All You Gave Me

Guidance

The school counselor's name is Mr. Pickins. Technically I'm supposed to go to Mrs. Lincoln (who became gray at 35and elderly at 36), because she counsels students with last names that begin with A-J. Mr. Pickens counsels K-T, but he's the son of a friend of my step-dad, and I trust him more than Mrs. Lincoln. Not entirely because he still has follicle pigmentation and a will to live, but that certainly doesn't hurt.

The school has a rule that teachers can't deny you a visit to Guidance, so I come to Pickens every other day or so at 11 o'clock to get out of French. As a direct result of this, Mr. Pickens knows me very well, and Madame Petit dislikes me very much.

Pickens prides himself in knowing everything about me.
"I'm the closest friend you have at this place," he says sometimes. I can never tell if he's concerned or just stating it as a fact. Either way, he's correct. I have friends, sure: Mattheo and Candy and Tillie let me sit with them at lunch. Then there's that guy from Pre-Calculus with the bunny-shaped birthmark and that girl who gave me a tampon once and... Mr. Pickens is only thirty anyway. He was my age fourteen years ago. I have a sister just two years younger than him. Sometimes I call him by his first name.

Anyway, Pickens and I aren't exactly friends in the ordinary use of the word. He still psychoanalyzes my dreams and bullshit like that. Sometimes when he makes me talk about my mother, I cry and hate him for days at a time. Also, he gives me advice about clearing my mind to get better sleep and keeping in touch with my step-dad even though it hurts and... oh, before I went to live with Dad and Candy and Lou, Mr. Pickens was the one who gave me the "How to Treat Your Druggy Older Sister's Eleven Year-Old Son Like the Little Brother of Yours He Still Thinks He Is" lecture, and it was vital to my relationship with Lou. Mr. Pickens dealt with me when my mother couldn't, and kept dealing when she kept couldn't-ing, and now we're here and she will never be able to deal with me again, so Pickens is all I've got, because Lou is young,  Dad is himself, and Candy is a spiteful trophy-wife-turned-step-mom, and that's my life story.