Mom rolled in at 9:03 P.M. and immediately began stripping off the facade of perfection. First to come off were the shoes, immediately followed by a loud sigh of relief. Then the hair was let down. The sweats came on and the makeup came off. By 9:07 P.M. the conversion was complete.

I’d watched her transform from the perfect, put-together woman to comfortably flawed mom almost every day of my life. When I was little I thought it was fun—like living with a super-hero, except it was the mild-mannered version that was so much cooler. Now I just rolled my eyes and walked toward the bathroom to get ready for bed.

“Serena, can you come back in here for a minute?” I cringed hearing the stilted, false voice she uses when she parents. Apparently she hadn’t reverted completely to Cool Mom.

“Yeah?”

“There’s something I need to talk with you about.”

I’d completely forgotten about the Post-it note by then, but it didn’t matter. The big “Let’s talk” confrontation was a major waste of worry. I should’ve guessed, seeing as how she didn’t punctuate “Let’s talk” with an exclamation point.

The crimes: using her tampons, using the last of her tampons, not throwing away the empty tampon box, not telling her she was out of tampons, not adding tampons to the grocery list. Gee, guess someone was on the rag. I gave her a halfhearted “Sorry,” since she was so sensitive and all.

When I first got my period, she told me virgins couldn’t use tampons. In retrospect, I don’t think she actually believed this, but probably thought it was a clever way of keeping track of my hymen. So I’d expected her next question to be: “When did you start using tampons, anyway?” To which I would’ve replied: “Wouldn’t you like to know?” But she didn’t say another word about it.

She probably thought our sharing feminine hygiene products signified some sort of bonding experience. She has delusions that I’m the Rori to her Lorelai, but the Gilmore Girls we ain’t.

five

On the first day of class, without saying a word, my social psychology teacher, Dr. Ramsey, commanded my attention with the quote inked on the wall above his desk like a tattoo:

To punish me for my contempt for authority,
fate made me an authority myself.
—Albert Einstein

A teacher with contempt for authority always had my interest. And my fascination with Doc hasn’t lessened since.

Under a head of thick brown hair, Doc’s face was a little longer than most. But he didn’t look horsey or anything. More than anything, he reminded me of a puppy—a little too excited, a little too expressive. In fact, the only thing that actually made him look doctorish or scholarly were the clear round glasses he was never without.