Now There's Drama

65

Christie walked to the Cavener's, each step as painful like she were walking upon glass. Marc text her earlier saying he was going to check out Kip's computer. He really has become a good Watson, she thought. Checking her watch she expected Marc would have been home by six o'clock.

She was wrong.

Raising a hand to knock on the wooden door, she paused, swallowed before knocking her hand against it, attempting to cause as much pain as possible to herself. Julie Cavener opened the door, her mouth slightly ajar when she saw the blonde sixteen year old.

"Christina how are you? Marc isn't home," she said, forcing a smile onto her face, gesturing wildly with her hands.

"I'm sorry I'll come back later," Christie said, turning on her heel.

"Come in I'm cooking and I need a hand," Julie said.

Christie walked into the house moving from the concrete to the varnished wooden floors, slipping off her boots and leaving them next to Marc's sneakers. She moved one more of his shoes so there were a group of five.

Following her ex-counsellor to the kitchen she was thrown a potato. Christie stood at the chopping board where two potatoes already sat. She took another two out of the plastic Woolworth's bag.

Julie's brown eyes followed her movement causing Christie to squirm. "Would you mind just peeling them," she said, handing Christie the peeler.

Christie nodded and leant over the bin watching the dirty layers of skin fall. Counting her strokes, her shoulder beginning to twitch. She hit the twenty-fifth stroke. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Sorry did you say something?" Julie asked.

"I said I was sorry." She kept going with the potato until she had finished with fifty stokes and missing half of a potato. "I'm sorry I was rude to you and I was insensitive."

"Christie it's alright I'd forgotten that," she said.

"No you haven't your mouth pulls into a thin line whenever you see me. Sorry I'm doing the analysis thing again. I didn't want you to tell Marc you were seeing me and I freaked out. I liked you, you're one of my favourite counsellors."

Christie picked up the next potato and began to peel it.

"How are you Christie? Are you better?"

"Not really I did a stint in the local clinic but the counsellor I have now is good. I like her. The OCD is mild and I'm doing the whole challenge yourself and leave it alone. It's stopped the hand washing a bit I go for sixty seconds rather than one hundred and twenty-five. Still a bugger thought. Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five."

Christie sighed, talking about her mental illness never went well. "Mum still doesn't care she still thinks OCD means I should have a clean room and that it's the little brother of schizophrenia."

"I'm sure that's not true. Do you still hang out with your grandmother? I see her at church all the time."

"Marja and I are still tight."

"I talk to your grandfather a lot he talks about you a lot."

Christie blushed as she kept peeling. "Will's a good man. He knows how to keep Marja under control and she thinks she's Miss Marple."

"Marc told me what she did last Sunday."

"Oh sorry about that. Is Marc alright, he's been looking a little tired?"

"I'm not sure. He's not sleeping," she said rolling up her sleeves and wiping her brow. "I've booked him into a counsellor if he has some sort of PTSD I'd like to know now rather than three years later."