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Title: Of cabbages and kings
Fandom: Original
Words: ~1,500
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Summary: Jamie Sorensen was six years old and he didn't have an imaginary friend. His parents were very concerned.
Beta: none
Notes: Just an old idea for a story that I've been fiddling about with.



Jamie Sorensen was six years old and he didn't have an imaginary friend. His parents were very concerned.

"It's just a phase, my dear," Mr Sorensen would tell his wife whenever they saw Jamie playing with blocks or reading a picture book in his room. "He'll grow out of it."

Mrs Sorensen would shake his head and sigh. "But he looks so lonely," she'd say.

---

Jamie didn't feel lonely at all. He had his mum and his dad, his gram who they went to visit on Sunday afternoons, his teacher Miss Phillips and all his friends from school, especially Vi. He liked to play with Vi, though sometimes Vi didn't like to play with him.

"What are you doing?" Vi asked him one day after lunch.

All the kids were playing in the courtyard, which was just a stripe of concrete around the school. There were only a slide and two swings but today Jamie had taken possession of one of the swings and was enjoying recess a lot.

"I'm trying to see how far I can go on this swing," Jamie told Vi. He pointed forward with one pudgy finger. "I can swing very very far, it's what I do best. Look, if I point my foot like this it's almost like I am kicking the window of our classroom!"

Vi cocked her head to the side to look at Jamie and then at the window. "It doesn't look like that at all," she said.

"It does too," Jamie replied. Then he remembered some vague notions about being nice to girls, though he couldn't have said why. They were, after all, girls. But his mum had been very firm on the subject. "Do you want a go on the swing?" he offered, magnanimous.

"No," Vi replied, much to his relief, and then she added, "Me and Alice are going to explore the jungle today, do you want to come with us?"

Jamie thought about it. "Alice is your pretend rabbit," he said eventually, proud that he remembered.

"She's not a rabbit, she's my friend," Vi said, pouting and crossing her chubby arms. "You should apologize to her."

This was why Jamie didn't like girls. They came up to him while he was having fun on the swing and demanded he apologize for no reason at all. Okay, it was just Vi doing that, but she did it all the time and Jamie thought it was reason enough to dislike the rest of the girls too.

He kicked the ground viciously on the next pass, disrupting his rhythm. Now the swing had slowed down and he couldn't kick the classroom window any more. "I don't see Alice anywhere," he said.

"That's not nice," Vi said. "She's right here. Look! Now she's angry because you're ignoring her."

Jamie huffed and looked past Vi and her silly paisley dress, to the spot she was pointing at. There was concrete and the metal leg of the swing. The red paint was peeling out, Jamie noticed.

"I can't see her at all" he said. "Is she an invisible rabbit?"

"She is not," Vi replied, peevishly.

"She is too," Jamie replied.

Vi stomped her foot on the ground. "She is not! Look, she's pink and she's almost as tall as me. She used to be just as tall as me, but then I grew up more, so she's about this high," she added, holding up a hand to the level of her nose. "And here are her ears," she added, moving the hand up above her head, "but we agreed that the ears don't really count because I don't have them."

"Yes you do have ears," Jamie replied. They stuck out from under Vi's twin pigtails.

"That's not the point," Vi said. Jamie pouted. "So do you want to come and be an explorer with us?" Vi asked. "We saw the jungle on the telly yesterday and it was awesome, there were temples and parrots and cougars..."

Jamie thought about it. "I'd like to see a cougar," he said. "But the jungle is, like, a hundred miles away. We can't go there. I don't even have my bike."

Vi gave him a look. "Duh," she said. "We couldn't go by bike anyway, there's an ocean between here and there, with sharks and other things trying to eat you."

"So?" Jamie asked, interested despite himself. He stopped the swing and jumped down.

Vi grinned and gestured to the air. "Alice said she'll take us with her plane," she reported.

Jamie's face fell. "Poo," he said, the filthiest word he knew. Vi looked scandalized at this. "It's just more make believe," Jamie complained.

"Whatever," Vi replied. "Me and Alice are going to go alone and we're going to have a lot of fun without you."

"Whatever," Jamie repeated.

He shrugged as Vi skipped away, talking about gorillas and explorers, then turned back to his swing.

"Hey, don't sit there!" said Mike from the other section. "My friend Jab is sitting there, can't you see him? He's the one wearing the black top hat."

"Oh, poo," said Jamie.

---

"How are you today, Jamie?" asked Dr White.

Jamie looked at his sneakers. "I'm fine," he said.

Dr White scribbled something in his notebook. He always did that. "How's school? Are you getting along with your friends?"

"Yes," Jamie said. There was mud on the tip of the right sneaker, from when he had splashed into a puddle on his way back from school.

"Are you getting along with your friends' friends too?"

Jamie wanted to pretend like he didn't understand the question, but Dr White is always asking the same things and Jamie knew that he was going to insist until he got an answer.

"Kinda." Jamie stared around, even though they were sitting in the living room and the living room was boring. He always talked with Dr White in the living room because it was a room for grown-ups, unlike Jamie's room, which according to Jamie's mum was a disgrace.

Dr White scribbled something else and stapled his fingers together. "Jamie, remember what we talked about, last time? How we have to make an effort?"

The boy nodded, still unconvinced. "But it's so hard!" he exclaimed. "There's this girl in my grade who is friends with an invisible cat. And sometimes the cat is invisible, sometimes it's not, and she never tells me when the cat is supposed to be invisible, and then she gets mad at me when I get it wrong."

He was still upset about that, but as he was telling the story the doctor started to chuckle. His laughter was contagious, and soon Jamie was laughing as well. Then he remembered that he was supposed to be upset, so he pouted. Dr White had managed to trick him again.

"Anything else?" asked the doctor.

Jamie thought about it. "This other girl likes to pretend that she's having tea parties with a duchess. Today I bowed to her." He had felt silly doing that, even though the classroom was full of people riding invisible dinosaurs or flying invisible spaceships, so nobody paid him any attention.

"Very good," Dr White said. "Even though you bowed to the girl, not to the invisible duchess, didn't you?"

Jamie nodded. "Yes," he said, guiltily, because he knew the doctor and his parents wanted him to act like his friends' invisible friends were real. But it was difficult.

"You're doing very well," said the doctor. "You made such huge progress already, since we started talking. Very good. Now, I think you're ready to try and talk to one of your friends' friends."

"I don't have anything to tell them," Jamie said, peevishly. All of those invisible friends were weird, like dodos and dinosaurs and dancing ballerinas wearing pink tutus. He didn't have anything to say to a ballerina.

However, Dr White wasn't happy with that answer. "I'm sure you can think of something," he said. "Pretend that the ballerina is here. What would you tell her?"

The spot on the carpet in front of Jamie was still empty. He screwed his eyes and concentrated, but couldn't see any ballerina. He was trying to pretend that a pretend person was there, which was very silly.

Jamie shrugged. "I don't know. I can't even see a ballerina. I don't even know what she looks like."

"Very good," said the doctor. "That's a start already. You could begin by asking her what she looks like."

Jamie stared at the empty carpet and scratched his nose. "Are you sure?" he asked. "Won't she feel upset that I'm asking her even though she's right in front of me?"

"Not at all," replied Dr White. "In my experience, ballerinas are very vain and like to talk about themselves. I'm sure that, if you ask nicely, she'll be very happy to tell you. So, Jamie, promise me that you'll do this?"

Reluctantly, Jamie nodded.

---

Outside the living room, Mr and Mrs Sorensen discussed the situation.

"I'm so proud of our boy," Mr Sorensen said.

"A psychiatrist, though?" Mrs Sorensen replied. "I would have preferred that he had an astronaut, or a dragon, or something like that. Some friend that he could go on adventures with, instead of just sitting around and talking."

Mr Sorensen tutted. "Just be happy that he has someone, dear. Now, do you want to play a hand of bridge with Jack and the Queen?"

Date: 2011-11-05 09:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cellshader.livejournal.com
Stumbled on this, and absolutely loved it. Jamie is so interesting, and his friends' friends were fun to see! I like this idea of imaginary friends being legitimate. It was a lot of fun to read :)

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