The car ride to the clinic the following evening was stuffy and awkward. I felt like a ticking time bomb in the back of Dad’s sedan. He kept his eyes glued to the road and Mom glanced back at me every three seconds to make sure I hadn’t melted into a pool of tears or something. 604Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdY54Stm8mt
The group was held in a cramped, windowless classroom in the back of the clinic. There was one of those crappy plastic tables set up against the back wall with an untouched plate of chocolate chip cookies and a pitcher of that powder-mix lemonade standing nearby. The main spectacle was collection of creaky metal folding chairs set up in a circle, each filled with a kid about my age or younger, all of whom looked like they would rather be in the Bastille than here. There were eight kids including me, and my parents were the only adults in the room.
Mom, of course, grabbed two cookies with a napkin and offered one to me right away. I shook my head, feeling my face flush because I knew all the other kids would be watching me. The pit of my stomach churned and I, too, found myself wishing for a nice cozy prison cell, or maybe a pit of lava. I parked my butt on the edge of the last chair available and leaned back, hands stuffed in my hoodie pockets as if I couldn’t care less about where I was. Thirteen pairs of eyes darted to and fro, trying to steal furtive glances at the me, the new kid, probably trying to guess what kind of morbid condition had condemned be to Support Group.
One pair of eyes didn’t move from where they seemed to be very interested in a beetle that was inching its way across the thin grey carpet. They belonged to a girl with dark hair that fell carelessly onto her shoulders in a way that made me look twice. In fact, everything about her seemed careless. She was wearing an old grey t-shirt and jeans with enough holes in that I was sure my mom had already noticed and cringed. She had her Converse-clad feet splayed out in a perfect slouch, arms crossed, unmoving. I didn’t even realize I was staring at her until Dr. Frolland entered the room with the grace of a bull elephant, greeting the other kids with tense smiles and head nods. When he noticed my parents, he stiffened, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with them.
“Aha! Mrs. Reynolds, this must be your husband…”
“Jack,” Mom answered with a huge, fake smile that did nothing to hide the worry written all over your face. Dad’s mouth was a pencil-thin line and I felt a twinge of annoyance that he seemed to want to be here even less than I did, and I was the one supposedly suffering.
“Ah, yes,” Dr. Frolland said, faking his smile nearly as much. Call me weird, but that’s the first thing I could spot about a person, how fake their smile was. Frolland was rockin’ an eight out of ten on the fakeness scale. “Ah, perhaps I should have taken a little more time explaining the Group to you, Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds. See, the Group is supposed to just be for the children, so they feel safe and secure sharing their difficulties with the others.”
Two things immediately annoyed me: first, Frolland calling us children and second, the sort of arrogant attitude he was putting on for my parents. I shifted in my seat, realizing that a lot of things had been annoying me recently. See? I told myself somewhat smugly, I’m not depressed. I’m just bitter.
“So, you’d like us to leave, then?” Dad didn’t attempt to hide his relief. “How long does this, eh, ‘group thing’ last?”
“No longer than ninety minutes, I promise,” Dr. Frolland said , moving to open the door for them. “You can come pick up your child at seven-thirty, out in front of the building.”
My mom opened her mouth as if to protest but Dad led her towards the door before she could. “Make some friends, Sammy!” she called as they disappeared back into the hallway. Frolland closed the door with a dull thud and several of the other kids snickered. I sank lower in my seat, feeling the heat flush through my face and right to my ears, where it always did when I was embarrassed. Leave it to my mom to remove any hope I had of saving face in front of this group.
Then again, we were all here because we were supposedly crazy, so what were the chances of that happening anyway?
“Alright ladies and gentlemen, as you can see, we’ve got a new member of
Support Group with us today!” Frolland said a little too cheerfully as he pulled up his own chair and settled a clipboard with a notepad on his lap. He began clicking his pen every few seconds, much to the annoyance of pretty much everyone in the room. I glanced at the girl with dark hair, who didn’t seem interested in what was going on around her whatsoever. “Samuel, how about you tell everyone your name and why you’re here, if you would?”
All eyes stayed on me, save two.
“Uh…” I looked around, wondering what to say. Since I didn’t have anything rehearsed, I just said the first thing that popped into my mind. “I’m Samuel, and, uh, I’m here because, uh, I’m... bitter.”
“Bitter?” Frolland scribbled something on his notepad and gave me a peculiar look. “What makes you say that, Samuel?”
“I mean, I’m here instead of at home, for starters,” I said plainly. A couple of the other kids ooohed and I bit my lower lip, avoiding looking directly at the counsellor. The girl with the dark hair looked up slightly and cocked her head at me, as if noticing the strange new kid for the first time, the ghost of a smile touching her lips. I’m really not an obnoxious kid, I just had a bad habit for saying exactly what I was thinking at the time. Call it a byproduct of being socially awkward, I guess. Luckily for me, Frolland seemed to have a lot patience, and just pursed his lips and scribbled another note.
“Alright then, Samuel, since it’s your first time we’ll let you keep it short. Thank you for your honesty, I suppose,” he said with a cough. He turned to the kid sitting immediately to my left. “Over to you,, Caleb, how about you share with the rest of us why you’re here?”
The red haired kid frowned and his eyes dropped to the floor. “You guys already know that,” He said, shuffling his feet.
“Samuel doesn’t know,” the counselor said, giving Caleb that fake-ass smile again.
“If you don’t want to tell me, that’s cool,” I said in a low voice. “It’s none of my business.”
“Ah ah ah, Samuel, you’re wrong there,” Frolland tutted, clicking his pen with each ah. “Actually, it is your business. It’s all of our business, right, kids?” He looked around at the circle, whose gazes seemed to have wandered everywhere but him. “In fact, let’s all say the Support Group mission statement, shall we? All together now!”
“I am member of this Support Group,” Six kids began in low drones. The dark haired girl’s mouth stayed predictably shut. “I am a sentient being, and I recognize my responsibility to help better and improve the lives of each member of the group through empathy, understanding, and personal contribution. Together, we can overcome the challenges that daily hold us back.”
The words themselves were pretty positive, I guess, but the way the rest of the group spouted it off like robots made the hairs on my spine stand up a little.
Frollands smiled, a little more genuine this time, and turned back to Caleb. “Now, Caleb, could you please share?”
“Fine,” he sighed, looking right at me. “I’m Caleb, and I’m here because I sometimes hear voices in my head.”
“Um... okay.” I said after a long and painfully uncomfortable pause. Caleb grimaced and went back to staring at the floor. Frolland moved right on to the next girl.
All in all, there was Caleb, Alice, Derek, Bethany, Cara, and Jeremy. Alice had night terrors, Derek was an ex-drug addict, Bethany used to cut herself, Cara was bipolar, and Jeremy had something he called “family issues,” which Frolland didn’t seem too keen to press him about. He skipped right over the dark haired girl until the very end, when everyone was looking freshly wounded from digging up their secrets for what seemed like the millionth time in Support Group.
“Quinn, do you think that you could possibly share with the Group today?” Frolland ventured, though he didn’t look too hopeful. The girl, Quinn, glanced up at him, then to me, and then back at him.
“I suppose I’ll probably never hear the end of it if I don’t, huh Dr. F?”
“I would really rather you not call me Dr. F,” Frolland said, sickly-sweet. “Now come on, you’re just as much a part of this support group as everyone else.”
“Fine.” she said shortly. She leaned forward on her elbows and stared right at me. If her green eyes could shoot lasers, I would have been a pile of ash. “My name is Quinn, and I’m here because I’ve got a case of incurable apathy.”
“That’s a rather… interesting way to put it, though not inaccurate I suppose.” Frolland said, raising his eyebrows. “Now that that’s out of the way, how about we move on to the Sharing Circle, and share what difficulties we’ve had this week. Sound good?”
Nobody answered him.
This is how Support Group continued for the next hour and a half. Dr. Frolland spend every minute trying to provoke some profound, introspective crap out of a bunch of teenagers who would have given anything in the world to simply not have to talk about it. It really wasn’t easy hearing some people talk about what they had gone through, it kind of made my “chronic depression” seem irrelevant. I felt especially bothered by Derek, who talked a little about how he had wrapped a belt around his arm to bulge up the veins because he was having a hard time not thinking about heroine that week, and also by Bethany, who teared up when she admitted that she had cut herself twice that week “just to remember what it felt like.” It was a surreal world, catching a glimpse into the minds of people who, otherwise, you’d never hear talk about their problems.
More than once I was pretty sure I caught Quinn staring at me but she darted her eyes away each time. I was pretty sure it was just because I was something new and different; like the beetle on the carpet, I was just something to be watched until I became boring, something to fill up her time until something newer and less boring wandered along. Oddly enough, the thought didn’t quite bother me for some reason. Finally, at seven-thirty, Frolland wrapped up Group with that “be the change you wish to see in the world” Ghandi quote and dismissed us all. I noticed that the cookies and lemonade remained neglected as we all shuffled out of the room.
“Hey, Samuel.” I was leaning against one of those decorative brick walls out in front of the building, waiting for my parents when Quinn showed up in front of me. “You got a light?”
“What, like, for cigarettes?” I asked stupidly.
She laughed, her smile lighting up her otherwise unemotional features, making me realize suddenly that she was actually pretty attractive despite the general brooding sort of atmosphere. “Technically, yes, but I don’t smoke.” She plopped her left foot up on the wall next to me and pointed at the bright green shoelace on her Converse sneaker. “My aglet broke.”
“Aglet?” I stared at her foot blankly.
“Yeah, you know, the little plastic thing that goes on the end of your shoelace?” I could indeed see that one end of her shoelace was beginning to fray. “I can fix it, I just have to sort of set it on fire a little bit.”
“Sorry,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t have a lighter.”
“That’s cool,” she said, and leaned back against the wall with me. “I’ll fix it later, I guess.”
“Okay.” Was all I said. If you thought I was socially inept around normal people, girls were a whole new level of awkward for me.
“So, Samuel, how d’you like Support Group so far?” She asked after a slight pause. She popped a pack of gum out of her pocket and slipped a piece into her mouth without offering me any.604Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHBT4agnN1F
“It’s… uh…” I struggled to find an an accurate description.
“It’s like watching a baboon teach a bunch of cats how to knit, huh?” she said with a straight face. “It’s just fucking painful.”
I couldn’t help it, I laughed out loud. “Pretty much.”
We stood like that for a little while, silently watching as one by one the other kids’ parents picked them up. My parents, of course, we the last ones to show up. Well, kind of, Quinn’s parents still hadn’t shown up when I spotted my dad’s sedan come around the corner.
“So, uh, I guess I’ll see you next week, then?” I said, pushing myself off from the wall.
“For both our sakes, I hope not,” she said with a wide grin. “Don’t stay too bitter, kid.”
“Don’t stay too… uh, apathetic,” I said, finally remembering the word she had used in Group.
“Fat chance,” she smirked, and turned on her heel and began walking through the lawn in the direction of a neighborhood behind the clinic.
“Sammy, you made a new friend!” Mom said enthusiastically as I slid into the back seat and clicked my seatbelt. “See, Dr. Fronald was right, this Support Group is already really good for you!”
“It’s Dr. Frolland, Mom,” I said with a sigh, pressing my cheek into the cool class of my window with a sigh. “And I just met that girl, we’re not really friends.”
“Oh, you will be soon enough, don’t you worry,” Mom said, turning back toward me and squeezing my leg. “So what did you learn at group today?” She asked,
I was going to say “nothing,” which wasn’t exactly untrue, but I spotted Quinn again as my dad pulled onto the street behind the clinic and started back toward our side of town. She was perched on the bus stop bench , hands shoved deep in her pockets, staring off a into space like she had been for most of Group.
“No matter how hard it tries, a baboon will never teach a bunch of cats to knit,” was all I could come up with.
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