Ciao

_________

Miss Perkins turned in her chair as her door opened.

"Good Afternoon, on time Max."

The teenager trudged to the well worn patient seat and sunk in, the vinyl crinkling in an almost dead quiet room. It was always like this, Miss Perkins had to really provoke Max to make him speak, or else the sixteen year old would never speak.

"So have you done what I suggested last week? Writing the five things you enjoy?" Miss Perkins prompted, clicking her blue pen, ready to take notes.

Max sunk back into the seat, staying silent, the wall clock ticked.

"I'm guessing no..." Miss Perkins wrote in her blue leather bound book, she could fill one book about this kid. Multiple sessions and she barely knew much about him, an adopted teenager who didn't speak much about how he felt, that was how he kept it.

Max stared at Miss Perkins, she was a lady that looked way too young to be a psychologist, but also had the same demeanour as someone years older. He didn't like her, not because she was a psychologist but he disliked most professionals for various reasons.

"So Max... I'm going to go off script for a minute because I've been seeing you for over four months now and I've barely held meaningful conversation with you beyond just "therapy is a waste of time"," Miss Perkins put her pen down, Max tracked her hand movements, his eyes following her hands as she placed her notebook aside.

Miss Perkins then clapped her hands together. "Alright! So tell me something about you Max... when did you last feel safe? Like very safe? Like nothing could hurt you?"

Max's whole body tensed, a reaction, he wasn't a robot, Miss Perkins nodded, he had a wall up but that wall didn't extend upwards too far.

"I want to know... does Mom make you feel safe?"

No answer.

"... What about your father, I haven't met him but-"

"He's gone."

That was the first words of today, Miss Perkins looked back up at him, seeing his usual teenaged apathy seemed to be chipped or at least cracked. It was a good break to open with.

"Gone where Max?"

"Just gone. August 8th 1995."

Miss Perkins tensed. That was a big town legend and she knew what Max was talking about.

"... I see."

"I don't even know if he really considered me his kid, I was a stray."

"A stray?" Miss Perkins questioned that term he used.

"An orphan." Max said. That was how he thought of himself, like an alley cat that couldn't join the real world with other people, it had always been like that, from the moment he was born.

"Oh. So you were at that... orphanage, Playspace?"

"Playcare." Max corrected, rubbing his eyes. He had vague memories of the padded fake environment, it was mostly lost to the ten years since he had been there. That and he actively repressed any memories of it, he didn’t want to think about it. Most of the past was meaningless.

Miss Perkins picked her notebook back up and wrote quickly, a new development.

"So you... did you meet Mr... Willard while in Playcare's space."

"Doctor."

"Huh?"

"Doctor Willard." Max corrected again.

"Oh he was a doctor for the Orphans?"

"He was a biologist."

"Why would a biologist work at a toy factory?" Miss Perkins asked with an air of suspicion in her voice, Max didn't miss that, he had also asked the same questions years afterwards.

"Dunno." Max shrugged.

"I see... so Doctor Willard met you at some point there? And he's the one who took you home?"

"..."