e person who said it. All right?"

"Sure," I said. "Sure. Let's get started."

"Well, aren't you eager?" the doctor said warmly. "OK. Manuel was just telling
us about his friends."

"They're not my friends," Manuel said angrily. "They're the reason I'm here. I
hate them."

"Go on," the doctor said.

"I already *told* you, yesterday! Tony and Musafir, they're trying to get rid of
me. I make them look bad, so they want to get rid of me."

"Why do you think you make them look bad?"

"Because I'm better than them -- I'm smarter, I dress better, I get better
grades, I score more goals. The girls like me better. They hate me for it."

"Oh yeah, you're the cat's ass, pookie," Lucy said. She was about fifteen,
voluminously fat, and her full lips twisted in an elaborate sneer as she spoke.

"Lucy," the doctor said patiently, favoring her with a patronizing smile.
"That's not cool, OK? Criticize the idea, not the person, and only when it's
your turn, OK?"

Lucy rolled her eyes with the eloquence of teenagedom.

"All right, Manuel, thank you. Group, do you have any positive suggestions for
Manuel?"

Stony silence.

"OK! Manuel, some of us are good at some things, and some of us are good at
others. Your friends don't hate you, and I'm sure that if you think about it,
you'll know that you don't hate them. Didn't they come visit you last weekend?
Successful people are well liked, and you're no exception. We'll come back to
this tomorrow -- why don't you spend the time until then thinking of three
examples of how your friends showed you that they liked you, and you can tell us
about it tomorrow?"

Manuel stared out the window.

"OK! Now, Art, welcome again. Tell us why you're here."

"I'm in for observation. There's a competency hearing at the end of the week."

Linda snorted and Fatima giggled.

The doctor ignored them. "But tell us *why* you think you ended up here."

"You want the whole story?"

"Whatever parts you think are important."

"It's a Tribal thing."

"I see," the doctor said.

"It's like this," I said. "It used to be that the way you chose your friends was
by finding the most like-minded people you could out of the pool of people who
lived near to you. If you were lucky, you lived near a bunch of people you could
get along with. This was a lot more likely in the olden days, back before, you
know, printing and radio and such. Chances were that you'd grow up so immersed
in the local doctrine tha