Reliving Yesterday ✔

Chapter 3.

"Hey, Michael," I said, dropping into the couch in front of him.

"What's up, Alex?" he replied, "How's it been, huh? Summer away. First day of school?"

"I don't want to talk about it," I said, slumping and crossing my arms over my chest.

"But that's exactly what you're here to do," he said, putting on a mock pout.

I rolled my eyes at him. Michael was my therapist.

Calm down.

I wasn't about to be shipped off to the loony bin any time soon or anything, it's just that four years ago, when Parker started 'attacking' me, I went into this dark, gloomy shell of mine for a long time and my dad got worried. The last time that might have happened was a decade ago, when my mom passed away, but it only started. It didn't last, because Parker was able to pull me out of it.

Parker pushed me into this.

Dad thought it might be better if I had an confidential outlet to vent. It wasn't bad. Michael and I didn't really have a typical therapist-patient relationship. He was someone who was in training when I came here all those years ago, because that's what I wanted. I didn't want some old shrink telling me that I'm cuckoo.

It's worked really well, actually, since we help each other out, instead of it being just unilateral. While I seemed to be hopeless at being bullied by Parker, he was hopeless at getting a date. True, he was cute in a kind of dorky way, but he got absolutely tongue-tied talking to girls. The first time I came in here, I thought he was having a seizure.

"I hated the first day of school, OK?" I said to him, looking away.

"Do explain," he persisted.

I glared at him; something I seemed to do when he was being persistent. "Fine," I huffed, and turned away, "Well, we had this thing to do for French. A play in class. And he and I are the main characters."

When I looked up, Michael wore the expression of utmost amusement. I narrowed my eyes at him. "What?"

He chuckled. "So you're the Juliet to his Romeo? The moon to his sun?"

My mouth dropped as I launched a pillow in his direction. "Don't even go there," I threatened.

He laughed. "Is that what was so bad?" he asked, "Come on. There must have been something good about the day."

"Lunch," I replied, bitterly.

"What about Hanna?" he asked.

I shrugged.

"And gym?" he urged.

He knew my love for gym. That brought a smile on to my face. "Gym was great," I replied, "We got put into two teams for the rest of the year."

"And Parker?" Michael raised his eyebrows.

"Is not on my team," I said, giddy with delight. That was one part of my day where I didn't have to dread being around Parker. He was obviously the 'captain' of the team. Those people were going to look up to him for anything. Michael made a face. "What?"

He shrugged. "You're going to be competing with him," he said, simply.

I hadn't thought of that. It didn't even occur to me in the field today. I sat back, rethinking what had happened.

Coach Dunst walked in holding his clipboard as usual, looking at us like we were fresh meat. We were all jogging around the track when he hollered to us, "Pick it up, slowpokes. This isn't recess!"

We all stopped near him, panting slightly. Well, the others were. Me and some of the other track runners weren't. That was nothing compared to the five mile run we did almost everyday. "OK," Coach bellowed, as usual, blowing his deafening whistle, even though we were all just there, "This year's going to be different. We're dividing you into two equal teams for various fitness challenges. We're going to be doing everything you could possibly think of, from softball to dancing. Yeah, that's right, people, I said dancing and you're all going to love it. So am I.