Meet Mr. Way

It was a normal room; to be honest, Angelica thought it would be a plain white room with only a chair and a couch, with a male waiting for her, a judgemental face ready for her. However, she was completely wrong.

Mikey Way was a very nerdy person. That was the first thing the girl thought, which helped the stress and anxiety vanish and an incredibly large need to giggle came to replace it. He sat on a very comfortable looking chair, eyes closed and feet propped up on the table in front of him, looking like he was in a deep slumber.

The past weekend had been a complete disaster; for once, the brunette had attempted to be nice and actually have a conversation with her father. Of course, it hadn’t resulted in anything good; the male had long ago given up on considering the female his daughter, treating her as a useless human being. The events that had destroyed their family often came back up in conversation, and this time, Angelica brought a small mark on her face to prove its return.

“Mr. Way?” The girl called out gently, afraid of scaring him out of his slumber. It wasn’t a busy day for him; the school wasn’t that problematic, as many newspapers sometimes tried to portrait it.

Mikey quickly woke up, his eyes darting to the petite brunette, and a gentle smile formed on his lips. He seemed nice, and for the first time she was meeting a therapist that didn’t always have a pitiful smile plastered on his lips.

“You must be Angelica! I’m sorry; I always doze off for a few minutes after lunch. Yes, I must be that old.” He joked with her, in a poor and awkward attempt at making their interaction lighter from the start. “Please, come inside and feel yourself at home.”

Normally, these poor jokes and lame attempts at making her feel at ease annoyed her; this time, his goofy smile conquered her, dragging a chuckle out of her lips as she placed her books down on the table and sat down in front of him.

“Don’t feel bad, I sometimes do that.” She admitted lightly, shrugging. “Mr. Way, your brother, said I could come in for an unexpected meeting, since we were only supposed to start next week.” The girl added, knowing that this wasn’t exactly how they had agreed to start things.

Nodding, Mikey dismissed her worries; he was dying to have a bit more of work. These girls weren’t fond of opening up, and the ones who truly needed help didn’t come search for it, which caused a lot of boredom and uneventful days for the therapist.

“Of course, don’t worry about it. I’m guessing something is troubling you at the moment… Would you like to tell me all about it?” The tall male asked, his feet coming back down to the ground for only a few seconds before they went up to the table again, looking at her.

She wasn’t sure if the change of demeanour was supposed to help her feel more at ease, or simply make him more comfortable, but Angelica felt annoyingly calmer and at ease inside the room. Nodding, she cleared her throat.

“I guess I don’t need to tell you the reason why I’m here, right? I mean, if I’m seeing a psychiatrist then it’s because something is definitely wrong with me.” The girl half laughed, half hissed.

She wasn’t particularly happy to see a therapist, but she had to agree that, as things with her father went from bad to worse, maybe talking to someone who knew how to help her deal with her problems was not so bad after all.

“I guess we’re all a little messed up in this world. No one’s perfect, and those who pursuit perfection are definitely the craziest ones.” His lips thinned into a flat line, fingers drumming against a brown paper folder on his lap, the folder she knew had all the information about her.

“How was your weekend?” He spoke after a while of watching her in silence, trying to find the words to begin with. “Did you stay here or did you go home?”

“I went home.” Her eyes swung from him to the folder beneath his fingers. “I thought it would be a good idea, but I guess I was wrong.”

She could bet he had already read the contents of the folder and studied it, over and over again. He probably thought she was just another teenager with a volatile behaviour.

“What happened to your face?” Her hand instinctively hid the bruise when he spoke. She didn’t expect him to ask that, and she wasn’t sure about whether it was better to tell him the truth or not.

“You know, there’s a thing called medical confidentiality. There must exist a level of trust between a physician and the patient so that the physician can properly treat the patient.” He let his feet slip one at the time back to the floor, his body leaning slightly forward.

“This is nothing,” she sighed. “I said some things to my father I probably shouldn’t have said.”

“Did he hit you?” His voice was strangely calm. Angelica sensed he was assessing her, so she simply nodded. “And how did that make you feel?”

She blinked at him several times. “How do you think? My own father hit me!” It was such a stupid question that she had to refrain herself from rolling her eyes at him.

“But yet, you recognize it was your fault. You said it yourself, that you shouldn’t have said the things you did.”

“Yes but,” she breathed out deeply in exasperation. “He shouldn’t have done it, right?”

“Yes, that’s true.” He had placed the folder on the coffee table separating them, next to the small notebook that remained closed. “What about you? Should you have done what you did?”

“You don’t even know what I said to him!” She crossed her arms. That man was starting to annoy her.

Saturday’s dinner had been going well between Angelica and her father, thatwas until he mentioned that he had gotten rid of most of her mother’s things, and that a box with a few photos and another belongings with a sentimental value was now the only thing left from her. It suffices to say that she ended up telling him that she wished that he’d been the one to die in the car crash instead of her mother.

“And that’s not what I intend to know. I just want you to think about the reasons why your father acted that way. Yes, your dad lost it. It’s called rage and it makes people say and do things they later regret about it.”

His words sunk into her brain, causing her to dwell on them for more than a second, and install an awkward silence between the pair. As much as she would hate to admit it, Mikey was right; she often did and said things she regretted herself. However, in this situation, it was different.

“That’s true. They do say things they don’t mean. But do you want to know the difference between those people and my father?” The brunette asked him, her eyes on his figure without blinking.

He simply nodded, knowing that it would be hard to truly understand what was happening inside her household, and if she was safer inside the school or out of it.

“He doesn’t regret saying anything. Why? Because to him, I’ll always be the one who took away the woman he loved. And he won’t ever get rid of me until I either die or find someone crazy enough to fall for me.”

Notes