Chapter 21
“I made sure I got thicker frames this time,” Sophie told James as they walked together down the hallway.
“Why?”
“I don’t want any more trouble, really,”
“Well, they weren’t mean to you,”
“They might as well have been, they ignored me,” she pushed her new black-framed glasses up her nose, “they only paid attention to what I looked like, not to what I said,” she paused, “not really.”
“Let’s go this way,” James pointed to his left down another hallway.
“But it’s shorter just to go straight-” she looked at James and smiled, knowing that he was going to show her something new. “Okay,” she followed him down the hallway.
They drifted through the tunnel of aged linoleum that had lined cases on one side. They were filled with sculptures that were glazed and fired. Each took a unique, lumpy shape, and looked like enlarged candies. On the other side of the hallway, layers of white paper were tacked to the wall making them look like a haze of tombstones in a cemetery. James and Sophie walked through the hallway in silence, looking from the walls to each other while they stepped toward the end of it. At the end, there was a bust sculpture of the man the school was named for, as well as a case behind him full of trophies. The sculpture had a hand written sign under it that was held in place by uneven masking tape: ‘Please, do not touch.’
“Do you think that guy is still alive?” Sophie asked James. He looked at the dark bronze face of the man frozen in sculpture, the way his eyes were hollow, and his metal cheeks held a stern expression. James looked at his hair as one block fused seamlessly with the man’s forehead, the way the ears emerged from the sides of the sculpture’s head and twisted around like dual flowers. James reached out his hand-
“Don’t!” Sophie nearly shouted. “Don’t break it!” James put his hand in his pocket,
“Either way, he’s alive here- I think. Those empty eyes.” They turned right and continued to take the long way to the counselor’s office. When they got there, they could hear that the session already started,
“No, Sarah, how does that make you feel.” Sarah looked up and began to answer the counselor when the woman’s face darted away from Sarah and toward the door where James and Sophie were.
“Sorry, the teacher let us out late,”
“Oh- sit down,” she stood up and hugged Sophie, who nervously returned the hug but brushed herself off after before sitting down in a chair across the circle from James.
“This is Sophie,” the counselor said, extending her hand palm up to point at Sophie. The counselor smiled like she was presenting a car on a game show.
“HI SOPHIE!” Sam said hyperactively. Sarah looked up and nodded. James looked over at Sophie and raised his eyebrows.
“Sophie, how do you feel today?”
“Alright,”
“Why just alright?”
“Nothing too interesting has happened,” the counselor wrote in her notes and looked at James,
“How do you feel today, James?”
“I feel good,”
“Oh, good,” she looked around the group, “I’m good, too. I’m happy to talk to you all today.” She looked at Sophie.
“Sophie, how do you feel about your-” she paused and flipped through her notes before returning her gaze, “about your parents?”
“I’m a little unhappy about my dad, he made me a bologna and ketchup sandwich for lunch today- I hate those,”
“So- you think it’s your dad’s fault that your parents are getting divorced,” she wrote in her notes, “what do you think your dad did wrong?”
“It isn’t my dad’s fault- they said they both decided,”
“How do you feel about your mom, Sophie?”
“What do you mean?”
“How much do you like her Sophie, here-” the counselor put her hands in front of her and extended one towards Sophie. “Would you rather spend a day with your mom,” she pulled the hand away and extended the other one, “or would you rather spend the day with your dad.”
“Both,” Sophie answered as the counselor folded her hands and said calmly,
“You can’t have both, anymore, Sophie, how does that make you feel?”
“Bad,” Sophie turned red, “it makes me feel bad.”
“Why?”
“Because I love them and I thought we were happy,”
“Can you be happy with them any more Sophie?”
“Not together, I can only be happy with one at a time,”
“Why, Sophie?”
“Because they only want to fight when they are together,” she wiped her eyes and sniffled, “they only want to be happy when they are apart,”
“Do you think they had a choice, Sophie?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think they don’t want to be happy?”
“I don’t know-”
“We’ll get back to that,” She turned to James.
“James, how do you feel today?” James looked down at his feet, one of his shoe laces were untied.
“I’m upset that you made Sophie cry.” The counselor smiled,
“James, you’re incorrect, I didn’t make Sophie cry, she is just working out how she feels about her parents. We are in control of our own feelings-” she looked right into his stern eyes, “James, how do you feel about your father today?”
“I feel,” James mocked, “I feel,” he rose his voice, “I feel,” James stood up and almost yelled at the counselor, “I feel, like my father would want me to be very angry at you for pretending to understand us.” The counselor leaned forward, like she was being challenged in the grocery store over the last ripe apricots,
“Us?” he waved his hands around in the circle,
“Us!” James’ face turned red, “We are in elementary school, and we have to figure out how we feel about people we love who we might never see again.”
“Why don’t you feel like you’ll see your father again, James?” The anger felt by everyone James had ever met rose up like flames lapping at window curtains inside him. At this point, he began to shout at the counselor,
“Because he’s dead! My dad is dead! And Sarah’s granddad is dead! And Sam’s mom was taken away! Sophie’s parents don’t love each other anymore, and all you do is pick at us,” the counselor was calmly writing notes, “all you do is pick at us for an hour a week, and then-” He caught his breath and kicked his chair, making Sarah jump. “You don’t really care, you don’t even remember who we lost,” he then yelled, “We are all going to die!” James collapsed on the floor and pulled his legs to his chest, with his face buried near his knees he murmured, “Don’t you know we’re all going to die?” and he sat there for a long time.
The counselor was smiling while scribbling down notes, everyone else including James was quiet and still. Sarah buried her face in her hands and dark hair. Sam stared at James and stopped kicking his legs back and forth in the chair. Sophie looked down at her hands. The room was still like rain-stained statues in a cemetery waiting to move the moment nobody was watching-
“James, why did you throw the chair?” James did not move. He thought about his father. While trying to remember his father’s face, James could only think of it the way he drew it. James could only see crayon on white construction paper, not his father’s eyes, his skin. James tried to remember going fishing with him, but in the boat next to James in his mind was a paper man drawn in crayon. When the paper man turned around, his eyes were hollow black. He shook his head and tried to remember his parents together, his mother was laughing in his mind but he could not hear his father’s voice when his paper mouth opened and closed. James heard his father’s arms crinkle as they were wrapped around his smiling mother.
“James, I have to report any violence to the Vice Principal, and your parents.” The air was like cold water running through the catacombs of his fiery lungs. “Your parent,” S
he corrected herself. James tried to remember his father shoveling the driveway he could hear him through the glass, scraping the snow off of the walk rhythmically. James’ father was facing away, working towards the road. When he turned around to wave at James in the window, the smiling paper face was where James’ dad’s head was supposed to be. When the paper man started saying something, the black of his eyes started dripping down and devouring the other colors smeared on his face. His gloves fell off and his shovel fell down while he waved at James through the window,
“There’s nothing to keep his fingers warm,” James whispered,
“What- James why did you choose to make this session about you?” In James’ mind the black crayon spread as far as his father’s head, and it started to dissolve him. James’ father’s clothes collapsed into themselves, every article of it was piled onto his snow boots.
“We’re all going to be paper.” James lifted his head.
“What?” The counselor asked in an annoyed tone. James put his head back down in his arms and said,
“Oh my God.” He lifted his head again and looked at Sophie, She looked back at him and finished his sentence.
“Oh my God, we’re all going to die.” She said between sobs.