Beginning after the End [Sean]

The counseling sessions had not been Sean’s idea, per se. One of Sidra’s teachers had approached him about her behavior, and her parents divorce, and suggested that she might benefit from conversation. Sean was of the mindset that most people would benefit from an hour or two of conversation during which they weren’t accountable to the outside world, and he also understood that although divorce was more common now, there were always potential issues when a family dynamic shifted, alienation from peers or not. Thus he had agreed to schedule a counseling session for her.

As he was familiar with Sidra, between interactions around the school and occasionally with her parents, and through stories from other faculty, he knew what to expect. He expected her to come but to try to talk her way out of participation and to be stubborn as a mule with twice the spectacle. He didn’t expect her to be happy about the sessions, and he didn’t expect her to cooperate.

When she arrived, he saw that his expectations weren’t for naught. She hadn’t knocked, but instead had entered on her own, dressed as she usually did. Profanity and irritation radiated from her thoughts, she all but scowled at him, and rather than greet him with a typical, “Hello Doctor Neville,” or an unintelligible murmur, she chose to make plain that she didn’t want to be here. So be it.

“Duly noted.” Setting aside the files he had been updating, he gestured at the array of available seating in his office. If she chose to sit on the sofa on the other side of his office, he could move from his chair to one closer to that end. “Make yourself comfortable, Sidra. Would you like a bottle of water?”

Since Sidra had refused a chair on the far end of the office, Sean saw no reason to get up and move. If she grew uncomfortable with the presence of the desk, they could relocate, but otherwise, if she was comfortable enough where she was – he didn’t expect her to actually be comfortable, which is why he aimed for a ballpark standard – then he was fine to remain as well.

And as she’s also refused his offer for water, he didn’t have to go over to the mini-fridge. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have a pot of coffee in here. Maybe we can scrounge some up before you go back to the rest of your day.” The staff lounge always had a pot of coffee on, and there was always the cafeteria.

Since they had no other beverages at the moment, they could get to the heart of the matter. This worked well, since she’d bluntly asked for an explanation; he would let the mild profanity pass, because truly, he’d heard worse in this office, let alone in his fifty-plus years on this earth. Time to get down to business. “Technically, you’re turning your work in late, which makes your grades discretionary.” Her teachers could refuse to grade her assignments entirely, or could deduct hefty penalties depending on the lateness, regardless of the quality of her work.

He was sure Sidra was aware of that already, which is why he didn’t linger on the topic; instead, he continued, “Several of your teachers are concerned about your work lately, and they wanted me to check in with you, to see how you’re holding up. So you have the option of talking to me, or you can sit there and stare at me, or I can teach you a couple of card games, if you’d like.”

Sean was immune to “the look.” This was natural resistance borne from his lack of children and reinforced by his job; two decades of handling petulant teenagers wizened him to their tricks. He met her expression with the merest quirk of his eyebrow, letting her puzzle through her feelings before choosing the most appropriate reaction. He had plenty of time to wait. He didn’t react to her thought, since he didn’t want to seem like he was intentionally monitoring her.

He also had no intention of taking away her individuality. The thought of him as some sort of all powerful villain, intent on – and capable of – brainwashing her into becoming one of the worker bees would almost be flattering if it weren’t a horrifying image and contrary to the telepath’s entire worldview. In time, she would see that he meant her no harm but that would have to occur after she stopped giving him “the look.”

Eventually her effort passed, and she changed tactics. Sean focused on her attempt to shrug off her behavior as unproblematic due to external factors, and an attempt to brand her conduct as sufficient. It was typical teenage behavior, but he gave her a point for a valid observation. “Your teachers can fail you for handing in late assignments, you know, which means you’ll have to retake the class at best, and you won’t graduate at worst. Unlike public schools, we have no qualms holding students back a year.” The telepath folded his hands before him on his desk, prepared for a conversation about failing education standards; he was willing to treat her like another adult for this, even though she hadn’t seen how the administration actually functioned. “And yes, the national standards have fallen such that your college education is worth what my mother’s high school education was. But you still need the high school diploma to get through the rest of your life. And as a private school, we have some leeway; we can exceed state and national standards, so long as we don’t fall below them. We have some good stuff senior year.” He taught senior year.

The psychiatrist then smiled at the description of Pokémon; Ryan had adored those bizarre little creatures when he was younger. He’d insist on playing his Gameboy and showing off what he’d caught. He also had a tendency to give Sean all of his purple cards, which he’d been told were the psychic characters. “My nephew liked Pokémon too, although he’s a little old for it. The card games I play aren’t anywhere near that convoluted.”

Sean opened his desk drawer and removed two decks of card, one a standard deck and one a Pinochle deck, both Bicycle brand. “I’m willing to teach you if you want, or we can keep talking about education standards. Or I can bore you with a story about when I was a student back in the day.”

Sean nodded in acquiescence and dropped the poker deck back in his drawer, as they wouldn’t need it. Opening up the pinochle deck, he removed the cards, letting them fall into his hand. He set the box at the end of the desk, and then handed her the instruction sheet from the bottom of the deck, so that she could use it for reference. Holding up the deck, he said, “Pinochle is played with a forty-eight card deck: we use the cards nine through ace, and have two of every suit.” He began to shuffle the deck, as he couldn’t remember the last time he used it, and that would help even the playing field a bit. “I just handed you the rule card, which tells you how many points each meld is worth. A meld is a combination of cards you want to try to display.”

Sean had always liked pinochle; his father had taught him how to play when he was younger, which was how he’d learned most of the card games he taught others. It was a simple way to spend the time, and an easy way to siphon off his paternal instincts, teaching the students how to play cards.

He’d just finished cutting the cards and had begun dealing them when she asked the first of her questions. The question was pragmatic, expected, although phrased somewhat uncouthly, as he expected of teenagers. As she’d already displayed the capacity to converse like an adult, he would continue to treat her as one, and he gave her an honest answer. “Your teachers are concerned that you aren’t handing your work in on time, yes. You’ve been advised of the consequences, and if you persist in the behavior, you’ll likely be sent here again since I’m the one-stop-shopping for non-curriculum matters. In the mean time, you’re here for the next hour and I prefer to do something constructive, even if it’s only learning a card game, rather than sitting here staring at one another for the next forty-five minutes. Fair enough?”

The psychiatrist finished dealing the cards and set the rest of the deck down. He chuckled lightly at the question and shook his head. “Not unless someone radically redefined ‘goth’ when I wasn’t paying attention.” With that, he flipped over the top card, which was a spade.” This is the trump suit; remember that for the rest of the game.”

Pinochle was a game unto itself, which was one of the reasons it required a special deck of cards. When he was younger, Sean had been surprised that so few people knew how to play, since his father had played with friends and when growing up in the Neville house, it was no different from playing bridge in other houses. Common. But as he’d met other people, he realized that he was in the minority when it came to this game. It was complicated, and it was easiest played by counting cards which wasn’t a skill that many people possessed, and it wasn’t a game one played to wast time like Go Fish or Spit. However, it was worth learning.

Sean had never been a goth. As a boy, he had been too ridiculous, too wholesome, too proper and too befitting Long Island and its stereotypes to be goth. Besides, goth as a style hadn’t existed as such when he was a boy; gothic literature existed, but the style came about later. When he was in college, he had been a hippie, albeit on the tail end of the accepted hippie era. And then he had continued to be a hippie to varying degrees before settling down at Hammel in a medical faculty capacity. At this point, he was merely himself: non-traditional by most opinions, although he had to keep boundaries with students. With his friends, it was an entirely different story.

“And what do you consider a normal adult?” The psychiatrist inquired. He then smiled at her determination and glanced down at his hand. “I wish you luck with that. If you want, we can play a round of twenty questions and see if that makes it any easier for you.”

The game was complicated, and Sean was aware of that. However, he was also patient and enjoyed teaching this to other people, so he was happy to explain the rules to her in a different way and walk her through the first hand. That should give her the opportunity to learn and make the situation less frustrating. “Of course. On the back of that card I gave you is a list of all the meld and their point values. Keep those in mind, because you can meld when you win a trick.”

He paused, giving her time to absorb that, while he looked through his hand for available meld. “Aside from meld, cards are in usual order of value: Aces beat kings down to nines. You play a card, and I play a card, and whoever has the most valuable card gets the trick – both cards in front of us, and also gets to take top card for their hand. The winner then gets to meld and accrue points that way.”

Unsurprisingly, Sean won the first game, although he was not boastful. There was no pride to be taken in beating someone when he was teaching her, particularly when it was the first game of Pinochle she had ever played. As he dealt for the second game, he noticed that she was already picking up on some of the subtleties. If she came to enjoy it enough to keep up the game, then he would feel more comfortable counting cards and could give her even more of a run for her money.

In another area where Sean was not boastful but was confident, he noticed that she had begun to relax. He tended to have that effect on students who came to his office. Height, psychiatric license, and telepathy aside, he was not particularly off-putting.

“It isn’t bad once you get used to it,” Sean replied. That was a common reaction to Hammel; the students didn’t know what to expect and tended to tilt the scales in favor of the worst possible scenario as a coping mechanism. The faculty tried to make the school as pleasant as possible while retaining the atmosphere of a school, and thus the students were better able to handle it after the initial resentment wore off. There were plenty of luxuries at the school itself to make up for the fact that, although aesthetically pleasing, the location was in the middle of nowhere. And there was a certain degree of liberation in being surrounded by other metas and no longer feeling isolated back home, sticking out like a sore thumb and depending on the power, fearing harm or insanity. “It took me some time, but I’d been coming from a very strict school and I didn’t know what to expect.” The psychiatrist smiled at the memory and went in to deal more cards.

“Have you called them recently? I’m sure they’d like to hear from you if they haven’t.” Keeping up with family was important, particularly at that age and given the divorce and the new location. Not everyone could function the way he could, estranged from what few living relatives he had.