Something's changed. I can't quite figure it out yet but something has changed. I looked around Dr Getrude's office trying to figure out what it was. The walls were still the same old bland colours, the fancy framed degree she had was still pinned to the wall behind me and her old humidifier still churned silently in the corner of the room. Everything almost seemed normal. Except it wasn't. 

"Josiah." Dr Getrude's voice was neutral as always giving the impression of an automated telephone lady, like the one that tells you ‘the number you have dialled is unavailable please try again later,’ I could see Dr Getrude moonlighting as a voice-over person. Was that what they were called? 

"Josiah." Dr Getrude called my name again. 

I looked up at her eyes meeting her brown ones. At least they looked Brown under the shadow of her closed blinds. Dr Getrude watched me with her scrutinising look. Given that she was a therapist the look was subtle and you had to have been in therapy with her for as long as I had to know that. 

"Tell me what you are thinking of." Dr Getrude said, clipping her pen to the top of the clipboard. A gesture she only did when she was trying to get me to concentrate on whatever we were supposed to talk about. 

"It's the couch." I heard myself say. 

"What's wrong with the couch?" 

I splayed my fingers on the couch cushion beside me, "It's different. I don't like it." 

It was different. The colour was the same old boring beige and the texture was still a cross between leather and faux leather but it still felt wrong. Like I was in a strangers house and they would kick me out soon. I looked up at Dr Getrude's face and tried to smile but my cheeks hurt and she almost cracked a smile. Almost. 

"It's a new couch." She said leaning back into her seat, "What did we say about new things?" 

"That they don't have to be necessarily bad?" 

"Exactly. Now, tell me what happened yesterday." 

"Oh." 

I looked at the beige digital clock that sat on Dr Getrude's desk. Ten minutes past four. Plenty of time left in that hour. I looked around the room trying to find something else to say. Anything but the truth. I couldn't tell Dr Getrude about my ‘tree’ and how he accidentally saw the sketches I was drawing. Especially since said sketches were of the ‘tree’. Dr Getrude patiently watched me like she always did when I took too long to reply. But this time I couldn't tell her. I just couldn't. She would think my ‘condition’ was getting worse. I have seen doctors on tv. 

"I think I made a friend."I blurted out. 

Dr Getrude's eyebrow raised slightly and she scribbled something short and quick in her book. She didn't comment on my sentence, instead she waited again. Watching, waiting and whatever else therapists did when they silently looked in your general direction. 

"He is cool. In a Jessie Usher sort of way. You know, that actor from The boys." 

"Yes, I know who Jessie Usher is." Dr Gertrude replied. 

"Then you know he is very handsome and he was a ..." 

"He has what?" Dr Gertrude asked me pen poised and ready to scribble something about how I fantasised about A-train from The boys. 

I shook my head and tried to change the topic, "You said I should do one brave thing." 

"Yes, I did." Dr Getrude replied, "What did you do?" 

"I spoke to someone." I watched Dr Getrude's eyes widen before she scribbled something messy in her notebook, "Not verbally. I used sign language and I don't think he understood but I did it. And my heart just thrashed loudly against my chest as I did it." 

Dr Getrude's rare small smiles slipped through her lips as she looked at me. 

"How did that make you feel?" 

"And here I thought we were going to end our session without hearing the magical words," I said, glancing at the clock again. 

Half-past four. The time wasn't moving at all. It always seemed to slow down in Dr Getrude's office. If she turned out to be a timekeeping alien I wouldn't have been surprised. I looked at the clock again. Only a minute had passed since the last time I checked. 

I wanted to tell Dr Getrude how I felt but for whatever reason, all I could think about was Baring's stupid smile when he told me he found sketches in his locker. The way he had described them like they were precious to him not at all like someone who received many gifts from boys, girls and non-binary people in our school. Looking down at my hands I turned them over, there was a bit of dried blue paint on the base of my thumb. I pulled down my long sleeve and rubbed at the spot. 

Baring had seen sketches I drew. Sketches of him. Baring had sat down somewhere and looked at countless sketches I had poured my heart onto. Sketches I didn't intend for him to see. It was an honest mistake. See, Baring's locker is one locker away from mine and Killian is impatient if not snappy. Especially days when he is about to go on yet another Mountain expedition for his youtube channel or his photography class. So two and two together equals four. Four being me accidentally shoving my sketches into Barings locker because I thought it was mine and I was in a rush to leave. And no, I don't know his combination. I slipped them in using those tiny air vents at the top.  

"Josiah!" Dr Getrude's voice snapped me out of my thoughts bringing me back to reality, "Stop. Your hand is clean. You are rubbing it raw." 

I looked down at my hand and sure enough, it was clean and red with a dull pain ebbing from the spot. I looked at it and curled my fingers so they could rub the heel of my palm even for just a second. 

"How about you tell me about what you were thinking about?" Dr Getrude said, looking at me with her stern Dr face. The face that she usually gave me before she launched into a speech about how therapy only works if you talk honestly and open up. 

"About my friend?"

"Is he being disrespectful to you?" 

"No. Daniel is nice to me. He talks to me and..." I laughed as the image of him trying to sign his name came into my head, "He uses terrible sign language." 

‘He is also the only friend I have made on my own in a while.’ I thought as I fidgeted on Dr Getrude's couch. 

"Ok. And how does Daniel make you feel?" 

"Like a person." 

"As compared to what?" 

I shrugged, "Not a person." 

"Ok. We will talk about Daniel another time. Let's talk about your nightmares." 

A cold draft passed through me causing me to shudder. Dr Getrude wrote down some more notes and looked at me with her slightly squinted eye again.

"Are they still the same?" 

"You mean do my lungs still fill up with smoke and heat?" 

Dr Getrude added more notes to her notebook. She was on fire. Ha! The irony. 

"What changed this week?" 

"Someone dragged me out of my room. But it wasn't a firefighter because the person wasn't in uniform."

Dr Getrude flipped through her notebook like she didn't know all the details already. The same details she kept reminding me about every session, "The police report said the firemen didn't save you. Someone else did. Your subconscious could be trying to remind you who it was." 

"Can you tell it to stop?" 

"Josiah, we have gone through this. You know the police department is trying to figure out who burnt the building. They need to find the person to determine whether it was Arson or an accident." 

"You mean they need to find out who did it so they can arrest whoever murdered my mother?" 

"We can't assume that's what happened. We have to assume this person, whoever they are, have a story of their own." 

I crossed my arms and leaned into the boring couch. Story of their own. As if. What sort of story made someone burn a building with fourteen floors and people still inside it. At least the person could have waited until everyone went to school or work. I looked over at the digital clock, sixteen fifty-three. Seven minutes were left. 

"You seem anxious to leave. Do you have somewhere to go?" 

I looked down at Dr Getrude's brown carpet. Yet another mundane addition to her mundane office. If I was one of the property brothers I would spruce the place up maybe give it a little colour because it was seriously lacking. Is that what the property brothers do? I glanced at the clock again, "sixteen fifty-seven." I whispered to myself. 

"I am going on a trip to the mountains." 

"That's a good move." Another one of Dr Getrude's clinical expressions of approval, "What will you do there." 

"Paint the landscape. Killian and Kennedy are taking me. I don't think it's a good idea because Killian and Kennedy have been fighting since the womb but my dad thinks it's a sign of something divine so I will see what happens there." 

Dr Getrude smiled and closed her notebook. She looked at me and shook her head. The professional clinical look resurfaced and she placed her book on the table before me,  "I want you to work on something, Josiah. Whatever you are having trouble telling me. I want you to go home and talk about it in your video diary. You have to practice saying it out loud so you can be able to tell me." 

I looked over at the digital clock. It was three minutes past five. Three minutes past our time. I nodded my head and immediately stood up, "Ok. I will." try my best. I thought as I looked at Dr Getrude's unbelieving face. 

"What did I say about therapy?" 

"It doesn't work if I don't speak about the stuff on my mind." 

"Exactly. You can go now. Have fun with the twins."

Author's Note : So I noticed that I totally forgot to post this chapter before chapter 6. So sorry for the inconvenience here is chapter 5.