For months, they took Soon to see a psychologist. She was a very friendly woman who spoke softly and gave the impression she doubted everything, even herself. She stammered, she hemmed and hawed, and she contradicted herself all the time. She talked about certain things with Soon and other, totally different things with Soon’s parents—Soon came to this conclusion after eavesdropping one day. The psychologist told her parents that she, Soon, was very confused. That the problem had started a long time ago, though it was impossible to determine its cause. That she felt panic at the onset of her sexuality and that, unconsciously, she had sought an ally in an older man who, when the moment came, she could manipulate as she liked. This last part was what had most outraged her father. Soon manipulated the old man? More like the other way around!, she heard him murmur through the door. Her mother soothed him, told him it was a matter of terminology: the point was that it was unconscious, of course the child couldn’t control anyone. Hidden, Soon listened and bit her tongue to keep from interrupting. She had never talked to the psychologist about any of that! She just answered her questions about hobbies, tastes, and desires for the future, the kind of questions adults ask kids they don’t know how to talk to: what’s your favorite subject, what do you want to be when you grow up, what’s your greatest life dream? The psychologist couldn’t know how rebellious Soon was in her answers. She talked about birds and Nina Simone, tried to disconcert and surprise her: her favorite subject was natural sciences, she wanted to be an ornithologist when she grew up, her greatest dream was to go back in time and hear Nina sing live. But she had never talked about sexuality—why did the psychologist take everything she said straight to that stuff? After the day she listened to her parents through the door, she started to look at the psychologist differently. Her innocent air, her skin, so white, and her melancholic green eyes now held a perversion that repelled her. That woman was sick, Soon thought: sick with psychology. She refused to talk to her anymore, and in the end her parents cancelled the sessions.