“I heard there’s been some attention around your family.”
“Attention” was a pretty word for it.
I looked at the jar of peppermints.
“I’m not failing any classes.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“I know how this goes.”
Her face changed a little then.
Not offended.
Sad.
Maybe she did know how this went too.
“I’m not here to judge your mother,” she said.
I flinched so slightly most people would have missed it.
She didn’t.
And then I knew she’d seen it, and that made me mad at myself.
“My mother doesn’t need judging,” I said.
“She sounds like she’s working very hard.”
“She is.”
“And you sound like you are too.”
Something hot rushed up my throat.
The dangerous kind of emotion.
The one that makes you either cry or say the truest thing in the ugliest voice.
I gripped the chair.
“I was,” I said. “Then for like one second I wasn’t. And now it feels like the whole county saw me not drowning and decided to build a parade around it.”
The counselor sat very still.
“That sounds exhausting.”
I laughed once.
