running around, but I couldn’t keep in the laugh that burst out of me. Before I even had a chance to respond, a barrage of GIFs featuring people doing a range of things from laughing hysterically to passing out appeared on the conversation thread.
Finally Salome interjected.
Salome: Damn Julia, you savage. Can you pick me up tho?
Julia responded with an angry-faced emoji and a thumbs-up, which had me grinning to myself like a total fool. Before I could think about it too much, I texted her again.
Rocco: I’ll buy you a glass of rosé, Julia.
Julia: That’s the least you could do. Now leave me alone. I’m stressed out!
I closed the chat and looked up to see that we were getting close to our destination, and the urge to see Julia got more intense every few yards.
“Here we are.” The driver of the car service Sturm’s ordered for me gestured at the main entrance of the center.
“Thanks, man.” I hustled out of the car and took a moment to look at the sign. It was done in the same cursive font that Sturm’s used in their logo, but this one read Sturm Youth Center. The front of the building was landscaped with stones and grass. The first time I’d been here, I was so nervous about meeting Julia I hadn’t taken the time to absorb the little details. It looked like a place where they cared about the people who went into it.
As I walked through the brick hallway, I noticed it was lined with posters and what looked like art created by students. I wondered if the collages were the ones the students had been making on my last visit. They all had facts about historical figures from all ethnicities, and I’d stopped to read one about Maria Tallchief when I heard someone calling my name.
I turned around to see Mitzy, Muffy, and Phil standing by the door to one of the classrooms. They had another two women with them. Once was Gail, as always in one of her bespoke suits, and she was smiling at something that Muffy was telling her as Mitzy waved me over. The other woman had salt-and-pepper hair and was dressed in some kind of tunic that looked Central American. She didn’t look very happy as she said something to Phil, who seemed to be doing his best to ignore her. As I got closer, I could hear voices of young people talking excitedly.
“Hey, I thought Mr. Sturm would be here too.”
The twins just made a face, and when Muffy spoke, she sounded pissed. “He isn’t. After making us all rearrange our week and having the program get all kinds of consent forms from parents, and a bunch of other bullshit, he decided he didn’t want to come.”
Gail coughed like she was going to choke on something, while Phil shot a very disapproving look in the twins’ direction. I just smiled and nodded because I wasn’t even sure why I was here.
Gail extended her hand to me and smiled wide. “Thanks for visiting us again, Mr. Quinn.” She signaled to the other lady. “This is Vicki Morris the clinical director. She oversees the therapists that provide mental health counseling services for the students.” Vicki barely acknowledged me and kept looking inside the room with her lips drawn in a thin line. Whatever was going on in there, Vicki was not a fan. This had to be the shitty coworker Julia had been venting about the other day.
I smiled at both of them. “It’s nice to be back. I had a nice time when I was here.”
“Today we have our Leadership Academy, being led by Julia Ortiz, who oversees our after-school program among other things.” Gail said that for the others’ benefit as my heart raced. I stopped to look at her as the others walked through the door. I took a moment to take stock of what I was feeling, a trick my therapist had shown me when I first started working with her. She’d said when I was feeling something intense, to think about what caused it and what happened to my body. Usually the feelings she was referring to were anxiety, or stress, sometimes even anger—but this was different.
My body was taut with awareness. My eyes tracked her movements as she glided across the room smiling at the teens and their parents. I knew the Leadership Academy was one of the programs they offered for the kids. They worked with the students and their