Chapter Three

I followed him into his office and sat down in the very uncomfortable violet chair in the corner. Why does this man have a purple chair, anyway? Very strange. My long legs stretched out to the middle of the small, cramped room. And why was there a large reception area for a man with such a small office? Another curiosity.

He scarfed down the piece of shepherd’s pie, probably obtained from the school’s home economics classroom. As he devoured this disgusting morsel of meaty pie, I could not help but look at his fat fingers. I wondered how he got his rings off his fingers, if he ever did at all? Looked to me as if they were permanently stuck.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said, reaching into his desk drawer. “Were you hungry?” I shook my head. I was never hungry anymore and I wasn’t quite sure why.

“All right,” he sighed, pulling a yellow legal pad out of the drawer. He took pens from a cup on his desk and scribbled on the pad continuously, throwing them on the desk when no ink came out, until one of them decided to work. I bit at my nails while I waited.

“What’s got you down, kid?” Dr. Swanson turned to look at me. He had a ridiculously thick Welsh accent that made me feel the slightest bit better about my Brummie one.

I shrugged. I always prompted these meetings with him, but I never quite knew what to say to him when he asked me questions.

“Kids picking on you again?”

“I guess,” I shrugged a little.

“Now, why do you think they pick on you, son?”

“I…don’t…know…” What kind of question was that? Nobody really knows why people pick on them, unless they’re obviously irritating and annoying, or whore themselves out for attention. And none of those things were me. I knew I was a little bit different, with my accent and all, but it had been five years. At that point, I had figured they would have been over that. I also had red hair, but there were plenty of other kids in the school who were ginger and they didn’t get picked on. And the same went for the fact that I had green eyes. Plenty of kids had green eyes. I started school a year later because my mum wanted me to. But again, so did at least a few other people. Maybe I just make myself out to be an easy target, I thought.

“Do you think you alienate yourself in an obvious manner?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“What I mean is, do you think make yourself out to be an easy target?”

What the shit? How did he do that? That was the one thing that had always bothered me about psychologists. They always seemed to know what I was thinking. I didn’t know if I was easy to read, or if it was because they had psych in their job title. Either way, they were able to read my mind in some form or another.

“I guess so,” I shrugged, pretending I had never thought about that before in my life.

He wrote something down on his legal pad very quickly in his bad psychologist handwriting and looked back up at me.

“So,” he whispered softly, as if what he was about to say was some sort of secret. “How goes your home life?”

Oh, God. My home life. Mum was still as neurotic as ever. Still as overprotective as she always was. I don’t think she quite understood that I was a teenager, and that I could basically take care of myself. I didn’t need a spokeswoman. And my father? Apathetic. Sitting at the kitchen table reading his newspaper and drinking his tea, straight with no milk or honey or lemon. However, I did have this belief that he continuously spiked his tea with whiskey, “like any Irishman should,” he would say. I’d always had some sinking suspicion that I was going to end up just like him and quite frankly, it frightened me.

“Fine,” I averted my gaze; I didn’t want to make eye contact. He already knew everything there was to know about my family. I didn’t need to tell him again.

“Hhhmmmm,” he hummed slightly, scribbling furiously on his yellow legal pad. Lord, what could he possibly be writing? All I said was “Fine.” I could picture it now: Subject is noncompliant. Can tell he is lying about supposed ‘fine’ family life. Or perhaps he was just drawing stars and hearts to make it look like he is working on something particularly strenuous. I stared at him. I expected his pig-like face to break out into a sweat any minute.

He got up and dug through a filing cabinet drawer labeled “STUDENTS A-F,” filled with an assortment of manila folders, pulling out the thickest one from towards the back. On the flap, it read “Flann, Tudor L., M, 10/12/85” on a sticky label. Obviously, this was mine. I continued to give Dr. Swanson a vacant look.

“Tudor,” he sighed. “A young man your age should not have a chart this thick.” I guess he expected some sort of response out of me. Again, I shrugged. What else was I supposed to do? Say ‘Oh, isn’t that lovely?’ I wasn’t about to do that.

“You know what this means?” he inquired. I shook my head. “It means you need serious help—more than what I could give you, Tudor. I’m sorry.”

“But—“ I started, but he quickly cut me off.

“But what? Are you opposed to that sort of thing?”

“Well, not exactly. But my parents pretty much are.”

“What do you mean?” he frowned.

“My parents don’t even know I go to you so often. They wouldn’t pay for me to see a psychiatrist.”
“Psychologist.”
“Whatever. Look, the thing is they would not pay.”

“So you were lying about your home life being ‘fine.’”

He was doing it again. God damn it.

“No, not exactly.”

“Not consciously.”

“I guess not. But they would not pay for an actual psychologist, I’m telling you that right now.”
“Hmm, alright,” he scribbled this down on his pad again. “If you change your mind you can come back down here, I have a recommendation all picked out for you and everything. Here, let me write you a pass back to class, since I don’t want you missing too much class.” He ripped the top sheet of paper off the legal pad and slipped it into my makeshift chart—the manila folder, that is—and wrote in sloppy handwriting a pass back to my calculus class. A grabbed it and nodded, exiting into the reception area. Miss Rhiannon smiled at me as I passed by her.

“Have a nice weekend!” she exclaimed in a pleasant tone.

Yeah, right.