Tiffany Arsenic: Counseling session 1

Alisa once again called to the group of kids asking for someone on her list.

"Tiffany?" she asked. "Tiffany Arsenic? Please sit down and try to tell me what's wrong without your eyes. Try to mouth the words as well as you can if you cannot get out the sound."

Tiffany's eyes widened. She felt it would be cowardly to just mouth the words, even though she thought this woman could probably lip read.

"I-" something in her voice cracked, "I-I-I have a-a sorta thing where I... I... I..." Funny how much 'I' sounded like 'eye', "Can talk to p-people using just..." Her throat hurt, "M-my eyes."

She coughed a few times. "I... I hardly sp-speak anymore..."

"Maybe you could come see me once a week for speech therapy," Alisa suggested. "And try to talk with your mouth not your eyes. You need to get used to talking again."

"It... Hurts..." She said the words slowly, because it didn't seem as hard as if she said them fast.

"That's why you have to get used to it," Alisa explained. "The more you do it the less it should hurt."

She sighed.

"Fine. I-I-I just..."

She coughed again.

"One t-time I-I actually got used to talking a-and... People laughed at me m-more than they d-did when I never spoke..."

"Tiffany my dear," Alisa said sympathetically. "No one is going to make fun of you hear. I see no reason why anyone ever did. Why your voice sounds perfectly fine to me."

"If you ignore that it's cracked," she tried to make a joke, and paid for it with a coughing fit. Already her throat felt like it had been rubbed with sandpaper.

"You dont ignore imperfections," Alisa told her.

"Exactly my..." cough "point..."

"I can assure you that no-one will make fun y=of your voice," Alisa replied.

"It's not my voice..." she said, "It's the... The fact that it t-took me so long to be able t-t-to use it again."

"Nomtter why you think they'll make fun of you, I know for a fact that they wont," Alissa told her.