It snowed in Nashville while we were gone. We drove up late last night to a blanket of white over the bushes and the roofs. Everything looks iced in sugar. And now I’m sitting in Andrea’s office waiting while she fetches tea. I decided to come back. I called Well after listening to his playlist, and he talked me into giving it one more shot. Well could talk anyone into anything. He also convinced me to talk to Andrea. “Feel your feelings, Lou,” is his new mantra for me. It’s annoying, but effective.

Except now that I’m here, it all feels different. Like the world I came back to is not the one I left.

“Here you go, Lou. I hope chamomile’s okay.”

I take a sip. It reminds me of Tahoe and Joe. In her white turtleneck with her hair tied up in a silvery scarf, Andrea looks like a winter fairy. She’s waiting for me to speak. I’m the one who requested this meeting. But I don’t know where to start.

“The fire drill. I know it was… traumatic.” She’s trying to get me going. But this is not the right road.

“I don’t want talk about that.”

“Okay.” She puts down her tea. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I want to talk about the sensory processing stuff. I want to hear your plan.”

“Oh, well, let me just—” I’ve frazzled her. She’s been trying to get me to talk about this forever. Now I’m the one bringing it up. To her credit, she stands and starts rifling through her file cabinet without mentioning that I’ve been avoiding her like the plague for weeks. She pulls out the Adolescent Sensory Questionnaire and hands it back to me. I force myself to look at it. All the boxes I checked and all the ones I didn’t that I probably should have.

She uncaps a red pen and begins to circle different questions. She seems excited, the kind of excited adults get when they’re cutting coupons or doing sudoku.

“These…” She points to bothered by “light touch,” someone lightly touching your hand, face, leg, or back and distressed by others touching you. “These indicate sensory issues related to touch.”

Duh.

Now she picks up a green pen. “And these”—she circles bothered by noises other people do not seem bothered by, sensitive to loud sounds or commotion, and avoid crowds and plan errands at times when there will be fewer people—“are related to sound and crowds.”

I look at the page. There is hardly anything left that isn’t covered in red or green. She sees the look on my face.