Disclaimer: Suze, Jesse, and Paul are jointly owned by Meg Cabot, Patricia Cabot, and Jenny Carol. Hah. I made a funny. Technically true though…

My next session was with an 8-year-old girl named Monica. As soon as she and her young mother walked in, I could guess at what was wrong. Her eyes were unfocused, as though she was looking at something no one else could see, and she had a blank expression. Before I could ask what the problem was, she started talking to herself. "Why do you haunt me?" and then, in a lower, sort of evil voice, "because you can see me." She kept switching between voices. "Well my daddy says this lady can help me." "She can't. No one can get rid of me." "When will you leave me alone?" "When you stop listening to me."

No one was talking back to her except herself. I asked her if there were any ghosts in the room. She replied that there was just the one who followed her around. Then she seemed to respond to herself, "Shut up! Don't you tell her about me!"

I replied "No, it's OK," (glance at clipboard) "Monica. Just tell me."

She gasped. "You mean you can hear him too?"

"One moment please." I consulted her mother. "You mean she doesn't know she's…" Mrs. Steinback shook her head. "Yes Monica, you are talking. There is no man there."

She looked like she was about to cry. "No one believes me!"

Oops. Well at least I'd been nice… Still, I hadn't been trained to deny a patient's claims. "Monica, I do believe you. I don't think that you are lying; but you need to know that there is no one there." I had to lay it down flatly, even if my training disagreed with me on that particular point.

"But he's always there! He knows everything I know!"

I tried the question approach. "Do you think it might be possible that this ghost is really you?" I could see tears beginning to well up in her eyes so I rephrased slightly. "I mean, not that you're doing anything on purpose, but that he might be some part of your subconscious? The part of you that you have no control over?" I saw doubt in her eyes, like I was starting to get through. I decided to explain. "There is a part of you that you control, called your conscious." She gave me a look like 'geez what am I, 7?' which I thought was far more normal than anything else she'd done since she stepped into my office, so I thought I might just be making progress. "Also, there is a part of you called the subconcoius that knows everything that you know but that you have no control over." She seemed puzzled, which I thought might be a good sign. I explained it a bit more until we were sure that that was the problem.

She was about to leave early, when I overheard her whispering "you didn't honestly believe all that about me being you, did you?" Then she shook her head. I called her back. It was obviously time for a different approach…

"You—'he' said earlier that he would only leave when you stopped listening to him." She looked momentarily shocked that I had this bit of information, but got over it pretty fast. She had this look on her face like "Yeah? And?" So I stated what I thought was pretty obvious. "So stop listening. Just don't respond." She looked confused, again, but then determined. She nodded. "Alright Mr. Ghost, just try to get a response out of Monica now."

"That won't be a problem." 'He' said, apparently having already adjusted to the fact that I could hear 'him'. "Monica, speak." She opened her mouth, but seemed to go through a lot of trouble to close it again. "Monica, I command you to speak, or I will hurt you again." Again? She had hurt herself before?

She appeared to be about to cave, but I interrupted. "Monica, I won't let him hurt you. Very good willpower. You don't have to do what he says. Now, let's try another step. When 'he' is speaking, you should be aware that your lips are moving and 'his' words are coming out of your mouth." She didn't look too surprised at this; as I had made it pretty clear earlier. "You need to stop that." Her lips pursed like she was straining. "Can I test?" She nodded, her mouth still clenched together. "Mr. Ghost… by the way, does this ghost have a name?" She kept her mouth shut and pointed at her mother, who I had almost forgotten about. "Mrs. Steinback, does the ghost have a name?"

She looked startled, like she'd also forgotten she was there, and not just, like, watching TV or something. "Umm…" she began, trying to pull herself back into the room. "Scabbers." Scabbers? That sounded more like an imaginary friend than a ghost… or at least a rat… but I didn't say so of course. Her part done, she went back to watching in hopeful fascination.

Even though I felt stupid saying it, I addressed, uh, her by, uh, his, name. "Scabbers, she won't listen to you anymore. Go ahead, try to make her speak." She put her hand over her mouth, and I could actually see a little vein jutting out of her head, which was weird, obviously; but she didn't say anything. The clock made this little click that meant the end of the hour, so our time was up. "I think we've made progress here today. Alright then." Mrs. Steinback gasped and looked directly behind me. I subtly turned around to see… Jesse.

"I would like to see you again next week, Monica, and Mrs. Steinback, I would be interested in seeing you separately." She looked nonplussed, but nodded. Then they left.

"That was strange." Jesse said. Normally, I'd have said something like 'yeah, thanks, I couldn't tell,' but it just sounded so intelligent coming from his hottie mouth.