Nothing Between Us. Roni Loren

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       TWO

       October 31

      Right before quitting time, Colby got a visit from the Grim Reaper. Colby looked up from his desk at the hooded head peeking in through his doorway. “You know where Dr. Guthrie is?”

      The sullen voice sounded appropriately grim for the costume. Colby put aside the student file he’d been making notes on. “He had to leave early because he wasn’t feeling well. Were you supposed to meet with him today?”

      The reaper shrugged and pulled his hood back, revealing the face of junior Travis Clarkson. “Yeah. But if he’s not here …”

      Colby could hear the indecision in the drift of Travis’s voice. If his counselor wasn’t here, he had the right to skip his appointment, but Colby sensed the kid needed to talk. He’d heard there’d been a bullying incident this morning and that Travis had been the target. Unfortunately, not an uncommon spot for Travis. Poor kid came from one of the wealthiest families in the area, but money couldn’t fix his acne-prone skin, his crippling social anxiety, or the resulting depression it caused.

      “Come on in and grab a chair, Travis,” Colby said, keeping his voice casual. “There’s only a half hour before the bell. You can skip the rest of study hall and chat with me.”

      Travis shifted on his feet in that awkward way teen boys did when they hadn’t quite grown into their new longer limbs. “I don’t want—you look busy.”

      “Nope.” Colby stretched his leg beneath his desk and sent the chair in front of it rolling toward Travis. “I was just finishing up some notes. You’ll save me from boring paperwork.”

      Travis tucked his hands in the robe of his costume and shuffled in. He glanced around at Colby’s office, his eyes skimming over the shelves of books and the few photos he’d kept from his music days. “Your office is different than Dr. Guthrie’s.”

      No shit. That was because Guthrie liked to pretend he was Freud himself instead of some guy working at the pedestrian institution of Graham Alternative High School. Guthrie’s office had a plush couch, hunter green paint over the cinder-block walls, muted lighting, and a freaking desk fountain. If smoking weren’t banned in the building, Colby had no doubt the school psychologist would have a pipe hanging from his mouth during sessions. But Colby had learned that the last thing these kids needed was to walk into something that looked like a therapist’s office. In fact, he spent most of his sessions with his students doing something active while they talked. It was amazing how a kid could open up if he was shooting hoops and not being stared at when he answered personal questions.

      “I like to keep things simple.”

      Travis went to the wall to get a closer look at a photo instead of immediately sitting down. “Is that you and Brock Greenwood?”

      “Yeah,” Colby said. “I played with him in a band when we were younger. Of course, back then, he wasn’t the Brock Greenwood. Just a guy who could sing his face off. You listen to country music?”

      Travis turned away from the picture and lowered himself into the chair. “I listen to everything. I like mashing shit—er—stuff up on my computer. You know, making things that don’t seem to go together blend.”

      Colby smiled. “Really? That’s cool. I can’t be trusted with all those music programs. I have a friend who does it and he’s tried to teach me, but he’s declared me a hopeless case. Just give me my guitar and a blank piece of paper to jot down lyrics.”

      “Old school.”

      “Or just old.”

      Travis almost smiled—something Colby wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Travis do—but the kid seemed to catch himself before he let it break through. God forbid he let the school counselor know he liked talking to him. “You still play?”

      “I do. I play a few gigs here and there. Nothing serious. It’s a good way to relax—playing without any pressure attached to it.”

      Travis nodded. “Yeah, I get that. But I can’t really imagine getting onstage as being relaxing. I like the behind-the-scenes stuff. Putting on my headphones … I don’t know, it’s like a switch that shuts out the world and transports me somewhere else, another life.”

      “An escape.”

      “Yeah,” he said, rubbing his chapped lips together. “That’s what I like. That escape. Nothing else matters when the music is playing.”

      Colby leaned back in his chair and hooked his ankle over his knee, understanding that desire but also hearing the loneliness lacing Travis’s words. “Ever thought about pursuing a career in that? Sound engineering or music producing?”

      Travis glanced up, his face a bit haunted—although that could’ve been the whole Grim Reaper look he had going on. “I’ve thought about it. But my parents would shit a brick—sorry.”

      Colby waved a hand, dismissing the language. The kid was talking, he didn’t care if he slipped up and cursed.

      “They hate me fooling around with my computer. They think it isolates me or whatever. Like if I just stop doing that, suddenly my life will be all Friday night football games and proms and crap.” He sneered. “They can’t see that those things aren’t options for me even if I wanted them. Maybe they should be the ones on medication. They’re delusional.”

      Colby rubbed a hand over the back of his head, choosing his words carefully. It was always a fine line when kids complained about their parents. If you took the parents’ side, the kid shut down. If you undermined the parents and agreed with the kids, you helped justify behavior that might not be one hundred percent healthy. “Sometimes it’s hard for parents to see the benefit in something that from the outside looks like wasting time. If they don’t share that passion, it can be hard for them to understand.”

      “They just wish I were someone else.” His gaze dropped to his hands, which were fiddling with the strap of his backpack. “I don’t really blame them.”

      Colby hid his frown. “Would you want to be someone else if you could?”

      He twisted the strap around his fingers. “Maybe.”

      “And who would you be?”

      He grimaced. “I don’t know. Someone who could ask a girl out without getting pit stains in front of everyone.”

      “Is that what got Dalton and his friends after you today?”

      He chewed his lip and gave another shrug.

      “Would you want to be him?” Colby asked, picturing Dalton Wiggins—Mr. Popular, lead shit-stirrer at Graham High. And a kid who had an irrevocably broken home life that Colby would wish on no one. Of course, no one here knew that except him since Dalton only shared that stuff in the privacy of his counseling sessions with Colby.

      “Fuck, no,” Travis bit out. “The guy’s a jerk. But if I looked like him, I wouldn’t act like he does. I’d just, I don’t know, use it for good.”

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