Meg Cabot - Princess Mia

This had to be a joke. My dad had to be kidding that Dr. Knutz is one of the nation’s preeminent experts on adolescent and child psychology. Maybe I was being punk’d. Maybe Ashton Kutcher was going to pop out any minute and be all, “D’oh! Princess Mia! You’ve just been punk’d! This guy isn’t a psychologist at all! He’s my uncle Joe!”

“So,” Dr. Knutz said, in this big booming cowboy voice after I’d sat down next to Dad on the couch across from Dr. Knutz’s big leather armchair. “You’re Princess Mia. Nice to meetcha. Heard you were uncharacteristically nice to your grandma yesterday.”

I was completely shocked by this. Unlike Dr. Knutz’s other patients, who, presumably, are children, I happen to be acquainted with a pair of Jungian psychologists—Dr. and Dr. Moscovitz—so I am not unfamiliar with how doctor-patient relationships are supposed to go.

And they are not supposed to begin with completely false accusations on the part of the doctor.

“That is total and utter slander,” I said. “I wasn’t nice to her. I just said what she wanted to hear so she would go away.”

“Oh,” Dr. Knutz said. “That’s different. So you’re telling me everything is hunky-dory, then?”

“Obviously not,” I said. “Since I am sitting here in your office in my pajamas and a duvet.”

“You know, I’d noticed that,” Dr. Knutz said. “But you young girls are always wearing the oddest things, so I just figured it was the new fashion craze, or something.”

I could see right away that this was never going to fly. How could I entrust my innermost emotional thoughts to someone who goes around calling me and my peers “you young girls” and thinks any of us would willingly go outside dressed in Hello Kitty pajamas and a duvet?

“This isn’t going to work for me,” I said to my dad as I got up. “Let’s go.”

“Hang on a second, Mia,” Dad said. “We just got here, okay? Give the man a chance.”

“Dad.” I couldn’t believe this. I mean, if I had to go to therapy, why couldn’t my parents have found me areal therapist, not a COWBOY therapist? “Let’s go. Before he BRANDS me.”

“You got something against ranchers, little lady?” Dr. Knutz wanted to know.

“Um, considering that I’m a vegetarian,” I said. I didn’t mention that I stopped being a vegetarian a week ago. “Yes, yes, I do.”

“You seem awful hetted up,” Dr. Knutz said. I swear he really saidhetted and notheated. “For someone who, according to this, says she finds herself not caring about anything at all most of the time.”

He tapped the assessment sheet I’d filled out in his outer office. Sinking back down in my seat, since I could tell this was going to take a while, I said, “Look, Dr., um—” I couldn’t even bring myself to say his name! “I think you should know that I’ve been studying the work of Dr. Carl Jung for some time. I have been struggling to achieve self-actualization for years. I am no stranger to psychology. I happen to know perfectly well what’s wrong with me.”

“Oh, you do,” Dr. Knutz said, looking intrigued. “Enlighten me.”

“I’m just,” I said, “feeling a little down. It’s a normal reaction to something that happened to me last week.”

“Right,” Dr. Knutz said, looking down at a piece of paper on his desk. “You broke up with your boyfriend—Michael, is it?”

“Yes,” I said. “And, okay, maybe it’s a little more complicated than a normal teenager’s breakup, because I’m a princess, and Michael is a genius, and he thinks he has to go off to Japan to build a robotic surgical arm in order to prove to my family that he’s worthy of me, when the truth is,I’m not worthy ofhim , and I suppose because deep down inside, I know that I completely sabotaged our relationship.

“And, okay, maybe we were doomed from the start, because I scored an INFJ on the Myers-Briggs Jungian personality test we took online last summer, and he scored an ENTJ, and now he just wants to be friends and see other people, which is thelast thing I want. But I respect his wishes, and I know that if I ever hope to attain the fruits of self-actualization, I have to spend more time building up the roots of my tree of life, and…and…and, really, that’s it. Except for possible meningitis. Or lassa fever. That’s all that’s wrong with me. I just have to adjust. I’m fine. I’m really fine.”

“You’re fine?” Dr. Knutz said. “You’ve missed almost a week of school even though there’s nothing physically wrong with you—we’ll check on the meningitis of course—and you haven’t changed out of your pajamas in days. But you’re fine.”

“Yes,” I said. Suddenly, I was very close to tears. Also, my heart was beating kind of fast again. “Can I go home now?”

“Why?” Dr. Knutz wanted to know. “So you can crawl back into bed and continue to isolate yourself from friends and loved ones—a classic sign of depression, by the way?”

I just blinked at him. I couldn’t believe he—a perfect stranger, WORSE, a stranger who liked WESTERN THINGS—was talking to me that way. Who did he think he was, anyway—aside from one of the nation’s preeminent experts on adolescent and child psychology?

“So you can continue to drift away from your long-term relationship with your best friend, Lilly,” he said, referring to a note on the pad in his lap, “as well as your other friends, by avoiding school and any other social settings where you might be forced to interact with them?”

I blinked at him some more. I knowI was supposed to be the crazy one, but it was hard to believe from this statement thathe wasn’t crazy.

Because I wasnot avoiding school because I might have to see Lilly there, or interact socially with people. That wasn’t it atall. Or why I want to move to Genovia.

“So you can continue to ignore the things you used to love—like instant messaging your friend Tina—and sleep during the day, then stay up all night,” Dr. Knutz went on, “gaining weight through compulsive binge eating when you think no one is looking?”

Wait…how did he know about THAT? HOW DID HE KNOW ABOUT TINA? OR THE GIRL SCOUT COOKIES?

“So you can go on just saying whatever it is you think people want to hear in order to make them go away and leave you alone, and refusing to observe even basic proper hygiene—again, classic examples of adolescent depression?”

I just rolled my eyes. Because everything he was saying was totally ridiculous. I’m not depressed. I’msad , maybe. Because everything sucks. And I probablydo have meningitis, even though everyone seems to be ignoring my symptoms.

But I’m not depressed.

“So you can continue to cut yourself off from the things you used to love—your writing, your baby brother, your parents, your school activities, your friends—and go on feeling consumed by self-loathing, yet lacking any motivation to change, or enjoy life again?” Dr. Knutz’s voice boomed very loudly in his ranch-style office. “I could go on. Do I need to?”

I blinked at him some more. Only now I was blinking back tears. I couldn’t believe it. I really couldn’t.

I don’t have meningitis. I don’t have lassa fever.

I’m depressed. I’m actuallydepressed.

“I might,” I said, after clearing my throat, because it was kind of hard to talk around the big lump that had suddenly appeared there, “be a little down.”

“You know, there’s nothing wrong with admitting you’re depressed,” Dr. Knutz went on in a gentle voice. I mean, for a cowboy. “Many, many people have suffered from depression. Having depression doesn’t mean you’re crazy, or a failure, or a bad person.”

I had to blink back a lot of tears.

“Okay,” was all I could manage to say.