about what it is you actually need right now—another chance—and whether it’s worth milking the cow one more time in the name of going on with the rest of your life.”
We blink across the table at each other.
I may have swallowed what was left of my anger, but it never actually left me—everything roils in my chest, wild and burning, and I honestly cannot believe this wannabe Joni Mitchell is telling me to sacrifice the very heart and soul of my work in the name of money.
Without a word, I hand my half-constructed journal across the table one last time.
Dusk holds it in both of her hands as if it’s something precious.
“Follow the White Rabbit,” it says across the bottom.
“I’d love for you to tell me more about your Alice thing sometime,” Dusk says.
Embarrassment comes over me suddenly—painfully—and I don’t really have the words to explain what it is exactly I’m embarrassed about.
“I’ll explain it when I figure it out myself,” I say.
“Well,” says Dusk, “the time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things—”
Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax, I would usually respond, of cabbages and kings.
And then she would say: And why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings—
We do this every week, almost as if it’s some sort of religious call and response. Today, though, there is only silence.
I stand, and so does she. Our fifty minutes are up.
“I’ll see you in two weeks,” Dusk says. “Remember—seek out the people and things that give you joy.”
Yeah, whatever.
“I’ll try,” I say.
She smiles.
“Let’s get you back to your mom.” With her banjo strap slung across her shoulder, Dusk guides me out to the waiting room.
* * *
The therapy office parking lot looks more like a scene from a creepy video game—fog hangs in the trees, cutting off our line of vision to the busy I-85 below. It’s otherworldly, almost as if we could walk in any direction and plummet off the side of a cliff into the great wide nothing below.
Mom’s chemical-peeled skin is still red and swollen; she grimaces down the barrel of the green straw that sticks out from the clear cup in her hand. Wind rattles the thinning dogwood branches that ring the parking lot, and I pull my jacket tighter.
“So, Dusk told me you’re thinking about the Capstone Award after all,” she says, eyeing her reflection in the driver’s-side window. With a flick of a polished thumbnail, the car beeps twice and the doors all unlock at once. I start to cross over to the passenger side, but Mom hands me the keys. “You need the practice.”
I sigh and slide into the driver’s side instead.
Translation: I’m exhausted from my morning with the esthetician, and I’d like to sleep off the Bloody Mary that’s still in my system before we get back to your dad.
“I’m not doing the Capstone,” I say.
My position has only galvanized between Dusk’s office and Mom’s car: I would be selling my soul to the devil. I’m not ready to count it as my only option just yet.
“We all agreed that the Capstone Award was a part of your outcome goals.” Mom shoves a pair of oversize designer shades onto the bridge of her nose and then cringes. She fans her face with an old church bulletin off the floorboard. “I’ve got the document on my phone—”
“You can’t just stick your kid in therapy because she’s not doing what you want her to do.” I jam the keys into the ignition and start the engine. “That’s literally not even how therapy works.”
Merely surviving versus fully thriving … But only when it’s convenient to the adults in the room.
Mom reclines her seat as far back as it can go and fastens her seat belt.
I throw the car into drive and descend the hill through the fog, stopping to merge onto the frontage road. The traffic doesn’t relent—the fog is thick, and one car after the next flies up with their brights screaming through my rear window.
I have no option: I have to go forward. There’s no escaping, no turning right and finding a back road onto the interstate.
I’m stuck here, with no fewer than twenty cars behind me, and now they’re all starting to blare their horns, waiting for me to merge. Stuck. Always effing stuck.
“Mom—”
“I’m just saying, you did wonderfully in the Ocoee Youth Arts Awards last year. It’s so good for your résumé, and this is your year for the Capstone Award—”
“No.” I breathe through