Counselling. The next devious thing in my mother's mind. She sent me for counselling. In school.
So basically, there I was sitting in maths class, when a woman I've never seen walks in to class and asks to see me. My teacher dismisses me, although I should have seen something coming faster when my classmates start whispering behind my back. At first, I thought it was because they were grumbling that they didn't have a reason to skip maths, which quite frankly, was absolutely boring.
The woman who came to see me was tall with rather long dyed-black hair. To me, I thought that the colour of hair kind of suited her blue eyes, which looked kind of like what I thought ice would look like if they had colour. All in all, I thought she was pretty.
I should have taken the hint by the time she started walking me to the main block of the school building, which was basically where all the offices like the general office, staff room, library and hall was located, and asked me all sorts of questions. At first, I thought that maybe something had happened. But then I should have realised it wasn't the case because of Terrence's absence.
I only actually got the hint when she walked up to the third level, which basically consisted of the consellors' offices. I know, that was pretty fast of me and everything, but all the while I was wondering about what it was that I had been called out of class for, so it didn't really occur to me that my mother had requested that I get counselling.
When the woman sent me to the office, she smiled at me. "Hello, Miranda!" She said enthusiastically. I rolled my eyes. "My name is Abigail, and I will be your counsellor for the next few weeks. We will have counselling twice a week, until the term ends."
I rolled my eyes again and sunk into the chair.
"Do you know why you're here?"
"Because my mother is angry at me that I don't want to share with her about what's going on in my life, so she signs me up for counselling in school, which I can't skip, so that she can be sure that I'm actually attending these stupid sessions just so she can get her hands on my juicy secrets which she then tells everyone she knows so that they can all laugh at the troubled child?"
Abigail hardly looked surprised, although she did raise her eyebrows, like she had heard this many times. "Well, that is what you might think, but-"
"But what? The nurse thinks I need help with my panic attacks?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Tell me more about these panic attacks, Miranda."
"There's nothing to tell! The nurse was wrong because I don't have any panic attacks. I've never suffered from them, and I never will!!"
"Now, Miranda, it's perfectly normal for people to suffer from panic attacks. In fact, most people would suffer from them for at least one or two times in their entire lifetime! Miranda, there's nothing to be ashamed of having panic attacks."
I glared at her.
"Now why don't you tell me about these panic attacks? You have 45 minutes here, and I can have this staring game if that's what you want. I'm pretty free from now until the end of the session. And you can't get out early."
I continued to glare at her. She stared back coolly, hardly flinching in the process.
"I'm not telling you. All you adults ever do is to judge me, tell me what I should do and what I shouldn't. I think it's hardly fair. All just because you're older, you all expect me to do whatever you tell me to do."
She looked at me with an amused smile playing by her lips. "What makes you say that, Miranda?"
I continued to glare at her. She hardly seemed to notice, though. I think she was more happy that I was actually talking to her and not sulking.
"Because that's what you adults ever do. You make us happy, and then you make us do whatever you want because you helped us do something."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Care to elaborate?"
"No."
She sighed. "Miranda, I can't help you if you're being difficult."
"So I need help now?" I asked, kind of annoyed at what she was insinuating. Even more annoyed at my mother, who decided that I would need counseling, without even bothering to check with me. I mean, yeah, it sounded selfish about this, but I felt that it was unfair if my mother thought that she could sign me counseling, she was wrong.
I mean, there was nothing wrong with my mental health, and I was sure that by then, the rumours of me going for counseling was spreading across the school as fast as it could, because by now, more people knew about what had happened during that wretched party, and Kelly was in the same maths class as me, so to give her some credit, she wasn’t a complete idiot, as I had been led to believe. Or maybe underneath the layers of gossip and acting in her brain, she actually did have some gears turning.
Gears of gossip, that is.
I knew most people would think that I’m just sore that she was the bane of my existence, but if you saw her from a third-person’s point of view – this third person being a neutral party, neither for or against Kelly Morgan – she would actually seem like a pretty nice girl, which is why most people are for her.
I – unfortunately – am on her bad side, simply because she thinks that I’m and easy person to push around, because that was what everyone thought.
“Now, Miranda, I can still help you deal with your panic attacks, even if you won’t tell me what it is that caused it.”
Well maybe not everything she said felt like nails against a chalkboard to my ears. It might not have been so bad to know how to control these panic attacks, I mean, at least people would not need to see me so weak and vulnerable. Also, at least Connor wouldn’t know that he was the one making me have all these panic attacks, or the cause of my discomfort. Because I’m quite sure he would be more than happy to know that.
So, for the rest of that session, Abigail taught me several ways to control my breathing and methods to tell myself that I wasn’t in trouble of anything worth having a panic attack over. Then, she finally released me after she was sure that I had mastered the breathing exercises. Luckily – or maybe unluckily – for me, it was recess.
As usual, I made my way to an empty table with my food. I could tell that the people all around me were stealing glances my way, trying to figure out what was wrong with me and why I had to be sent for counseling. But I had already expected those things to happen, so I wasn’t all that surprised. Besides, I was already pretty used to people looking at me and snickering, so I wasn’t too upset.
Well, maybe I was slightly – okay, fine – very upset at the fact that my mother put me up for counseling. But then again, shouldn’t it be expected? There was nothing wrong with me!
To take my mind off things, I decided to watch people for a little bit. It was, after all, my favourite hobby to do, because I could practically do it everywhere. So, I started from the table at the extreme end. There was a boy sitting there. James. He was a loner, like me, but he still seemed to be able to sit with a bunch of other school geeks. Good for him. I mean, I would give up anything I could to not sit alone anymore.
After hanging out with Terrence and his friends, I had come to realize that it wasn’t too bad to sit with other people. It was actually nice to be in somebody’s company, even with my preference to be alone.
Next table I turned to, all the popular people of the school. Those who thought that they could run the school, simply because they were good at sports and the rest of the school populations weren’t. This included the girls from cheerleading, who thought that they were better because they knew how to perform complicated stunts and untrained person wouldn’t be able to perform.
Then, my eyes landed on Terrence’s table. It seemed that Connor and Derek had made up, and were now friends again. They were both laughing at something that Terrence had said, as I could tell from the triumphant grin on his face. It was obvious that he felt great whenever people laughed at his jokes.
I sighed. Forgetting about all the hurt that they had put me through, and even my vow to keep away from making friends, I knew I had made a decision I would regret ever making. I wanted my friends back. Badly.
***
I've given up on the whole word count thing, as you may have seen, and I'm kind of desperate to finish writing this whole story because I have a deadline in five days, so you may and may not expect many more chapters to be coming soon.