October 15, 2:01 a.m.

Hello Notebook. I didn’t make it to class; it took me all day to locate Tony. He and Taco had gone off to the trailer—excuse me, the Ivory Tower, and were busying trying to beat each other at yet another anime-style fighting game.

Tony was sitting on a pillow on the floor, his legs crossed, his thumb working on the pad and his body jerking. Taco resisted his attacks from the couch, cigarette held gently between the two free fingers of his left hand. Despite this seeming handicap, Tony lost.

He tossed the control down and turned to me. "So what’s the scoop, man? Jules said you needed some psychiatric help. I remind you, I am not a certified—"

Taco snorted. "You’ve been at college so long you half teach your own damned classes."

This is true. Tony has become an integral part of the psychology department here in his seven years. He’s an incredible student and an amazing thinker. He just doesn’t care to graduate. And I trust telling Tony more than I do writing it down. Jules can’t stand him, but she keeps him close in hopes that one day she’ll find some crack in his moral fiber. I once heard her complain, "The problem with Tony is he hears all the most interesting gossip and he refuses to spread it. The problem with Tony is that he took doctor/patient confidence as seriously as he took the rest of what he learned. The problem with Tony is he’s taking everything everyone tells him right to the fucking grave." And that’s what makes him good.

Taco stood up and wandered into the back room. "I’ll just skip out if you don’t mind, let you two hold palaver."

When he was gone, Tony looked at me expectantly, waiting.

"It’s…I have a friend," I started.

He lit up, signaling the beginning of the session and blew out a haze of menthol flavored cigarette smoke. "If I had a nickel for every time I heard that one."

"A girl."

He raised an eyebrow. "So, Chris finally got over the Karen-Jones-blues? And so this friend…"
"She told me something that happened to her. Something she thinks happened to her. And it doesn’t make any sense, Tony."

He leaned back a little. "Why don’t you start at the beginning and work your way on down?"

And I told him everything Sarah told me, word for word. I’d write it here too, except I’m getting a cramp in my hand already and I’ve got a long way to go still.

One cheap pack of Basic Light Menthol 100’s later, he was tearing open another and I was wrapping up what had happened after she told me. It was my turn to look expectant.

Tony shook his head and lit up again. "I don’t know, man. It sounds really fubar."

"But what if it was just a dream?"

"Then she’s not nuts. Does she think it was just a dream?"

I shook my head. "I don’t know, Tony. I think she doesn’t know. I mean she said it was and it wasn’t."

He stood and walked around, pacing thoughtfully. "It was and it wasn’t." He went over to the sagging, particle board bookshelf, peered over the books, and finally pulled one down. He handed it to me.

Alice In Wonderland. And I understood what she’d meant.

"Alice in Wonderland is a great fantasy story. It is also the story of a girl trying to manage her subconscious. Alice is dreaming it all, though, isn’t she?"

"It was and it wasn’t…It’s like a metaphor made flesh and blood."

He nodded. "Yeah. And I don’t know if that can really happen. But the human mind is so incredibly powerful, I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that honestly did happen for someone. There’s really no limit to what the mind can create for itself, and it tends to believe in those creations completely. So this girl, maybe that’s what happened to her. Maybe her subconscious was a little out of control—a lot out of control—and it invaded her waking mind so completely that it just took over. Then…" Tony was deep into The Zone by that time. He was in that place, you know, where all the possibilities and motives open up to him, and he’s really analyzing. "Then it becomes a matter of exactly what was going on in her subconscious.

"If what I theorized was correct, and it feels like it is, the entire world of the maze you described would be the representation of her subconscious. Hm. This dark, mysterious Labyrinth full of tricks and hard lessons. And at the center, this threatening, seductive figure of great power. Something at the center is usually important. A goal. Is he the goal? No," he said, with a head shake, more to himself than me. "No, he is part of the Labyrinth, her dark side. The goal is saving her brother, confronting this villain. He is the ultimate representation of her subconscious, the king in this out-of-control fantasy land.

"When she fears him, she strengthens him. It is only when she stands up to him that he vanishes. You see, the moment she discovers she controls her subconscious mind—‘You have no power over me’—she wastes no time in banishing this most threatening aspect of her subconscious. She retains her child-like imagination, but the part of her that tried to harm her brother and keep her from connecting to the real world is gone.

"Now that doesn’t seem like such bad news. Not on the surface. But Chris," he said, suddenly stopping and dropping down in front of me. "Chris, everyone’s gotta have a dark side. You, me, Ghandi, I don’t care who it is. You have to be able to tap your desires and your dreams. Otherwise…" Tony spread his hands. "You’re not whole." He smiled. "Human beings, fragile-minded creatures that we are, need the shade and shadow."

"She’s incomplete."

"Sort of." He stood up with a sigh and flicked ash into a soda can. "Chris, I don’t want you to take what I said too seriously. We’re dealing in abnormal psychology here, by proxy, even. To be blunt, I’m not confident in my diagnosis."

"Okay," I said slowly. "So, assuming it is correct, why the hell is this coming up now?"

Tony smiled gently. "You mean what did you do to her? Probably nothing more than you do to half the girls you run into. She liked you. That combined with the reminder of what happened to her, your poem, she just sort of…caved."

"Caved," I repeated numbly

"Don’t worry, Chris. Really. The mind can be amazingly resilient too. She might just come up out of this on her own, especially with you supporting her. And there’s nothing here that a little therapy couldn’t fix, for sure. Now, if she starts biting the heads off live chickens and sacrificing goats, I’d be a little unnerved, but until then, I think she’s okay."

Maybe that’s true. Maybe that’s all there is to it. But I’ve got a bad feeling. Something’s wrong, something’s not clicking for me in Tony’s analysis. And I keep thinking of that word. Caved.

I thought I’d unlocked some door to her soul. What I’d really done was thrown her to the wolves.

--Chris

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