Jet Black Hearts / l.h.

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Thursday, September 3, 2018
5:10 p.m.
Group Therapy Room

The room goes silent as I take my seat. For once I'm not the last person to arrive, so I have a choice on where I sit for the next hour: next to Dr. Hunter, or next to Andrea. I sit beside Andrea.

Everyone's eyes are glued on me. I make eye-contact with Luke for a few seconds before I look away, but even then I can still feel his eyes on me.

Dr. Hunter straightens his dark blue tie and sits up. "Brinley."

"Brin."

"Brin," the man corrects himself. He squints at me and pushes up his glasses. "What . . . Do you want to share with us something that happened this week?"

"Not particularly."

"Okay," Dr. Hunter chuckles without traces of humor. "We'll try this again. Please share with the group what happened this week."

Before I could refuse his offer once more, the door opened and in came in the last girl. She took her seat next to Dr. Hunter. He smiled at her as she greeted everyone with a shy wave.

"Sorry I'm late," she breathes.

"It's okay, you still made it," Dr. Hunter says cheerfully. "We were talking about our weeks. How has yours gone so far?"

She shrugs and tries to suppress a smile, but it spreads across her face after a few tries. "Really good, actually." She runs her hand through her long hair. "I got the part I wanted in that play I was talking about."

"Good job! See, really putting yourself out there and doing what you always wanted to can pay off," he exclaims. He turns back to me. "What about you, Brin? What happened this week?"

I roll my eyes. He wasn't going to brush this off, was he?

"My mom made me go to the park because she said that I was being too reclusive."

"Being stuck inside your room all day isn't healthy." Dr. Hunter adjusts his glasses on his round nose. "Sometimes just taking a short walk around town is what you need."

"Actually, it didn't help at all, but okay." I clear my throat. "Anyways, while I was at the park, I saw these two people I went to primary school with. Long story short, one of them called me a bitch and then I might have slapped her and then her boyfriend punched me." I motion to my black eye. "So that's that. I also fell when he hit me." I hold up my elbow and point to it, although no one could see my skin because of my sleeve. "I got this sick scrape, though. Plus my eye looks cool."

There's a few beats of silence. I dare to shoot a glance at Luke, who is watching me curiously. Dr. Hunter claps and rubs his hands together and I look to him.

"Okay, and how did hitting her make you feel?"

I scoff. "Not sorry, if that's what you're looking for. I've wanted to do that since primary."

He rubs his face. "After you hit her, did you feel better?"

"Hell yeah I did." Well, it felt good until I was punched, but still.

"That doesn't make what you did the right thing to do." Dr. Hunter turns to everyone else seated in the circle. "Does anyone want to share what they would have done in that situation?"

There's only two replies, one from Andrea and one from another girl. Andrea said that she would have walked away and the other girl said that she would have called her some names in return.

Dr. Hunter looks at Luke, whose twig arms are crossed over his shallow chest.

"Luke?"

He looks up and clears his throat. His eyes momentarily meet mine. "Honestly, I would have probably just left to go cry in my room."