“What about friends?”
Count ‘em on one hand, Crazy Megan says.
Shhhh.
“I hang with the goth crowd mostly,” she told the doctor.
“As in ‘gothic’?”
“Yeah. Only She decided she could tell him the truth. “What it is is I kinda stay by myself a lot. I meet people but I end up figuring, why bother? There’re a lot of losers out there.”
“Oh, yeah.” He laughed. “That’s why my business is so good.”
She blinked in surprise. Then smiled too.
“What’s the boyfriend situation?”
“This won’t take much time,” she said, laughing ruefully. “I was going with this guy? Joshua? And he was, like, all right. Only he was older. And he was black. I mean, he wasn’t a gangsta or anything. His father’s a soldier, like an officer in the Pentagon, and his mother’s some big executive. I didn’t have a problem with the race thing. But Dr. Hanson said I was probably involved with him just to make my parents nuts.”
“Were you?”
“I don’t know. I kinda liked him. No, I did like him.”
“But you broke up?”
“Sure. Dr. Hanson said I ought to dump him.”
“He said that?”
“Well, not exactly. But I got that impression.”
Crazy Megan thinks that Mr. Handsome Shrink, Mr. George Clooney stud, ought to’ve figured it out: How can a psycho nutcase like me go out with anybody? If I hadn’t dumped Josh-which I cried about for two weeks-if I hadn’t left, then everybody at his school would be on his case. “He’s the one with the loony girl. “And then his folks would find out -they’re the nicest people in the universe and totally in love-and they’d be crushed. .. Well, of course I had to leave…
“Nobody else on the horizon?” he asked.
“Nope.” She shook her head.
“Okay, let’s talk about the family some more. Your mother.”
“Bett and I get along great.” She hesitated. “Only it’s funny about her-she’s into her business but she also believes in all this New Age stuff crap. I’m, like, just chill, okay? That stuff is so bogus. But she doesn’t hassle me about it. Doesn’t hassle me about anything really. It’s great between us. Really great. The only problem is she’s engaged to a geek.”