain, causing a headache to form. It's been three hours since my therapy session, and yet, I still have that woman's mechanical voice in my head. I wonder if she even likes kids. But then again, it wasn't a real session, just some stupid evacuation or something.

I look up at Mommy who is staring stiffly at the road, her hands clenching onto the leather steering wheel. Every time I see her, I wonder how much pain she's going through. Even through her smiles I can see the sadness in them, especially in her eyes. I try my best not to bring up the subject, knowing it will cause me to cry and her feel angry, and lean against the armrest, staring out the window.

City scenery just makes me more uncomfortable, with the houses crammed together and people pressing against each other as they walk passed and cars squeezing through the streets. I can never understand as to how Mommy likes this, the city. It just makes my heart race anytime I'd walk to school. Lucky for me, I don't have to walk to school until two weeks, leaving me still wondering when my real session will start. But just seeing it causes me to breathe hard, so I stare up at the sky and try to form pictures with the clouds, smiling sadly.

"Are you okay, baby?" Mommy asks when she slows to a stop at a red light behind a Toyota truck. I glance over at her before placing my chin back on the surface of my palm, gazing out the window again.

My voice shakes as I say, "Yeah." The tears emerge when I begin to quickly replay the interview. The questions about my father and the memories and the pain. All that crammed under an hour. Their eyes watched silently when I tried to stop the tears from crying when I repeated what he would do. Suddenly, the sound of Mommy's voice stops the tears from falling.

"If you ever need to talk, ever," she peers over at me with a tender smile. I can feel the tears coming, but I don't mind it much. "You can always talk to me. Even if it's sad or a memory about him. I'm always here."

Usually, I'd think what I want to tell her in the future or at that very moment, but I don't want to talk about this. Not now, not when her anger is too strong from the recent exposure of my father's sickening abuse to me. I can't make her suffer right now, or myself. It's bad enough that I saw her breakdown when I told her, I can't see her angry at the memories. I can't bear to watch her muster up the dark emotions. Not now, it's too early.

So I sit quietly and nod, not wanting my voice to crack from the knot in my throat. It starts to hurt, so I swallow hard and clear my throat, wiping away a few stray tears before Mommy can see.

Not now, I think.