Chapter Two
Therapy. Whatever deity there is out there, they must hate me, because my aunt and uncle decided that I should go to therapy. They think that I’m bottling in my grief. Screw grief, anger was what it was. I was angry that I was stuck here. I was angry that I had to go to school and learn about stuff that doesn’t matter. But mostly, I was angry that I was still being over-looked by everyone, even my guardians.
“The world officially hates me,” I told Jordan. I was hanging out with him a lot since coming to the BSS. Though it stood for Burnsview Secondary School, the rest of the teenage population at this school referred to it as Bull-Shit Secondary. I had friends now, real friends. At my old school, my friends were just people with pretty faces who interacted with other people with pretty faces for social standings sake. The people here were real. They were my friends.
“We love you,” Jordan vaguely responded with another chuckle. He had that vague expression on his face and a small smile playing on his lips. From the joint in his hand I could tell that he was gone for a trip. I laughed at the spaced out expression on his face and turned and started to look around.
“Come on, have a drag,” Liam offered, but I waved it off. “Maybe soon, but not yet,” I answered. Liam just smiled and told me that I’d come around.
I heard the bell ring, but I didn’t pay attention. It’d ring again. “Hey, Liam?” I asked, wondering if he was still sober enough to respond. He was, so I asked him to pass the joint. “Finally coming to the bright side, huh?” he asked jokingly.
Taking the burning joint, I dropped it to the ground and stepped onto it. As I squashed with my foot, I could make out his complaints that it had been a perfectly good roll with some good weed and that it had never done anything to me. I laughed a bit and started to walk towards the building, anticipating the next ring of the bell. I wasn’t going to skip after all.
*
“Hi, my name’s Dr. Rilling, but please, call me Mark.” The man across the richly decorated room was holding out his hand, waiting for me to shake it. He wore a rich dark suit and a painted-on smile. His eyes were a dark hazel and his teeth a perfect white.
“Andrea,” I replied, slumping down into a big leather chair in front of the desk. Taking back his hand, his smile faltered slightly before he sat down in his own chair.
Trying a new approach he started in again, “It seems we got off on the wrong foot already, or in this case, the wrong hand,” he joked, but it was a miserable attempt. Mentally collecting himself, he tried again. “Well, let’s get to the point, there’s no point in beating around the bushes. You’re here because your parents said that you haven’t been acting normal. What do you have to say about that?”
Nothing. I shrugged my shoulders. “Let’s not make this more difficult than it has to be,” he comforted, reaching across the desk to pat my left shoulder. I watched, with a slight regard of disgust, as his hand made its way to my shoulder where it tapped twice before returning to its rightful position.
“So, tell me about yourself, who are you, Andrea?” he asked with concentration on my eyes.
“Well, I’m 15, I was born to the parents Ellen Willis and George Willis. I lived a good life and my family had no financial problems. My parents died a couple months ago in a drunken car crash, I know attend Burnsview Secondary School where I get average grades.”
