A spiral of binge dieting almost killed her, but now she was at TAFE and working at a café part time. She was doing okay. Or so she thought. Until tonight. The worm was rampaging again.
Greg didn’t say much as she spilled her guts. She hadn’t expected him to. Boys didn’t talk about feelings, especially to girls in pubs with a few glasses of wine under their belt but, as she was leaving, he grabbed her arm.
‘Look, I might be out of line, but this is the phone number of my aunt’s cousin. He’s a psychologist. Go talk to him. He’s a top bloke.’
Katie took the paper and shoved it in her pocket, nodded at Greg and ran after Chloe and the others.
‘He’s nice, Greg is,’ Chloe said on the way home, her head resting on Katie’s shoulder, ‘much nicer than some’.
‘Yeah.’ Katie nodded. Easier to pretend that she was interested in him than tell the truth, but her body was so hot with shame and embarrassment it was a wonder Chloe wasn’t half cooked. A psychologist! He must think she was a real psycho. But as she lay in bed that night clutching her teddy she wondered if he was right. Perhaps she was a psycho.
Twelve hours later Katie stood on the riverbank staring at the water below. As brown and mucky as it was, there was something calming about the river. She listened to it trickle as it meandered its way downstream. She hadn’t understood why she’d skipped class and walked down to the river, not until she got there.