The Carnivore [boyxboy]

Chapter 13

Rory stared down the woman with his arms crossed over his chest. He didn’t want to be here, but his mother was making him go. On a Saturday. What kind of people worked weekends? This woman evidently.

They’d already gone through all of the legal jargon surrounding attending counseling. Rory was under sixteen, so she could release information to his mother. His mother had promised she wouldn’t ask for any of that information if he didn’t want her to.

Not like there was anything to talk about. He wasn’t going to say anything first. “Rory,” the woman, Elise, began gently. “We can sit here for an hour staring at each other if you really want, or we can talk.”

“I’m not sick,” Rory protested firmly.

“No one said you were,” Elise consoled him.

“And I’m not crazy. Sickness is something physical, not mental. So there’s nothing wrong with me. It’s only natural to want to avoid getting sick.” Rory shrugged. It was that simple.

“If you think it’s only physical, what about the mental side of things? PTSD, mental defects, psychopaths and sociopaths. That’s all up in the mind.” She tapped the side of her head.

Rory ground his teeth together. “Most mental defects can be attributed to genetics and chromosomes,” he corrected her. But on the others he wasn’t so sure how they worked.

“Your mother says you’re into a lot of science. I know from that kind of perspective, things without much reason are hard to accept. But she say’s you and germs border on obsession. Between your subject of reading, art…”

“I read other things,” Rory could proudly tell her. “Deacon showed me a whole section at the library.”

Elise nodded and smiled. “Good. Who’s Deacon?”

Rory stalled. How did he answer that? “He’s my sister’s ex-boyfriend.”

“And the two of you are still friends?” Elise questioned.

“We’re not friends,” Rory scoffed. “He just drives me home from school so I don’t have to take the bus. And sometimes he’ll take me to the library, or once we went swimming—“ although that brought back very different memories then. Rory found himself blushing.

“Well those sound like friendly things to do,” Elise pointed out. “And you must mean a lot to him if you’re both still talking after he broke up with your sister.”

Rory narrowed his eyes at her. “Did my mom say something to you?” he sat forward a little bit. “About that one rainbow book?”

Elise cleared her throat. “She mentioned you might have been struggling with your sexuality as well.”

“I’m not struggling with anything. I don’t see a reason to even be attracted to people; it’s pointless, unless it’s to have kids. And maybe Deacon thinks that something is going to happen, but it isn’t. It’s only happened once and it won’t happen again,” Rory stated firmly.