Chapter Text
On Jawbone’s first day of work at Aguefort Adventuring Academy, he had been handed a list of students that had regular meetings with his late predecessor, plus another list of incoming freshmen that had been flagged to be pulled in for a couple of sessions to support their transition to high school.
He hadn’t seen any students that day, had spent the whole time going through that list, looking up records, trying to figure out how the hell he was going to do this job. Talk these teenagers through all the issues that troubled them. A pile of borrowed textbooks from the library were his only guides, and determination to do right by these kids drove him.
Both lists had been long.
Each student’s record, details of previous visits, notes on supports already in place, contacts with parents and guardians, secrets divulged, even longer.
At the start of his second and third years of work at Aguefort Adventuring Academy, he did the same thing. Reviewed his list of students from the previous year that would continue seeing him on a regular basis. Went through the incoming freshmen to see if he could spot any that he’d need to keep an eye on in the first few weeks.
Lists and records just as long as the previous year.
At the start of his fourth year of work at Aguefort Adventuring Academy, he did it a bit differently.
He started with a list of only five.
Carefully booked each of them in for weekly sessions, making sure they were at the best times for their class schedules. Wrote up a plan for what he wanted to cover, eventually, going at their own pace but with some gentle nudging from him.
Emails got sent home to their families, everything written down in a brand new part of their individual permanent records. A single section stuck to the end, labelled ‘Strategies, Accommodations and Interventions for the Support and Rehabilitation of Antagonistic Students’.
A very fancy way of telling him to write down everything he was going to do to make sure they didn’t try to end the world again.
He’d had to fill out such a section a handful of times before.
These ones were different.
“I’m glad to see you here, Ruben,” Jawbone put on his warmest smile as he stepped aside to let Ruben shuffle past.
“Mmhmm,” Ruben didn’t make eye contact, looking up and around his office but deliberately avoiding actually looking at him, before finally striding over to the couch students usually sat in and pulling his legs up to sit cross-legged on it.
Well, he’d already known this wasn’t going to be easy. The fact that they were now five weeks into the school year and this was the first time he’d actually seen any of the Rat Grinders in his office despite the schedule was already proof enough of that.
Jawbone closed the door and gathered a few different fidgets, timers, stress balls, and other items that some students liked to hold or mess around with during sessions, putting them on the table in between the couch Ruben was sitting on and his own usual chair. “You’re welcome to use any of those if you want,”
He went back to his desk to get his notebook and a pen to give Ruben another chance to settle and catch another look at the entire room before he went and sat down. When he did, he put the closed notebook on the table, noticing Ruben eyeing it.
“So, Ruben. Perhaps we can start by talking about why you’ve picked today to come see me.”
“My Mom sent you an email asking if I’d been going and you said no and then she said she’d ground me forever and take away my crystal if I didn’t,” Ruben said in a deliberately flat voice, trying to cover up an undercurrent of something else. Could’ve been nerves, or just frustration.
“I see,” Jawbone was trying very hard to project openness, trustworthiness, but Ruben had seemed to pick one of the stress balls, a red one with a faded angry face on it, as the object that he’d stare at instead of ever looking at him, so his attempts at reassuring body language was mostly going to waste. “In that case, my next question is going to be, what are you hoping or expecting to get out of these sessions?”
Ruben folded his arms across his chest. “I dunno.”
“Okay,” for now, Jawbone was just going to take it all at face value. There would be time to press and nudge and prod for elaboration later. “Well, I’ll let you know what I have in mind for today, and then we can work things out from there.”
He briefly paused to give Ruben a chance to add something, to change his answer, but he stayed stubbornly silent, so Jawbone continued.
“The past few years, last year especially, you’ve gone through some pretty heavy stuff. Now you’re in your senior year, which is a big deal even without all of that. What I want this office to be is a space where you can feel comfortable to talk about the things that are worrying you, or even things making you happy, or ask questions about what comes next, and I can help you work it out.”
“When do I stop having to come?”
“…well, if we come to a point where I feel you’re confident and secure enough, we can talk about scaling meetings back to fortnightly, or monthly, or even stopping them all together. But that’s not a discussion that will open up for a while.”
Ruben shifted in his seat, reaching out and grabbing the stress ball he’d been staring at. He didn’t squeeze it or stretch it, just held it in his hands and kept looking down at it. “Well, I don’t need to talk about anything. I don’t remember any of it.”
Jawbone blinked. “You don’t?”
“Nope,” Ruben popped the ‘p’, lightly passing the stress ball from one hand to another. “Whole junior year. Gone. Nothing. I went… I finished sophomore year, went to bed, woke up on the ground in a whole new body. Wiped clean.”
“You don’t remember anything at all? Not even a few scattered memories, some feelings?”
Ruben shook his head.
Tilting his head, Jawbone leaned forward a little. He wasn’t sure if he believed Ruben entirely. He’d never seen him in his office prior to now, but he’d been vaguely aware of him. He knew what Ruben had looked like in sophomore year, how he had carried himself. The puka shells, the ukulele, the warmer colours in his clothes, hair combed out of his face.
He had a new string of puka shells around his neck now, but his clothes were the heavy and dark patterns he’d sported last year. Half of his face was still obscured by hair. Dark bags hung underneath his one visible eye.
Eventually, Jawbone hummed, trying to play off the pause as a thoughtful silence rather than a disbelieving one. “Well… that’s an experience all on it’s own. To lose a whole year of memories.”
He saw Ruben’s eyebrow furrow, face tilting up almost as if he was about to look at him before remembering himself and looking back down again.
“I guess.”
“Has it made your schoolwork any more difficult?”
“…nah. I’ve got the ukulele muscle memory. That’s still there. Professor Lullabye’s a really easy marker anyway.”
“What about the rockstar career?”
Ruben paused for a long moment. “I’m not doing that. Don’t remember any of it. It’s not happening anymore.”
“Okay,” this was what Jawbone had been expecting from these kids. Denial, deflection, and vague answers forcing him to drive the conversation rather than the other way around. “What about socially? It’s been a few weeks now, how has the rest of the student body been treating you and your party?”
For the first time, Ruben looked up at him, locking eyes for barely a moment before looking away again, squeezing the stress ball in his hand and shrugging. “Dunno. Depends, I guess.”
“Depends on what?”
“Some of them are nice about it, some of them are mean, some of them don’t care. It’s whatever.”
Jawbone nodded. It was probably accurate enough. High schoolers were fickle, and summer holidays were powerful enough to wipe away a lot of emotions that might’ve been swirling at the end of last year. Their involvement in everything had been a footnote to begin with, overshadowed by the revelation of Porter and Jace’s corruption, evil, and deaths/imprisonments, Kipperlilly’s more permanent death, the excitement of the Seacaster Manor joyride and dragon fight, the destruction of the gym, again.
Still, there were always some that wouldn’t forget. Wouldn’t forgive. As the gym got repaired and Porter and Jace’s absence slowly covered over, soon the Rat Grinders would be the only consistent reminder.
“What about your family? How did they react to everything?”
Another long pause, before a quiet, unconvincing, “Fine.”
His responses were getting shorter and more vague the more he asked, but they still had twenty minutes to go. There had to be something he could touch on that would get more out of him.
“Okay. Let’s talk about this year then. Anything you’re hoping to achieve?”
“Graduate.”
“And after that?”
Ruben shrugged.
“Have you thought much about it? Trying to pick between a few options? It’s okay if you don’t have a clue just yet.”
Ruben shuffled, switching the way his legs were crossed and putting the stress ball down in his lap. “I don’t really know. We haven’t talked about it.”
“You’re wanting to stick with your party?”
“Who else am I gonna stick with?”
Hmm. Jawbone doubted that the rest of the student body was being as ‘business as usual’ about it as Ruben had previously implied.
“How is your party going? I’m sure you’re all processing everything in different ways. That can be tricky to navigate when you’re working through your own feelings.”
“I guess,” Ruben mumbled.
“Would you like to talk about them?”
He shrugged. “I’m fine. Mary Ann’s… quiet. Ivy and Oisin are whatever. Lucy is…” he trailed off, and Jawbone waited a long minute for him to continue. When he didn’t, he quietly cleared his throat.
“Lucy was gone a long time. How does it feel having her back?”
“She never left. As far as I can remember,” Ruben said, voice tinged with a stubborn edge, almost warningly. “Don’t remember her being dead.”
“Fair enough. It’s still bound to be different to what you remember.”
“I guess. I dunno, I’m glad she’s alive. I-“ he snapped his mouth shut, brow furrowing in frustration, jaw visibly grinding before Ruben kept talking after a long moment. “It’s a bit awkward, sometimes. But like, it’s fine. She’s fine.”
His shoulders were starting to tense, hackles starting to rise in defensive deflection. Jawbone felt one of his ears twitch, aching to ask a few more questions, to push a little further. But not for the first session. He’d have more opportunities later, this wasn’t supposed to be an interrogation. Time to change the subject.
“What do you think you might all do together after you graduate? Adventuring?” It was the usual path for a party that wanted to stay together after graduation. But privately, Jawbone was a bit worried if that was their plan, considering everything they’d gone through, and their level of experience.
“Maybe,” It was hard to tell whether Ruben was a fan of the idea or not, considering he said it in the same subdued tone he’d said everything else in.
“Is that what you want to do?”
All he got was another noncommittal shrug.
There weren’t many other things Jawbone could bring up unless he started pressing for elaboration on what he’d already asked. But he didn’t want to let them sit in silence either. Perhaps turning it over to Ruben would get something. “Alright. Is there anything you wanted to talk about?”
“Like what?”
“Anything. School, home, your party. Past, present, future. A show you’re watching. Your favourite colour,” he chuckled lightheartedly at the last couple options. “Whatever you’re comfortable with. And whatever you say, no one else will hear.”
“So if I don’t say anything, you won’t tell my Mom?”
“I might tell her that you’re reluctant to engage, if she asks for an update. But, for example, if you told me you were struggling with a class, I wouldn’t tell that to her, or anyone else. It all stays in this room, unless I think you or someone else is in danger.”
“What would make you think I or someone else is in danger?” Ruben looked up again, this time holding the eye contact for longer than half of a second.
He was testing the boundaries. Trying to see what the limits of confidentiality were. Maybe because there were things going on that would require Jawbone to break it. Or maybe he was just curious.
Benefit of the doubt. “It’s a tricky line. I want this to be a safe place for you to share your thoughts, and sometimes those thoughts can be scary, could be harmful if you acted on them. I don’t want you to hide them because you think I might tell someone else. But if…”
He hesitated. Slowly brought his hands together as he mulled over his words, trying to think of a good example. “If… for example, you indicated that you were actively planning to harm yourself, and my counsel wasn’t enough, then I might have to report it.”
“To my parents?”
Jawbone nodded. “Potentially.”
“Teachers?”
Another nod. “Potentially.”
“The police?”
He grimaced. “Very unlikely.”
Not unless he thought there was about to be a town-destroying event at Ruben’s hands that would require civilian evacuation or something like that. He doubted that.
Jawbone leaned forward a bit. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to hide things here, Ruben. I know you’re only here because it’s required, that you may not want it, but I want to try to support you. With your senior year, with everything that happened last year and before that, with anything that you need or want support with.”
“I don’t remember it,” Ruben finally looked away again, sinking backwards into the couch and dropping the stress ball onto the cushion. “So there’s nothing to talk about.”
“Maybe so. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t things I can help you with.”
“You can do my homework for me.”
He chuckled a little, even though Ruben hadn’t said it with any particular kind of mirth. “Unfortunately, that would be academic misconduct.”
“Like Aguefort would care.”
“Maybe not, but it would be a disservice to your education.”
The stiff silence that followed told Jawbone that Ruben wasn’t particularly worried about that either.
Jawbone glanced to the side where the clock was. “Alright, Ruben. We’re just about at the end of our time,” Technically a stretch, they still had about five more minutes. But Jawbone doubted they would be very productive.
“Okay,” Ruben mumbled, sliding off the couch and sticking his hands in his pockets.
“I’m glad you came.”
“Have any of the others shown up?”
Jawbone blinked for a moment. Technically, students weren’t supposed to know who else among them visited him. But he wasn’t surprised that Ruben knew. It was bound to happen when the entire party was on his list. There was no rule against students telling their friends they saw him. Or against complaining about being supposed to see him.
“I can’t tell you that, Ruben. Confidentiality extends to them as well.”
Ruben glanced up at him a final time, studying his expression. Perhaps the Rat Grinders hadn’t been discussing it much, if he wasn’t sure whether the others had come to see him or not. Or perhaps he suspected they were lying, whatever they’d said.
“Sure,” he finally said, looking away. “Bye.”
“I’ll see you again next week, Ruben.”
Ruben shuffled out of his office with hunched shoulders, leaving the door ajar. Jawbone left it as it was, tidying up the things he’d left on the table and picking up his notebook. There weren’t many things for him to write down. Just vague concerns, things to try to corroborate when or if he saw any of the others.
When a few minutes had passed, and Ruben was certain to be well out of earshot, Jawbone let himself exhale a deep sigh.
It was going to be a tricky group, he’d known that. Ruben just needed time to get comfortable, to open up. They had that time, they had a whole year. Hopefully, the rest of his party would start showing up too.
They needed support. He had to be able to give it to them.
The next two weeks were much the same. Ruben showed up, which Jawbone counted as a win. But the vague answers and avoidance of almost every topic Jawbone brought up continued for the most part. Occasionally, he’d forget himself, let himself ramble on a little bit, and Jawbone listened carefully for those details, cataloguing them away until Ruben caught himself and clammed up again or waved off whatever he’d just said as unimportant.
The fourth week of Ruben turning up, more than two months into the school year, Jawbone decided that it was time to start pressing. He wasn’t going to force Ruben to talk, but it was obvious they were never going to get anywhere if he didn’t at least try poking and prodding at Ruben’s answers to try to get some elaboration.
Still, given Ruben’s overall reluctance so far, he wasn’t going to get too heavy too quick. Easing into it was the way to go, at least for now.
“How has your week been so far?” Jawbone started once Ruben was settled in. He was somewhat more relaxed now than he had been in his first session, no longer avoiding eye contact like the plague, some of the tension missing from his shoulders.
There were still dark bags under his eye though, still hid half of his face behind his hair. Still had stubborn wariness in his tone and expression.
“Fine,” he said, probably one of his favourite words in this office, accompanied with the just as popular loose shrug. “I had a maths test yesterday.”
“How did it go?”
“Haven’t gotten the mark back yet.”
“Alright, how do you feel like you went?”
“Good, I think.”
He shrugged again, and Jawbone just nodded. “How about your Bard classes? Any assessments for that yet?”
Ruben hesitated, fingers picking at the loose threads hanging from the artfully torn holes in his jeans. “Just some performances and stuff.”
“I’ve heard from some of the other senior bards there was a performance assessment yesterday too.”
Ruben didn’t immediately say anything else, so Jawbone continued on instead. “In any case, how did that go for you?”
The teenager was looking at him now with the wariness of someone who suspected Jawbone held more knowledge than he was letting on, was waiting for him to stumble into some sort of verbal trap.
“Fine.”
“What sort of performance did you do?”
“Played my ukulele.”
“What sort of song did you play?”
Ruben stiffened, snapping in irritation. “Why do you care? What does that have to do with therapy?”
“Technically, this isn’t therapy,” Jawbone leaned back and held up a hand. Ruben was glaring at him now, tightly folding his arms and lifting up his legs so that his feet were on the couch and his knees formed a barrier between him and Jawbone.
Jawbone sighed. “I know you didn’t get a passing grade on that assessment.”
Ruben’s glare deepened. “How do you know that?”
“If a student’s grade suddenly drops, it’s my job to notice. I wanted to talk about why.”
“Professor Lullabye didn’t already tell you?”
“She told me that when you did a performance two weeks ago you stopped halfway through and refused to continue. On top of being incredibly reluctant to share your playing in regular class activities.”
Ruben made a vague gesture as if to say ‘well, there you go’.
Jawbone leaned forward. “But that’s not like you, Ruben. I checked your report card comments from your first two years of school, you’ve never been afraid to perform in front of others. Did something happen before your last performance?”
Ruben continued to glower at him for a long second before breaking the eye contact. “I dunno. I just have some stage fright now.”
“How so?”
“How so what?”
“You say stage fright, what do you mean? When you were performing to the class. What made you stop?”
Ruben went to shrug again as if on reflex, before heavily exhaling, pulling at the sleeves of his shirt. “I just couldn’t do it anymore. I dunno.”
“How were you feeling?”
“Bad.”
“Can you be a little bit more specific?”
“No.”
“Can you think about how your body might’ve been reacting? Your breathing speeding up or slowing down, feeling suddenly hot or cold?” He didn’t want to put words into Ruben’s mouth, because chances were he’d just deny them flat out or agree to his first suggestion just to get the questioning to end.
“I don’t know. It was two weeks ago, I don’t remember.”
Jawbone chewed on the inside of his cheek. Just a little further. “Ruben, I know it can be a little embarrassing to be vulnerable. I’m not trying to dig up bad feelings to make you feel bad, I just want to talk through them, so we can figure out the root and help you move past it. You’re a bard, performance is an important part of your role.”
“I know that. I’m fine in a fight. My spells are fine. It’s just-“ he cut himself off, deflating. “It’s just everyone else.”
Jawbone’s ears perked up. When Ruben didn’t elaborate after a moment, he prodded. “What about everyone else?”
“Looking at me,” Ruben whispered. “They…”
He stopped again, grinding his jaw and visibly wrestling with his words, gaze flickering towards Jawbone then darting away just as quickly before he finally decided to just say it. “They’re all expecting something else.”
“What do you think they’re expecting, Ruben?”
“A rockstar,” Ruben said flatly. “With the guitar and the hair and the scream-singing or… or whatever it was.”
“Like how you were last year.”
“Like how Evil Me was last year,” Ruben harshly corrected. “That wasn’t me. I don’t remember that. It wasn’t me.”
“Okay,” Jawbone acquiesced without quite agreeing, holding up his hands. “Keep going.”
Ruben stared at him for a long moment before huffing, falling back into the couch. “That’s it. People laughed when I showed up with a ukulele. They keep talking about how cool the music was. Ask where the guitar went. They want me to be something I’m not. I’m not a rockstar.”
“So when you performed in front of them?”
“I couldn’t do it,” he started to mumble, almost shrinking in on himself. “The words… stopped. My fingers weren’t strumming right. The ukulele felt- I kept thinking…”
He trailed off, but Jawbone’s mind was racing. It sounded like an anxiety response. He could work with that, and perhaps it would be a gateway to talking about other things.
“How about next week you bring your ukulele with you, think of some songs you might want to try playing,” he suggested. “We can talk some more about strategies to work through it.”
“Sure. Whatever. Are we done now?”
“Right on time,” Jawbone smiled warmly, closing up his notebook. “Thank you for sharing this with me. In the meantime, I’ll talk to Professor Lullabye, see if I can organise an accommodation for you to perform to a small group, or just her.”
Ruben mumbled a response and a goodbye, sliding off the couch and slipping out of the door, glancing back at Jawbone over his shoulder for the briefest of moments before he left.
Ruben not turning up for the next session was disappointing, but Jawbone didn’t hold it against him. Students ditching sessions with him after being given what was essentially counselling homework wasn’t unusual, especially in those first few weeks.
It just meant he was skittish.
And the ‘stage fright’ was probably stressing him out more than he was letting out.
So when Ruben showed up the week after, ukulele slung carelessly over his shoulder and hands wedged deep inside of his pockets, Jawbone made not sure to make a big deal out of it, inviting him in and going through some shallow questions about his week to settle him in the office again.
Results were mixed, in that Ruben was answering questions, but seemed as uncomfortable and wary as he had been on his first visit again.
Baby steps.
“Okay,” Jawbone said. “You’ve got your ukulele. Here’s my idea for today. You play a few songs, whatever you feel like, and then we can talk about how you feel while you’re doing it, what’s running through your head.”
Ruben nodded, pulling his ukulele over to hold it in front of him. Immediately, Jawbone realised it was a brand new instrument. By the time they got to their senior year, most bards’ instruments had gotten as many bruises and breaks as their owners, most of whom preferred to Mend it a million times over before daring to even consider replacing it.
This ukulele was smooth, with pristine strings and not even a single scratch on the wood. Ruben settled it awkwardly in his hands, stroking a loose chord before glancing up at Jawbone.
He smiled encouragingly. “Whenever you’re ready, Ruben.”
Ruben’s grip tightened around the neck of the instrument, fingers hesitating over the strings. He glanced up. “Do I have to sing?”
“Not if you don’t want to,”
Ruben looked down, but still didn’t start playing for a long moment. He hunched over, focusing completely on his instrument, hair hanging low and covering even the eye that was usually visible.
When he actually started playing, it was slow and almost disjointed. Jawbone’s taste in music wasn’t usually anything with a ukulele in it, so he couldn’t say he was entirely sure what it was supposed to sound like, but from a senior bard, he would’ve expected something smoother and more confident.
Ruben got through a handful of chords before he seemed to hit a wrong note somewhere, cringing lightly and correcting his fingers to try the chord again. A few more chords and he made another mistake, and this time he stopped completely, letting his hands drop. “That was bad.”
“We’re not here to judge your skills,” Jawbone said, clicking his pen and readying his clipboard. “Alright, so how are you feeling?”
Ruben looked vaguely in his direction, pulling the ukulele strap over his shoulder and moving the instrument so that it was resting next to him rather than on his lap. “I don’t know… weird, I guess.”
“Can we get a bit more specific?” Jawbone pulled out a laminated sheet of paper, of a circle divided into multiple rings, each of those rings then divided into sections labelled with emotions. The inner rings were more generic, and then the further out to the edge it got, the more specific. “This might give you some ideas,”
He took the paper and studied it for a minute, turning it around before putting it down on the table and shrugging. “Frustrated, maybe?”
“Okay, let’s take a look at that, then. What was making you feel frustrated?”
“That my playing sucks,” Ruben folded his arms, leaning into the back of the couch and looking up at Jawbone long enough for him to tell that no, the bags under his visible eye was not better, and may have been worse.
“Like you’re out of practise?”
Ruben frowned, glancing down at the ukulele. “No. As far as I remember, I never stopped playing it. I’m just... not doing as well as I should be.”
Jawbone nodded slowly. “Even if you don’t remember playing another instrument for a year, maybe your body does.”
“Well, it shouldn’t,” Ruben muttered, folding his arms and seeming to decide there was nothing left to add to the matter.
“Okay,” Jawbone turned the emotion wheel around so it was facing Ruben properly again. “Anything else you were feeling? Maybe how you felt about me watching?”
He grumbled for a moment before picking it up, giving it a cursory glance before flippantly dropping it back down to fold his arms across his chest again. “Self-conscious? It was awkward.”
“Hey, those are some good descriptions,” Jawbone was careful not to sound too cheerful, lest Ruben cringe away. The teenager still scrunched up his nose, but he’d take it. “Is it similar to how you were feeling in front of your class?”
Ruben was quiet for a moment, thinking. “The class was worse.”
“Why do you think they were worse?”
“I care what they think more than you,”
“Ouch,” Jawbone joked, and Ruben just looked at him, unamused. And entirely serious.
Dang. Maybe that ‘ouch’ was actually a little real.
Irrelevant. Stay focused. Being more concerned about peers was incredibly normal, especially considering Ruben had admitted to being upset with their expectations towards him.
“Anyway,” he said quickly. “What about your friends? Do you play in front of them much?”
“Yeah. It’s fine with them,” Ruben avoided his gaze again, fingers digging into his sleeves on his upper arms. One of Jawbone’s ears flickered.
He was lying. Jawbone was pretty sure he was lying, or at least stretching or omitting the truth, about a lot of things, but that particular statement, he was certain.
Undoubtedly, straight up calling it out would only get Ruben to clam up and double down. So he had to dig deeper. “Okay, so let’s make a list. It’s worse with your whole class. Have you tried playing in front of only a few classmates?”
Ruben shrugged. “It’s still bad.”
“On the same level as the class as a whole?”
“…I guess a little better than the whole class,” Ruben hesitated warily.
“Alright. So we have your whole class, small group. What about Professor Lullabye?”
He’d already spoken to Professor Lullabye last week, after Ruben failed to show up for that week’s session. So he already knew the answer, but wanted to see whether Ruben would try hiding it or not.
Ruben pressed his lips together, obviously considering his options, before finally sighing. “I… I was still bad just in front of her. Better than the others, but…”
Jawbone nodded. There was some honesty. Which meant the lies were even more important to unravel, because that was where the heart of the problem really sat.
“Where would you rank me? Above or below Lullabye?”
“Below? I guess,”
“And then your friends at the bottom?” Ruben nodded, so Jawbone had more option. “What about playing just by yourself, not in front of anyone?”
Ruben stiffened, visible eye widening ever so slightly, leaning away from the ukulele so slightly Jawbone doubted it was an intentional movement.
“I can do it by myself. That’s easy,”
“No awkwardness or frustration at all?”
Ruben’s fingers dug into his arm even deeper. “No.”
Jawbone let the answer sit for a minute as he made a show of writing down the list, giving Ruben an opportunity to consider opening up. When he didn’t, he looked up. “Okay, so from most difficult to easiest, we have the whole class, small group, Lullabye, me, your friends, and then by yourself. Would you say that’s accurate?”
“Yeah,”
“And last time, we spoke about how the thing that bothered you the most was what the rest of your class expected you to be like. The you from last year, rather than-“
“Rather than the actual me,”
Jawbone blinked, a little surprised by how forcefully Ruben interrupted. “I was going to say the you from your sophomore year.”
Ruben stared at him for a long moment. “Yeah.”
Silence stretched between them, a waiting game of who would speak first. Eventually, Jawbone cleared his throat. “Alright. So based on what you’ve already shared, I think these difficulties are a bit different to your classic stage fright. Usually for that, we’d be looking at things like social anxieties, fears of failure or making a mistake. But frustration is a bit different,”
He paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts and giving Ruben a chance to interject and deny if he needed to without having to interrupt. When he didn’t, he continued on. “I’m going to make a bit of an assumption here, so tell me if I’m wrong, but do you think that maybe your difficulties might be a way to deny others what they want?”
Ruben frowned, for once not in suspicion or irritation, but complete confusion. “What? Like- I’m playing bad on purpose?”
“Not necessarily,” Jawbone held up a hand, asking for a chance to explain. “I just mean, last year, you became a very public and known figure within the community. You shared things, and you performed on a level you hadn’t before,”
“Not me,” Ruben said quietly.
They had to address that at some point. But not yet.
For now, Jawbone let the comment slide by. “Now, this year, you don’t want that anymore. You don’t want your peers to see the same person you were, so you want to shut them out from the opportunity. So unintentionally, you’re going on strike. If they only want you as a rockstar, they can’t have you at all.”
Ruben’s frown deepened. “I don’t… I don’t get it.”
“It’s a bit of a confusing concept, I know,” Jawbone said, smiling awkwardly. “And it’s just a possibility. But it could be your mind trying to feel some control again, just in a way that’s not very helpful, because sometimes our minds don’t care very much for what would be easiest or convenient for us.”
Ruben looked away, visibly mulling over what Jawbone had said.
It was jumping out on a limb a bit, in Jawbone’s opinion. He suspected there was more to the entire story, but until Ruben was willing to open up about it, he felt this was close enough to start doing some good.
Ruben couldn’t stop the rest of the school from expecting things of him and his music, but he could deny them from getting to hear his music at all. He, or whatever version of him that had existed during junior year, whether he remembered it or not, had let them hear too much.
Half a minute had passed, and Ruben had yet to say anything. Jawbone dropped his voice to a softer tone. “Ruben, have you listened to any of the songs you released in junior year since your resurrection?”
“No,” he denied it so quickly he neglected to correct Jawbone’s assigning of the songs to him rather than the Other Him, body freezing up and gaze burning a hole through the table in between them.
“Have you looked into the possibility of removing them from platforms so people can’t listen to them anymore?”
Ruben scoffed. “It’s too late for that. I had the ‘song of the summer’. Taking it down would just make people find and listen to it more. It’s not even good,”
A split second later, his eye widened, and then he cringed.
Gently, Jawbone spoke. “You have listened to it.”
Ruben’s face twisted in irritation. “Maybe,”
Jawbone let each answer sit for a few seconds before he kept going. Take it slow, while he was getting somewhere. “I want to support you, Ruben, I want you to trust me. You can be honest. No one else will know what you say here, and I will only use it to help you.”
This was always the biggest hurdle for students to jump. To believe him when he said that what they said here was safe, and protected, that he was here to help, not to judge. Whether they were afraid it would get out to their friends, classmates, teacher or families, nine times out of ten that fear was what led them to lies, and half-truths, and deflections. No one wanted their loved ones, or even just an adult in authority, to think different of them for things they usually didn’t understand or know how to control.
“I know that,” Ruben finally said, voice hard in a way that told Jawbone he wasn’t over that hurdle yet.
“Okay. So you know, if there’s something you don’t want to talk about, you can say so. Instead of saying what you think I might want to hear.”
“I don’t want to talk about anything,” Ruben immediately retorted.
Jawbone nodded his head in acknowledgement. “I understand that. But burying things won’t help you move past them. We can’t hide from the things that hurt us forever. But we don’t have to address everything immediately. We can put things aside for later. Not everything, not always. I’m not here to force you to talk, but I can’t help you unless you do.”
Ruben looked at him for a long moment. It wasn’t a glare, it wasn’t even particularly mistrusting the way he usually held himself as soon as he entered this office. Instead, it was almost resigned. Teetering on the edge of something and barely holding himself back.
“I just want everything to be normal,” he finally said, only a few decibels above a whisper.
Jawbone felt his heart squeeze. “I know. I wish it could be, Ruben. It probably won’t ever be again, not the way you remember.”
The teenager’s expression darkened again, and Jawbone kept talking before he lost him. “But that’s why you’re here. So I can help you find a new normal, and make peace with everything that happened to your old one.”
Ruben breathed in, slowly, deliberately, squeezing his eyes shut as he did. When he opened them again, he locked eyes with Jawbone. “How?”
This was a start. This was a foot in the door.
There were a lot of possible answers to Ruben’s question. Dissecting last year, determining exactly how much Ruben remembered, if any, was going to be something that took time, and probably a lot more coaxing and trust. For right now, what Ruben seemed most concerned about was that disconnect between who he used to be, and who he was now.
He couldn’t go back to sophomore year. His ukulele playing, whatever joy it may have brought him in the past, it didn’t fit anymore, or at least not right now.
“I think perhaps it might help to try some new instruments.”