He didn’t have many friends, which is why the few he had were so precious.
However, they had got him into trouble, more than once. He knew these had been bad things, but wasn’t going to lose his friends because of them. His parents had never liked the sound of these new mates that he’d taken up with from the very beginning. It was only when they had it explained to them by the boy that they were very special because he was the only one who could see them, that they became worried. When they were told that these friends wouldn’t appear to anyone other than him, they began looking for help. They eventually settled on a specialist, a man who, it would seem, had made remarkable progress with similar patients.
After several discussions, the boy agreed to attend the medical suite for a number of sessions.
The medical practitioner, who was very expensive, as well as coming so highly recommended, had a number of really annoying habits. These, the boy had to contend with in order to keep his parents happy. The three that were particularly hard to put up with were the way he insisted on his referring to him as ‘Sunshine, the way he would keep saying, “Yes, yes,” to himself, as though he was congratulating himself about something, and the way he would idly sit twiddling and rotating the large, green marble apple, a paperweight he kept on his desk, whenever the boy tried to fully expand on his feelings.
On his final visit, when the boy had managed to convince the doctor that he had made all his friends go away, never to return, it was met with sheer delight and a great deal of “Yes, yes.”
The man was shuffling papers in his bottom drawer, looking for a discharge form when it happened.
He hadn’t even noticed the apple being picked up…
