Dr. A: Put me there, Rylee. Take me step by step through what happened, what you did.

Me: Okay. I got home from school, and I heard the water running in the bathroom sink. I just knew my mother would bitch at me for leaving it on. Even though I didn’t. Mom had been critical of me, while praising my little brother, Hayden—despite the fact he didn’t do much to deserve it. If he remembered to flush the toilet after a late-night pee, she practically did handstands the next morning. Mom had always been harder on me.

Dr. A: Why do you think that was?

Me: She always said it was because I had so much potential. Which meant that whatever I did disappointed her. Like homeschooling. Mom was big on that. She homeschooled Hayden.

Dr. A: Why didn’t you want that?

Me: That’s easy and pathetic. I just wanted to fit in with other people. I didn’t want to be the loser at the mall who had no social skills and didn’t know what’s in and what isn’t. How to wear my hair or whatever. You really can’t learn all you need to know from TV or the internet, and contrary to what most people think—that all kids that age do is hang out online—it’s not true for all of us. Not for me at least. I’m a watcher. An observer. I liked being out in the real world, mostly because my home life was always so fake.

Dr. A: You said you enrolled in school.

Me: Right. I was a sophomore at South Kitsap High School in Port Orchard. While I didn’t know for sure if I was fifteen or sixteen (long pause)—it’s complicated—I knew that for the first time in a long time that I actually fit in somewhere. That was no small feat. By then, we’d moved fourteen times. I think. So many times that I’ve lost track. But in Port Orchard, no one asked any awkward questions about where we lived before because people came and went around there all the time. Across the inlet was the naval shipyard. Moms and dads would arrive in the naval ships or go out to the Pacific on their way to the nearest war. Kids would come later and stay in crummy housing near the shipyard or the submarine base a little farther north. In a way, all the moving around that other people did made me feel as though I was actually part of something stable.

Dr. A: I understand, Rylee, I do. Let’s go back to that afternoon… after you got home from school.

Me: (long pause). Right. I heard Hayden squawking as I turned off the running water in the bathroom. I looked down at the toilet bowl, the water was the color of sunshine, and I dropped the lever and the whirlpool sucked down my little brother’s pee. Then…

Dr. A: Why are you stopping?

Me: It’s stupid.

Dr. A: Nothing is stupid. You need to trust me and trust the process. Everything, Rylee.

Me: It is stupid, but here goes. I remember glancing at myself in the mirror above the sink. Thinking how average I was. Sometimes I had actually wished that I had a big hairy mole on my chin or something that could distinguish me from other girls. The ones who lurk in the halls at school with pleading eyes and heavy eyeliner that makes them look more glamorous than I am. At my school before Port Orchard, I adopted a kind of Goth persona and really piled on the mascara—two extra coats of the blackest I could find. My dad thought I looked kind of slutty, but I told him that’s what I needed to look like in order to blend in.

Dr. A: Blend in?

Me: Right, Dr. Albright, my whole life has been about blending in, being invisible. My hair is brown now—not chestnut, not auburn, just a nondescript brown, the color of the bark of the dead tree near my dorm. My real hair color could be blond, but it has been dyed so many times I have forgotten what shade it actually is.

Dr. A: That’s not stupid. It’s about what you needed and how you survived. I understand completely. After you turned off the tap, what happened?

Me: My brother. He called from the kitchen. I thought he wanted me to fix him a chicken potpie or something as an afterschool snack. He was lazy that way. Home all day with a refrigerator and microwave at his disposal. He could make whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it—the only undisputed benefit of being homeschooled. I followed the sound of Hayden’s irritating and agitated voice.

Dr. A: What did you see, Rylee?

Me: Hayden was on the other side of the kitchen. He was on the floor hunched over and when he looked up, I noticed two things. First, he was crying. The second thing I saw was so puzzling that it really didn’t compute. It was like my brain was stuck on a search engine to nowhere. His white T-shirt was soaked in red. I threw myself down on the floor and looked at the blank eyes of my dad, staring into space.

Dr. A: Do you need a moment? I know this is very difficult. You’re doing fine. You are.

Me: No. I’m not fine, but I want to finish.

Dr. A: Drink some water. Take a deep breath. We can continue when you are ready.

Me: Okay. I’m fine. The room started to turn. Everything was spinning. I remember thinking for a second that this was what it must feel like to be really, really drunk. I pushed Hayden away and pressed my hands against Dad’s face, then his neck. He was wearing a powder-blue shirt, gray trousers and a red tie. But it wasn’t a tie. It was a slash of blood that had emptied from the top of his chest, drained down his shirt, pooled on to the floor. The black handle of a knife stuck out of his chest. I didn’t cry: Hayden was crying enough for the both of us. In my heart I had known that a day like that was always possible, that somehow darkness would come after my family. Our life away from others, our life blending into the background of the world, could be undone by someone. Fear and the possibility that something like that had always been there, had been what kept us together. Also, a barrier. It was what held us away from everyone that we ever pretended to know.

Dr. A: How was Hayden? What was he doing?

Me: Quiet. Real quiet. He was rocking back and forth like one of those weighted, blow-up clown figures. His light blond hair was compressed above his ears where his hands clamped the side of his head as he tried to shut out everything. He’d done that before. We all cope in ways that we can. My heart nearly heaved from my chest, but I did what I could to reassure him. Despite the fact that our father was a bloody mess, we could survive. We had to do the right things—and do them right away. I remember leaning closer and tugging at his shoulder so that he would look up at me once more. You know, listen to me. He finally tells me he was in the bathroom when he heard something, he said, yelling, and then a crash. I asked for more and he stayed quiet. It went like that. Me asking and Hayden being mute, focused on the blade.

Dr. A: What did you do next?

Me: So, I yanked the knife from our father’s chest. I wiped the blade’s handle with a kitchen towel. I didn’t want my fingerprints on it. Then I put it gently across my father’s chest. I didn’t know where else to put it. It dawned on me, right then, that our mother was gone too. Hayden and I were alone. And then, I saw it.

Dr. A: What, Rylee? Saw what?

Me: On the travertine tile that our mother went crazy over when we first moved in were three letters written in blood. Dad’s blood. R-U-N.

Dr. A: Run?

Me: Right. Our family’s code word. It told me everything Hayden and I needed to know. There was no calling paramedics; no 911 dispatcher to notify. There was no going through the house and pulling up family photos and squirreled-away scrapbooks. We didn’t have much of that anyway. Mom used to joke that if our house was on fire, we’d have no reason to linger. I told Hayden we had to go. I reached into my father’s jacket pocket and took his phone and wallet. I took his car keys from the table.

Dr. A: You must have been terrified.

Me: No. I mean yes. I want to say yes. I was in a strangely calm and frenzied state. Calm because in some peculiarly innate way I knew what I must do, and yet my heart was racing, and I was frantically trying to coordinate my uncooperative brother and get my backpack by the door where I had unceremoniously dumped it. I told Hayden we needed to go out the back door and through the woods, following the creek to the road. He asked me what would happen next and I didn’t really have an answer. I was moving and thinking as fast as I could. I took a clean T-shirt from the pile on the table —our mother might have been doing laundry before our father’s killer came into our house.

Dr. A: Here’s a tissue.

Me: I’m not going to cry.

Dr. A: Right. Of course not. You know it’s okay if you do.

Me: I’m fine, Doctor. I might be allergic to something here. I just remember my little brother looking at me with his dopey, scared eyes. I see those eyes in my mind now and then. Anyway, we bolted toward the ravine. We needed to get out of there fast.

Dr. A: I don’t completely understand. Why not call 911? Why rush?

Me: (long pause). Because I knew if we stayed, we’d probably end up with knives in our chests too.