“She’ll always live in your heart, certainly.” Dr. X watches me, as if the cliché is a test.
I don’t meet her eyes. I’m not stupid, so I know the last thing I should confess is that Ginny’s in the room with us. That I take her everywhere, that what started as me talking to her because I couldn’t bear her absence turned into imagining her responses, and then it was full conversations, whole days spent together, and now it’s gotten to the point where I’m half convinced sheislistening and talking back to me fromwherever she is. And that’s the only reason I still get out of bed. “Next subject, please.”
There’s a beat of silence as Dr. X studies me. Finally, she says, “Let’s start over. You’re currently in San Francisco?”
“Yep. We’re playing the Bellmore this weekend. Another venue way out of our league.” At least it had been until our recent internet fame. It feels safer not to think too hard about what’s happening, lest it vanish in a puff of smoke.
“You know, I never got the chance to ask,” Dr. X says. “How did you start playing?”
This feels like safer territory. “My dad teaches guitar at a shop back home called Fuller’s. When we were young and my mom had to work overnight shifts, Ginny and I would hang out there.”
“Must’ve been nice to spend time with your dad.”
“Not for him. We were terrors. He was always yelling at us about touching stuff. But it was fun to run around and pretend to be rock stars. One day he caught me staring at this guitar they got in second-hand. It was beautiful. Baby blue. And instead of telling me to leave it alone, he took it off the wall and let me hold it.”
“You got his blessing.”
I tap a thumb against my knee. “I surprised him by playing a song he taught beginners—‘Stormy Monday’ by the Allman Brothers. I must’ve heard it a million times.” I smiled to myself. “He said I had a good ear.”
Dr. X’s voice is gentle. “What did that mean to you?”
“Well, I’d never been good at anything before. So . . . ”
“How did Ginny react?”
I look at Ginny. “She stopped asking for her own guitar once I started taking lessons. It was like she understood I needed something of my own.”
“How old was she then?”
“If I was ten, she was nine.”
“Emotionally perceptive for a child.”
“I really was,” Ginny agrees.
“Was that how it was between you? You each had your own lanes, gave each other space? That’s pretty common with sib—”
Ginny and I laugh at exactly the same time. “Not at all,” I say. “Ginny gave me no space. She followed me everywhere except to music lessons. She was like this overeager puppy. No matter how much I wanted to ditch her sometimes, I couldn’t.”
“I’m not sure you’re painting me in the most flattering light,” Ginny says with a sniff.
“In sixth grade there was this girl named Yully Gonzalez who was a total bully. One day at recess, she started calling Ginny a baby for following me everywhere.”
“No, it was the lisp,” Ginny reminds me.
“Oh, right. Ginny also had this lisp when she was young. Yully kept mocking her and made Ginny cry. Obviously, I couldn’t have that, so I took my gum and smashed it in Yully’s hair, which was her shining glory. It was a dumb move, considering she had about two feet and fifty pounds on me. You should’ve seen me run.”
“I can’t imagine that was well received by your teachers.”
“Oh, I got in huge trouble. Yully had to cut a chunk out of her hair, which was cool, but my parents met with the principal, I was threatened with suspensions, blah blah blah. It was fine in the end. Only a three-day suspension.”
The doctor steeples her fingers. “Did you often play Ginny’s hero?”
“Isn’t sarcasm against the Hippocratic oath?”
She smiles. “Psychologists don’t take the Hippocratic oath.”
Damn, cold as ice. “If you ask my mom, I ruined Ginny.”
