October 2nd, 2017
I could tell Will Solace was infiltrating Jenny's office before I entered the premise.
I wouldn't have been able to smell him... which is probably a weird statement on a normal day, but I had a bad cold. Thankfully, I wasn't coughing or puking or dying, but I had a stuffy nose, my face was congested, and I keep sneezing.
Obviously, sneezing didn't warrant death either, but it was embarrassing. It draws attention. It's small. It's... cat-like. Terrible.
I hated being sick, especially at night. I hated waking up in the morning, not being able to breath through my nose, head pounding, eyes burning.
I put my hand on the icy door handle, trying to prepare for an hour of talking. Talking about nothing besides myself. Then a tickle in my nose caught my attention. Covering my mouth, I sneezed.
I shook my head, rubbed my hands over my face and eyes, and then through my hair, and hoped I wouldn't sneeze in front of Will. That'd be embarrassing.
I got over myself and walked in, interrupting whatever they were talking about.
Will caught my attention first, since he was right in front of the door, hand outstretched. His hair was so blonde it looked like a barbies, sun bleached, but soft looking. It was very obviously not dyed, and I'm sure girls at my school would kill for hair like that.
His eyes locked with mine, and I realized that other than the sky blue, he had flecks of gold in his irises like I do. A weird quality, but it looked cool.
"He's here," he exclaimed, looked behind himself to Jenny, who had stopped what looked like pacing. Her index finger was brought up to her mouth in worry and her other hand was placed on her hip.
Her hair was in a messy bun, with loose strands falling around her face.
"Nico! Are you ok? Is it a bad day?" She rushed over to me, putting her hands on my shoulders and stared at me even more intensely than Will had.
"No? Why would you think that? I didn't text you that I remember..." I got a little worried and took out my phone to make sure I didn't. My memory was shit enough as it is, we don't need to add any more short term memory loss.
"No no no, it just, you're 15 minutes later than usual, and that usually means it's a bad day, and so I got worried and was going to get Will to go and see if you were out front," she replied, closing the door and moving me slowly to the couch. Her arms were around my shoulders. Will trailed behind us. I could feel his eyes on my neck.
"Oh, I didn't even realize," I said, because truthfully, I didn't. I guess I was walking in a slow haze from my cold,
"Don't worry Jen, I'm just sick, I've had a cold since Saturday that hasn't gone away."
"Ok good. I mean, not good, but better than what it couldn't love been..." I knew why she was scared. More than once, during really bad days that include panic attacks, I would end up walking somewhere I didn't recognize, and then get even more freaked out. That usually ended in a very panicked call to Jenny.
Other times, I would wonder off on purpose, to get away from the people, the pairs of eyes that always seemed to be watching me. The ones that would never help a teen boy in all black even if he was having a mental breakdown. Even if his thoughts were plagued with evil voices. Even if he showed visible signs of needing help.
I sniffed as I sat down, shrugging my back pack off and placing it beside me. Jenny was calming down, and she looked a lot less tense as she walked around the coffee table to sit in her chair. Will stood staring at me, but I could tell he wasn't looking at me, he was just staring off into space.
He looked extremely tired today, I noticed when I took a better look at him. Even from farther away, I could see the bags under his eyes, and his eyes, that I had seen in so much detail a few seconds ago, were glazed over. His shoulders were slumped and his mouth was turned down. Last week he had looked happy and energized enough, but now he kind of looked like the walking dead. Literally.
"Uh, Will? Are you ok?" I asked him, waving and snapping my fingers from my seat to get his attention.
He shook his head. I couldn't tell if he was trying to say no, or shake himself out of his funk, but what I did know, was that his blonde hair fell over his eyes, and made him look a little more intriguing.
"Oh, yeah, I'm fine, I just didn't sleep a lot last night, and I had a huge lecture really early this morning," he told me, and then went and sat down, fixing his hair.
My eyes flicked away from him back to Jenny who still looked worried.
"Jenny, I swear I'm fine," I told her. That didn't seem to calm her.
"Yes, I believe you," she shook her head as well, and tucked her stray hairs behind her ears. It seemed we were all a mess today.
"It's just, everything is really stressful right now, I'm just trying not to think about it." She smiled at me tightly.
"What's wrong? You can tell me," she shrugged but didn't elaborate in detail.
"Oh just normal stuff. Taxes, relationships, that kind of stuff. It's nothing," she assured me, but I felt no reassurance, the opposite really. What was the opposite of reassurance? Un-reassurance? Unnerved?
"Relationship? You've never said anything about that to me before," I wondered aloud. We told each other everything, or so I thought, so this surprised me. I thought she would trust me enough with information as small as that, considering I had no one to tell it to. I guess I didn't know her as well as I thought. She was just my psychologist, after all.
"It's nothing Nico, you can stop worrying," she soothed. I nodded and made the look of concern leave my features, but that didn't mean it wasn't still there. She may not have been telling me because Will was there, but I doubted it, considering she never told me before.
I watched her compose herself, push away anything that was bugging her. Becoming professional again. I didn't want her to do that. She always told me it was better if you voiced your problems, even if I didn't always comply.
"So, Nico, tell me how your weekend was," she started, getting her note pad out. That usually meant she was in a bad mood. I wanted to counter the question, asking 'how was your weekend?' But I refrained so she didn't get upset. I knew she wasn't supposed to show her emotions, as her job was to stick to business and nothing but business, but I was curious now. I considered her my friend. Only friend. I wanted to know what was wrong.
"Well, my cold sucks and keeps making me sneeze, but no voices yet this week, except for Friday..." I trailed off, glancing at Will. He was leaning forwards in his chair, elbow on his knee and hand under his chin.
I didn't exactly like explaining my problems in detail with Will here. It was probably an unnecessary worry that he'll use it against me like most people in my life, a dumb trust issue. It was kind of weird to me, though, considering I normally only trusted Jenny with this stuff and now someone else was listening. Not that I blamed Jenny for bringing him, because I agreed, but I kind of blamed Jenny.
Jenny noticed and prodded me on. I don't know if this was her bad mood talking or something else, but I didn't like it. I work badly under pressure.
"And?" She said, but not in her usual soft voice or calm attitude.
"I, well, I did text you," I didn't want to tell Will that he was one of my delusions. I hardly knew him, and it's weird. If he didn't think I was messed up now, he would if I explained.
"Oh my gosh Nico," she shook her head. I could feel tension in the air.
"Just tell us what happened, this is therapy after all, that's what you're here for," She noted passive aggressively. Maybe it was just me being over sensitive and dumb, but she had an irritated tone, which made me flinch. Stupid maybe, but I wasn't used to it.
I stayed silent, staring at her weirdly. She sighed and looked down at her notepad again.
I was staring, because in the 4 years I've been coming to see her, I don't think I've ever seen her be like this. It was stress, she already said that, but Jenny was professional always. Even when she did talk about herself (because I wouldn't) she never let her emotions take over work.
I glanced at Will, who was looking a Jenny understandingly. He definitely knew something I didn't. Then he looked at me, saw the obvious hurt and confusion in my eyes, and stood up. He walked over to me and sat next to me- like right next to me, so that our thighs were touching. It made me shiver.
He leaned up to me, and I got slightly self conscious and awkward, before he put his mouth to my ear and started to whisper, so quietly I had to concentrate hard to listen.
"I know you don't understand why she's like this, but she has a good reason. Don't get mad, she's going through some shit and is having a hard time handling it," Then he sat up as if the little murmur session never happened and moved so we weren't touching. He was really warm, and when he left, I once again shivered.
"Ok Nico, you don't need to tell me what happened on Friday, but in my experience, it helps to talk," He suggested.
I nodded but stayed quiet. I could probably trust him, considering he wanted to be a psychologist in the future, and he was a friend of Jenny's. He was only coming to my session because I told Jenny I would be ok with it and she wanted to help him get some experience under his belt. Plus He was only one year older than me. Maybe he would slightly understand.
"I," I swallowed and restarted, "Friday was a bad day for me." Will looked surprised that I actually spoke, even if I was a stuttering, quiet mess.
"Why is that Nico?" He asked, trying to keep a small smile of achievement off his face. I glanced at Jenny who was looking out of the corner of her eyes at me, looking shocked as well.
"Well, I woke up really unfocused and I couldn't think straight. It kind of got worse throughout the day. I walked to school with an apple I was going to eat, and forgot all about it, and then my science partner, Sarah, tapped my shoulder and I got so scared I whipped it across the field by mistake," I chuckled thinking back on it now, and when I looked up at Will who had a notebook, but was staring right me, was smiling too. The dark circles seemed to have lightened. He knew what he was doing, talking to me, and he enjoyed it. I could tell he would make a good psychologist. I was already opening up to him.
"She tried to talk to me, but I kept getting really distracted, so I got away from that situating as soon as possible," I laughed again, and tried to think back to that day.
"I helped a boy who I saw get beat up by the assholes in my grade and brought him to the nurses office. I left there as well, I still couldn't focus. My first class sucked, but not as much as the second, when the hallucinations decided to come along," my smile went away and so did his. He didn't look pitying though, he looked understanding like Jenny does a lot of the time.
"What were they of Nico?" He asked, moving forwards in his seat ever so slightly. Barely noticeable, but I had a keen eye.
"Oh funny story actually, they were actually you and Jenny," I started, trying to maintain my confidence of sharing all of this, for Jenny's sake. Plus, Will was a lot easier to talk to than I expected.
"Yeah, I have no clue why, but you guys were like, outside my classroom, and trying to get me to leave with you, which made no sense, and then I tried to ignore it, but I couldn't, so I kind of stood up in the middle of class and since the teacher hates me, I got yelled at."
"Oh jeez. What's his name?" Will asked, seemingly amused by my story.
"He's a little shit head, his name is mr. Armoni," I replied, smiling at the touch of disgust in my tone.
"Geography?" He asked, eyes widening. I sat up, wondering how on earth he could guess that.
"How did you know?"
"I think we went to the same school, because I've had that guy, and he hated everyone. I hated him too, obviously, and me and my friend watched him once, and saw he seemed to have a crush on one of the English teachers. So obviously, we tried to set them up, like, Clueless style, but that didn't work out and we may have made him worse," he laughed and I did with him. Jenny was looking at us in confusion, like she couldn't believe I was actually laughing with a stranger. To be honest, I couldn't either.
"That's- that's amazing!" I could hardly breath, I was laughing so hard. I haven't laughed this hard in a long long time. But then I felt it, and I didn't want it to happen.
"Oh no, oh no!" I exclaimed, and Will stopped laughing and looked at me in concern,
"Are you ok?" He was trying to slow his breaths.
"No , I-" and then I sneezed. My annoying ass, cat like sneeze that made me want to melt in a pool of embarrassment.
Five seconds after it, I opened my eyes and unsquinched my nose, and saw him staring at me. I looked at him for 5 more seconds and then he burst out laughing, and weirdly enough, so did I.
What strange affect did this boy have on me and why did it make me smile and laugh so much?
"That-" he heaved,
"was," he wiped a tear streaming down his face, "the," he took another large intake of breath,
"cutest thing," heave, "I've ever heard," he finished and fell over on the couch we were sitting on.
I muffled my laughing by covering my face in my hands in shame.
"I hate when I sneeze!" I wailed. I haven't felt this happy in a long time. It was a privilege, I realized, to have a day where you laugh so hard that you cry. It makes it feel like the other stuff isn't actually that hard to deal with.
Will was still laughing and so was I, until Jenny stood up. I quieted as she walked in front of me and made me stand up and hug her. I hugged her tightly, knowing she needed it a lot more than me today.
"I'm sorry I'm an asshole," she said and I chuckled, nodding . I didn't mind.
"You could never be an asshole Jen," she laughed at me.
Then I sat, and she sat, and Will was still laughing, and it was so infectious, that we both laughed too.
A/n
It's not as long I know, and I apologize, but I think 2800 words is enough. I'm driving to my cottage atm and writing is a good driving activity. I realized that I used to hate car rides when I was little, but now they're one of my favourite things.
Anyways, it's Canada's 150th year this year so yay!!!!
Bad news, I still have hoards of homework and my two good friends are moving to the US. So that's fun. But that's ok cause I'll still see them at least once a year I hope. Anyways I arrived at my cottage so I'll probably go swimming. I hope you all have a fantabuluos (I love that fake word) day, I love you all!!
|| I graduated with honour roll so whoo!! Hopefully since it's summer I can update more||
Word count: 2815
Thea