MRS. FREYA HOLDS GIOVANNI IN a firm handshake and he just can't shake the feeling she's boring into his mind, shuffling through the debris and poking the core with a slapstick, with that simple, harmless gesture.
"We will see again soon."
"Of course, we will. They pay you too good to leave me the hell alone." When your parents are too busy to give a fuck about their dying son, what do they do? Throw him to into a shark pit of therapists and soothsayers. Where they lack in attention, they throw money at it.
He has an appointment with Dr. Calvin from the hospital three days in a week. The family doctor gives him a "physical and psychological" check-up two days a week. This asian hippie guy pays him visits once in a while with borderline voodoo, pungent incenses and terrible Spotify playlist. Now recently, they have arranged sessions with the school's counselor; crusty old crone, Mrs Freya with stretch marks on her neck.
Someone will probably think Gio has psychosis and trauma from military battle scars like some veteran, instead of SCD and stage-1 leukemia. Sometimes, Giovanni wonders, with all the therapists steady brewing into his head, how scrambled his brain will present itself at the end of the day, even if he despite the odds, beat the odds: if he escapes the grip of cancer; first things first.
"That's one way to put it," she muses, a finger playing with greying curls. "Tell me; why do you think your parents put me up to this."
"You really--Nice try," Gio shoots back. "You think you can put me down here after our session has ended. Is this another ploy to finally engage your sadistic tendencies?"
"If it was, then I'd be working overtime and won't get paid enough for it."
"Good point," says Gio who already has his bag slung over his shoulder, ready to go. "But the idea of you suffering sounds too good to pass on."
"Oh?" She raises a brow.
Gio drops his bag back to his feet, reaches for the basket of crimson apples and lands in the recliner. A smug simper stews his simulacrum, muffled by citric goodness bursting in his mouth.
"Fire on, mum."
Freya smiles at this. "I'm not interested in interrogating. We're merely having a civil conversation."
"Sure," Gio deadpans. "As if that's what your job truly entails."
"This might seem unprofessional but, children." Freya shakes her head.
"I'm not a child," Gio retorts defensively.
"That sounds like what a child would say."
"Ugh whatever, what's with children?"
"You're the most amusing age group. The way they see the world is fascinating, so vibrant, so dreadfully colorful it hurts their eyes. Teenagers especially; and you wonder how many years they've spent on this Earth to have such a newfangled, idiosyncratic worldview."
"What are you getting at?" Gio scrunches his nose. She sure knows how to use vocabulary to spice her preaching.
"Maybe it is actually the number of years they have spent on these soils, that is to blame. But what do I know?"
"Hmm hmm." Gio sinks into his seat.
"What are your plans after beat this stage?"
"If I survive it with my organs and sanity intact, and that seems more improbable than Cardi B winning another Grammy. Even if what the doctors say about me having a 73% chance of winning, I still have sickle cell to worry about."
Gio's heart pangs a little as he listens to himself talking, and he scolds it for still reacting as if this is news. He has groomed himself to at least grow past all this and move forward, even if without a care in the world.
YOU ARE READING
TORPEDO ✓
Teen FictionGirls have always been enough for Dorian Ayuba; until they weren't. Now, he is a hurricane in a box, all the while piggybacking scholarships, bills and his broken mother. Then there's rich, sickly Giovanni Price whose life expectancy is just as shor...
