I wiped my palms on my trousers. “Well, when I was younger, I always compared myself to her. She was a lot prettier...sexier than me, and it always made me really insecure.” I shook my head, smiled. “Just stupid kid stuff.”

“It doesn’t sound like stupid kid stuff to me. It sounds quite painful.”

“Yeah, well, there were a few times she really let me down. Like, when I was seventeen, I really liked this boy and he chose her over me.”

Linda kept nodding, like she totally got it. Even though I felt like a fifteen-year-old sharing it. Such pathetic teenage stuff. “You said the word ‘chose,’” she prompted. “What does that word mean to you?”

Hannah was goggle-eyed behind her, scribbling notes, while I felt pinned against my chair by Linda’s question. “Well, it means being picked, doesn’t it?”

“And you felt this friend was picked more? And you’re feeling the repercussions of that now she’s back in your life?”

I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Well she WAS picked more. And I’ve never had that with guys. Mainly because she was always around. And, when she wasn’t in my life, I got chosen. Because she wasn’t there as a better alternative. But now she’s back...”

“You’re worried you won’t be chosen anymore? That she’ll be picked instead?”

“I guess...fuck...”

Linda gave me one more blast of therapy smile, and then she turned back to Hannah and the spell around us turned to vapor. “You see there? How I used questions to draw out more about what she’s said?” she asked her student. “Now, you think you can try that?”

She reshuffled the chairs, told us “good work,” and that we had five minutes to debrief before she’d come back to observe me.

“Wow,” Hannah said. “Fucking hell. I’m never going to be that good. She’s like a fucking...Jedi counselor.” Then she noticed me sweating and holding my hand to my chest. “Shit, Fern, are you OK?”

I nodded but couldn’t speak. For the first time in weeks I was fully in my body again, and my body was a choked up, jittering mess. I almost couldn’t hold myself up on the chair, Linda’s questions whirring through my head.

“I’m fine,” I said. But I wasn’t.

Holy shit. Could it really be that I hadn’t matured one inch since I was young?

I got home late, after calling Heather, begging her to meet for an emergency post-counseling-lesson debrief. I pushed against our front door that always sticks and half fell into our hallway. “I’m home,” I called out, kicking off my sandal and examining the red marks left on my foot. The first day in them always required a week’s recovery time, and I hoped there were plasters in the bathroom cabinet.