Troubled [Frerard]

“Every day?” Frank cried. “I have to see a shrink every fucking day!?”

His mother let out a low sigh and her gaze dropped to the floor in guilt. “It’s what the doctors said you needed. I’m doing this because I care about you, Frankie.”

“Don’t talk about caring about me! You haven’t been here, you’ve never been here. You send me off to live at some boarding school, five hours away! If you cared about me you would have been there! You wouldn’t have sent me away so you could be with your new boyfriend!” he seethed, turning away from his mother. The sight of her dressed in some fancy silk dress, with her hair curled and pristine made him sick. This wasn’t the mother he knew.

The mother he knew wore outworn sneakers and sweatpants. Baggy shirts and hoodies. Not slippers and dresses. Not pearl necklaces and diamond earrings. The mother he knew would never send her son away to a boarding school so far away. Things had changed, and it was all because of him. Kyle Goodman. That pretentious asshole.

“Frank, don’t speak to your mother like that!” the asshole shouted, slithering his firm arm around Ms. Iero. Frank grunted in response and sent a desperate look to Sister Jane. “May I please be dismissed, Sister?” he pleaded, wanting nothing more than to go back into his dorm and rot.

The sister gave a sympathetic glance to his parents then shifted back to Frank. “Of course Mr. Iero.” she nodded. Frank stormed out of the private room. He’d been in that room too many times for only being at that school for five months. Those rooms were reserved for meetings with students and their parents, on the ‘rare occasion’ that those would happen. Nevertheless there was five of those rooms, and he’d been in every single one.

Frank wasn’t usually problematic. He was always quiet. However, recently he was becoming more and more violent. Towards himself mainly, but the reason for the parent-student meeting was that he had knocked a fellow student- James, unconscious and threatened to kill him. ‘He kept calling me short and telling me I was going to die alone. That sick fuck.’ Frank had told the principal- otherwise known as Sister Ana.

Frank was escorted by Sister Jane to his dorm. As if he was going to run and try to escape. He had tried that- hence the first ever parent-student meeting, so it wasn’t illogical- but he wasn’t going to run away. There was nothing within miles of campus. He knew that from experience.

The door clicked shut behind him and he slammed himself on the bed face first. At least one advantage of beating the shit out of your roommate was that you’d have the room to yourself until he got out of the infirmary.

So Frank was to be going to a psychologist after lessons every day until he showed signs of ‘complete recovery’. Frank didn’t exactly know what he had to recover from, but he was sure that if he pretended to be all smiley and happy- he could fool the shrink into thinking they’d cured their patient. Smirking to himself about his plan, he fell into a deep, exhausted sleep. He’d missed the soft knock on his door, and missed the paper slipped under his door. That letter read;

‘Dear Mr. F. Iero,
In light of recent events, Sister Ana has advised a highly trained and experienced psychologist for you to confide in. Your sessions will begin after classes starting tomorrow, and following every day afterwards. Sundays are excluded from this program- as that is reserved as a religious day.

Doctor G. Way is a professional and respectable member of our church, who has kindly offered to assist our troubled students free of charge. You are to treat him with the utmost respect, otherwise you will be punished.

Serving you with love and loyalty,
Blairwood Catholic Academy’

Notes