Angries.

“-they’re scary because they aren’t just him being upset. It’s someone else. When I look at him, I see this sweet, caring boy who loves his family and his friends, and then, suddenly, there’s this other person in my house where my son once stood. This screaming, seething person who scares the crap out of me and everyone else around him, and honestly is not welcome here.” She realizes what she just said and sighs, ashamed.

This again. More therapy, more long talks, like I’m a disorder, like you can be cured. I’m not impotence or alcoholism, I’m rage in its worst form. They’ll never take me alive.

“Well, that’s unacceptable.”

“Laura, what else is there to do? He hated Jim Reiner so much… Any time I bring therapy up, he gets this look on his face, like I’m stabbing him in the back…”

It’s a shrink. Must be. No one else is as good at making people spill their guts out. Fucking parasites.

“I’ll talk to him, Charlotte, but this is up to him.”

That’s all I need to hear. I walk out from the front hallway and march over to the fridge, doing everything in my power to keep the venom at bay. The energy of it, the power, is already coursing through my bloodstream. I can barely keep my hand steady as I reach for something to drink. I hear Mom’s voice say, “Hey, honey, how was your day?”

I turn around and face her, making sure my voice is good and hard. I am ready to be a bastard. “Fine. Who’s she?”

“I actually wanted to talk to you about this…”

My vision starts blurring with anger. It’s half me, half venom at this point. “Well, you didn’t. So who’s she?”

The woman sitting with my mother looks like Ann Coulter. She’s blond, not that annoying bleached blond but that warm, natural blond, her hair reaching down past her shoulders. She’s wearing a blue turtleneck sweater and wire-rimmed glasses, and she has the biggest breasts I have ever seen in my entire life. The muscles in her back must be insane to carry those things around. Given different circumstances, they’d almost be comical, but now they only serve to make her grotesquely irritating. She’s holding a mug of coffee and staring at me with utter neutrality. Yeah, that’s right, bitch, keep looking at me like I’m a specimen. I’m real fucking scared. You have NO IDEA who you’re dealing with.

“Locke, this is Laura Yeski. She’s an old friend of mine from college.”

I sneer. “Ahhh. Psych major?”

“Locke,” my mom says in a voice that lets me know I’m going too far, “Laura’s a psychologist. I wanted you to talk to her.”

I shrug and glance at my boots. “Why not? Let’s rap.”

My mom stands up and walks over to me, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Look, honey, I have to go pick Lon up from school. All I ask is that you talk to her until I get back, and see how you feel. Afterward we’ll talk about it, okay?”

I calculate the time in my head. It’ll take my mom about a half hour, forty-five minutes to pick up my brother. I can go that long without putting my boot through this woman’s skull.

A few minutes later, after my mom’s thrown her coat on and said her too-cheery good-byes, I sit down across the table from Laura-sorry, Dr. Yeski-and slowly sip my soda. She hasn’t stopped staring at me, and it’s making me a little uncomfortable and a lot pissed, because I can tell that behind her eyes it’s all zeroes on the checks my mom will have to write her.

“So, you seem not to like me very much, Locke,” she says, bringing her coffee to her lips.

“Nope,” I say.

“What’s that about? You don’t know me, after all.”

“Well, doctor,” I say, emphasizing her purpose, “the last psychologist I dealt with was one of the bigger assholes I’ve ever met. I’m not sure you’ll be any different.”

“So you’re calling me an asshole?”

“Maybe not calling you one…I’m expecting you to be an asshole.”

“And all you know is that I’m a psychologist.”

“That’s all I need.”

“Well, first off,” she says, looking up into my eyes, “Jim Reiner was a psychiatrist, while I’m a psychologist. They’re different things.”

“How so?”

“One is crazy, the other isn’t.”

“Which one’s the crazy one?”

“I guess you’ll decide that for yourself.”

Touché. I can’t help but laugh a little, a tiny snort of amusement at the comment.

“Second, your mother invited me to talk to you because you yourself seem a little uncomfortable with these problems you’re having. These…what does she call them?”

“Angries.”

“Right. What do you call them? She said you had a name for them.”

“I call it the venom.”

“Interesting. Anyway, I just want to be someone who you can talk to. You’d come to my office once a week and we’d talk about whatever is on your mind. I’d scribble in a notebook about certain things I notice in your ideas or beliefs, and I’d try to help you work out some of your problems. Pretty painless, and wholly your prerogative.”

I sip my soda to show her I’m considering this thing carefully. “And if I refuse?”

“Then I go back to my office and get back to work.”

“That’s it? I say no, and you leave?”

“Yup,” she says. “Locke, I’m not here to be your friend or your confidante. I came here because your mother’s a dear friend of mine, and from what she told me, this ‘venom’ thing of yours is becoming a problem for you and your family.”

It’s about to become a problem for you in a couple of seconds, you hideous slag.

“You think I need curing, that it?”

“I didn’t say that-”

“But you implied it,” I snap, rising to my feet. My face flushes white-hot. My hands tighten on the table. The dark parts of my brain twitch. “There’s nothing to fix here, okay, doc? I’m my own fucking boss, and I don’t give a shit how you know my mother. I’ve had enough of this psychobabble bullshit.”

“Fair enough, but think about this,” she says unwaveringly. “You may be content with the person you are, but you’re scaring the living hell out of your mother, who seems to care a great deal for you. And while you may not like me, or therapy in general, it might be worth a try if it’ll stop you from hurting the people you love.”

“The people I love can tell me what they fucking think.”

She snorts. “Can they? Then why’d your mother call me?”

The words blow out the rage like a candle, and I feel the burning darkness replaced with the emotional muck. She’s right, as frustrating as that is. If my mother had been able to tell me she was scared, if I wasn’t such a horrible mess, I wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. Slowly, ashamedly, I sit back into my chair and lower my head, defeated. “Point taken.”

She smiles finally, a cool little smile that could be a smirk if it wanted to. “So let’s talk. Venom, huh?”

“Yeah. The venom.”

“Like the comic-book villain or the band?”

I didn’t know there was a band named Venom. I hate that. How dare she get the upper hand on me? “Neither. Is that supposed to impress me in some hip kind of way?”

“No. I don’t think impressing you is really in the cards. Just a question.”

“That’s clever. You’re clever.”

“If we’re going to do this, you have to be willing. I can’t fight you on this, but compromise is always an option. Let’s make a deal.”

I feel like Faust, but I nod, and we talk.

A couple of nights later, Lon and I are having dinner together alone. It’s Mexican takeout, which means we eat it on the couch in front of The Simpsons. It’s the closest thing to male bonding that we have. I don’t do catch, but I’m fine with nachos and Apu.

Lon glances at me midway through his burrito and says softly, “So, was that lady with the huge boobs your new shrink?”

I have no idea how Lon knows any of this. I didn’t hide the fact that I’d gone to see Dr. Reiner, but I never really discussed it with Lon, and I didn’t think my mom had either. The idea always scared me a little bit: Big brothers are supposed to be protectors, people to look up to. They should be able to beat up bullies for you and make sure you know what terms like “popping her cherry” mean later in your life. The fact that I’m so screwed up, screwed up enough to need therapy anyway, is not okay. I wish Lon didn’t have to even consider this shit. Having him ask me about it is almost painful.