Today, things are not soft and warm. The black sludge and the red anger are taking over a bit. Those are always the same, in every person. I don’t know why. Black and red can be other emotions, depending on the person, but disappointment and anger always feel the same at their core.

Jeez, save it for therapy, Caleb. Focus on class. Focus. Focus.

I step into the car after practice and get an earful.

“Good God, Caleb, you could at least put your pads in the trunk. You reek.”

“Sorry, Mom. Hold on.” I hop out and stuff my gear in the back. I’m not sure it improves the smell though, because she still rolls down all the windows when I get back in.

“Is there a reason you can’t use the school’s showers? Does your father put up with this every day?” She sounds incredulous. She hasn’t picked me up at school for a while—Dad’s writing has been keeping him at home for the past few months so he’s taken over chauffeur duties.

“Ha, yeah, he does,” I say, “and I can’t use the showers, it’s way too weird.”

“Why?” I feel her familiar orange concern wrap around me in a suffocating hug. “You’re not … ashamed of your body, are you?”

“God, Mom, no,” I scoff. She’s always doing this—inventing more and more reasons to be worried about me. As if me having a pathetic superwhatever isn’t a big enough problem to occupy her brain. “No, no, it’s just…” I can feel my face reddening as I trail off.

“Just what?” she jabs, her concern like hot, yellow pokers sticking out of her.

“Guys think about a lot of … stuff in the showers,” I mumble, powering through the humiliation, focusing on minimizing her concern. “And it’s weird to be around that. Even if I’m not thinking about that … that stuff, I can still feel it from the other guys. And those kinds of emotions are not something I need to know about my teammates.”

I feel the yellow pokers turn into understanding.

“Oh … right, of course.” She sounds a little embarrassed, but I don’t feel it from her. Only sympathy. My mother is sympathetic to a fault. “I can understand that.”

She shudders a bit at the thought and looks over at me, a smile beginning to form. There’s a bubbly rush of air that tickles my lungs and we both burst out laughing.

My smile is threatening to break my face apart and I turn toward the open window, feeling the wind and the sun on my face. It’s in moments like these that I don’t mind my Problem all that much.