Charlie smiled sadly. "I'm sorry about my grammar back then. It gets better as it goes on, I promise."
The counsellor let out a small laugh, but it was hollow and lifeless. "What was she like? Back then, I mean. Before the depression."
"Like any of us."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"We're all trying to be unique, right?" The counsellor nodded. "Which, in turn, makes us all the same."
"I see." Although she didn't, really. "Some of the messages though...you weren't meant to see them? They argued about you?"
Charlie sighed, and immediately remembered their conversation on tinychat. He let out a small laugh, followed by an unintentional whimper of regret as he thought of how she ended the conversation by herself.
"No. Some of them I was never meant to see." He shifted awkwardly in his seat. It was plastic and remarkably uncomfortable, which had made the past hour of showing and reading out messages quite painful. "I suppose she should have thought of that before she killed herself," he said bitterly.
"Who's Anna? And Josey?" Did she ever stop asking questions?
"They were her friends."
"Any emphasis on her?" The counsellor raised her eyebrows and leaned back in her seat. Hers was much comfier, with a reclining back and leather material. She was not uncomfortable after the hour of reading messages.
"No... No, they were my friends too. But they were always hers, if you know what I mean? Because she had them first."
The counsellor nodded her head although she didn't really know. It had been a long time since she was a teenager.
"What happens to them?"
"You'll find out." Charlie opened the phone again, using the pass code that he had memorised and put in use thousands of times. "It was around a year after I met her, when things started to change. Let me see..."
