She asks me to sit. I hesitate, then sink slowly into a blue chair with a faded pink flower pattern. I shift uncomfortably in the overly plush cushions that smell faintly of dust. She seems to scrutinize me, and so I look her over as well. She is...old. Hair too sleek and too dark brown to be real. Her eyes are a dark brown as well, deep pools wide with fake empathy. They seem to search my soul as though I lay it out bare on the table in front of us.
She clears her throat. I stare at the peeling wallpaper. Then she begins to talk, filling the empty silence between us. She tells me why I am here, that my parents are concerned. Her voice is high and too cheery. Her smile is too wide, showing her perfect white teeth. Her words are like a mindless ticking, the irritating scratching of chalk on a chalkboard.
She asks me a question and I stare at her blankly. I am not listening. She repeats it, louder, as though I cannot hear her from two feet away. She wants me to explain what happened at school. I do not speak. I know that whatever I say she will twist. She will take my words and record them carefully in the notebook she has in her hands.
She shrugs and tells me its okay if I don't talk, that my parents have told her most of what has happened. She only wanted to hear my side, she tells me, and her eyes look at me as though she understands, and says that everything I say is confidential, and that my parents can't see anything, blah blah blah.
I speak, interrupting her, and her eyes light up, as though I'm finally being receptive to her sympathetic, listening ear and about to pour out my hearts story. I hardly have to force my voice a dull monotone and ask what time it is. She seems to deflate slightly, only to regain her bright and cheery smile quickly, as though she had not been disappointed in my apathetic reaction to her confidentiality speech.
She informs me in a sickly sweet voice that she doesn't like to keep clocks in the room because it can distract her patients. I decide at that moment to wear a watch from then on and to check it frequently during our "session". After all, I'll be coming back again for more "sessions", because I am her "patient". My parents pay her to fix me. You can't fix something that is not broken. I am not broken, I have problems, but a stranger cannot fix them for me.
When we get home that night, my parents ask my how it went. I say that it was fine. They look disappointed and I walk to my room, disappearing into the quiet peace of the dark.
They take me to see her again the next week. I sit in the same chair and she sits across from me again. She clears her throat. I have a feeling of deja vu. She asks me how my week went and if anything happened. I decide to feed her tidbits, enough to make her scribble down notes, not enough to mean anything to me. I tell her we argued in class. She scribbles furiously, her pen scratching across her tablet in neat, orderly strokes. She stops and sets her tablet down.
I stare at her incredulously as she reaches into her desk and pulls out a large poster. It is a poster of a hundred faces, all with different emotions. One is crying, another is angry. I like the one with the flames above its head. I tell her that and she nods seriously, as though I have just told her exactly what she wants to hear.
We play our little cat and mouse game for what seems to drag on for hours. Finally she glances at her computer and tells me my time is up and that she hopes I will be more open the next time we meet. I want to laugh in her face and tell her I will never come back. But I know I will, and the surety of that is in the faces of the parents that stand outside, waiting for me.
