Buster, Caleb Huett [great novels .TXT] 📗

a few deep breaths. After a minute, he opened his eyes. “Do you have a piece of paper? I think better with my hands.” Dr. Jake gave him a pad of paper, and Tonio started writing. I didn’t peek over—I wanted to give him privacy and not distract him by reminding him about me right now.

“Okay,” he said after a few minutes, with a few breaks to close his eyes and breathe again. “I have some theories.”

“Let’s hear them!”

“Okay. When kids see me having a panic attack, they might think there’s something wrong with me for real, and they might start being nice to me just because they think they’re supposed to. I don’t like when people lie to me, because I usually can’t tell. So I’m scared that I won’t know when people are lying, and then I’ll be embarrassed when I find out.” He paused. “But that’s just being embarrassed again. And you said to think about why that was embarrassing. In this case, I think I don’t want to be wrong. And also I don’t want people to talk behind my back.”

“We can still ask why on both of those,” Dr. Jake pointed out. “So let’s pick one to focus on. You don’t want people to make fun of you and you don’t want people to talk behind your back. What happens when people talk about you?”

“More people think there’s something wrong with me, and if more people think that, then even people I don’t know will already think there’s something wrong with me, and so I can’t ever know if anybody is treating me like a real person, or if they are all being nice to me just because they know I’m not normal. Like my—”

Tonio froze. The concerned look on his face made me risk moving over to flop my head onto his lap. I couldn’t help it. “Like my parents,” he mumbled finally. “They don’t act like they used to, and I don’t want everyone else to act like that, too.”

“What’s different?” Dr. Jake asked softly.

“They changed everything for me. They used to throw parties and have friends over all the time. They used to play card games, and my mom was in a band.” Tonio’s voice quavered, and his eyes filled up with tears. “I’m sorry. One second.” His breaths were shallower, too, and I could tell his anxiety was spiking.

“No need to apologize.” Dr. Jake handed him a few tissues. “Remember that anxiety works extra hard when you’re close to it. I think you’re on the right track.”

After another shuddery breath, Tonio continued. “I know they changed some things when I was little, but they changed more because of my anxiety. And now they even want to move because they think it might cure my anxiety.”

For the first time, I saw Dr. Jake look genuinely stunned. “They said that to you?”

“Sort of.” Tonio rubbed at his eyes. “I know that’s why.”

“That’s a lot of pressure to put on you. I’m sorry to hear that.” He wrote a little note down in his book. “You know, Tonio, I’ve talked to your parents about something, and now that I think of it, I might not have explained it to you very well.” He tucked his pen into his book and closed it over to focus completely on Tonio. “Anxiety isn’t something that you can cure, exactly, and panic attacks are something even doctors don’t totally understand yet. Lots of doctors and scientists are still trying to figure out why they happen to some people more than others. What we can do is make sure you have ways to keep it from interfering with your life.”

Tonio frowned. “So I might never get better? That’s not fair.”

Dr. Jake shook his head. “You’ll definitely get better. And sometimes, with enough work and time, anxiety disorders can shrink down so small you hardly even notice them anymore. But it’s likely you’ll have some amount of extra anxiety for your whole life—and you’re right that it’s not fair.” He looked down at his book. “I wish I had realized sooner how much your parents have been looking for a cure, because that’s not the right idea at all.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“Oh, no, that’s not what I meant.” He smiled at Tonio. “You haven’t done anything wrong. And I’m really proud of how hard you’ve worked today.”

Tonio blushed again. “Thank you.” I licked his cheek, and he remembered I was there. He scratched my ears and whispered, even tinier, “Thank you.”

“I’m going to talk to your parents soon. I won’t tell them anything you’ve said, but I am going to try to find out more about this move—and try to remind them of what our treatment is really about. I think they need to hear from you, too.”

Tonio’s eyes widened. “What?”

“You should tell them what you’ve told me today. The parties, the card games, your mom’s band. If you want them to do those things again, you should tell them. I think they’re trying their best to help you, but don’t know how.”

“Like anxiety!” Tonio realized. “They’re trying to do something good, but doing it too much.”

Dr. Jake smiled. “You’re a really smart person, Tonio. And you’re very kind. If you talk to them, if you tell them what matters to you, I know they’ll listen.”

Another deep breath, another swallow. “I’ll think about it.”

I wished I had hands so I could give Tonio a real high five. This was amazing. To wrap up their session, Dr. Jake asked Tonio to do more of what he’d done that day: Find a place where he was feeling anxious, try to solve the mystery around it, and write it all down to bring to therapy the next week. For the first time, Tonio seemed genuinely excited to think about his anxiety.

Dr. Jake seemed happy, too, as far as I could tell. He liked his job, and he liked Tonio. (I also liked him, and now it wasn’t just because he had