Friend Forever

Years

Three years later
Summer 1999

  "So, how is life at home?" She asked me, Dr. Bailey as I crossed my leg over the other, closing myself off from everything else, the way I always sat in my therapy sessions. I had been seeing the same therapist for two years now, as I had gone to multiple in order to find one that I felt comfortable with. Dr. Miranda Bailey was my choice, as she was a younger women almost straight out of school, for which I felt she could relate to me more. Understood me more. She was in her late twenties I believe, however I wasn't certain, we usually stuck to the topic of myself during our times.

  I shrugged a bit, trying to think back to my parents, trying to discuss how everything had been going. Nothing really changed at all.

  "It's alright. They worry about me still, but who can blame them," I explained, my mind going back onto the day earlier when my parents freaked out when I returned home late. I had stayed after school to watch one of the teams basketball games with a few friends, for the game lasted roughly an hour and a half. I wasn't too keen into sports and all, although a few of my classmates insisted I stay with them to watch, for they enjoyed spotting the guys in their gym shorts, I wasn't too much into the whole guy thing though. Not my type. I would have turned down their offer and returned right home, however I wanted to fit in with others still, I wanted to join in. And so I did.

  It turned out to be rather fun, for I did enjoy myself as my classmates cheered hysterically, I just found them acting so stupid it was funny. Staying for the whole game, almost two hours after school, beginning to walk home alone later in the evening, as I stepped into the unlocked door on my way to the house.

  "Mallory?!" My name shouted from the other room, almost dropping my bag in fright as it startled me. My Mother rushed into the room near the front door, along with my Dad tagging along behind. They both had on worried faces. A sigh of relief releasing after they spotted their now fifteen year old daughter. Me.

  "Yeah?"

  "Where have you been?!"

  "Sorry, I know I should have called. But I stayed after school to watch a basketball game—"

  "You are to come right home after school Mal! You know that!" My Father screamed, the temperature rising drastically with the rage almost, the terror in my eyes as the confusion yet unbelievability also rose. I knew my parents were bad, however they had become much worse with the whole caring thing, almost becoming helicopter parents over myself. An odd thing, for as the years passed, and I got older, I thought for sure they would have let me live more, loosen the leash on me more. However it seemed they only reeled me in further the older I got, as if I would become wild, or rebellious or something. Although since everything I had been through, I knew that would not—never—be the case.

Dr. Bailey continued to note things down in a type of folder perched on her lap, her light hair tied back in a messier bun, her eyes returning to meet mine a few minutes past.

"How would you like things to be at home?" She asked, her curiosity coming from the notes written down on her sheets of paper that held my file. Curling up my knees this time to my chest, I hugged myself as my light, longer hair began to fall out from behind my ears, in front as it fell around me. I tried to think back.

"I don't know. I mean, I would have given anything years ago for my parents to treat me this way, but now that I have it, I don't want it as much. Don't get me wrong, I don't want them to go back to not caring and treating me as if I'm not there, invisible. I would just like to do my own things sometimes, without them having a say in everything I do. I'm fifteen now, I'm getting older. I understand why they treated me this way when I was younger, like when I was twelve, but I don't understand now," I tried to paint her a picture of my family life, for she knew all about it now. It seemed everyone did.