In loving memory to the wonderful people that I have
had the privilege of knowing that left us too soon.

Melissa Vickers
TJ Fraizer
Jim Larson
Joey Binder
Ben Smith





Chapter One
Korin
Things to worry about today-
Falling out of bed
Irritating my father by simply existing
Getting ran over by a truck
Finding a way to fill an hour talking with Dr. Joyce

There are exactly eighty-five one square foot acoustic ceiling tiles in the closet sized waiting room. There are twenty-one outdated magazines, three children's books with most of their pages torn or missing, and a stack of signed novels by Dr. Joyce Smoot neatly displayed on an end table next to the door to her office. What kind of person charges two hundred and fifty dollars an hour to listen to someone talk about their feelings, and then feel it is apropos to advertise and try to push their latest book on them for an additional $39.99 a copy?
Sometimes Dr. Joyce feels more like a journalist than a psychiatrist. She asks redundant questions that I couldn't even begin to understand why their answers would be prudent in figuring out what is wrong with me.
What is wrong with me?
There is nothing wrong with me. I am a sixteen year old kid that found his mother dead on her bedroom floor. Cancer. Ironic considering my father is an Oncologist. What can you do though? Mom was young, only thirty-six, when she died. I was so busy with my life, doing what would make my dad happy that I didn't spend as much time with my mom as we both would have liked.
In the end I guess we look back to the beginning. My mother was beautiful and lovely, elegant and regal, but caring and compassionate. Over a thousand people came to her funeral. There were so many lives that she touched and changed for the better. I just wish that I could have changed her life like she did mine.
I hate therapy.
The hands on the clock above the door are mocking me. I am rather confident that they are moving backwards just to spite me. Stupid clock. I wish I had a baseball bat right now, once I could reach the dame thing-I'd have to move a chair or something since I'm practically a goddamn midget-I'd smash the hell out of it. Maybe I should swipe it after therapy and blow it up with an M-80 with John tonight.
Yeah right. I'm too much of a pussy to even steal a ten dollar clock. When I was a seven or eight me and John stole some penny candy from the store, I returned less than five minutes later and paid five times its price out of guilt. Needless to say I will never be a career criminal.
For the past six months I've had the same schedule. Wednesdays at four-thirty I go see my therapist. Saturday at twelve-thirty I go see my therapist. Saturdays I get there early and Wednesdays I get here late. School starts in two weeks, lovely, another consistent inconvenience that I have to deal with, pencil in, and schedule my life around.
Even before my mother died, before I found her on her bedroom floor lifeless, an eternally sleeping angel, my life was on a constant schedule:
Fencing lessons
Music lessons
Language lessons
Tutors
Riding lessons
School
Band practice
There are more but I don't do any of them anymore so why struggle to remember what they were? My mother didn't like the heavy load of activities that my dad forced me into since before I could walk. It was the one thing that the picture perfect couple argued about. Dad wanted me in an Ivy League school but my mom just wanted me to be happy being a kid. Initially mom lost the battle but when they discovered she was sick dad gave her anything she wanted so I started high school and was able to follow my passion-music.
It was three minutes until my appointment when everything changed. You know when you get that feeling like hell is about to break loose on earth and the four horsemen of the apocalypse are going to be riding through the streets destroying everything in sight. That feeling that floods your better judgment and says Run, get the hell out! That feeling that you shouldn't ignore but more often than not you do. Yeah, I am having one of those feelings and I didn't listen to the screaming warning in the back of my mind telling me to get the hell out!
The door to the office swung open slamming into the wall behind it and in walked Trouble. That was the only way to describe her. Trouble was written all over her face. The girl was tall, really tall, with green camouflage pants, layered white and black tank tops, leather and silver studded bracelets stacked on each wrist with a matching belt, and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth with smoke rolling from her nose. If it wouldn't have been for the ample size of her chest I would have thought she was a man at first, her head was shaved cleanly bald, tattoos on her arms, a piercing in her nose and fourteen gauge black titanium plugs in each ear-I only know this because my best friend has the same size in his ears. Trouble pulled off her silver aviator styled glasses-which looked completely ridiculous, very motorcycle cop'ish-- and looked around the room before settling her eyes on me.