He frowned, stared down at the furious swirls. “They weren’t who they said they were.”
I took in a breath. Rubbed at my left eye, which had started to water. “Who weren’t? The trout?”
He nodded. “They were something else. They’d turned into something else.”
“What did they turn into?”
He didn’t answer, just pursed his lips tighter.
“Dreams can be scary,” I said at last. “But they’re only dreams, Declan. They can’t follow you into real life.”
He looked up at me. “Promise?”
“Promise,” I said. “The fish in your class, they’re still the same beautiful trout they always were, right?”
He looked up and gave me a half smile. “Right,” he said. “They are.”
“And you’re going to let them go in the pond next week, right?”
He nodded, started putting all the crayons away. He took the drawing, crumpled it up, put it in the trash.
“Are you feeling sad about letting them go? Worried, maybe?”
He thought a minute. “No. It’s time. They’re meant to be free, not live in a tank.”
“And you’ll still be able to see them,” I said. “They’ll be in the pond. You can go visit them anytime you want.”
He nodded. “Ms. Evans says we can even catch them in nets if we want, but I don’t think it’ll be that easy, do you? If I was one of those fish, I wouldn’t let anyone catch me ever again.”
He spent the rest of the session talking excitedly about all the activities planned for the final week of school: the trout release, a picnic, a field trip to the science museum. When he left, his mom and I confirmed his appointment for next Friday.
“Have a great last week of school,” I told him.
As I was closing up my office for the night, I pulled the picture out of the trash. I opened up the paper and smoothed it out. He’d drawn what appeared to be a turbulent sea with big, dark fish. His nightmare trout? They had black eyes, open mouths with jagged teeth. Some had long tentacles. And there was a little stick figure in with them, sinking, being pulled down by the tentacles, drowning. Himself?
I looked closer. No. This was not a little boy with dark hair and eyes. This was a woman with long black hair, a white shirt, and gray pants.
It was me.
* * *
I unlocked the door to my studio apartment, shouldering my way in, my laptop bag bulging with my work computer and notes. I set it down on the floor and attended to the first order of business: pouring myself a very large glass of wine and taking three ibuprofen. I took my first fortifying sip, then went over to the bed, stripped off my social worker outfit, and put on sweats and a They Might Be Giants T-shirt. My ex-boyfriend, Phil, had bought the shirt for me. Phil enjoyed outings of all sorts—concerts, plays, basketball games. I was more of a stay-at-home-and-watch-Netflix kind of gal, but Phil insisted that going out on proper dates was something normal couples did, so I went along with it. Phil was long gone, but the T-shirt was still going strong.
As I settled in on the couch and put my head back, I thought of Declan’s words: They weren’t who they said they were. And his drawing. I made a mental note to call the school on Monday to check in with his teacher, Ms. Evans, and see if she’d noticed any changes in his demeanor.
My job could be stressful as shit, but it had its good days, too. And on the good days—the breakthrough days when a cowbird was not just a cowbird or when a girl came into my office grinning, saying she’d used the techniques we’d been working on to get through a panic attack at school—it was all worth it. Even though I’d been in private practice for a little less than a year, my schedule was always full, and I had a waiting list of clients. Sadly, there was no shortage of messed-up kids. I gravitated toward the tough cases—the kids everyone else had given up on. My undergrad was in psychology, and I worked in community mental health out of college for several years before deciding to go back to school for my master’s in social work. I did it while working full time, taking night classes, filling my weekends with reading and writing. My area of focus was always kids.