I run my finger nails along the natural grain of the wood table, over and over again. It's just about the only thing that keeps me sane during these sessions.

"What do you think would have been a more healthier reaction to the situation?" Del Thompson, my guidance counselor, asks in her classic wishy-washy voice.

"I don't know." My voice echoes off of the plain white walls.

The only thing in here besides us is her creaky old desk, a rusty filing cabinet, and the two hard wood chairs that we're sitting on.

Somehow these sessions always seem to feel more like I'm being interrogated than that she's trying to help me.

"Looking back on it now, if you could change what happened, would you have tried to think things through before you went after Carl?"

I stare at her, a look on my face that shows her that I think she's an absolute idiot. What kind of a question is that?!
Why on earth would she think that would be a good question to ask me? For someone who supposedly went to college and trained about human emotions for ten years she is brick stupid.

"Anna, why do you even bother coming here anymore?" She takes her glasses off and sets them down on the table before letting out a long sigh. "It's been months, and you haven't given me an inch."

"You know why I come here." I say, raising my eyebrows to remind her. As if she doesn't know.

"Let's talk about something else then." She says, a section of her brunette hair falling out of her normally perfect bun.

She seems flustered, and that makes me grin to myself. It's a refreshing contrast to her normal wishy-washy-everything's-fine-stay-calm personality. I don't know how the woman can live like that. It would make me puke.

"Something that won't make you want to kill me too." Del mutters to herself. "Tell me something about your life before the first night, when you were younger."

Again, I give her that look. How dare she act like I'm some kind of ticking time bomb that will just go off if she slips up and says the wrong thing!

"Where did you live?"

"I lived on a farm in Georgia." I say with a tone of boredom to disguise the anger bubbling beneath the surface.

"Did you have any siblings?"

Images of my siblings laughing and playfully teasing me on a hot summer day take over my vision. But then I remember their brutal deaths and I shake my head to clear it of the image.

"Two." I snap, as if it's her fault they're dead.

"What are their names?" She asks gently.

"Maggie and Shawn. Their names were Maggie and Shawn." I say refusing to make eye contact and dragging my nails against the grain, so hard it's almost painful.

"Can you tell me something about Maggie or Shawn?"

"They're dead."

I can tell that I'm annoying her but she doesn't falter with the questions.

"Anything else?" She asks. "Maybe a memory? Something you used to do together that made you happy?"

"I was to young to remember anything."

"You don't have any memories of them?" She asks me, narrowing her eyebrows just slightly.

I shake my head no and she writes something down on her stupid clip board that she refuses to not use. It annoys me. What is she writing this stuff down for? I'm sure she has a folder with my name on it in her stupid filing cabinet. That's where she keeps private information and the dark secrets that her other 'clients' share with her. I doubt she has anything in there about me besides my sarcastic answers. Like she said, I've given her nothing.

"Why don't we talk about you for once, Del?" I sass her.

She prefers for me to call her Mrs. Thompson, the prime reason I hardly ever do.

"Don't be disrespectful, Ms. Greene, it's rude." She scolds me, barely looking up from her clipboard to me.

I roll my eyes and cross my legs, moving around a little bit to try to get a little bit comfortable in the hard wood chair. I've come to the conclusion that it's impossible.

After a minute she sets it down and looks at me again. I refuse to squirm under her piercing glare. I hold my ground and stare her down until her eyes flicker away. Ha. I win.

"Since you can't remember your old life, I guess we'll have to talk about something a little more recent."

Is her voice cheery and calm for everything she says? I can just imagine what things are like at her home. 'Oh no! There's a walker trying to eat my face!' 'Honey, I just shit my pants!'

I have to stifle a laugh from that last one. To be fair, that's probably never happened or will ever happen.

"How did you feel when Charlie died?"
I wince at that. I hate when she brings him up, and talking about how I felt when he died is going to far.

She wouldn't even know his name if it was up to me. But it's not.

I shrug my shoulders, trying to remain nonchalant, when inside, I want to bolt from the room like a frightened rabbit and never return.

"Words, Ms. Greene, use words. Don't be silent. Say whatever you want."

"How anyone would feel if someone they were close to died. That's how I felt." I sound calm, but inside my shoes, my toes are curling.

"How would anyone feel? Describe it." She persists.

"You have a husband, right?" I ask her, and she nods. "Say someone were to just put a bullet through his skull, two feet away from you. How would you feel?"

"I know exactly how I would feel, that's not the point. I want to know what you felt. This isn't about me, or anyone else. It's about you."

I don't give her a response. I go back to
my glaring instead.

"Let's try something else." She suggests, digging through one of her desk drawers.

I roll my eyes yet again as she pulls out a sketch of something.

"I want you to look at this picture and describe what you see in it to me with as many words as possible."

She holds up the picture, one of some kind of abstract drawing that could obviously be twisted around into a bunch of different objects.

I nearly slap my own forehead from the stupidness of it.

"Are you serious?" I say, nearly laughing at the earnest expression set on her face.

"As serious as a heart attack, Ms. Greene."

I look deep into the picture, trying to put something believable together to tell her.

It only takes a moment, but when I see the image, clear as day, I can tell that my tough exterior expression has slipped off my face. My mouth slips open just a little as I stare.

"Anna?"

She breaks my focus and I snap my head up to look at her.

"What?" I snap.

"What do you see?" She asks me.

"Nothing." I say, looking back into the picture and not seeing the same thing I saw five seconds ago. "Absolutely nothing. There must be something wrong with me."

"Don't lie to me, I know you saw something." She insists. "What was it?"

I don't answer. Instead I stare at the ground and twist my fingers together.

"What did you see?" She asks me again, her voice still not changing from that perfectly calm and understanding tone.

When it's clear to her that I'm not going to answer the question, she opens her desk drawer again and replaces the picture into it.

"Are you liking school here?"

"No. I think it's ridiculous." I answer. "We should be learning something that's gonna help us, not what pi is and how to find the simplified form of an equation."

"Well for someone who feels that way, your grades are excellent. Mr. Jacobs sent me a copy of your report card yesterday and I was pleased to see how well you're doing. I know it was hard for you to start high school when you missed several previous grades. You should be proud of yourself."

"Thank you." I say, the first thing I've said to her today that wasn't laced with sarcasm or anger.

"Do you have a favorite subject?" She asks.

For once I feel like I'm not just the test subject for her to understand the inner workings of my mind. I feel like she's actually asking, not just analyzing me.

"I've always liked to read. I like when we read out loud in class." I admit.

"What books have you read lately?" I grin.

"We just finished Romeo and Juliet. I heard about it when I was little but I never actually knew the story until now. Everyone else thought it was boring, but I liked it." I can tell that she thinks she's finally made a connection with me, but she hasn't.

"I read that once in high school." Del says with a smile on her face. "What else?"

"Lots of others. Mr. Jacobs says they're 'classical literature'. Some of them I don't like as much, but reading is better than anything else we do."

"Excellent." She begins to write what I told her down on her notepad and the smile slips from my face.

"Did you read while you were separated from your group last winter?"

"No." I lie.

"I can tell when you lie to me." I grind my teeth together.

"Come on, Anna, don't do this. You were just starting to open up to me- just the slightest bit. Tell me more. Anything. I will never judge anything you say. This is a safe-"

"I know!" I interrupt her. "This is a safe place and you want me to feel at home and relaxed at all times."

I've heard it enough times to know exactly what she was gonna say. Regardless, I don't think I've ever felt at home or relaxed while I was here.

She rolls her lips into her mouth, thinking carefully for a minute.

"Would it help if you had someone you trusted here? Would it be easier for you to say how you feel?" Another one of her weird ideas.

"No." I say, somewhat disrespectfully.

"It wouldn't be like you were telling these things to me then. Maybe we could ask Rick? Or someone closer to your age?" She hints.

"Let's be honest here, Del. If you can't pry it out of me, then no one can." It's at this point that I kick my feet up onto the desk and cross my ankles, an obvious act of rebellion.

This position isn't even comfortable, but I'm trying to make a point here. She purses her lips but doesn't say anything about it, although I can tell it's bothering her. That's enough encouragement for me to keep my feet up. I'm getting under her skin. I know, I'm evil. It's what keeps me up at night.

"I'm not trying to pry anything out of you." She says, all positive and collected. "Whatever you want to say is what I want to hear. I'm just here to talk with you about it and be as helpful as I can."

"Excellent." I mimic her from a few minutes earlier, a devilish smirk playing on my lips. I can tell that I'm pushing her limits, but she's pushing mine too.

"May I ask you some more questions then?" She asks sweetly.

"Shoot."

"Is there anything in particular that you miss about Charlie?"

"Nope."

"If you could've, would you have stayed there with Charlie forever?"

"I don't know."

"What do you think things would be like now if he was alive and you had stayed with him at his soldier camp?"

That one really hits home. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about it.

"I don't care." I say harshly.

She's done it again. She's got me all upset and angry all over again. Del doesn't seem to care though, because as soon as I answer her question she fires another one at me.

"Do you think Carl was wrong to kill Charlie?" That's the straw that breaks the camel's back.

It's that nagging voice, the one that she uses on me all the time, that pushes it over the edge. It always stays the same, trying to be helpful, but instead just brings up painful topics. By the end of most of our sessions I'm literally spitting answers at her and she still is completely calm.

"I don't want to talk about it!" I angrily shout at her, pushing my chair back and standing up. "I'm just a girl that developed a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome, so stop trying to figure me out!"

"See you next week?" She asks before I can get out the door.

"Of course." I squeeze my fingers together, making them turn white.

The door slams behind me and I allow myself a small smile from that.

-

(Comment what you think is going on. Xo😚)