Maybe, even, with the prospect of hurling yourself in front of a Mack truck, your subconscious is giving you things to be scared of. Things to make you realize that, ultimately, you actually don’t want to die. That, confronted with the reality of death . . . say, someone lunging at you with a butcher knife . . . you actually want to live. That you must live. (That you would kill to live, but don’t think that. It’s too horrible.)

A diagnosis.

Stress. Transition. Self-preservation.

My own mind is playing tricks on me to get me to admit that I want to live, I want to go to college, I want to go to Bryn Mawr. I want to survive. I do not want to throw away my life. Maybe I just want, desperately, to change it.

A revelation.

“Daffodil. Face it. You love this world. In your own weird way. It makes you curious.” I’m muttering to myself on the bed. “You love learning. You love strange facts. You love contemplating empires and the fall of empires and ancient aliens and Sumerians and the Silk Road. And, despite yourself, you actually want to live.”

A calm comes over me now.

It’s okay. There’s a diagnosis. There’s a reason.

All is well.

I feel light now.

As if a weight is lifted.

My lie to myself.

No, I’m not going to hurl myself at a moving vehicle.

I refuse.

There I am, about to gather myself for the day in a rational, normal way, when I hear the sound of a car winding up the long drive.

It’s a bit early, but nobody seems to care about that much around these parts.

I go to the window and stare out beneath me, down to the driveway, where a yellow SUV parks just in front of the house, awfully close.

Curious.

Perhaps this is the professor, come home early. I don’t remember seeing his car . . . but this could be his. Although, I would peg him more for a Prius, quite frankly.

The door opens and the very tan leg of a very tan woman pokes out. Okay, definitely not the professor.

It’s a kind of orange spray tan, I remember well from some of the country club girls back in Nebraska. It’s not really a color the sun would ever make you. Unless the sun hated you.

Now the hair pokes out. This hair is did. A fresh blowout, stick straight. Blond. Quite long, actually. And the outfit is did, too. Put together. Buttoned up.

A kind of skirt suit, pencil skirt, blazer, matching in a dark teal. This lady is really going for it. Officious.

She looks up at the house, and I jump backward, frantic.

There is zero way I am interacting with this woman.

I mean, what the heck would I even say? Nice blazer? What’s your favorite gym? How do you get such an allover tan that definitely isn’t orange?

Before I can imagine the hundreds of awkward sentences I could say to her, she grabs a clipboard and begins walking around the house.