“Another transfer, Isaac?” Evelyn’s head declined as she spoke, horn-rimmed glasses splitting a line through her irises. Despite this, her gaze never faltered, instead pinning me against the worn, crocodilic leather of her couch. I had attempted to reach a more comfortable position, one leg crossed beneath me as the other dug traces of mud into her rug, though no change in posture could ease the tension.
“Another transfer?” She reiterated, sinking back into her armchair.
“Uh… yeah,” I blinked. A chuckle followed the pause. I couldn’t help it. The school’s incident report was plain in her grasp, printed in fresh ink that once matched her coiling braid. Of course, after three years of visits and four of these transfer notes, it was easy to spot her locks fading to ash in real-time. After all that, it was impossible not to get a kick out of confirming the obvious.
Evelyn rolled her eyes onto the pages, flipping through a few CPS filings and witness statements before her index finger landed against the damning words. “It seems you… struck another sophomore?”
I leaned in and took a quick sip of seltzer, masking my flinched reaction before popping the drink back onto the coffee table that divided us.
“That’s quite unlike you, Isaac,” She murmured.
“Thanks for the reminder,” I countered, “it’s nice to know this is a judgment-free zone.” My buried leg planted itself as my eyelids dropped in sync.
“Do you believe you’re exempt from judgment?” She prodded. This time our shared silence ended with a chuckle from her side of the room.
“Mrs. Ev, we can always revisit your code of conduct before continuing,” I dodged and gestured to the filing cabinet in the corner, “it’s second from the top, right?”
“And like last time, you’ll be hard-pressed finding anything that changes how I address you, nor stops me from pointing out how you're stalling the clock." The words ricocheted and pierced back through me. "Your grandfather pays good money for this."
"Then why are you complaining?" I remarked.
"I'm just saying, it's ill-mannered to take an opportunity like this for granted. It's a sign that he cares."
Not enough to take me in though. “I’ll make sure to thank him later then.” I dismissed, shuffling my posture and kicking back the leaves that began to brush against my ankle.
She sighed as her eyes fell back to the paper. A solid thirty seconds passed of us both pleading the fifth before she shifted gears. “I didn’t figure the Beck family as the kind to drop you over a single school infraction…” She muttered, then reeled with exhaustion as she read the victim’s name, “Wyatt Beck? Really?”
My eyes swung back toward the filing cabinet, yet she quickly grounded my focus with shot daggers. I held my tongue, then nodded.
“So, Isaac, what could’ve possibly led you to striking The Beck’s child? Under their foster care no less?” Evelyn continued to puzzle out the scenario. While she sat distracted in thought, my mind finally took the opportunity to breathe:
There had only been five minutes left in P.E. God, if only I’d bothered heading back to the lockers early. Wasn’t like I was a huge fan of the Florida heat anyhow, nor was I particularly fond of Wyatt Beck up till now, so I couldn’t have honestly told you why I found myself loitering by him throughout the period. It was as if being under his family’s care made my tether to him an obligation.
Nevertheless, the whistle sounded and the crowd flocked back. Not that I followed. My eye had already been caught by the girl in the sweater. She wandered onto court aimlessly, spinning as she pondered exactly where to step. She was practically in her own game of hopscotch without a care in the world. With each step, a nearby flower either bloomed or hissed away from her. Hell, it felt as if the trees bent over the court just to shine god rays onto her. It was amusing to see her prance around, completely lost and in her own world. Spotting her had never been difficult. My hair had always been decently bright, the gold sheen being one of the few features I was fond of, but hers was on a whole other level. Pearl white. I’d double-checked that the sun’s glimmer wasn’t simply messing with me. Placing her in any crowd would be the easiest game of Where’s Waldo. The ironic shame of it all was that nobody else saw her. But she saw me. Soon enough, Wyatt—
“Isaac?”
I snapped back to the present with a flurry of blinks. “I punched him.”
“…yes, I got that much, Isaac,” Evelyn noted, cocking her head. “Would you… be comfortable sharing why?” She asked with a lighter tone, glancing back at the notes provided. She started flipping through more pages in lieu of a response.
I made an attempt to pipe up. My vocal cords disagreed. My mind instead rewound its cassette.
Wyatt’s fingers snapped an inch from my face. A member of his clique piped up.
“What’s he looking at? Coach called everyone in.”
“Maybe he’s looking for his dad.” Wyatt snarked.
My breath eventually caught itself after the startle, but when I looked back at the court, the girl had vanished. All that was left was a mess of dirt in her place. I lightly gestured in that direction with hopes that I wasn’t alone this time.
“Uhuh, Greene?” Wyatt’s brow shot up.
“You saw her, right? The flower girl?” I prayed.
“Flowe— christ, you really are delusional!” Wyatt cackled. “Like father, like son, right? My folks were totally onto something with you!”
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
As I snuck a glance back at Evelyn, it was evident through the translucent looseleaf that she’d landed on my personal statement. It wasn’t an exact retelling. I’d only bothered keeping the details that made me look sane, for better or for worse. Through the page, I could see each word that her finger traced over, gauging her reactions live despite the daydreaming.
The other boy had spoken up. “Wy, this really the kid you’ve got in your house? Your fam’ taking in a charity case or something?”
I shut my eyes and stood from the bleachers. Thanks to my mom, I had practiced being patient to the best of my abilities. A simple count matched each step as I shrugged them off.
One. Two.
“It’s no biggie,” Wyatt droned, “but we sometimes get special cases like this guy.”
Three. Four.
“He hardly says a word to me as is. Must think he’s something special… well he is, but- OH, bro I just remembered-!”
Five.
“I’ve gotta show you his dad’s—"
—mugshot was the word Evelyn’s finger stopped at before she forced out a cough, straightening the pages and plopping them onto an adjacent desk.
While she hastily reorganized her documents and approach, I let my eyes wander toward any other focal point. A floral-patterned lamp, an unfamiliar pair of heels, and a few framed pictures beside her laptop. Evelyn proudly gleamed in each photo, husband in tow with a scoop of kids barely poking into frame. It was surreal seeing her so outright joyous, though most motherly grins felt like an abstract concept nowadays. Even now, Evelyn shortchanged me with a not-mad-just-disappointed disposition. Not that I should’ve expected more from bi-weekly appointments and a stream of misconduct.
Evelyn inhaled, then reeled things back to therapy. “Is your grandfather the one picking you up today?”
My eyes fell off the frame and landed back on her. We held a stand-off at that question, but after a full minute, it became clear she wasn’t budging. I offered an “Mhm.”
She nodded and readjusted in the armchair, shifting her leg to mimic my posture. “Has that been going well?”
“Mhm.” As if I had an answer to that question. I changed my stance, disregarding the puddle my heel dug into.
“I imagine he’s kept incredibly busy with his recent campaign. Has he shown you any of the ins and outs of that at all? Seems like something that’d be right up your alley.”
I fought to get another hum out. My brain rejected the lie’s passage. Evelyn discreetly rubbed her temple, and after briefly pondering, she pushed forward. “I heard him—your grandfather—in the lobby when he dropped you off. He mentioned possibly taking you to visit your dad.”
My nonchalance melted.
Mom hadn’t come home yet. She wouldn’t that night. She rested early on Christmas Eve.
A jolt passed through me, and before I knew it, I had stamped two marks into the decayed rug. One. Two.
When you’re 11 years old, you’re just crossing that bridge of understanding that the world exists past your own bubble. I was slower to that realization than most. As I looked through our front window toward the driveway, that hit me as I saw her. Hair white as snow, and a sweater fluffy enough that I swore it was Santa.
Three. Four.
Yet it was a lone girl, and as I waved, she waved back, and the forest loomed in on her till she melted away. She was in her own world, one past my family’s shelter.
Five.
My father didn’t come home either. I spent the rest of the night alone in our shelter, and by morning, the snow I’d been praying for was replaced with a crimson outside world which bled through my doorstep.
Six, Seven. I barely managed to restitch my torn focus, just barely hearing an echo bounce off the walls as I came to. I must’ve instinctively said something in that slip of mind because Evelyn stared me down with a nod I couldn’t interpret.
“So that’s it…” She murmured, leaning forward a tad.
“Sorry, what? I blanked.” I admitted half-accurately. The next thing she’d begun to mimic was my silence. “Why the hell are you even bringing that up?”
“Ill-mannered, Isaac.” She squinted.
“Are you now gonna ask for my code of conduct or something? Those rules go both ways,” I challenged. All I was met with was a glare, and I allowed my head to cool off, “…ma’am.”
Evelyn huffed.
“…I’d really prefer not to talk about that, Miss Evelyn.”
Her expression cracked with brief triumph before morphing into an unusually gentle smile. “That’s alright, Isaac. This is for your own comfort and growth. You should be speaking up more about those boundaries.” She reassured me, lurching over before rising to her feet. She gestured down at the clock on her smartwatch. 12:00 PM already. That didn’t stop her from leaving one last note for me. “But speaking honestly… your life would weigh much lighter if you worked to better open up to those in your life.” She stepped back to her desk, tapping her fingers against the picture frames. “Family makes all the difference. That’s how I’ve always seen it, at least.”
I nodded cautiously, still a bit lost in the situation as my nerves forced out a singular laugh. My eyes fell back on the photo, cross-referencing her current grin with the snapshot. A perfect copy. Indistinguishable aside from the vines that had begun to slither over the frame.
I recoiled on impulse as the beige wooden frame decayed a shade, my sore knuckles landing back on the couch to keep me propped up. The leather had dampened significantly, and as I glanced down, I realized I’d been palming a mossy clump. Algae had begun to seep out of the pile, creeping over the couch en masse and degrading everything it touched. Looking back up toward Evelyn, she was still there, simply staring at me with a level of confusion no different than before.
Of all days for this to happen, dammit.
With held breath, I propped myself up. My legs wobbled far more than I’d hoped. It would’ve been convenient if I had grown used to these delusions already. Still, I’d push through and lead myself to the door, stepping around the short hedges and hanging creepers that had overtaken the room. The walls were hardly visible at this point, replaced with a vast expanse of willows, though I could still see the rough outline of the office door buried in the boggy flora.
“I’ll k-keep the advice in mind.” I feigned normalcy at my best capacity, swiping away leaves to reveal the steel handle. With a twist, the faint clicks of the lock sounded, yet stopped abruptly with a squish. Peering down, a vine had entangled itself in the mechanism. Another twist. It still refused to budge.
I sputtered out a “See you next time!” in the hopes that it would buy me some time without making me look even more unstable. Another twist. No dice. A breath, a fourth twist, and finally a snap. The vine fell limp against the handle, and my heart took the single ounce of solace where it could get it. Taking one last glimpse back at the office, visible through the devouring wild was the shadow of the therapist, and a fluff of white staring at me from the back of the room.
“Oh, and Isaac?” Evelyn piped up. “Are you still seeing it?”
My heart stuttered, and as my eyes fell back to the door handle, the vines, and girl, had vanished without a trace. I squeezed the steel handle, firmly shook my head, and stepped out of Evelyn’s office.