This is a short story I wrote the other day. Hope you guys enjoy it! THERAPY It doesn’t matter how you rationalize it- therapy is a weird concept. Once a week, you sit down on a couch, detailing the deepest, ugliest, most painful parts of your life- things you wouldn’t dare share with your closest friends, not even your mother, but because this stranger has a diploma and an office, you sit down with her for sixty minutes a week, talk, and send her a check. It’s a strange institution. Not that I’ve ever seen a shrink before, sitting in the waiting room, I realize that this will be my first time. Maybe it will do wonders for me, as everyone whose ever grown close to me seems to think. But as an idea, therapy to me seems a little odd. Who knows though, maybe I’ll get some killer drugs out of it. Everyone at my school is on something, after all. Jim takes Adderall, Katie pops Xanax, Timmy’s on Lithium, Joe takes Prozac, Anna has her Ambien and Helen does Zoloft. The whole country is high as a kite! Why not me? I remember sharing some Xanax with Katie- we got totally wrecked, total end-of-the-world shit; everything was blurry and I couldn’t feel half my face, but I was totally fine with it. Euphoric, in fact. I remember dancing most of the time. There wasn’t any music or anything, we just dance, smiling our limp-faced smiles. Xanax. What a drug. Maybe I’ll score some if I play my cards right. The white-noise machine in the lobby gives me a headache. Through the door, I can here murmurs of Dr. Taylor talking with her current patient. On the wall is a painting of a park scene, smiling people are sitting on picnic blankets eating bread while children are running, playing in the background amongst themselves. The walls of the room suffocate me with their whiteness. Here and there, along the corners of the walls, in the tiny creases, there is some chip paint and the color is more grey then anything else- a little break from all the overwhelmingly white in the room. I tap my foot, and look at the clock on my phone. 4:05. The appointment was scheduled for 4:00. Maybe it makes me seem like a bratty little bastard to grow impatient, but I am nonetheless. I mean, really, what kind of first impression was this? It’s not like I was already thrilled about the whole deal. Just as I feel the urge to get up and leave, I hear the slow shuffling of footsteps from inside the room, just barely audible over that stupid noise machine. A moment later, the door to Dr. Taylor’s office swings open and I am invited in. I’m not sure why, exactly, but I was expecting some old lady, her face a mess of wrinkles and lines, wearing big circular glasses over her eyes. Instead however, I am shocked by the total beauty of the doctor. She was tall, wore long blonde hair and soft blue eyes. She’s wearing a long dress, but I can see the beginnings of beautiful, slender legs. Holy crap. I’d heard about transference. Is this it? Was I already being transferred? Maybe I am as fucked up as everyone thinks I am. She invites me to take a seat on the long, brown leather couch, against wall on the far side of the room. It’s a small, four cornered room, the walls are painted the same dull white as the waiting room and lined with all sorts of thick books. “So,” She says, flashing a warm smile of very white teeth, “Before we begin, do you have any questions?” I think for a long moment, trying to find a question to ask out of politeness, but come up with nothing. Slowly, I shake my head from side to side. “I know some kids your age who come in here are very iffy about the whole ‘therapy’ thing, but there’s nothing to be anxious or nervous about. Coming to me doesn’t mean you’re ‘retarded’ or anything, it just means you have some things going on in your life that you might want to address.” I am still listening at this point, but I have no clue what to say. My mind begins to drift back to Xanax, and I try to think of what it was that Katie said she had anyways. A brief quietness passes before she continues on. “So,” She said, still smiling. God did she ever stop smiling? “Why are you here today?” It’s a fair question, and one that I know the answer to and don’t know the answer to at the same time. I know why my parents sent me here. I know I’m different than most kids my age. But I’m not really sure what I’m doing here. I know most kids my age don’t steal their parents credit card and book a flight from New York to Denver. I’m not even sure why I did it in the first place. My life in New York wasn’t so bad. I mean, I didn’t particularly like the kids at school, I was failing most of my classes, and I was utterly bored with this bullshit bourgeois suburban lifestyle, but there wasn’t anything drastically wrong with my life. My parents had never divorced, we lived comfortably in a nice Victorian house with a backyard and all. My dad never beat my mom. There was always food in the fridge. Stopped on the street by two cops and held in the station for a whole day. What an embarrassment. I shrug my shoulder at Dr. Taylor, who is, goddamn it, still smiling. “Well, c’mon,” she says, with a tone that falls somewhere between insistence and nagging. “There must be some reason you came.” But honestly, I’m not sure what to tell this woman. I know I haven’t been the same since Kiera died. Driving home drunk from my house, killed in a car crash. I know I haven’t exactly gotten a good night’s sleep since then, and I know that she was my only friend, the only one who knew, well, anything about me. Do I start there with Dr. Taylor? That was over a year ago, well before my failed escape from New York. I say nothing, and the room remains silent. It’s a true silence now; the white noise machines aren’t audible from inside the office. There’s an awkwardness that makes me uncomfortable, and so finally I speak up. “I had a friend who passed away. I guess I haven’t been doing too great since she left.” The warm friendliness I’d previously found on her face fades quickly, and now her eyes are filled with sympathy. So rapid is this change that I wonder if she actually feels anything at all for me. Is this the look she gives all her clients, every time one of them tells a boo-hoo story? “What happened?” She asks, looking me straight in the eye. I’m not much good at making eye contact, I have a bad habit of looking down at the floor or past a person when I talk to them, but she’s got me in a deadlock and I can’t look away. “A car crash,” I say. I don’t know why I brought this up at all. I don’t want to talk about this. But now my mind is forced on my least favorite subject as of late; Kiera. I’d first met her freshman year. I’d never noticed her before; a small miracle in a school of only 1500 kids. She sat next to me in biology, and we were always put together in groups for lab assignments. Eventually we got to talking, exchanged numbers, went to a movie, and before either of us really realized it, we were dating. I didn’t care for most people at school, which isn’t to say I have anything against them. They just don’t interest me. I don’t relate very well to anyone, and I’m happy to walk in the hallways with one of them in between periods, or share a joint after school, but usually I just want to go home and be on my own. But Kiera was an exception. I don’t think I ever knew what it was about her, and I don’t think I ever will. I remember really digging the fact that she read. Nobody reads anymore, at least nobody our age. I mean, sure, they’ll check out the latest Twilight book or whatever crap they’re showing at the movies, but the days of Wilde and Hemmingway are long gone. Kiera, though read everything. More than me, which was some feat, if I do say so myself. But it was more than that. I remember watching her laugh. She’d be telling me a story, and she’d giggle to herself, I’d totally miss what she was telling me. It was an intoxicating laugh, I wanted to bottle it and drink it, live on her joy. And then one day, she’d came over, and had a little vodka, and then she was gone. I went to sleep, and she drove home, and when I woke up in the morning, she was dead. I look at Dr. Taylor, but she’s not there anymore. Nobody is. It’s just me, I think, and a hot tear rolls down my cheek. It’s just me and it always will be.
you had me spellbound reading this. the confusion and loss is so descriptive. i hung on your every word.
This might be the best thing anyone's ever said about a piece of mine. Thanks a ton Searching Paws! Your feedback is appreciated as always.
