It’s odd how you can be young, but not necessarily naive. Rania Wydell supposed most kids were like that now. At least the non-rich ones. Because those born into wealth could be better insulated by their parents. Especially with the recent trend in the world of affluence that favored going “anti-screen.” In short, only the “dummos” were encouraged to relish as much screen time as possible. To enjoy their “parlor walls” so that Mommy and Daddy didn’t have to “deal with” them. To bother with anything like getting to know them. These were the parents that would stand by, out of sheer laziness, the idea that no one can ever “really” be known anyway. That would simply be asking for too much. 

Besides, wasn’t it enough that these parents had bothered to birth them at all? Wasn’t that the greatest “gift”? Unless, of course, you could secure the far greater gift of being birthed into more financially generous circumstances. As the “non-screen kids” had been. These were the ones Rania found herself surrounded by. Because what other type of youth was going to have parents that could afford a child psychiatrist of her caliber? Granted, Rania knew that if she had decided to “charge less” (a.k.a. not taken pleasure in the financial benefits of her own private practice), she might have attracted a different kind of clientele. Those, let’s say, slightly more “in need.” But hey, rich kids have psychological issues too. More than anyone probably. And not just because their parents “indulge” them in their problems by choosing to amplify them as a result of actually acknowledging such issues in a way that poor parents simply don’t. No, the child born to the rich suffers from that same phenomenon Bob Dylan was talking about in “Temporary Like Achilles” when he sings, “I’m helpless, like a rich man’s child.” They can’t help that they can’t help themselves. They were raised with the indoctrination that there would always be a safety net to catch them. And there would be. 

Rania learned this long ago, when she attended a private high school on a scholarship and first began to “orbit” this echelon of wealth. Initially, she truly believed she was “passing,” but it didn’t take long to find out that she was the butt of every joke. They were all just being nice to her face while talking ample shit behind her back. Saying she was “gauche,” “graceless,” that sort of thing. That’s when Rania comprehended that no matter how hard she tried, she would never be “one of them.” Because they could always sniff out who was actually born into their class and who merely tried to infiltrate it. 

Maybe this was the crux of why she had decided to get into child psychiatry that targeted the progeny of the wealthy. She figured she could nip their assholery in the bud early on. Or at least try to mitigate it so that, gradually, over several generations, perhaps the rich she had counseled would become something resembling human beings. Her newest client, a five-year-old named Edward John Hutchinson III (“Eddie” for short, and to blend among the plebes), was proving to be her most difficult challenge yet in that regard. A bona fide dickhead through and through, his parents had clearly sent him here because they wanted someone else to “fix” the “goods” they themselves had broken. There were any number of unique ways that rich parents could fuck up children, but Rania had found that the go-tos were usually absenteeism, enablement and setting impossible standards. Often a combination of the three. In Eddie’s case, it was indeed the dreaded trifecta of this form of parental abuse that was turning him into a monster quite prematurely. 

Talking to him, therefore, proved a more herculean task than it did with most of her other clients, many of whom were girls, which, as far as Rania was concerned, made her job much easier. But Eddie had serial killer and/or serial rapist written all over him. She clocked it the second he traipsed through her door in his private school uniform, complete with a sweater vest bearing the school’s insignia embroidered on the right side of the chest, just above the heart. He was sullen and bored from the outset, a look of perennial ennui plastered to his face. As though he had already seen and done it all at his tender age. Despite what he may have thought, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Especially as he had so little exposure to the internet, with his screen time limited to the carefully curated content micromanaged by one of his three nannies (they alternated shifts). And this is what Rania could never figure out about the rich kids. How they could be so simultaneously pure and jaded. 

Eddie was proving to be a particularly severe instance of that dichotomous combination. And the more Rania learned about him, via what little she could draw out when he was willing to talk, the more she realized that there was something intrinsically fucked about rich kids. Like they were conditioned to be sociopaths if they weren’t automatically born as such. It left her with an uneasy feeling at the end of each day, but particularly after her sessions with Eddie. 

After a year passed, and it seemed no improvement in Eddie’s behavior had occurred, Rania was the one who requested a meeting with his parents. For it seemed they would have been content to keep paying her ad infinitum despite no results. Just so they could keep telling themselves they were “doing something.” Rania didn’t have the balls to inform them that they were doing jack shit, and that was part of the reason Eddie showed no signs of emotional amelioration. Even though she had weekly “touch bases” with them over the phone to offer guidance on how to implement the tools she had tried her best to give Eddie in therapy. Of course, all they could ever seem to respond with was the suggestion that she “up his dose.” Any higher, she thought, and he might as well be a zombie. That’s ostensibly what his parents wanted out of psychiatry. In which case, she wondered why they didn’t just let him numb out on a screen all day the way children of poor parents did. Screens were the new babysitters, after all…for those who couldn’t afford a rotation of nannies. 

The purpose of the in-person meeting she called with Eddie’s parents one year into his treatment was to suggest terminating it. She was going to have to be blunt, something she hated doing with parents like these, because they were always willing to tempt her with the offer of more money, a higher rate for her services. Anything to keep her from cutting their precious child loose from her “capable hands.” She had arranged for them to come on a Saturday afternoon, when neither could proffer work as an excuse. Or at least, not as easily. They might have used a social engagement as a defense, but, to her surprise, they agreed to the appointment without too much of a fight. 

It was only when they brought Eddie along with them, against her very specific wishes, that she understood why they had been so willing. They wanted to guilt trip her. For her to know that Eddie was in the other room, fully aware that his long-time psychiatrist was not only rejecting him, but had clearly given up all hope on his betterment. These fuckin’ pricks, she thought to herself when she opened the door to the waiting room and saw them in there with Eddie, who formed a sinister grin on his face as he looked Rania up and down. She never did bother to mention that Eddie was an overt sexual pervert to his parents. 

After “warmly” greeting them and instructing Eddie to play with some Legos (kids of all classes still liked Legos) in the corner, they spent about twenty minutes talking in her office before their conversation was interrupted by an unignorable thud. The three adults looked from one another and then to the door before they each jumped up to see what the source of the ominous sound was. Eddie’s father was the first to see him. Splayed out among a pile of Legos and foaming at the mouth. They witnessed his final spasms before the death throes gave way to outright death. Turns out, part of the reason no one had seen any improvement is because he had been stashing his pills. Saving them for a rainy suicidal day. 

Rania had been wrong. Eddie wasn’t naive at all. He had known the whole time how he was going to end up, one way or the other. Her rejection was simply the catalyst. He was, in the end, not equipped for this world because he was, ironically, too equipped for it thanks to his riches. Yet those riches had been no match against the void that had grown so big inside of him that it had exceeded his entire body.