Whatever Happened... to Robot Jones? Continued

Chapter 30: The Boy on the Catwalk

"Let me make one thing clear," Shannon said, tossing her books onto the blue suede couch to her left as she entered the room, and took a seat. "This was not my idea."

"So I understand," said the friendly, calm voice of Mr. Mitchell with an unwavering smile under his unruly beard. He sat with a legal pad in his lap, in an armchair opposite Shannon, so old that the cotton was spilling out in multiple places.

"Just because my mother's got some sort of problem with me, doesn't mean I have a problem," Shannon told him. "So, don't expect me to be all sappy and start spilling my guts all over the place," the brace-wearing, lisped teenager told him, folding her arms.

"We wouldn't want that," the young teacher said, continuing to grin. "I was never good at getting tears and organs out of the carpet."

A long, painful groan escaped Shannon's mouth, and she sank against the back of the couch. For someone who hadn't had his own children yet, Mr. Mitchell was quickly picking up a sense of humor that would make a father proud.

"Would it help to know why she asked for you to be signed up with a counselor?" he asked.

"No. It wouldn't," Shannon said back firmly, eyes narrow. She resented the fact that she had to be there at all, and she didn't need to be told second hand what her mother thought was wrong with her.

After consoling her the night before the anniversary of their lives falling apart, Shannon and her mother had spent more time together than they'd ever had in years, going out to eat at restaurants and visiting parts of the city like the zoo and aquarium. Her grandfather even took some time out to come with them, but Shannon had always enjoyed his company. It was her mother's company she was surprised to enjoy. It gave her a reason to blow off Pam some days, and yet, she didn't really mind. She was actually beginning to feel them forming that mother-daughter bond that other girls took for granted their whole lives.

But all the progress they'd made towards that closeness was smashed to rubble the instant that she got the pass in study hall that instructed her to leave for the counselor's office. Years ago, right after the 'accident' happened, Shannon had been seeing several mental therapists along with the physical ones. While she got along better with some than with others, she resented them all. These adults thought they could explain all her problems, all her worries and anxieties and nightmares that woke her in the middle of the night, and reduce them to words on paper. This disorder, that disorder.

Scholastic degrees on the wall didn't meant they could erase the past. The same way the technicians never really 'fixed' her body by sticking a metal leg to it, or the dentist set out to 'fix' her embarrassing overbite with a ridiculous headgear set that made her own reflection humiliating.

After several complaints like this to her mother, Mrs. Westerburg had the decency to pull her out of therapy and never ask her to talk about 'it' again, so she could try and start to rebuild a sense of normality in her life.

And then came the aftermath of Clara's party on Halloween. When Shannon had stumbled home a little after two o'clock in the morning, in dirty, black sweat clothes, having walked all the way home after ditching her cousin Chester's no-good, no show ass, her mother had had a lot of questions. So many that Shannon just couldn't keep selling her original story. She'd had to confess to her mother 60-percent of what had actually happened, only leaving out the parts she didn't feel like getting into detail about. At the top of that list was that she conspired to turn a girl's intense fear of snakes against her. That was a no-no. As well as details she herself was only now realizing, like how it was watching Robot's willingness to take action when things weren't right, like the arcade shutting down, that inspired her to take action in her own battle with Clara.