It had been a problem since I could remember. A push on the playground. A fight with my piano teacher. A tirade in middle school. Anger there, beneath the surface, always. Therapy had kept it at bay all through high school, and a counselor had taught me to do the visualizations, imagining a hatch, shutting it tight, locking it with a key, and only opening it under the proper circumstances. Boxing classes. An invigorating run around the high school track. An occasional scream into my pillow.

But to my parents, it didn’t matter that I’d held it all back for so long, that I’d learned to adapt to a world where anger – or female anger, at least – wasn’t allowed. Every day that I’d kept the hatch closed no longer counted once I’d gone and done this. All my mom could say, over and over again, was: Why’d you have to go and ruin your future? After all we tried to do for you. And my dad’s version, a bit more succinct: Somehow, after everything, you found a way to fuck it all up. Then he’d reminded me that I should have been happy that someone wanted to date me at all, with that video circling around.

It’s not that my parents weren’t loving. They were, in their way. They’d made me soup when I was sick, taken me to the park, enrolled me in art classes, found a therapist for my issues – all of it.

Only, I was sure, after that day, that it had all been conditional. They’d wanted me to be their perfect daughter, and they’d spent loads of money trying to contain the monster inside me.

Once it was out, for everyone to see, they were as disgusted with me as I was with myself.

I shook my head, pushing Stephanie aside for a moment as I made another turn, deeper into the pass, the trees even thicker now as Dusty whined on.

My parents had seen the worst of me, they had judged me, and their love for me, it had seemed to dissipate completely – I could see it in their eyes – so I left.