Leone Frasier was living the aftermath of a tragic car crash that took his mother's life and left him barely able to walk on his feeble legs. He has had to endure the loss of his mother, the wrath of an abusive father, and all the added weight that...
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"Hello Leone, welcome!" Counselor Gomez gestured me into her office with her usually bright and kind smile. "It's been awhile since the last time you came in, how've you been?"
I hesitated my answer for just a moment, recalling all the turbulent events that have happened to me lately. "Good." It was all I could muster, my voice betraying the lingering tremors of emotion still within me.
My eyes shy away from making any possible eye contact with her as I slumped further back against my seat. "May I ask you something?" The sound of her taking her glasses off and closing them gently on her table filled the silence.
"Okay." I sniff and do a tiny nod.
We finally lock eyes and she gives me an unreadable look, the kind that made my chest constrict and tighten due to the unknown.
Finally, after her lips parted and pressed together as if she was contemplating the best way on how to phrase her thoughts, she spoke. "Are you okay, Leone?"
In that instant, her simple question unleashed a storm within me. All the chaos and conflict I had with my father and those three bullies no longer had a convenient smokescreen that could obscure the truth of my inner turmoil. Here I was, alone with my thoughts that were causing the cracks within me to form on the outside, enough that I was surely about to break.
Why is it that I am okay until someone asks if I am not?
"Yeah, I am." I nod my head as she doesn't seem overly convinced by my faint answer. "Why?"
"May I ask when you cut your hair?" She brings up with a tilted head. "I've never seen you with shorter hair before."
"I-I cut it a few days ago." I gulped. "Why?" I repeat.
"Nothing-I just think it suits you." She observed further and gestures against specific marks and bruises on my neck and face. "What happened here?"
"I was learning how to ride the skateboard with Dydan and I fell." I gulped down as I was so nervous about all her questioning that I couldn't stop doing it.
"The boy next door?" She asks with a smile and I nod. "I see, well that sounds lovely. How often do you two see each other and do fun stuff like that?"
"Almost everyday."
"Has he met your father?"
There it is, a suffocating ploy to somehow navigate this entire conversation about my dad.
"No, he hasn't." I couldn't help but grumpily let out as I began to grow impatient with all these questions. "Why would he? It's not like he has to anyway."
"What about your awards?" She deeply sighed as my reaction only seemed to have made her seemed more focused in observation.
"What about them?" I shrugged as the topic of my awards being brought up felt like a wound being reopened.
