The Region 8 building stood, foreboding as ever, before me. It wasn't quite as frightening this time, just a sort of dark presence. The way a lot of people might describe the sense that a poltergeist is near, except this building alone was harmless. The weight of the opinions held inside it? Those were what was scary. This time, however, I was armed with some semblance of evidence on my behalf.

Dad and I had scoured through my email, looking for any evidence of people being threatened by my silly auto reply. There was none, What we found instead were a few, very few, people simply asking what it was and my hurried explanation that followed. "Just song lyrics."

In we went. Again, we waited. Hours, maybe, I can't remember quite how long- but instead of the kind black therapist who had called us in the first time, it was a different one. He was tall, certainly at odds with dad- though I wasn't paying attention at the time, and fat. Genuinely fat, but I do suppose that round is a shape.

His shirt, as dad and I would come to later discuss, was perfectly pressed and folded just so- short brown hair slicked back with gel. He was pristine. I was not.

I shuffled in the door wearing, on this day, a denim button up that was fraying at the edges over a dark t-shirt with shorts. On this particular day I'd chosen to wear a pair of black cat ears that I'd gotten as part of a halloween costume.

Halloween was just around the corner, usually I go and do something weird. My freshman year I was a business cat. Suit and all. It really was rather fun.

The therapist's name was Vincent Seaner, and as he walked us to his office through the oddly confusing plethora of squared hallways, he asked me questions. Somehow, this led me to talk about God.

I'm not a particularly religious person, you should know. Often I describe God as the old bearded man in the sky, a satire to those who so blindly trust simply "his" written word. It's not that I have anything against the religious or that I don't believe in some more powerful deity. If I'm to be honest, there must be something more powerful at work, otherwise we'd have a real answer for how we came to be. I just don't so blindly trust what I don't understand. I simply acknowledge it.

I also began talk of my subconscious, "the little Carmen behind the curtain". He didn't like that. At all.

The conversation went about how you'd expect. We explained that it was all simply a misunderstanding. Yes, I created the auto reply, but that was a year ago now. No, it was not meant to be a threat. Yes, I can certainly see how it could be construed as such, but again- it was created a year ago before she was even principal here. So on and so forth.

By the end of the conversation, instead of just letting me go, he recommended that I go for in-patient therapy at our local institution, Riveredge. I kept quiet, let dad do the talking. I wasn't a very good negotiator.

I was made to sign a contract that I at least made an attempt to read in full. I was to call dad or him if I were to have any suicidal thoughts, be okay with myself, yadda yadda yadda. We initialed that first part out. I would write an entry in Crysophalax (my journal) first, and then maybe I'd call him. Maybe.

I realized that I was treading on thin ice, but I wouldn't be making promises that I either would not or could not keep. You don't sign before you read.

This, actually, becomes a problem later on in the story. If you thought this was coming to a close, you were grossly mistaken.

Following the signing of this contract, the "session" ended rather abruptly. Again, I was home sitting in my room as comfortable as I could be. We got the risk assessment the next day. I wouldn't be going to school again with a recommendation like that.

In his "evaluation" he misquoted my earlier remarks regarding god and my subconscious, neglected the fact that I'd explained to him specifically what I meant, made note of my dress and character. It was defamation, but I couldn't do anything about it. There was no way I was going to school, and there was no way I was making it to competition. I was broken, there's no other word for it.

I was home on the floor, curled up into a bean bag. Who knows what I was doing anymore, I was just upset. My younger brother came home with news that only crushed me further.

Apparently my band director had been forced to resign under accusations of inappropriately texting a minor

Accusations that, to this day, I refuse to believe.

My younger brother described that the entire band from seventh grade up was called into the cafeteria to hear the news. The school's deputy was standing behind them with his hand on an unclipped holster, ready to draw his weapon as if those children were going to attack someone over the news.

...

Competition was three days away.

I was going to miss competition.

My band was without a real director.

They were going to suffer.

Correlation doesn't equal causation, but..

It all seemed like it was my fault.

...

I cried. I didn't just cry, I bawled, sobbed. Huge crocodile tears, real crocodile tears streamed down my face for what seemed like hours. I was letting down my band, my family. I felt like I'd ruined everything for them. I couldn't even bring myself to support them that Saturday at the competition. I dearly wanted to go. If I couldn't march I could watch, couldn't I? But.. I couldn't bring myself to. It wasn't possible for me to bring myself to go. So I didn't.

It didn't seem like it could possibly get any worse, that thought was a mistake- there was still more to come.