Me&Me

Tick tock, tick tock. The sound echoed around the room in the awkward silence. I sat alone on the purple armchair, pretending that I didn’t know they were staring at me. As a pathetic attempt to try and avoid eye contact, I looked around the office. The potted plant on the windowsill made the whole place feel like a dentist’s office, and the bright yellow paint on the walls seemed to aim to act as a cheery distraction.
“So Katy, why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?” he said calmly. He was sitting in the purple armchair opposite mine, wearing a green tartan jacket and brown corduroy trousers. His left leg was crossed over his right, and his bottle rim Harry Potter style glasses were on the end of his nose. It really was the perfectly casual pose, all expect for his hand. His notepad was resting on his leg, and I was very aware of his hand poised holding a pen, ready to write down anything I said.
“Go on Katy,” mum smiled encouragingly. It looked like there was absolutely no escape from this, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try. 
“Dr Fields you already know everything about me, I’m sure you still have everything on file from my last visit,” I told him. He pushed his glasses back up his nose and looked at me.
“Katy dear, your last visit here was nearly seven years ago. I do believe you were six, and you’re… thirteen now? I think that’s quite old enough to answer my questions,” he smiled warmly. I sighed, seeing no other option but to wade my way through this.
“Tell him about your netball,” dad suggested.
“I don’t really think that’s relevant,” I said.
“No, no, I’d like to hear about it,” Dr Fields insisted calmly.
“Fine,” I sighed tiredly, “I play netball, I’m on my school team. I’m the goal attack or the center, depending whether it’s home or away. I go to a netball club on Saturdays with my friends,” I said. This seemed to spark his attention.
“Tell me about your friends Katy, what are they like?” he asked, leaning forward and putting one hand on the other, resting his arms on his knee and his chin on his hands.
“They’re all nice,” I shrugged.
“Do you have any best friends?”
“Yeah,”
“Tell me about them,” he smiled.
“…Okay,” I said, trying to avert my eyes from the sweat that was starting to appear on the top of his nearly bald head. I hated that I had to be here, I wasn’t crazy, and I certainly didn’t need a child psychologist.
“I guess they would be Nancy, Nancy Norris and Ellie Potter,” I said, and I got the feeling that he wanted more, “Um, Nancy is a ballerina, she lives with her mum… she’s good at cooking and she’s really clumsy, I know, not the best trait for a ballerina. Ellie, well she’s very blunt, like if she thinks something she’ll say it.”
“She’s very free-willed,” mum added.
“And strongly opinionated,” dad tagged on.
“Uh huh,” Dr Fields noted, scrawling something down on his notepad. There were a few more minutes of silence while the clock ticked away on the wall. Everyone knew what was coming, we all knew what he was going to ask now. 
“Why don’t you tell me about Annie?” he finally said. I waited for a while, not saying anything, and then:
“What do you want to know?” I asked quietly.
“Why don’t you tell me what she says to you?”
“Nothing much, we just talk about normal stuff.” I shrugged, keeping my eyes low on the floor.
“Tell me Katy, does she tell you to do things… bad things? Does she tell you to hurt people?” he asked, rather bluntly I thought.
“No!” I looked up, startled. Where had that come from? I’d never hurt anyone! He sat back and watched me, tapping his pen on his knee.
“She helps me… be better. She tells me what to do when I don’t know myself,” I said, keeping my voice low.
“Alright, alright, let me through. This jerk has had his fun, time to let him see the magic!” she cried, angry that he was making her look bad.
“Shut up Annie, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” I told her.
“Exactly! Let me through!” she ordered. I sighed.
“She’s talking to you now, isn’t she?” he guessed. I didn’t answer, instead, I let her have her way. I sighed, and then started to breath slowly in and out. Every breath I let out, it let a piece of me go, and every breath that came in, pulled her forward. I felt myself tumbling backwards, right to the back of my head. Right to the place where I couldn’t do anything but return if I wanted to. She was in the control seat now. It didn’t take them long to realize. I leaned back in the chair, stretching my legs out and examining my nails casually. A surge of confidence was running through me.
“Hello Annie,” he greeted us politely.
“Hey Doc,” my voice said, “I had to come out and defend my good name, no dragging this chick through the mud,” It was funny because when Annie spoke in my head, she was American, but when she took control of us, my voice was still English.
“So how have you been?” he asked carefully.
“Oh you know, same old, same old. How are you? How’s the Mrs., how is life?” she grinned with my face. I could see my parents staring at us in shock, the way they always did when Annie took over my body. They didn’t understand though, they thought I had Split Personality Disorder. They didn’t understand that Annie wasn’t me, she was a different person. It was something completely different, something magic.
    Annie StLawrence had always been in my head, and when I was a little kid I had believed that she was my imaginary friend, just like all the other kids had. Only all of their imaginary friends had played by the rules, joining in the pretend tea parties and making up dances. The other kids had also created their friends, given them a name, a face, and most of the time a family and even a kingdom if their friend was a princess or a prince. But not my imaginary friend. No, Annie had introduced herself to me one day in nursery school like she was just another kid.
      She was the ever confident voice inside my head, and she was just as clueless about how she got there as I was. I used to hate her when I couldn't make her do what I wanted the way the other kids did with their pretend friends. But Annie had always been different, and something inside me had always known that she was anything but imaginary. When I was six, as Dr Fields had said earlier today, I had visited him in his office. This was because when I was six, Annie took control of us for the first time. She didn’t used to ask me, not when we hated each other. She would just push herself forward in my head, and push me to the back, turning us into her. I was like two completely different people, in the same body, and now we both took turns being in charge.
      The first few times she pushed her way forward, or as we liked to call it, switched, I had fainted. When I had woken up I was a completely different person, and I couldn't control anything I did, it was all her. I had to sit in the back on my head and wait for her to let her guard down before I could knock her back and take control. But over the years, she’d helped me so much that we’d become friends. Actually she was more like my self-appointed bodyguard, she always got up in a huge fit whenever I wasn’t happy about something. She did her best to protect me, and I did the same for her.
“I’m fine thank you,” he said.
“Excellent,” she grinned.
“So Annie, why don’t you tell me a little about yourself, just like Katy did, I’m sure you’ve been listening?” he asked.
“Yes I have been, I’m always listening you see. It gets so boring trapped away in the back of her head, all I can do is listen, or if I’m feeling bad then I hum really loudly in the middle of a math test. Katy doesn’t think it’s funny when I distract her, but I like seeing her face when she realizes that no one else can hear it,” she laughed.
“How do you feel about Katy’s life? Do you feel the same things she feels, like the same people?” the doctor asked.
“Oh god no! As you can probably tell, I’m a lot chattier than she is, but I am quite fond of all the people in her life, after all, I’ve grown up with them too. Like you two,” she said, turning to my parents, “you don’t feel like my parents because you’re not, but I still like you a lot. After all, you were the ones cleaning up my puke when I was a squirt,” she continued, chatting happily away.
“I love the same people she does, but I have my own opinions about things. I think I get my opinions from my mum, she was always very…” she stopped. We both had the memory at the same time, it filled our head. Annie’s mother had pale skin and dark eyes the same color as her thick curls. She was beautiful. 
“Very…” Dr Fields prompted, but we were both too stunned to answer. I took the opportunity and raced forward, taking control.
“She… she left,” I said quietly, drawing my legs back in. I sat through the rest of his questions, answering as little as I could. When we drove home, mum and dad didn’t speak. I waited until I was in bed that night to think things over. If Annie remembered her mother, that meant she was real. And that meant that Annie really was a real person, and that she was somehow trapped inside my head. But the question was:

What the hell do we do now?