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Eleanor Shellstrop is 13 years old when she’s first assigned a shrink. It’s an eight-week programme, they tell her, to help her behaviour or some shit. You call the vice-principle a cunt one time and all of a sudden there’s a ‘pattern of issues’ that ‘need addressing in a controlled environment’.
So here she is, showing up, sinking into a slightly understuffed blue leather couch-creature as far away from this ‘Sharon’ as possible. The table between them is laid with markers, paper, pencils, a box of tissues, dolls, little cars, and whatever bullshit that doesn’t make an appearance is probably stuffed into the big box of plastic figures and plush rabbits below. Eleanor knows that this assumption is a challenge to her maturity. Or Sharon didn’t read about the crime that’s landed her here.
“Well, I would like to get to know Eleanor!” Shrink beams, as though changing the topic of conversation. “These sessions are for you, so fill them up!”
Sharon is so very chipper. It’s thrilling.
“Three weeks ago the meteor carrying my spaceship crashed into this planet. I killed and ate the first sentient creature I saw, which just so happened to be a cool as fuck teenage girl, so I absorbed her essence and replaced her. My real name is Pterodactyl Dan and my peoples’ planet was destroyed two years ago. You have to help me, Sharon.”
Sharon takes a long pause. Eleanor considers walking out right this moment. Sharon would probably stop her.
“I called Mr. Carraway a cunt and now everyone’s pissed at me again.” She tries.
Silence is boring. She’s giving Sharon a great starting point. Eleanor's great!
“Hm.” Shrink jumps on it— “I heard your teachers were rather concerned about your recent conduct, not that they were angry with you.” Pause, this time. “Why do you differ, do you think?”
Very stupid question, 0/10. Eleanor does not like Sharon. She is either dumb as bricks or is putting all this on to get through her day, and, quite honestly, Eleanor has no idea which one she would prefer. Oh, how to play it?
“They have to say they’re ‘concerned’,” Eleanor says, “but they really just fucking hate kids.”
Sharon turns a page in her notebook and lowers her glasses. Sighs. “Could you walk me through the incident with Mr. Carraway?”
Mr. Carraway already didn’t like her. He’d made as much clear when he’d attempted to call home to complain about her, but three voicemails later had resigned himself to lecturing Eleanor in his own time. In the hour-long detention he gave her. Her offence then had just been her general attitude, despite passable attainment and regularly submitted assignments. And so if he saw it fit to scold her the one single time she hadn’t come to class with her homework, then she saw it fit to call him a motherfucking cunt of a man. Eleanor Shellstrop does not have an issue with taboo language.
Eleanor talks. Sharon scribbles and blows away all the competition for making empathetic eye contact. Eleanor puts her shoes up on the couch and watches Sharon’s eyes flicker to them but her mouth say nothing. Then the hour is up, and it’s all sign out here and see you next week, Eleanor!
—
Sharon has fewer toys out this time. This is the first thing Eleanor notices. The second thing she notices is that Sharon is not talking. Eleanor sits on the couch, feet tucked under her, and waits approximately a good thirty seconds before asking, “Now what?”
“These sessions are all yours, Eleanor. Is there anything you’re wanting to share here? Or should I pick something?” Sharon comes alive. “We have activities, too. This is all for you.”
Eleanor does not believe this. She is here explicitly as punishment.
“What’re the rules?”
Sharon tilts her head, like a dog. “Which rules do you mean?”
Dogs are not smart.
“All of them. The rules for—“ Eleanor gestures vaguely to the room, “—all this. I know there’s things that I might say that you have to snitch about. I know you have a job. What are the rules?”
“I see.” She says. “There are things that may come up that, if I’m made aware of, there are steps to be taken, actions involving breaking confidentiality. Is that what you mean?” Eleanor nods. “Well, if we find that there’s immediate danger to you, or to others around you, things have to happen. Like if you are experiencing an abusive home life, or thoughts of hurting others.” Sharon looks purposefully into Eleanor’s eyes before speaking again. “But standard procedures are not as scary as they sound. It just means we update school, likely your parents, and reevaluate our direction in these sessions. Things will look very much the same.”
Eleanor fleetingly meets Shrink’s eyes before returning to picking at her nails. “And what’s gonna happen for the next two months?”
“Well,” Sharon begins, “I initially planned for more self-guided sessions. You can bring anything here, big or small, and we can talk through it. If you have ideas about doing these differently, then, by all means, take the reins.”
Shrinks are meant to be disarming, (Eleanor knows about Hannibal Lecter, she’s no baby, she’s seen it all) so she’s only really a little troubled when she loses her words trying to take the fucking reins. Eleanor opens her mouth, but she doesn’t have any sound in her throat, and even if she did, the muscles there are too weak to move. She scowls at Sharon.
“I suppose… I’m wondering why you’re curious.” Sharon says when Eleanor fails to get any sound out. “Am I right in asking if there’s something you’re concerned about?”
Eleanor coughs, getting her throat working again, before she delivers her response.
“Fuck you.”
She’s rewarded by silence. Sharon blinks, her brow draws into a concerned little squiggle. She doesn’t respond.
Eleanor stares, hard, and the clock over the door tick-tocks by, and then it’s been ten seconds since either of them have spoken. Eleanor has an odd feeling in her chest, like a balloon blowing up inside of her and pressing all her organs into her ribcage. Sharon’s been breathing too much, using up all the good air in the room, and now Eleanor has beachball lungs making her heart rattle. Sharon’s still there, not doing anything. Anything.
“Eleanor— I think using some more feeling-words might help us understand one another.”
And it’s so empty and distant, all those words, that sentence. Speaking is a wall that Eleanor has suddenly forgotten how to climb— her mouth is dumb and useless. She feels the burning, her eyes blurring, and maybe crying is like riding a bicycle; Eleanor knows just how to suck it up, stop it before it can start.
“I… feel… like…” She bites every syllable, and the tide recedes. “…You’re no fun.” Hah!
Sharon smiles, eyebrows still sad. Then she laughs, a simple laugh, a whole-body one that’s probably real enough. Eleanor tugs at her sleeves as though they might give her more coverage.
Sharon composes herself. “Well, that can be remedied!”
And she tries. Eleanor tells her to get real games, smart ones; Connect Four, Guess Who… others. She doesn’t know all of them. She has places to be. Connect Four was fun enough when they get it out at break, but the school lost their Guess Who a few years ago and never replaced it. Sharon hears about this, about that bitch Cassie in the grade above who teased her with it in her first year of middle school, until Eleanor just bit her one day. That must’ve been difficult, Sharon says, and Eleanor responds, Yeah, she tasted terrible.
—
Connect Four is still a decent game. It’s made better by the fact that Eleanor’s won the last two rounds.
She’s setting up a winning row of five (who said therapy was hard?) when Sharon whoops: “Connect-five! How about that?”
Sure enough, she’s taken Eleanor’s move; the five yellow tokens sit smug between them. Eleanor clenches her fist around her red piece, drives it into her soft palm. Throws it back in the box. She is good at this game! She glares at the plastic board, hands twitching, desperate to toss it to the ground—and a little voice pipes up— It could break. I’d have to pay.
She groans, scours her surroundings, and lands on the paper Sharon had indulged her with earlier, a crude crayon drawing of a small dog. She snatches it up, crumples it, tears at it, stares at Sharon’s sad dumb face watching her—tosses it in the trash. And then Sharon’s still looking at her, so Eleanor wrings her hands, and hits the box of tokens off of the table to crash and spill over the carpeted floor. And Sharon nods at her. Eleanor suppresses an involuntary gag.
“That was a nice drawing. I’m sad for you that you got rid of it, but it’s good you can make more.” She’s pitched her voice down, mocking the utter din Eleanor created. “Let’s tidy up together.”
Eleanor holds out for... maybe a minute. She’s pulled down to her hands and knees, collecting her own mess, by some sort of nausea-inducing sense of both pride and shame, curdling together unpleasantly in her gut.
It’s monotonous, quick work.
And then there are three pieces left, and Eleanor snatches them up, eyes the clock. The session has run over by almost two minutes. Sharon opens her mouth, settled in her chair, ready to spout some shit, as Eleanor drops those last three tokens in the box— but Eleanor’s gone in milliseconds, a rough Bye! left echoing around the room as she scampers away.
—
“My Mom asked me where I was going today.”
Sharon gives a trademarked small nod. “Is your Mom aware of these sessions?”
Eleanor pulls her leg up in front of her to lean her chin on it. She has no desire to discuss her mother, but here she is, doing just that.
It took a few weeks, but Eleanor’s started to note certain things. She’s been curating a list, of sorts. The working title is ‘Things That Should Be Talked About In Therapy’. Donna Shellstrop’s infuriating nature dances around the top, desperate for priority over When I wanted to kiss Jenny so I insulted her painting instead and God thinks I suck but I don’t really care. And Eleanor’s not going to give Donna that satisfaction. There’s so many other things in her life.
“God knows,” she says, “‘cause she sure as hell doesn’t pay attention to anything school’s ever told her about.”
Donna doesn’t care about her grades, because Donna isn’t aware of her grades. Maybe if Eleanor wrote them on the label of a wine bottle they’d make some impact. Donna’s daughter is four weeks deep in mandated therapy, getting solid Bs with As peeking through every now and then, babysits for church moms almost every weeknight (and is amassing a respectable amount from it), and she is none the wiser. Eleanor might be angry if it weren’t a clear blessing compared to how the other girls at school live their lives— an 8pm curfew, sandwiches still made for them by their parents, being sent off to clubs like ballet and kung-fu against their will. And Eleanor is more adult than her mother’s ever been.
Sharon said something. How does that make you feel, probably. What? What does that mean, really?
Eleanor’s been too quiet, mulling it over for too long, ‘cause Sharon’s filling the silence again. She might’ve never stopped.
“Do you feel upset that your Mom doesn’t engage with you about these sessions?” She pauses. “Maybe you’re relieved she doesn’t engage. Or maybe it’s something you’re alright with, or angry about.”
Eleanor fists her hand and pushes it against her palm until she hears that knuckle crack, loud. She repeats. When she’s run out of knuckles, she twists her head around until her neck gives a few sweet pops. She meets Sharon’s eyes with no sense of urgency. “That’s dumb.”
Sharon’s not a… regular person. Eleanor met a school counsellor, once, and she had a similar energy— though Sharon’s is a lot more sophisticated. She’s a real, properly trained child therapist, so she’s got this unflappable-yet-approachable and unintentionally-frustrating air about her, which Eleanor can only assume was installed in whatever factory these people are built in. University. Whatever.
Eleanor’s words won’t be matched. There’s not much she can do that would change Sharon’s programming from unyieldingly receptive to any form of antagonistic. Eleanor can really say just about anything to her, and it’ll be received the same.
“Having feelings about your Mom is dumb?” And sometimes Sharon says things like that, that really just lay everything out in the open, and Eleanor wants to scream a little, because yes, it is.
She nods. “Mm-hmm.”
Sharon uncrosses her legs. Then she crosses them again. “No matter how ‘dumb’ feelings are,” she says, “sometimes the best way to deal with them is to let them have some time. To even just sit with them, and feel them.”
Eleanor keeps coming back to Sharon, every week, even though every week goes a little like this. Eleanor makes some mistake, and Sharon senses it, and looks straight at it in such a way that it feels like she’s reaching down into Eleanor’s throat and through to her stomach and just shaking her, misplacing her organs about her body so that her lungs beat against her skull and her heart is lodged in her throat. Nothing else does that.
Her eyes burn and they don’t stop. She trembles, she looks down at her hands and they’re trembling, but they’re blurring, too, what with the tears and such. They roll down her face and she doesn’t wipe them away because that would show Sharon that they’re there. And Eleanor doesn’t understand why she’s crying, or why Sharon can’t see it, or why this only happens here—
“No—“ Eleanor speaks so softly, anyone else wouldn’t’ve heard. “This— this’s stupid.”
“It’s okay to cry.” Sharon tells her, like a shrink does.
“I don’ geddit.” Eleanor coughs. “I don’t cry. Why ‘m I cryin’?”
The second the words leave her mouth she hears them, how much of a child they make her. Like a baby, bottle-fed by mama, born yesterday, so, so stupid—
Eleanor tries shouting, but it feels more like sobbing. She doesn’t have enough air to yell, ‘cause she’s coughing every time she takes a breath, and her heart still in her throat is beating double time somehow, so Eleanor just stands up and wrings her hands, desperate for something to throw and break, all she can do, but there’s no Connect Four out today— the space is bare, toys tidied away, so she stomps her feet and pulls her hair— like some sort of toddler— It’s mortifying, mortifying, so she snaps her body ramrod straight and tells Sharon—
“I’m not a child!” And maybe it's a touch frantic—
“Eleanor—“ Sharon’s been talking, though— “I know— Eleanor, look at me; yes; okay. Copy me. Breathe in— one, two, three— okay, out, again; one, two, three, four, five, six-and-seven— good! And out, for seven— one—“
Eleanor has dried tear tracks when she leaves the room, and she wipes them off before she signs out.
Sharon is not a regular person. Eleanor will come back next week.
—
There will not be a next week.
Donna finds out about the sessions— says her daughter’s just fine, she doesn’t care that the eight weeks are covered, she’s been alive long enough to know there’s gonna be a hidden bill eventually. Gets Eleanor’s father in on it, tells her it’s a big scam, that she’s smart enough to see that. Eleanor retreats to her room, shuts the door, drops down upon the bed and can’t cry.
—
The list isn’t something Eleanor thinks about often. She gets angry enough that it wilts in the back of her mind, like a daffodil fed wine over water, weak and boneless. There’s things she might add, but she won’t. She collects everything she feels that scares her, and, because breathing takes too long and she’s forgotten how to do it, she just squashes it down instead, down into a little box that she can shove beneath the bed and ignore. Eleanor is not a child.
—