“This’ll he repeating some things,” Peters now said, “but if you don’t mind, could we go over some of the basics?”

“I guess.”

He asked, “It’s Megan Collier?”

“No, Collier’s my father’s name. I use my mother’s. McCall.” She rocked in the stiff-backed chair, crossing her legs. Her tomato socks showed. She uncrossed her legs and planted her feet squarely on the floor,

“You don’t like therapy do you?” he asked suddenly

This was interesting too. Hanson had never asked that. Wouldn’t ask anything so blunt. And unlike this guy, Hanson didn’t look into her eyes when he spoke. Staring right back, she said, “No, I don’t.”

He seemed amused. “You know why you’re here?”

Silent as always, Crazy Megan answers first. Because I’m fucked up. I’m dysfunctional. I'm a nutcase. I’m psycho. I’m loony. And half the school knows and do you hare a fucking clue how hard it is to walk through those halls with everyone looking at you and thinking. Shrink bait. shrink bait? Crazy Megan also mentions what just plain Megan would never in a million years tell him-about the fake computerized picture of Megan in a straitjacket that made the rounds of Jefferson High two weeks ago.

But now Megan merely recited, “‘Cause if I didn’t come to see a therapist they’d send me to Juvenile Detention.”

When she’d been found, drunk, strolling along the catwalk of the municipal water tower two months ago she’d been committing a crime.

The county police got involved and she maybe pushed, maybe slugged a cop. But finally everybody agreed that if she saw a counselor the commonwealths attorney wouldn’t press charges.