Jared McPherson was supposed to be relaxing. That was what he kept telling himself, at least. This was supposed to be an escape from psych patients, an escape from all of the various mental disorders, an escape from the world, essentially. So why would the tale of a kid who has some paranoid delusions, likely resulting from a mild case of schizophrenia, interesting him?

No. Diagnosing the kid before meeting him was wrong. NO. Worse, mentally diagnosing him and mentally implying they were going to meet was wrong. After all he wasn't going to do anything of the sort, was he? Of course not. That would bring him back to the same old routine that he was trying to escape from in the first place. But, as he well knew, some routines are too deeply ingrained in us to simply "escape" from.

Which is why he found himself standing in front of the house of the kid, Neil something or other. It would be rather embarrassing for him to simply walk away now, so he knocked on the door and awaited an answer. And here he was trying to keep away from anything to do with psychology...perhaps he was trying too hard.

Then again, maybe he was subconsciously subverting his own efforts, or unconsciously, even. Bah, he thought, I'll never get any work done at this rate. His mind had started to settle back into its analytic mode, and it was not likely to shut off any time soon.