Speaking in Tongues

northern Virginia had beenhot as July and ghosts of mist rose from the asphalt. Nobody on the sidewalks—it was deserted here. She’d never noticed how empty this neighborhood was.
    Crazy Megan whispers, Just. Say. No. And leave.
    But she couldn’t do that. Mega-hassle.
    She took off the wooden peace symbol dangling from her neck and flung it into the backseat. Megan brushed her blond hair with her fingers, pulled it away from her face. Her ruddy knuckles seemed big as golf balls. A glance at her face in the rearview mirror. She wiped off the black lipstick, pulled the blond strands into a ponytail, secured the hair with a green rubber band.
    Okay, let’s do it. Get it over with.
    A jog through the rain. She hit the intercom and a moment later the door latch buzzed.
    Megan McCall walked into the waiting room where she’d spent every Saturday morning for the past seven weeks. Ever since the Incident. She kept waiting for the place to become familiar. It never did.
    She hated this. The sessions were bad enough but the waiting really killed her. Dr. Hanson always kept her waiting. Even if she was on time, even if there were no other patients ahead of her, he always started the session five minutes or so late. It pissed her off but she never said anything about it.
    Today, though, she found the new doctor standing in the doorway, smiling at her, lifting an eyebrow in greeting. Right on time.
    “You’re Megan?” the man said, offering an easy smile. “I’m Bill Peters.” He was about her father’s age, handsome. Full head of hair. Hanson was bald andlooked like a shrink. This guy . . . Maybe a little George Clooney, Crazy Megan decides. Her wariness fades slightly.
    And he doesn’t call himself “Doctor.” Interesting.
    “Hi.”
    “Come on in.” He gestured. She stepped into the office.
    “How’s Dr. Hanson?” she asked, sitting in the chair across from his desk. “Somebody in his family’s sick?”
    “His mother. An accident. I hear she’ll be all right. But he had to go to Leesburg for the week.”
    “So you’re like a substitute teacher?”
    He laughed. “Something like that.”
    “I didn’t know shr—therapists took over other patients.”
    “Some don’t.”
    Dr. Peters— Bill Peters—had called yesterday after school to tell her that Hanson had arranged for him to take over his appointments and, if she wanted, she could make her regular session after all. No way, Crazy Megan had whispered at first. But after Megan had talked with Peters for a while she decided she’d give it a try. There was something comforting about his voice. Besides, baldy Hanson wasn’t doing diddly for her. The sessions amounted to her lame bitching about school and about being lonely and about Amy and Josh and Brittany, and Hanson nodding and saying she had to be friends with herself. Whatever the hell that meant.
    “This’ll be repeating some things,” Peters now said, “but if you don’t mind, could we go over some of the basics?”
    “I guess.”
    He asked, “It’s Megan Collier?”
    “No, Collier’s my father’s name. I use my mother’s. McCall.” She rocked in the stiff-backed chair, crossing her legs. Her tomato socks showed. She uncrossed her legs and planted her feet squarely on the floor.
    “You don’t like therapy, do you?” he asked suddenly.
    This was interesting too. Hanson had never asked that. Wouldn’t ask anything so blunt. And unlike this guy, Hanson didn’t look into her eyes when he spoke. Staring right back, she said, “No, I don’t.”
    He seemed amused. “You know why you’re here?”
    Silent as always, Crazy Megan answers first. Because I’m fucked up, I’m dysfunctional. I’m a nutcase. I’m psycho. I’m loony. And half the school knows and do you have a fucking clue how hard it is to walk through those halls with everybody looking at you and thinking, Shrink bait, shrink bait? Crazy Megan also mentions what just plain Megan would never in a million years tell him—about the fake computerized picture of Megan in a straitjacket that made the rounds of Jefferson High two weeks ago.
    But now Megan merely recited, “ ’Cause if I didn’t come to see a therapist they’d send me to Juvenile Detention.”
    When she’d been found, drunk, strolling along the catwalk of the municipal water tower two months ago she’d been committing a crime. The county police got involved and she maybe pushed, maybe slugged a cop. But finally everybody agreed that if she