Releasing 10

“‘What is wrong with that child!’

‘Mike, she doesn’t understand.’

‘She’s disturbed, Catherine. A blind man can see that.’

‘How can you say that about your own flesh and blood?’

‘I can’t take it, Catherine. I’m sorry.’

‘You’re a fucking coward, that’s why.’

‘It’s killing me to watch her like this.’”

Lizzie’s point-of-view chapters illustrate her father’s lack of love. Here, a four-year-old Lizzie overhears her parents argue about her treatment, with her dad insisting that he can no longer deal with Lizzie’s mental health challenges. This scene helps the reader understand Lizzie’s feelings of isolation and lack of belonging throughout her teenage years.

“Shannon whispered from her perch beside me. We were sitting on the bench outside the principal’s office, waiting for our parents to come out from their meeting. ‘But you shouldn’t have done it.’ She looked up at me with big, blue eyes. ‘You’re going to get in deep trouble because of me.’

‘I don’t care,’ I told her. ‘He hurt my friend. He made you cry.’

‘Yeah, but you made him bleed,’ she replied, chewing her lip.”

The introduction of Lizzie’s best friend, Shannon, emphasizes Lizzie’s fierce loyalty and adds layers of nuance to her behavioral issues. While the adults in her life think that Lizzie simply acts out on a whim, the reality is that she is often lashing out at bullies who will not leave Shannon alone.

“When Mark draped his arm over my lap to hold my sister’s hand, I shivered all over. He noticed and gave me the special wink. The secret one he saved just for me. For when he was fixing me. It made me feel special, and I beamed back at him.”

Lizzie struggles to tell anyone about Mark’s sexual abuse, particularly because he often pretends that his sexual assaults are the result of tender and caring feelings, and because his attention seemingly makes up for the love her father refuses to give her. Mark is so manipulative that Lizzie at first finds it hard to identify what he is doing as abuse—deliberate confusion that will play into The Complexities of Trauma and Healing.

“I didn’t need Dad’s help to write the invitations, but I did want him to watch. I worked hard on my handwriting, even during the school holidays, and it showed. When Dad told me how proud he was, it made me want to work even harder to make him even prouder.”

In one of Hugh’s first point-of-view chapters, the reader is shown how much Hugh values his father’s attention and praise. This dependence foreshadows the effects of Hugh’s future conflict with his dad, as Hugh is devastated by his father’s complete withdrawal from Hugh’s life as a result of extreme grief.

“When I handed her the invitation to my party and she agreed to come, my stomach flipped like a pancake. I tried to be cool about it, but I couldn’t hardly breathe. The way she smiled at me made my skin prickle and heat up.”

In this simile, Hugh compares his stomach lurching with anticipation and nerves to the action of a pancake flipping. This childish imagery reminds the reader how young both Hugh and Lizzie are, while also underscoring the immediate depth of their bond. Although they don’t understand what is happening between them, it is clear that they have a deep attraction to each other from an early age.

“I was feeling.

I could feel again.

I didn’t have to scream to make the lady go away, either.

She disappeared when he found me in the tub.

She was afraid of Hugh.

Because he was good.”

Walsh often uses short, choppy sentences separated by new lines to convey Lizzie’s inner monologue, mimicking her thoughts jumping from idea to idea. Here, she recognizes for the first time The Love and Support Friendships Offer, as Hugh helps her to cope with her trauma.

“‘[N]obody is allowed to touch your [private parts]. Not your friends. Or your family members. And especially not grownups.’

[…] ‘What if you’re sick and need the medicine to get better?’ I pushed, digging my nails into my hand. ‘What if you’re bad and need to be fixed?’

‘Liz, if you get sick, then you go to the doctor, and they can give you medicine for that,’ Hugh explained with a frown. ‘Do you understand?’

No. ‘Yes.’

He eyed me warily. ‘Are you sure?’

No. ‘Yes.’”

After Lizzie in advertently hits Hugh in his testicles, she tries to touch him there to console him. In response, Hugh explains to her the idea of “private” areas of the body that no one should touch. This moment emphasizes the lack of parental influence in Lizzie’s life: No one has ever told her that her body should not be touched without her permission. Additionally, the contrast between what she is thinking (italicized “No”) and speaking (standard font “Yes”) shows that Lizzie is simply saying what Hugh wants to hear—she does not internalize his point.

“Now, when the monsters came out at night, I let them have me. I didn’t fight back anymore. Instead, I opened the door and let them come inside me. My body. My mind. It didn’t matter to me. Because it wasn’t real. The doctors said so. The monsters were all in my head.”

Lizzie’s decision to treat Marks’s sexual assault as imaginary demonstrates the failings of the mental health treatment that she is receiving. Her doctors ignore and dismiss her experiences, chalking her descriptions of being raped as hallucinatory because of her mental illness. Their aggressively harmful interventions thus only exacerbate her situation.

“I tried to listen, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything except the way Mark kept playing with [Lizzie’s] braid. Lizzie didn’t seem to notice, she was too engrossed in whatever she was saying, but I did. I noticed, and I didn’t like it. Not one bit. I tried to keep smiling and ignore it, because he’d been in Lizzie’s life so long that he was practically her brother, and I, myself, often ruffled my sister’s curls with playful affection. But I couldn’t seem to shake off the protective feeling roaring to life inside of me.”

Hugh’s immediately sees that Mark is dangerous, intuiting that something is wrong with the way that Mark plays with Lizzie’s hair. Although Hugh cannot articulate why, his attunement to Lizzie and his emotional intelligence are honed enough to make Hugh extremely uncomfortable at Mark’s demeanor.

“‘Mark Allen can huff and puff all he wants when I’m a grown-up, but I’ll be strong enough to keep him out.’

‘Me too,’ I agreed, balling my hand into a fist. ‘And the brave knight will stop him with his sword if he tries to come down my chimney.’

[…] ‘You sure you’re okay?’

‘Yep.’ Smiling, I reached up and brushed a tear from his cheek. ‘I’m always okay, Gibs.’”

The phrase “I’m always okay” is an allusion to Taming 7, another novel in this series that explores Gibsie’s childhood (see Background). Despite being sexually abused by Mark, Gibsie repeatedly describes himself with this phrase, even though he is far from well. Walsh thus draws a parallel between the characters: Lizzie, too, insists she’s okay—even though she is struggling greatly.

“Dark purplish fingerprints were imprinted into my flesh. They looked bad, but I knew they paled in comparison to the damage the monster inflicted inside of me. On the parts I couldn’t see in the mirror.”

The motif of scars is important throughout the novel, highlighting Lizzie’s internal and external trauma. Here, she notes the external evidence of Mark’s abuse, which everyone can see; however, they are much less severe than the psychological ramifications of what she undergoes. The imagery of light and shadow underscores this contrast: The fingerprints are “dark purplish” but they “pale” next to the real “damage” Lizzie experiences.

“For some strange reason, I didn’t pull my hand from [Gibsie’s], not even when we got inside. Instead, I let him hold my hand for a solid five minutes before he finally let go.”

When Hugh finds Gibsie at home alone with Mark, likely sick because of Mark’s sexual abuse, Hugh steps in as Gibsie’s protector, holding his friend’s hand even though it is a little “strange.” This moment highlights The Love and Support Friendships Offer, as Hugh is there for Gibsie in whatever way his friend prefers, even while not fully understanding what harm Gibsie is experiencing.

“In the past forty minutes, I’d lost count of how many times I’d heard the words, ‘Lizzie just gets a bit down in herself from time to time’ or ‘she has her up and down days, but it’s nothing for you to worry about’ or, my personal favorite, ‘she’ll pull herself together in no time.’

Yeah fucking right.

Did they honestly think I was buying any of this?”

Hugh has precocious emotional maturity and intelligence with regard to Lizzie’s illness. Ironically, the adults tell him that he has nothing to worry about, yet despite his young age, he is the only one who truly understands that Lizzie needs much more help than the adults are providing.

“Grinning like I’d won the Olympic gold medal, I watched my dad walk away, and then I listened to the sound of his footsteps as he descended the staircase. Today is a good day. And I’m not bad. Because my dad loves me. I can be lovable.”

Here, a happy Lizzie is excited by the extremely rare moment of attention that her father gives her. The scene juxtaposes her parents’ typical treatment of her, highlighting how valuable their care is to Lizzie. Her parents’ love should play a key role in her coping with trauma; instead, she is largely neglected, exacerbating her mental health episodes.

“Liz came willingly, barreling into my arms. ‘It came out of me,’ she cried, shaking violently. ‘There was so much of it.’

‘The blood?’

Nodding, she buried her face in my neck. Fuck. It was her period.”

When Mark performs a home abortion on Lizzie, the young and immature Hugh and Lizzie cannot fully grasp what has happened: They assume that the copious blood coming from her vagina is menstruation, and Hugh stops encouraging Lizzie to go to the hospital (where doctors could ostensibly have realized what really happened). Additionally, the complete lack of parental involvement leads to a failure to appropriately address and help Lizzie.

“[T]he trembling body that welded itself to mine didn’t belong to my sister. It belonged to…‘Gibs?’ Confused, I tried to sit up to switch on my lamp, but the way he was clinging to me made that impossible. ‘What happened, lad?’

‘Hughie.’ Sobbing uncontrollably, my oldest friend in the world locked his arms and legs around me. ‘Hughie.’

‘I’m here, lad,’ I tried to coax, wrapping an arm around him.”

After Caoimhe discovers that Mark is sexually abusing Gibsie, Gibsie runs across the street and into Hugh’s arms, relying solely on The Love and Support Friendships Offer instead of confiding in the grownups that have failed him. The scene again characterizes Hugh as a strong, comforting figure in Gibsie’s life—a friend who will help him through anything, even when he does not fully understand what’s happening.

“I felt so alone and desperately wanted to have [Hugh] close, but I was also terrified of him seeing me at my worst—really seeing me…and walking away. Because there was something wrong with me, something broken inside of my head.”

When Hugh tells Lizzie that he plans on spending the entire summer at her house, Lizzie is conflicted, feeling The Benefits and Burdens of Commitment. Loving another person means knowing who they really are. For Lizzie, this means allowing Hugh to see her at her worst, which makes her afraid that he won’t like the person he sees.

“From there, we would cycle to the hotel and private leisure center in town, where both our families were members, and swim until they kicked us out at closing time. For two whole hours, I got him all to myself, after which he cycled me home, before heading home himself. Maybe it was the endorphins from swimming or maybe it was Hugh, but I felt a stillness in the water that I didn’t feel anywhere else.”

Water is an important symbol in the relationship between Hugh and Lizzie. Here, swimming provides Lizzie with comfort and freedom from her internal trauma, metaphorically washing away her problems while she spends time with Hugh doing what he enjoys.

“With great effort, she lifted her face to mine and pressed a soft kiss to my lips before dropping back down. ‘Thanks for staying with me tonight. It means everything to me.’

‘And you mean everything to me,’ I reminded her, stroking her arm with the one I had draped over her. ‘Besides, we’ve rang in every new year together since 1994, and I have no plans for breaking the tradition.’”

Hugh and Lizzie make it a point to spend important moments together. Thus, New Year’s Eve, Halloween, and their birthdays become key moments in their relationship. However, the tradition also emphasizes The Benefits and Burdens of Commitment. As Hugh separates himself from the rest of his family to be with Lizzie in these moments, he necessarily gives up on his friends and ignores his family.

“That was also how I found the strength to be here, in [Hugh’s] home, enduring the discomforting company of a boy who made both my skin crawl and the voices in my head grow louder. I was doing this for Hugh.”

As Lizzie struggles with her anger toward Gibsie, the strength that she finds in Hugh emphasizes The Love and Support Friendships Offer. However, her inability to get over what she sees as Gibsie’s betrayal also conveys The Complexities of Trauma and Healing. Lizzie does not properly address her issues with Gibsie. Instead, Hugh encourages her to endure Gibsie for the sake of their friend group—something he asks because she refuses to share why she is furious.

“None of these assholes had a single clue of how life was for me, and no number of books, research, or college credentials could teach them, either. Of course, Mam’s first instinct was to cry, while Dad’s was to try to admit me for inpatient treatment. Thankfully, he didn’t get his way, and I was allowed to return home this evening, dosed to the high heaves with antipsychotics and sedatives.”

As Lizzie stops taking her medication, the tone of her point-of-view chapters shifts. Walsh’s diction now transitions to harsh language and angry words, emphasizing the change within Lizzie as she lets herself feel all of her emotions.

“‘[D]on’t fight it, munchkin. Don’t be a fucking crybaby like my other one…’

Shivering violently, I held my breath and waited for it to end.

‘Is this your first time?’

‘…see, that wasn’t so bad, was it, munchkin? You’re a big girl now…’

‘No.’ My tears trickled onto my pillow. ‘I’m a big girl.’

‘Hold up—are you crying?’

‘…keep your mouth shut or I’ll slit her fucking throat.’”

Walsh frequently uses italicized words alternating with standard font to contrast Lizzie’s thoughts with the spoken words around her. When Lizzie has penetrative sex with Pierce, the sexual encounter takes on aspects of the many rapes Lizzie has survived at the hands of Mark. The experiences bleed together, preventing Lizzie from internalizing the present as her traumatic memories take over and color what she is doing.

“My parents couldn’t seem to stand me, and my father often took my mother away from the house for long stretches of time every evening. I knew why. He was giving me privacy to kill myself. He wanted me dead. They all did.”

When Lizzie develops depression, the lack of support and belonging from her family that earlier chapters described here resurfaces. Broken up with Hugh and largely neglected by her parents, she lacks any support system to intervene in her suicidal ideation.