Burn

Twenty-Three

Therapy 2.0

"Chloe," Aunt Lauren says as she pulls the car into the parking lot.

I press myself against the door tighter and squint out at the blots of figures walking across the black asphalt.

"Chloe, look at me."

She touches my arm, heat leaking past my heavy hoodie, and she glances down at my hands, twisted into fists around each other.

I pry my eyes away from the walking people. "What?" I ask.

"Don't blame me, okay? This is court-mandated," she tells me quietly without meeting my eyes.

This is all your fault, I think as I look away and unlock the door. "Sure," I mutter and kick open the door.

After the cop cars took us to the station and asked me what happened and I couldn't remember, they decided I was nuts—especially once they caught sight of my arms—and got a judge to sign a court order for mandatory therapy.

Therapy, like I'm a whiny thirteen-year-old that hates life and needs to talk about how my crush doesn't like me back and all the girls are mean because I like My Chemical Romance and dress like I live in Hot Topic. Gag me already.

I'm barely inside the building before a girl with a pink bandana pops up from behind a cactus and shoves some pamphlet in my face.

"Welcome to Genesis Springs! Here's a pamphlet about all our therapy groups and our one-on-one—"

I hold my hands up and glare at her. "Not thanks. Just point me to Dr. Davidoff's office and I'll be on my way."

Whether it's the glare or my tone, I don't care, but the smile on her sallow face drops the minute I stop talking.

"O-oh. Um, past the receptionist desk, down this hallway, and it's door 402."

She clutches the pamphlets against her chest, wrinkled already and torn-up corners and ripped covers, and one hand sneaks up to her head, underneath the bandana. With one quick tug, several thin, black hairs come out of her scalp and she chews off the ends.

I scoot around her and walk as fast as I can without actually running.

There's muffled arguing from a room called "Marriage Therapy" and soft sobbing.

I pass a little boy who's hitting a woman who looks tired of his shit. When I glance back, the girl in the bandana still standing there with the same kicked-puppy look on her face but she turns away to greet the unfortunate new comers by shoving her pamphlets in their faces.

Eventually, I reach an ajar door with gold numbers across the top that read "402" and push it open.

The doctor's facing the huge, bay windows and there's six other people sitting in a semi-circle. A skylight lets sun shine down on his bald head, the skin surrounded by a circle of thin, white hair. When I open the door, he turns and pushes his wire-rim glasses up the bridge of his narrow nose and steps forward, opening up his arms.

"Welcome. My name is—" he begins, dropping his arms to extend his hand to me.

"Davidoff. I know." Instead of meeting his beady eyes, I stare at the spot above his left shoulder.

Someone coughs.

"Okay, I'm going to do a roll call." He gestures to one of the blue, plastic chairs like the ones they have in schools and I sit down in the middle of the left side.

There's four seats to the right of me, four to the left, and there's about twenty chairs in all.

There's an interracial couple next to me, a black boy and a red-haired girl of Asian descent, and I see the boy glancing at me continuously, like he's seen me before. I don't recognize him. The girl tilts her head down to whisper in his ear and his hand rubs across the ragged scars peeking out from under her prosthetic leg.

A blonde boy with thick eyeshadow is lounging across the sofa near the bookcase with his legs splayed on either side of a girl sitting on the floor. The only way I can tell the boy is a boy is because of a scruffy beard covering the expanse of his wide jaw, and instead of male-orientated clothes, she/he's wearing a pleated skirt with sneakers and a tank-top with a snake on it. He/she sees me looking and lifts a single hand and wiggles acrylic nails with rings in them.

"Hey," says the girl on the floor in a voice way too deep for a girl, "stop fucking staring. She's mine." Her eyes pierce me down to the very core. A lock of hair falls across her forehead as she lifts her top lip, revealing several piercings.

"David, stop," the boy-girl admonishes.

There's a long silence before "David" ducks her head and the boy-girl continues to braid her long, black hair down her back.

"Alright! Let's get started," a skeletal boy with braces says in a ridiculously cheerful voice, adjusting the heavy knitted sweater that hands off him. Next to him is an overweight girl whose thighs spill over the edges of the chair that smiles without teeth showing and whose hair hangs in limp pieces around her neck.

"Talia Reynolds?"

"Here." The red-head waves at Dr. Davidoff.

"Joshua Liasson?" There's a soft chuckle from the black boy.

"Kathryn Terrace?" Instead of answering, the boy-girl wraps her arms tight around the black-haired girl.

"David Level?" The black-haired girl kicks one of the empty chairs.

"Ashton Wales?" The blue chair squeaks under the overweight girl's shift of distribution.

"Conner Wildes?" The skeleton boy giggles.

"And Chloe Saunders."

I wrap my arms around myself and feel the thick, black stitches holding me together. Keeping my taint from spilling out.

"Okay then," Dr. Davidoff says, clapping his hands together, "let's tell everyone why we're here. Now, you don't have to right now, but eventually you will have to."

Talia shifts rubs her leg and squeezes Joshua's hand. "I'm here because my uncle cut my leg off and left me to die when I was eleven."

Joshua kisses her temple. "My parents were killed in front of me."

Kathryn's smile drops and tears fall down her face. "When I told my grandparents I wanted to be a girl, my granddaddy whipped me so badly I couldn't even stand and they tried to 'shock' it out of me." She lifts her hands to her face and sobs.

"I tried to kill myself six times in the last two months and then, before that, I was sent to the hospital when I fainted from starvation," David explains, pressing her lips against Kathryn's freckled wrists.

Connor wraps a boney arm around Ashton's wide shoulders and smiles sadly. "I was raped and beaten in an alleyway and when I told my parents, they called me a faggot liar and nobody believed me."

Ashton's entire body jiggles, her jowls quivering and big, fat tears running down her chubby face. Her fat hands squeeze her yoga pants and she looks down, ashamed. "I-I'm s-so…I-I…" she blubbers as she continues to cry and cry. "I binge and purge, okay?"

And then all eyes are on me, shiny with tears. I don't want to tell them my ex-boyfriend stalked me for six months, haunted me, broke into my house after I moved away, and he was shot in my friend's house. And then, after that, I sliced my wrists open and quit eating because it all tasted like gun smoke, but before any of that, my parents died in a fire and it robbed me of my everything.

Dr. Davidoff twists around to look at me, smiling encouragingly. "Go on."

"No. It's nobody's business why I'm here, just that I am." I set my jaw as Ashton looks up and says, spittle dribbling down her several chins, "We told you why we're here. You should do the same."

"I didn't ask you to tell me your life story," I argue.

"But Dr. Davidoff—" Kathryn starts.

"No! I can't."

"It's okay, Chloe. You can share in your own time," Dr. Davidoff says gently, "but let's continue."