Chapter 1 – The Therapist

“Are you still having bad dreams, Charlie?”

Today I’m playing a new game with my therapist, Ms. Wendy.  I’m wearing shorts even though it’s cool out for March. Even for L.A.  But I’m freeballing because my foster mom didn’t have time to finish the laundry over the weekend, so I’m sitting, bouncing my knees and crossing my legs to see if Ms. Wendy will notice.  It’s not that anything is showing – these are, like, board shorts – but I want to see if she’s pervy enough to look.

Ms. Wendy never asks me how I feel.  She just wants to know, yes or no, am I still having bad dreams, what are they about, and then she’ll make notes in her notebook.  One time when she got up to refill her blue mug (“Therapists Do It Thoughtfully”) from the water cooler down the hall, I snuck a look at her notebook and all she wrote was “persistent nightmares” and “uncommunicative.”  She had underlined “uncommunicative.”  I know I don’t talk much; I don’t have much to say to her.

“Charlie? Bad dreams?” She’s so annoying.

“I guess so.”  I cross my arms so I can scratch my elbows, and look around her drab office.

I see Ms. Wendy once a week which is fine with me.  It gets me out of school for an afternoon.  I wish she had one of those psychiatrist couches you can lie down on like you see on TV, but instead I’m fidgeting in this large wooden chair with a footrest across from her desk in her dimly lit room while she sits facing her laptop which has her calendar and emails up. I feel like I’m an interruption in her busy and very important day.  Her eyes are always focused on her laptop.  The computer’s reflection on her glasses sort of makes her face look like a weird Halloween mask with glowing eyes.  She occasionally scribbles down notes in her yellow paper pad that I just know will get me in trouble with my caseworker.

I know how things work.  I just turned fifteen but I know if I say too much to Ms. Wendy, her notes will screw up my future.  And the more notes she makes means the more she’ll be blabbing to my caseworker, and the fewer chances I’ll have to get adopted.

Ms. Wendy’s desk is surrounded by tall wooden bookshelves and her wall of degrees and certificates. It’s stuffy in here. Her office has this stupid brown ceiling fan, which turns very slowly like the second-hand on her wall clock.  What good is a ceiling fan that doesn’t go faster?  

Ms. Wendy has drawn-in eyebrows that make her face look not quite real, like a Chucky doll.  She always wears black to camouflage her fatitude but it only makes her resemble a big black bear balancing on a stool.  She ends our sessions exactly after forty-five boring minutes, even if I’m in the middle of trying to tell her something important.  I’m just a checkmark in her calendar:  “Appointment with Charlie Kenter.” So we both are clock watchers.

I hate Ms. Wendy.  I know it’s not good to hate people, but she represents the System, and I don’t have a problem hating the System.

My old therapist, Ms. Beverly, was always so eager to listen to me or play stupid (okay, they were sort of fun) board games with me that she sometimes lost track of the time or forgot to write anything at all in her notepad.  I liked Ms. Beverly a lot.  She was someone I could talk to about my worrying, my nightmares.  She taught me relaxation techniques, breathing tricks with a paper bag—for when I’m having anxiety attacks.  I thought she cared. Unfortunately, one afternoon I told her that I loved her and she calmly put down her pencil and told me that it was inappropriate for a boy to become overly attached to his therapist.  She referred me to Ms. Wendy the next week. Just like that, she didn’t want to see me anymore.  

Ms. Wendy is still taking notes, her eyes occasionally darting at me over the rim of her glasses.  Her pencil is practically tearing into the paper. I’m wondering what she’s writing when I’m not even saying anything.  My ass cheeks are itchy and falling asleep so I keep shifting in the chair.

“Can you tell me about your most recent dream, Charlie?”  Ms. Wendy sounds bored.

“I dunno.”

“Your foster mom says that she hears you getting up in the middle of the night.  Are you still worried about earthquakes?”

Finally I go, “I guess.”

“Still having nightmares,” she says to herself as she makes a note.

My dreams are in my file in TMI detail.  Ms. Wendy knows all about my recurring nightmares: the ones where the Big One, the great earthquake, was destroying L.A., and I had no family to run to.  No family to save me. Those nightmares were so real, so scary, I’d have to force myself to wake up, first thinking I’m covered in blood, then realizing it’s just sweat dripping from my face.

I’ve been in and out of foster care for almost five years, so I’ve developed my own checklist to try to get adopted.  Number one is be clean; potential parents always sniff for B.O., and see dirty clothes or fingernails or hair as problem areas.  Number two, don’t swear; say “shit” or “fuck” in front of someone and they’ll choose another kid.  Lucky for me, I had no problem with number three: don’t be a Damien.  Seriously, boys named Damien never get adopted.  My caseworker, Linda, told me that “Damien” was the name of an adopted kid from an old horror movie I had never seen (not that I ever watch horror movies anyway).  And number four, don’t talk about your nightmares.  I couldn’t have anyone thinking that I was nuts.

The main thing against me was my age.  We’re like the dogs at the rescue shelter.  Everyone wants the puppies—the cute and cuddly babies—and then the cute and wobbly toddlers.  No one wants a fifteen-year old dog (or kid) because they’re afraid we’re too old, we’re troubled, probably damaged beyond repair. We have “issues.” And in a couple years, we hit eighteen and the System bails on us.

A couple months ago, I had to do one of those Wednesday’s Child videos for the local TV station.  That’s where once a year each foster kid gets a whole sixty seconds of television time to beg for a home, but of course you can watch that Sarah McLachlan commercial for kittens and puppies for hours late at night, every night.  I know because when I can’t sleep, I sometimes watch TV and that’s all that’s on.  If you ask me, people worry more about dogs and cats than they do about kids.

On my Wednesday’s Child video, I said that I’m a pretty cool kid, that I’m a good person and you just have to get to know me.  I’d love to have a mom and dad and a brother. Oh, and I really want to have my own bedroom someday.  I’ve had to share a bedroom in every placement.  My current roomie, Bryan (or is it Ryan?), is a year older than me, doesn’t bathe or use deodorant, grunts in his sleep, and is starting to grow a beard.  It’s like rooming with a goat.

Everything I own fits in one duffel bag. I’ve got a pair of Converse, some t-shirts – whatever Goodwill or the nearest church has.  I have my ‘soup shirt’ which is a humongous black t-shirt that I wear if I’m eating soup or spaghetti. On my right wrist, I wear maybe five different color wristbands for maybe five different charities and causes that everyone at school supports (of course we all threw away the yellow one).

I didn’t really think much about my looks until after the Incident last year.  I know I am skinny (but it does make my abs show up naturally).  I seriously need a tan, and with my dark hair and bushy slashed eyebrows and the shadows under my eyes from lack of sleep, people keep thinking I’m emo or walking dead.  Most guess I’m older because I used to smoke so I have a raspy voice.  I don’t like people staring at me. I don’t like to be laughed at.  And, after the Incident, I’m always afraid people think that I’m some lowlife.  Ms. Wendy and my caseworker, Linda, are always telling me that I need to improve my communication skills.  “Smile more, Dimples!” Linda likes to say.  But my mouth is sort of crooked after an accident I had when I was a kid (stitches, damaged nerve endings), and I’m really self-conscious because of a chipped front tooth.  I hate dentists.

The Incident.  If I could erase that from my file and start over again.  See, my mom dated some really terrible guys over the years.  A couple of them beat on me because they were drunk or tweaking and I was pissing them off somehow.  One guy picked me up and smashed me into the wall.  Another guy threw me into a Dumpster, calling me a failed abortion, a piece of shit.  That time the neighbors called the police.  The police brought in Child Services.  And Child Services freaked when they found out that my mom, Julia, was using her walk-in closet for my bedroom.  My mom told them that she couldn’t afford a two-bedroom apartment working as a waitress and also as an attendant at a twenty-four-hour gas station in Venice.

But it was the Incident that really screwed over my life.  Last year at the apartment complex where I was living with my mom, two drunk women were hanging out one night in the community Jacuzzi in the corner of our building’s courtyard.  They were tourists from Europe visiting a friend; they didn’t even live in the building.  They saw me, waved a big bottle of booze and told me to come over and join them.  I was having the best time of my life.  Next thing, somebody called the police.  Then next thing, there’s an article in the Culver City Patch.  And that leads to a bigger article in the L.A. Times about the two women getting charged for “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.”  My mom finally lost her parental rights because she was out on a date that night and she didn’t pick me up from the police station until the next morning.

The funny thing about the Incident is that I think it literally made me grow faster.  I used to be shorter than all the guys in my class, but since the Incident, I’ve been getting taller and leaving shoe sizes behind like crazy so I hope I’m going to be over six feet.  Ms. Linda calls it a “growth spurt” and I want to say something rude to her about “spurting” because I did so much of it that night, but I know better than to talk about the Incident to Linda because she always makes a pity face and tells me I’m a brave young victim of abuse.

“Charlie!” Ms. Wendy’s voice is like a car horn. “Are you’re still worrying about earthquakes? School shootings?”  She flips back a couple pages in her notebook. “Uh, zombies? Terrorists? Alien invasions?”  

“I guess so.”  I keep squirming in the chair to find a comfortable position.

“You’ve started intruder training at school?” she asks.

“Yeah, we have it every two weeks.”  Thanks for reminding me, Ms. Wendy. “We’re doing the ADD survival training thing.”  I repeat what we were taught.  “AVOID the intruder by running away.  DENY the intruder access by locking doors behind you and hiding in utility rooms and closets.  And if all else fails, DEFEND yourself.”

“See? That’s good, Charlie.  ADD is supposed to give you confidence so you’ll know what to do.”

It also adds to the things I worry about. “We have the monthly earthquake and tsunami preparedness drills, too, because our teachers say that the Big One is definitely coming.  It’s a matter of math and they say the odds increase every day.”

Ms. Wendy scrunches up her nose likes she smells a fart (not me). “Well, that’s not helpful, is it?”  She shakes her head. “The training is preparedness. So you won’t be surprised.  Humans have a fight-or-flight-or-freeze mechanism. And what that means is that if you’re faced with a dangerous situation, you can react quickly.  Some people freeze up – and that can be fatal in a dangerous situation.”

I press on, “I noticed the security guards at school now all have guns—no more Tasers.”  Every time we heard about a shooting at another school, I just kept thinking that a major disaster was just around the corner.  Any day now.  I could feel it.  I could see it in my nightmares.

“Preparedness, Charlie.  That’s a good thing.  You can’t keep worrying about earthquakes and terrorists and things beyond your control.  Learn to relax and accept each day as it comes.”  Ms. Wendy is looking at me.  I look up at the clock.  We’re done for today.  

I’m not sure what to say. You can’t tell a worrier not to worry and expect him to stop worrying, just like that.  I’m sitting up, hugging my knees to my chest.  It’s the only position that stops my ass cheeks from falling asleep.

“Well, Charlie. I hope you’re sleeping better.” Ms. Wendy makes more notes.  “I’m going to let your caseworker know that you’re still having nightmares.”

“Okay.”  I get up to leave. My back is sore from all the sitting.

“Oh, Charlie?”  Ms. Wendy doesn’t even look up from her laptop.  “Do you take Latin at school?”

“What?  No.” Seriously, Latin?

She swivels to look at me. “Here’s a fun phrase for you to remember. Semper Ubi Sub Ubi. Always wear underwear.”

My face goes beet red. I want to key her car.

“Don’t worry so much, Charlie.  Have a good week.”  Then she turns back to her desk while I stumble out the door.