That first time I went, about a month ago, I trudged into Dave’s office expecting the same gray walls and berber carpet from the hall, but then the door opened to this funky waiting area cluttered with fish tanks, an assortment of lava lamps, a coffee table collection of those wiggly dashboard hula dancers, a wall displaying Dave’s impressive collection of vintage Tabasco sauce bottles, and, best of all, the most massive accumulation of comics (like the kind printed in the funnies section of the newspaper) I’ve ever come across. I sat for ten minutes flipping through an old collection of classic Peanuts. Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. Lucy yanking it out from under him. Charlie’s rage. And I laughed at poor Charlie, and it felt weird to laugh, because Ty had been dead for two weeks then.

That’s when Dave came out of his office. I expected, after the waiting area, for him to be a hippie or some kind of eccentric weirdo, but there he was in his plaid shirt and wrinkle-free khakis, his perfectly groomed beard and graying blond hair cut short and combed carefully into position using a little too much gel. He stuck out his hand to me.

“Lexie, I assume,” he said. “I’m Dave.”

I must have looked surprised, because then he said, “Sorry. Do you prefer to be called Alexis? When I met with your mother she called you Lexie.”

“You talked to my mom? In person?”

“Yes, briefly,” he answered. “She wanted to fill me in on the situation.”

I couldn’t imagine my mom in this place, sitting there with her legs crossed next to the hula dancers and the wall of hot sauce, waiting to go in and tell this man about her dead son and her sad daughter.

“Well,” Dave said, gesturing inside his office where the big plaid couch and the box of tissues waited. “Come on in.”

I hesitated. “Look, maybe this isn’t such a good—”

“I’m basically here to listen, Alexis,” he said then. “If you want to talk. Give it a try.”

Dave’s a nice enough guy. I haven’t figured out yet what he’s really good for, aside from being a misguided way for my mom to feel like she’s doing something for me during this time of need. Like life is not going to absolutely suck right now no matter what. But whatever. My brother’s dead. I’m not talking much, and not hanging out with my friends, and not being the normal chipper Lex they all expect.

So clearly I should go to therapy.

This afternoon I sit in Dave’s office for a full thirty minutes before I can think of anything productive to say. So far he’s been okay with that—letting me talk when I’m ready—but today I can tell that there’s something on his mind, some little walnut of my psyche he is eager to crack.

There’s something on my mind, too, but I don’t tell him.

I want to. The past few days have been pretty hard-core inside my head. I keep thinking that I must be crazy. Something inside this fragile brain of mine must have snapped under all the emotional strain. I’ve officially lost my grip on reality.

Because Ty is dead.

He’s gone. He’s never coming back.

What I saw the other night had to have been a hallucination or part of a mental breakdown or a waking dream.

It felt real.

But it couldn’t have been real.

Anyway, the smart thing to do would be to tell Dave about it. After all, he’s paid to listen to me. Rationally speaking he’s the perfect person to talk to—impartial, unemotional, practical. This is what therapy is supposed to be good for: to air out your crazy. To get better. To deal.

But what can I say? Um, yes, I saw the ghost of my dead brother in my basement four nights ago.

To which Dave will say: Oh, that’s very interesting, Alexis; let’s get you some nice pills.

So Dave asks me how I am and I say I’m fine. Which I am not. He asks me how my week was and I say it was okay. Which it, very definitely, was not.

Then it’s quiet while Dave pins me with those kind blue eyes of his and I use the toe of my sneaker to fiddle with the edge of the rug.

Dave finally says: “I hope you’re not still upset about last week.”

I stare at him blankly for a few seconds before I remember. Oh. Last week.

Right. We had a bit of a disagreement last week.

Because I told him about the hole in my chest. About how I feel like I’m going to die while it’s happening. How I’m terrified that these moments will come more and more often, and they’ll last longer and longer, until all I feel is the hole, and then maybe it will swallow me up for good.

I thought that was brave of me to confess. I was attempting to open up to him. I was trying to do what you’re supposed to do.

What I wanted Dave to tell me was that the hole is horrible, yes, absolutely, but that it’s normal, and that it will get better, not worse, and that I’m not going to die, at least not for a long, long time. It will hurt for a while, but I’m going to live.

And then I would try to believe him.

But what he said was, “There’s a medication we can get you for that.”

Then he went on about SSRIs and the wonders of Xanax or maybe starting with Valium, which is nicely non-habit-forming, and I stared at him mutely until he was finished waxing poetically about drugs. Then he said, “What do you think?”

I said, “You want to put me on antidepressants?”

He said that antidepressants with traditional therapy made a very effective combination.

I said, “Do you think I’m depressed?”