“It’s nice to meet you, Danny. My name is Dr. Laura Maes,” the red-haired woman before him said, holding out a hand.

Danny took it and they shook. He smiled, even though the whole situation felt surreal and distant.

“Hi. Nice to meet you too,” he said.

He was exhausted despite having slept almost twelve hours last night. After everything that happened, he hadn’t gotten any sleep until Saturday afternoon when he finally crashed.

After the fight and all the chaos with the first responders, Danny went home. Then he’d stayed up with his parents, waiting for news.

Peter eventually called in the afternoon. He’d given Danny an update. It wasn’t good.

Noa was still angry and lashing out. He’d kicked the Murphys out of his hospital room and didn’t want visitors. Rion, on the other hand, was acting normal, but he was hurt really badly and wasn’t even able to get up and move around.

But Danny expected that. The last time he’d seen them, Rion had been passed out on the kitchen floor, bleeding everywhere, and Noa had been sitting there, stunned, still holding the chunk of bloody glass in his hands.

When Danny finished his conversation with Peter and hung up the phone, Dr. Maes had called almost immediately after to ask if he wouldn’t mind coming to her office on Sunday. She had some questions for him. Danny said yes.

And now here he was.

It hadn’t been hard to get to her office. She worked at the hospital. He’d just needed the room number and some basic directions. And her office was pretty nice. It felt like his mom’s law office in the city, but a little cozier.

“I’m really happy you could come,” Dr. Maes said. “Make yourself comfortable. Feel free to take off your coat and have a seat.”

“Sure,” he said, already pulling off his toque. “You, uh… You wanted me to tell you what happened? With Noa and Rion?”

“I have some questions about the incident. I already read the statements, so I know roughly what happened,” Dr. Maes said. “I wanted some of the finer details.”

“Oh. Okay,” Danny said, relieved as he hung up his coat on a rack near the door.

He didn’t want to explain everything all over again. He felt like he’d gone over the story so many times. Questions were easier to answer.

Danny headed over and took a seat on the couch, sinking into it. He couldn’t help but let out a small sigh. If he closed his eyes and rolled his head back, he could probably fall asleep.

Dr. Maes took a seat across from him, a little notepad in hand.

“So, what did you want to know?” he asked her, trying to not melt into the couch.

“Why don’t we start before the fight,” Dr. Maes said. “Can you tell me what happened when you arrived at the Murphys’? What you did when you came into the house – that sort of thing.”

“Oh, um…sure,” Danny said, blinking. He didn’t expect to talk about what he was doing there in the first place. “We were all gonna hang out. Some of our other friends, Jesse and Celeste, were supposed to come over too. I came early because I had some pictures that Mom wanted to give to Mrs. Murphy.”

“Pictures?” Dr. Maes said. “I think that was mentioned. Did you look at the pictures?”

“Yeah, after a bit,” Danny said and then realized how that might sound depending on what she’d heard already. “I mean… The pictures I brought weren’t the ones that we got emotional over, if that’s why you’re asking.”

“No?”

“No. They were… They were normal pictures of school and stuff. But after that, we started looking at some other old pictures that the Murphys had.”

“Okay,” Dr. Maes said, jotting something down in her notepad. “Just to backtrack, what kind of greeting did you get when you arrived? Who answered the door?”

“Oh, it was Mrs. Murphy. And Noa,” Danny said. “Peter wasn’t there yet, but he showed up pretty much right after I did. Everything was normal.”

“And how about Noa? Was he acting differently?”

“No, not really. He was drawing hands in his sketchbook so we kind of talked about that. I mean… I guess it was kind of weird because he was actually talking to me. Um… Have you seen his hand drawings?”

“I’ve seen some of them.”

Danny gave her a small, half smile. “Honestly? Those hand pictures kind of weird me out. But, uh… I asked him about them. And he said he draws the hands of people he knows. I think it’s kind of sweet...in Noa’s weird, unique way.”

Dr. Maes nodded, almost to herself. “He hasn’t told me that, but I did wonder. He seems to express himself through his art.”

“Yeah,” Danny said. “He actually used to draw this comic with Rion when they were kids. He gave it to Rion not too long ago, actually.”

“Really?” Dr. Maes said. “It seems like they’re very close – best friends.”

“Yeah, they’ve always been tight,” Danny said. “I don’t think they’ve even had, you know, a normal fight before. They’ve always gotten along.”

“It does seem that way, from what I know,” Dr. Maes said and noted something else down. “But back to what happened at the Murphys’… Up until that point, Noa was calm?”

“Yeah. Kind of,” Danny said. “Like… Rion showed up, and… Noa kind of gets excited about Rion. It’s probably because they haven’t seen each other in forever. He rushed to the door to meet him and they hugged right away… Actually, it’s kind of weird to think that they were hugging and then…then not even an hour later…”

They’d gone from being normal and cheerful to yelling and wrestling on top of broken glass. It was hard for Danny to wrap his head around.

“Did Rion seem happy to see Noa?” Dr. Maes asked.

“Yeah,” Danny said. “I mean, he was kind of stiff and awkward, but Rion’s been like that since… Well, I want to say he’s been like that since I came back to town but I’m pretty sure he was always like that. He’s kind of shy, you know?”

“That’s right. You moved and were away from town for six years.”

“Yeah. My parents and I moved back at the beginning of September. Barely feels like it’s been a month.”

“And both Rion and Noa are similar to how you remember them?”

“Yeah…but no,” Danny said, waving a hand indecisively. “Noa… Noa’s really different. I mean, when he talks to Rion he’s like his old self. But the rest of the time he’s just…waaay too quiet. Rion seems more tense and stuff. I think that’s because of the bullying…”

“Bullying?” Dr. Maes said. “You think Rion’s being bullied?”

“Oh…uh… Right,” Danny said, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s not that I think it’s happening. It’s… I’ve seen it. I used to be really good friends with Sarina Knight. You might not know her. She, uh… We used to all hang out, but… Okay, it’s kind of a whole thing to explain… We tried to get together and hang out, but there was all this stuff about a friendship bracelet getting wrecked, and… Basically, Sarina attacked Rion in front of us. Like, she grabbed him by the hair and started hitting and kicking him. You can’t tell now, but he had a black eye for a long time. Sarina did that to him.”

“That sounds serious,” Dr. Maes said. “Did anything get done about that? Did Rion go to the hospital or were the authorities called?”

“Uh… No,” Danny said, the heat rising to his face. “We kind of pulled them off each other and Sarina left.  Rion said he didn’t want to go to the hospital. Should we… Should we have called the police or something? Or…”

“It’s not about what you should have done,” Dr. Maes said. “I’m asking to know what happened. I’m sure you did what you felt was best at the time.”

“I mean, kind of,” Danny said. “We were all freaked out. And worried about Rion, obviously.”

“Anyone would be,” Dr. Maes assured him.

“Yeah. We sat him down and, you know, had coffee,” Danny said. “Peter might have said something about calling the police. He’s mentioned it a few times but I don’t think he’s done it. I mean… Yeah.”

“I’ll ask Peter for more information,” she said. “And you said something about friendship bracelets?”

“Yeah, uh… That’s kind of a long story, actually…”

Danny took a breath and then began clumsily trying to explain the whole bracelet situation. It felt so far away from him now. Rion and Noa were in the hospital. Fighting over old bracelets… It felt petty talking about it after everything that happened.

“The others probably know more about it,” Danny said. “I moved away before the whole thing happened. And it wasn’t even Rion who wrecked his bracelet. It was Noa all along. Rion lied and took the blame for him. He’s a really good guy.”

“Rion has definitely given me a strong impression,” Dr. Maes said. “He seems to care very deeply for Noa.”

“Yeah. Which is why it’s so weird that they got into a fight,” Danny said. “It came out of nowhere. I don’t get it…”

“It was mentioned that they had a strong reaction to some pictures,” Dr. Maes said. “You said something about them earlier.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Danny said, realizing he’d gotten side tracked with the whole Sarina thing. “Mrs. Murphy brought out an old box of photos so that we could put away the ones I brought. We started looking through things and that’s… Um…”

He faltered, uncomfortable. He’d been curious about seeing those pictures at the time, but now thinking about it left a bad taste in his mouth. He couldn’t help but feel like they were the cause for everything. Even though he didn’t understand why.

“Danny?” Dr. Maes said. “Are you okay? Do you want to stop?”

“No, no,” he said quickly, shaking his head. “I just… I was just thinking about it. The pictures that bothered Noa and Rion… They were from the day Amber died.”

Dr. Maes was quiet for a moment, digesting the statement. She made more notes.

“Did anyone know when those pictures were from while you were looking at them?”

“Yeah,” Danny said. “They were in their own separate envelope. The date was on the outside. We… We didn’t really want to look at them, you know?”

“You didn’t want to look at them?”

“Well, everyone was kind of uncomfortable. But then… Yeah, it was Rion. Rion said he wanted to see them. I think Mrs. Murphy said something like it wasn’t a good idea? But Rion said he wanted to see Amber… Hold on. This might be a dumb question but you know about Amber, right?”

“Yes,” Dr. Maes said. “I’ve heard about what happened. It’s very sad.”

“Yeah…” Danny agreed. “Yeah, it’s really sad. We all miss her.”

“And Rion was the one to suggest looking at the pictures?”

“Yeah.”

“Were there other pictures of Amber or were those the only ones?”

Danny opened his mouth and then closed it, frowning. Actually…hold on. They had been looking at other pictures of Amber. Danny didn’t think about it at the time, but…

“Yeah. There were a bunch of other pictures, actually,” Danny said. “That’s…that’s really weird, now that I think about it.”

Dr. Maes tapped the end of her pen on her notepad. “You’d say that Rion was acting strange about the pictures?”

“I guess,” Danny said. “But I don’t know why. He wasn’t saying much up until that point. We looked through a bunch of stuff but he was making normal comments.”

“Those pictures from the day Amber passed away… Who took them? Who had the camera?”

Danny stared at her. “I think they shared it. Noa and Rion…and Amber… Does that… What does that mean?”

“It might not mean anything,” Dr. Maes said. “I’m trying to understand what happened. Right now, all it means is that they took the pictures and Rion wanted to see them.”

“Huh…” Danny said.

For some reason, he felt like it meant something. Rion wanted to see the pictures. The three of them had the camera that day. Then Noa got upset… That meant something, didn’t it? It had to be connected somehow, right?

“Can you tell me about the pictures?” Dr. Maes asked.

“Yeah,” Danny said, doing his best to refocus. “Um… Rion took them and started going through them while we looked. The first few were normal. They were all of regular lake stuff…”

“And did Noa or Rion react to them?”

“No,” Danny said and then thought about it. “Well… There were a bunch of pictures that were messed up. Rion stopped going through the pictures and stared at them. They were just some messed up, blurry pictures. I kinda took them from him and he did this weird thing where he stopped himself from grabbing them back. He seemed really tense and Noa… That was when it started to get weird.”

“Blurry pictures…” Dr. Maes said, making another note.

“Yeah. There were a handful of them,” Danny said. “It looked like the camera went off accidentally. I’m pretty sure Rion said something about it being an accident. It must have gotten switched to continuous shot or something.”

“Did Noa say anything?”

“No. He was really quiet. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure they were arguing about the pictures.”

“You mean when they started to fight?”

“Yeah,” Danny said. “But they weren’t making any sense. Noa got mad first… Uh, Peter had already left by then and it was just me and them. I tried talking to them and Rion was saying something, then Noa snapped at him and started going off about something Rion forgot? And Rion was apologizing and stuff… It sounded like they were talking about the pictures.”

“About the pictures…” Dr. Maes mused as she made more notes. “That’s strange.”

Danny nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, it was really weird. They weren’t making any sense. And then Noa started going off about how he should have died as a kid and he went to the kitchen and Rion followed him. That was weird too, because Rion ran and blocked the doorway that leads off to the laundry room and the bathroom. And Noa made some really weird comment – something about Rion blocking off the bathroom because he thought that’s where Noa wanted to hurt himself? And then Noa was going on about wishing he was never born, and…”

It hurt. It had been hard to stand there and listen to Noa talking that way. But Danny had no idea what to do in the moment. He’d floundered.

“I told them to stop but it didn’t help,” he added with a weak shrug.

Dr. Maes scribbled down more notes. She was quiet for a moment, reviewing something on her notepad, flipping through pages.

“I think this clears some things up,” she said, looking back up at him. “Thank you very much, Danny.”

“Yeah?” he said. “It feels like I’m just explaining everything all over again.”

“These are the details that I need,” Dr. Maes said. “It helps me understand what’s going on with Noa and Rion.”

“Does it? Because I don’t really understand anything,” Danny told her. “It’s all confusing.”

Dr. Maes nodded. “It’s very confusing. It’s hard to understand what people think, even when you know them really well.”

“That’s… Yeah,” Danny agreed with a small nod. “I just wish I could understand better. You know?”

“I do,” Dr. Maes said. “But you’re doing really well. I hadn’t even heard about what happened with Sarina. This information is very important and you’re doing a great job.”

Danny kind of felt like her praise was out of obligation but he still liked to hear it.

“Thanks,” he said. “I try. I just… I want to help if I can.”

“You are helping. A lot,” Dr. Maes assured him.