Pity.
Horror.
Fear.
But it turns out I might not have a choice. The publicity of the entire thing has got the University involved and it was ‘recommended’ by my school advisor that I talk to their counselor. Already being on thin ice, I agreed and I have my first appointment today.
The woman sitting behind the desk when I walk into the office is a bit different than what I expected. She’s got fiery red hair, the kind you have to dye to make it look like that. And I can see a tattoo peeking out from the collar of her shirt. She’s dressed in a pant suit though and her hair is pulled up into a bun, like she’s half-business woman, half rebel, which kind of matches the dark but beautiful artwork she’s got hanging up on the walls.
‘Oh hey,’ she greets me when I walk in as if I’m a friend not a client. ‘Violet Hayes, right?’
I nod. ‘Yeah, that’d be me.’
She smiles then leans over her cluttered desk to shake my. ‘I’m Lana. Glad you could make it. Have a seat.’
I plop down in the chair and drop my bag to the floor, a bundle of nerves as I pick at my fingernail polish then start biting at my nails. I’m telling myself to put my walls up, be tough Violet, because this isn’t a safety zone – this isn’t like the time I spend with Luke.
‘So what brought you in here today, Violet Hayes?’ Lana asks as she sorts through a file on her desk.
‘You don’t know that already?’ I put my hands on my lap. ‘Because I’m guessing you do. Everyone knows me. Violet Hayes, creepy girl who lived while her parents were murdered. Stayed in the house for twenty-four hours.’
She smiles up at me, surprisingly not annoyed by my bitchy attitude. ‘Sounds like you’re a tough chick.’
‘No, just blunt.’ This is going to be harder than I thought.
‘Hmmm … maybe … But maybe not.’ She looks down at the folder again, reading a paper that’s inside it. After looking it over briefly, she shuts it and slides it aside before overlapping her hands and putting them on the desk. ‘So other than what the news says about you, what do I need to know about you?’
I give a relaxed shrug. ‘Doesn’t the news tell you enough … tell you what’s wrong with me.’
She gives me a soft smile. ‘I’d like to hear what you think about you, not anyone else.’
I honestly don’t know how to answer her, not used to this kind of situation. ‘There’s not much to know.’
‘Do you have a job?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you go to school. You’ve been really good with attendance up until a couple of months ago. Do you want to tell me why?’
I shake my head. ‘Nope.’
‘Okay then.’ She lets it go easily and I’m relieved that she does – I’ve already heard enough about that from other people. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all. ‘And what about boyfriends. Do you have one of those?’
I shrug, the walls I’ve put up starting to chip away. ‘Maybe.’
She appears lost. ‘Maybe?’
‘It’s complicated.’
She nods like she understands, but how could she when I haven’t told her anything. ‘What about friends?’
I fold my arms across my chest. ‘I might have a few of those.’ Maybe.
She mulls over my answer then picks up a pen and grabs a notebook from her drawer. ‘And what about family?’ She starts to write something down.
‘Dead.’ The walls crash down. ‘I’m a foster kid.’
I catch her hesitating, but she quickly recovers. ‘Are you close with any of them?’
I almost laugh. Not by choice, I want to say. Because one won’t leave me alone. ‘Again, no. Adults really aren’t a fan of this.’
She glances up at me. ‘Of what?’
I point at myself. ‘Of a girl that scares the shit out of them.’
She writes one more thing down, then sets the pen and paper aside and focuses on me again. ‘Why do you think everyone’s afraid of you?’
‘Because that’s what they say.’ I’m uncomfortable, my inner demons and addiction clawing to come out and regain control over the situation the only way I know how. ‘I don’t blame them either. It’s creepy what I did.’
She considers what I said for the longest time. ‘You know, regardless of what you think, you’re reaction wasn’t odd.’
I snort a disdainful laugh. ‘I just sat there in the house with their bodies for almost a day. Even I think I’m creepy.’
‘Maybe that’s the problem then,’ she says, reaching for a tin of mints on her desk.
I feel oddly on display for her, like I’m sitting in a glass case and she can see every part of me, inside and out and there’s nowhere to hide. It’s not the most settling feeling and I can’t figure out a way around it. ‘What is? Me being creepy?’
‘No, how you think that about herself.’ She pops a mint into her mouth and closes the tin. ‘Sometimes we hear people say stuff about us so frequently that we start to believe it ourselves, even if it’s not true.’
‘No, it’s true.’ My voice is tight, unable to accept what she’s saying.
She sets the tin aside. ‘We’ll see,’ she says, then picks up her pen and jots something else down. ‘I’d like to see you next week, if that’s okay. Same time and day?’
I want to tell her no, be a bitch so I don’t have to come back and let her analyze my mind, but I find myself muttering okay, then I take the card she offers me before bolting the hell out of that office before she can say anything else.
The more I walk, the more I replay what she said about the problem. That I believe everything everyone’s told me. The more I think about it, the more it pisses me off, like I’m that weak-minded that I just believe what everyone told me. And that’s the thing. There’s only so many times you can get told how unwanted you are, before you start believing it’s true.
I hurry across the busy campus, yellow and brown leaves crunching under my boots as I stomp across the lawn, telling myself I’m not going back even though I agreed. I have a feeling that the next visit is going to go much deeper than our short preliminary appointment and Lana makes me too uneasy, probably because she cuts straight through the bullshit. I can tell I’m not going to be able to be the hardcore Violet with her and just fake smile through everything. I’m going to end up being the unstable one that cries in the privacy of her own bathroom because she so desperately wants to risk her life to turn off the pain, but made a promise to the only person she cares about that she would try not to do that anymore.