Miss Riley worked fast and had me an appointment with the school psychologist by Wednesday. I considered dodging it, but I had no doubt she would follow up and I wasn't feeling another lecture. I went to the admin building during third period, and the lady at the front desk directed me to student services. She ushered me into a small square room, informing me that the psychologist would be in right after she'd eaten.

The room was plastered with posters, in eye-assaulting primary colours. Charts about depression, stress and anxiety, Venn diagrams detailing school/life balance, and laminated stock photo memes. One does not simply forget about mental health during exam season. There was a bin of soft toys in one corner, and the cheap plastic desk splitting the room was decorated with an array of trinkets – a drinking bird, a twelve-sided Rubik's cube, and Newton's cradle. The staff plate read Ms. Hassan, Psy.M.

I'd never paid a visit to the psychologist, not even after mum. I'd assumed it was only for students with real issues. Abusive households, behavioural issues, special needs. Did Miss Riley consider my laziness a 'behavioural issue'? I didn't know how someone as functional as I was could be fast-tracked to an appointment.

I fidgeted with the straps of my backpacks and waited with rising trepidation. Eventually, a pair of heels came clicking down the hallway, pausing outside the door. I turned my head over my shoulder, just in time to see a manicured hand snake through the gap. It rested on the door as its owner called out, "Rhonda, have they serviced the elevator yet? Connor has an appointment at 2:40."

The hand was a collection of dark, slender fingers, nails filed into points, and painted sunflower yellow. But my eyes narrowed in on a black band, cutting through the base of her ring finger. A familiar collection of red dots and tattooed elven text sent my heart plummeting into the pit of my stomach.

I have just enough time to rake my fringe over my eyes and duck my head before Alba pushed through the door, letting it fall closed behind her. "Miles?"

My heart pounded, but her tone didn't suggest she recognised me. She knew my name by appointment only; however, the second she asked me to raise my head, I would be discovered.

"I'm Ms. Hassan, but you can call me Albany if you like," she said gently, and I kept my eyes firmly glued to the floor. She clicked over to the desk and took a seat in my peripheral. She looked drastically different to when I'd last seen her; her gold kaftan had been replaced by a violet dress shirt and formal skirt that fell just above her knees, conservative stockings, and a sensible two-inch heel.

I cleared my throat, mind reeling for an escape. "Cool."

There was a lengthy pause, which Alba clearly expected me to fill, and when I failed to she took over. "Do you know why you're here?"

I shook my head silently, fingers digging into the upholstery of the chair. My luck just couldn't be that bad. Someone had to be messing with me. I held my breath for someone to leap out of Alba's toy bin, screaming that I'd been punk'd.

"Your teachers all share pretty similar concerns about you, Miles," Alba began, shuffling files on her desk. "Over the course of a year, your grades have dropped drastically, your focus has... are you alright?"

I shook my head, more urgently. "I need to use the bathroom."

If that was the best my brain could come up, maybe I wasn't as smart as Miss Riley believed. There was another weighty pause, and I wondered if that counted as permission. I started to stand.

"Wait," Alba opened her desk drawer, and began rifling through it. She held out a piece of green card, decorated with tiny clip-art toilets. "Toilet pass."

I nodded appreciatively and reached out to take it. Just as my fingers were closing around the card, Alba retracted her arm, and I automatically glanced up in confusion. The second I looked up I realised her tactic. Her expression was unreadable, but her eyes spoke recognition.

I froze on the spot, the same way I had the week before with Caleb. Arm still outstretched, eyes wide, heart crashing against the bars of my ribcage. Alba slowly lowered the card onto the desk, uncrossing her legs slowly so she could plant both feet on the floor.

"Hmm," was all she said.

I wondered how far I would get if I ran. I could have been on a plane by that evening, in England the next day. I could reinvent myself under Uncle Thomas's roof. Leave everything behind and start over. Surely it would be better than facing the consequences of whatever phone call to Reece she was constructing in her mind.

Sorry to disrupt your day, Mr. Hewitt, but were you aware that your seventeen-year-old canvases gay bars on a weekly basis?

Alba stood and made her way to the door. My arm dropped onto the desk with a thunk.

"Rhonda," she called through the door. "Do I have an appointment at 1 pm?"

After a short pause, a woman called out to the negative.

"Great."

The door closed, and Alba returned to her seat. She clasped her hands in front of her, her tattooed wedding ring blinking out from the tangle of her fingers. I kept my eyes downcast, mouth feeling more like sandpaper every second.

"Do you have a history of self-harm, Miles?"

I startled. It wasn't exactly the first thing I had expected out of her mouth. "No."

"Have you ever thought about harming another student, or someone else in your life?"

My shoulders tense. "No! Never."

"Good," she said, voice as low as it was firm, "I want you to know that unless I have reason to believe you are a threat to yourself and others, anything you say to me in this session will remain confidential. That is written in my job description. And I take my job very seriously."

I stared at her, brow knitted in confusion. "But..."

"Our interaction was outside school hours, and to add, I didn't see you commit any illegal activity," she cut me off. "I'm not stupid, but I only saw you standing outside a club. And I only thought I smelt alcohol on you. So, I have no legal requirement to report you to the school, and by the way you are shaking like a leaf, I believe it would not be in your best interest."

I blinked at her; eyes blown wide open. She unclasped her hands and shuffled into her desk, picking up a file with my name printed on the top.

"Let's begin, shall we..." she picked up a biro and put it to paper. "How are you feeling today, Miles?"

"Wait," I sat up in my chair, crossing my arms over my waist. "Seriously?"

Alba looked up expectantly. She was wearing thick-rimmed glasses, pushed up the bridge of her nose. Beneath them, her kind chocolate eyes gave nothing away.

"You're not even going to..." I swallowed. "Address last Friday?"

"Well, I don't think it's relevant to how you're feeling, right now," she said simply. "I suspect it has something to do with you plummeting grades but we're not quite there, yet. And your personal life is for you to disclose to me, at your discretion. I'm not going to make any assumptions about you, Miles. I only ask that you give me the benefit of the doubt in return."

I swallowed thickly. "Benefit of the doubt for what?"

"That I can help you," she clicked her pen, dragging my focus to it. "Now how are you feeling today?"

I fell back in the chair, too incredulous to give anything other than an honest response. "Fucked."

Alba nodded and didn't reprimand my cursing despite the poster to her left which stated; No Cursing, No Abuse, No Slurs, No Exceptions. "Why do you think that is?"

I huffed out a breath. "Well, apparently this town is a lot smaller than I thought."

Alba made a small, confirmatory noise. "I can assume you've never been to see me before, then?"

"No."

"Even after your mother passed away?"

I focused my attention on the collection of Pop Vinyl figures amasses on her window frame, all nine of the fellowship of the ring. "They gave me the option, but I was fine."

Alba ended each of her sentences with a flourish of the pen. It was mesmerising to watch. "Did you see anyone outside of school hours?"

I shook my head.

"Did you talk to anyone about her?"

"My friends," I hoisted myself up in my seat. "Can we not do the whole 'tell me about your mother' thing? I loved her, she got sick, she died. I'm dealing with it."

Alba looked sceptical, but didn't push. "And you live with her partner?"

She was about the first person who hadn't automatically said your father in reference to Reece. "Yeah. 'til I'm eighteen."

"And after that?" she pried.

"I want to get my own place," I said carefully.

"Any reason for that?" she waited for me to respond, and then prompted me. "Personality clash, independence, wanting your own space?"

"Personality clash," it was the closest to the truth. Alba gave me space to continue, and I felt obliged to after the courtesy she'd extend me. "He doesn't know I'm gay if that's what you're fishing for."

"No fishing here. Would you like to come out to him?"

I shook my head fiercely. "I have no idea what he'd do to me."

"Has he been violent to you in the past?"

"No," I frowned. "But I've never really given him a reason to be. We don't have much to do with each other. He just..."

I clammed up. Alba's pen paused on the paper.

"Anything you say in this room in confidential," she reminded me.

"... he wants me gone," I finished. "He's just waiting for a reason to ship me out sooner."

Her delicately plucked eyebrows creased in the centre. "Do you have anywhere to go?"

I thought about Aaron's offer. Maya liked me, but she wasn't about to take on another teenager. They weren't a rich family, and even if it was temporary, I wouldn't put that on guilt on her, or Aaron's, shoulders. "Not in the country."

Alba nodded. "And what are you planning after school? University, working, gap year?"

"Working."

"What kind?"

She didn't know about Sephora. She didn't know about Sephora. It felt like a small mercy. "I don't know. I'm not picky. I'll do anything."

"Mmhmm. Do you have a job now?"

My silence spoke volumes.

Alba dropped my file and capped her pen. "Look, Miles, I understand the allure of adulthood. I understand wanting to grow up faster because clubs and bars and drinking is fun, but if you come out of high school with nothing to show for it, you're not going to have a good time in the job market. Even warehouse jobs will look for a high school certificate. And you don't strike me as a line worker.

"Growing up is more than freedom. Sometimes you'll find you have less freedom than you did when you were this age," she pulled out a sheet of blank paper. "I'm not going to force you bare your soul to me, but I'm going ask you come back at the same time next week. Have you ever heard of Maslow's Hierarchy?"

When I expressed that I didn't, she drew a quick pyramid and drew four lines through it, "This is Abraham Maslow's theory of motivation. The bottom of the pyramid is physiological needs, food, drink, shelter. People who don't have these needs fulfilled cannot work towards the next level. I've worked with kids who have no sense of self-preservation because they are driven by the need for this bottom layer. You very rarely meet them at good, middle-class public schools."

I felt instantly guilty, although I knew that was not Alba's intention. Knowing she'd been around kids who hadn't had all I had, no dinner on the stove or roof over their head, made my problems seem trivial at the least.

"I think you're stuck on the second layer," she drew a circle inside the triangle. "This relates to safety and security. You feel unsafe in your guardian's home, like your place in it is unstable, you're reliant on him for financial security and, I hope you don't mind me saying, I don't think you feel the most emotionally secure right now either."

I wasn't inclined to disagree. Describing my state of mind as 'fucked' wasn't going to earn much benefit of the doubt.

"While you're struggling here, you can't begin to think about moving on to higher levels. Love, belonging, and esteem. You can't focus on work because you're too busy dodging the feeling of insecurity in your day-to-day life. Tell me if I'm barking up the wrong tree."

I stared at the triangle. Despite it only having five layers, I looked awfully far down. Was that the energy I gave off? No wonder everyone was pitying me all the time. "I'm not insecure."

"I don't mean insecure in layman's term," she assured me. "I mean the way you are living now is lacing in uncertainty. You don't know what's happening after school, you don't know what your guardian would do if he found out you were gay. You don't even know if you'll graduate. I can't help you get back on track academically, but I can help you get your head to a place where you can focus on that."

I set my jaw. "How?"

Her smile was kind. "Well, how do you feel right now?"

I thought about it for a second. My heartbeat was regular. My breathing had deepened. My head was at ease, oddly enough. So much so that I hadn't even noticed. "... alright."

"I think you need to talk, Miles," she folded up the piece of paper. "Bottling things up is all well and good, to a certain point. But bottles have limited capacity, and so do you. Eventually, the lid pops off, and that's a much harder solve."

She held out the paper. I took it tentatively.

"Next Wednesday?" she compelled.

I agreed. We shook on it and everything. A last, nagging thought plagued me all the way to the door, and I turned back on my way out. Alba was packing away my file. I wondered vainly what her notes about me said.

"Alba," I asked. "About the triangle. What's the topmost layer?"

"Self-actualisation," she told me. "The drive to become the most one can be."

A/N: remember, if you have a problem, seek help. the love of the right person can help, but you're responsible for your own mental health. stay safe in these uncertain times <3