The Secret Life of Inanimate Objects

Chapter Three

Saturday, Date Unknown;

Time Unknown

In the entire town of Tobin's Bell, Dr. Anne Steinbeck was the only qualified psychiatrist, PhD. No one else in town wanted to leave town to study psychology, because of the belief that studying people's thoughts could make them crazy. The funny thing is, more than half the town probably visited her regularly.

Everyone had their demons.

I had been seeing her shortly after the bed incident, when I couldn't so much as open a door without being with somebody. Anybody. It got so bad that I was scared of my own hairbrush.

And that was when my mother had decided that enough was enough. There was obviously something wrong with me. My father hadn't been to keen on the idea, but as the days passed with my growing fear, he was soon singing the same tune as my mother.

I stopped seeing a psychiatrist when I'd turned eleven, because that was when I got smart and figured out that it was better to hide my 'irrational behaviour' from my parents; to let them think I'd 'grown out of my phase'.

But now, here I was.

In this large, spacious room, sitting at the equally large, uncluttered mahogany desk, avidly trying not to meet Dr. Steinbeck's eye.

"Terra? We can sit here in silence, but that's not going to help you," she said evenly, clasping her dainty hands on the desk before her. I noticed that they were painted an unflattering mauve.

Why was it that the only place where I wasn't safe was my own home?

I kept thinking that perhaps there was a streak of madness in my family and that I was the unfortunate Martins cursed with a few screws loose. But no. I just WASN'T crazy. I couldn't be.

I looked up and met the doctor's hazel-brown eyes. She looked expectant.

"What's there to talk about?" I asked, kicking my feet against her desk. It was a nervous habit - one of many - that I had developed.

"I don't know. You tell me. How's school?"

Start with the arbitrary, then go in for the kill. I knew this spiel.

I shrugged. "OK."

"And your boyfriend? You're still dating... Marcus?" She quickly shuffled through what I guessed were old notes from my file. "Marco, I mean," she corrected herself.

A wry smile flashed across my face.

"We're not dating. He's my best friend," I told her. Marco and me? Never. Our friendship was too valuable for that.

Dr. Steinbeck leaned forward, clasping her hands under her chin. "And how do you feel about that, Terra? Just being friends?"

I raised one eyebrow. "That's the way it's supposed to be. I don't FEEL anything." Where was she going with this?

"Hmmm... Well, he's the only person that hasn't ridiculed or shunned you because of your agoraphobia. It's quite natural to develop feelings about someone you perceive as -"

"Agoraphobia?" I said incredulously. "Since WHEN? And no, I haven't developed feelings for him. You call yourself a shrink, but you don't have a clue."

She leaned back in her seat and regarded me in silence. I didn't want to be there. My mother was probably outside with her ear ostentatiously pressed to the door.

"You want to hear something off the record, Terra Martins?" Dr. Steinbeck said after a moment had passed.

I shrugged. "Sure."

She leaned forward once again.

"I think you are pretending to be mad to alienate yourself from people. You don't like being around people, do you?" she said in a low voice. "The only person you truly let in is Marco Sebastian, perhaps because you have romanticized him.

You have created this whole... fear of things in your house as a guise, and have truly become mad in the process. This is off the record, of course."

I blinked at her.

"And our time is up!" she said brightly, clapping her hands together. "I'll see you same time next week."