Content that the point had been made the monster ended our little internal dialogue. I was only eight years old; I had no idea that this was what people viewed as wrong, only that the civil war that was going on inside my head was something that I had to keep secret.

I had only been to Ms. Duval’s office a couple of times before. In my elementary school she usually tried to get with every kid at least once toward the beginning of the year. The whole room looked like it had been designed by the same genius who came up with the paint job for the Partridge Family bus. She didn’t have any curtains because she said she liked the sunshine but I am convinced that it was because she had spent so much time hugging trees that she mutated the need to photosynthesize. That is of course, just a theory.

She looked like an enormous ostrich, if ostriches were pale with frizzy blonde hair and coke bottle glasses that made her pale blue eyes look enormous. When I said she was bony before I might have been understating the truth a bit. She had a body type that reminded me of Olive Oyl. Her hands and feet were gigantic and she had to be a little over six feet tall.

“Have a seat Johnny.” she said, offering me an uncomfortable bean bag chair that rested on the floor in front of another one. She perched herself on the bigger one. I was surprised that she could fold her gangly appendages up enough to do it without kicking me but she managed.

“Well,” she started. “I hear that you have been having a little trouble. Your teacher says that you are beginning to act strangely.”

I decided to play dumb. “I have?”

“Maybe strangely isn’t the best word for what I am talking about here. Ever since you had that awful fight here we’ve noticed that you have been acting differently than you used to. So I called you in here to see if there was anything that you wanted to talk to me about. You do know that you can talk to me even if it is something bad. Nothing you say here will get you in any trouble, did you know that?”

“Yes.”

She cleared her throat a little and gazed down at me with her huge magnified eyes. I knew that this was going to be the kind of conversation that wouldn’t end until I told her something that she wanted to hear. I know that Ms. Duval was only trying to give off the impression that she was warm and friendly but deep down she was just waiting for me to say something that she could latch on to, a cause for my suffering.

“Johnny, is there something going on outside of school? Is everything okay at home?”

“Everything is okay at home.”

“Have you noticed anything different about the way you have been feeling? Are you sad or angry, maybe even lonely?”

Lonely, the word stuck to me a little bit. Even if I were capable of being lonely anymore I was never alone. However, I saw this as an opportunity to get out of this conversation.

“Ever since I got in a fight all of the other kids have been mean to me. I don’t have any friends. No one plays with me at recess. No one sits with me at lunch.” I tried my best to look heartbroken.

A look of comprehension flashed across Ms. Duval’s face when she falsely assumed that she had hit the mother load. “Sometimes when people are a bit different it takes people a little while before they can get used to it. I know how you feel.”

I believed her when she said she knew how I felt. She was weird looking, even to a very weird boy. By telling her something that she could definitely personally relate to I had taken her absolute control over the conversation away. Now instead of being a screwed up little boy who she had to fix she and I were kindred spirits.

We talked a lot more after that. To her credit she was only trying to do what made her feel better about her own inadequacies but I knew that already I had won round one. I had conquered adult interference in my sudden sullen strangeness. It wouldn’t be long before I conquered my peers as well.