Sandalwood puffed out the silver dispenser sitting on the round birch table next to Sonia Hernandez as she scribbled on her legal pad. Her bare skin, that wasn't covered by her black and yellow striped skirt stuck to the warm leather.

"How does that make you feel?" Sonia threw out the nauseatingly generic question.

Alex drummed his fingers on the arm of the couch. "How do I feel about what," His eyebrows lazily lifted. "Today being Friday, the sky being blue, my hair being black, or me being white."

Sonia's pen stopped gilding across the yellow paper, "Alex, we are down the home stretch. You have just three months left of your probation. This would go smoothly if you would just answer the question and accept my help."

"The judge didn't get it and you're having a problem with it too. Open your ears; here it is one more time." Alex cupped his hands around the sides of his mouth. "I'm fine!"

"I've been your therapist for a little over a year, even though you spoke in one syllable the entire time." Sonia looked over to the red paper-covered hardback book in the middle of all her medical books on the silver bookshelf along the wall. "I've researched your life, your family, your friends. I'm a psychiatrist and as you should know from majoring in the field, we invest in our patients."

"Is this trip going anywhere?" Alex asked with his arms folded. "Can we just jump to the exit? I would like to salvage my day." He looked past her at the two framed degrees from Princeton and Cornell hanging on the crème wall.

Sonia uncrossed her legs, placed the pen and pad on the table to her side, and scooted to the edge of the chair. She sat up straight and tucked her black hair behind her satellite ear displaying a lackluster dainty silver hoop.

"You, Alex witnessed your girlfriend die at sixteen. You took the blame; spent a year in an asylum until your half-brother Malachi sprung you free only under the supervision of Dr. Fulton, who was on your father's payroll. After, which you attended the exclusive and prestigious Dawson Prep."

Alex opened his mouth. She held up her palm halting his rebuttal. He closed it in a tightly curved frown.

Sonia resumed, "Where during your senior year you became suspect zero when your colleagues started falling dead. Then you and your friends suffered a nightmarish ordeal while being locked in an asylum where you all had to kill to stay alive. Now, yes since then you have pulled the reins back to live a somewhat normal life, you go to school, have a girlfriend, and friends. But you are not normal and anyone who has lived through any one of these events can't be normal."

Sonia stood up balancing her thick body on the stilts that she called shoes. She shuffled back to her desk. "Don't come back until you reject your citizenship in fantasyland." She sat in her upholstered chair behind her birch desk.

"Seriously, I don't have to come back!" He stood up sporting a smirk.

She kept her eyes on her papers finishing up the last bit of work for his file, "You don't but you will. Also, the time that passes won't count."

Alex released the doorknob. "You mean you would let me leave but if I leave the time will still be on the books."

"Correct," Sonia affirmed reading the calendar on her desk.

"Then I'll stay." Alex reluctantly walked back to the couch.

Sonia clasped her hands watching him sit down. "And talk?"

He groaned rolling his eyes in his head.

"I'll talk." Alex pulled down the legs of his pants and sat back.

Sonia shuffled back to the grey chair in front of the couch. She pulled down her skirt and sat down.

"So, what do you want to talk about?" Alex pushed his back into the cushion of the black couch.

"Start by telling me about your morning." Sonia picked her legal pad and pen back up.

"I woke up, took a shower, got some coffee, read over some Aristotle then played some golf with Malachi." Alex nonchalantly told.

That was a lie but what was he going to tell her. At seven o'clock in the morning, I was coming back from Poe Woods after watching Faith dig a grave. His statement was partially true; he did take a shower, look at his philosophy book, and played golf.

"That's good. I'm glad to hear that. Have you heard about Lucas' appeal being granted?" Sonia asked riveted that Alex was finally cooperating, allowing her to use her hard-earned experience.

"Yes. I have." Alex slid his hand along the couch pillow.

"How does that make you feel?" Sonia cocked her head to the side.

There it was. One of those questions asking about feelings and emotions. Alex tensed up. He scrunched his mouth to the side of his face trying to think of a therapist-friendly statement because he couldn't say, Lucas is a psychopathic liar that killed his parents and tried to frame him for attempted murder.

"I just want justice to be done." Alex shook his head that was a damn good answer, cha-ching!

Sonia jotted down the statement in scribbled handwriting. She looked up, "So you've forgiven Lucas for what he did to you."

Hell No! May he burn in hell with flames at his nostrils; rest assured duplicitous Lucas would be punished Alex thought.

"Yes. I talked it over with Pastor Payson—Chance Payson." Alex nodded. "He helped me understand that forgiveness was the key to moving on, process, and living a happy, healthy, fruitful life."

Alex knew how to lie. He didn't learn it when his au pair Zelda taught him his first word or along the halls of The Wheeler School. He didn't discover it when he took his father's Benz out for a midnight joyride or when his older brother, Paxton, threw a house party while their parents were at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. No, lying was a craft honed by every soul who sprouted from the Lemen seed.

"So, you have closure? No resentment?" Sonia asked straight to the point.

"Complete closure." A smile grew on his face. "No resentment."

"I'm glad. Most people would still be harboring anger and resentment."

"Well, I'm not most people." Alex bobbed his head mockingly from side to side.

"I see." Chimes erupted from Sonia's android on the table. "That's time."

Alex stood up. "Until next time."

Alex pulled the door open, walked down the hall, looked at Sonia's usual clientele of pampered offspring in the waiting room that waited to rack up the billed hours talking about how tortured their lives were because their parents left them to be reared by their nannies whose native tongue was nowhere near English. 

He walked out the door. He didn't need to be fixed or evaluated. The things inside his head, the secrets he kept locked away would drive a sane person mad.

Is Alex right for keeping some things away from his therapist?