Quest and Tillie

Chapter 12: Not Even Close

I moved my head this way and that in the mirror, liking the feel of my hair swinging so freely, just skimming my shoulders. The blonde highlights made me grin at myself. All my life, my long, waist-length hair had been mousy, bland brown. Today, when I went in for my typical hair trim, Noel had casually mentioned her appointment after me had canceled. Turning to her, I asked if she wouldn't mind doing a makeover since she had extra time after me.

"I want it to my shoulders and I want blonde highlights," I told her. Such a simple thing, but I'd always kind of let my hair just happen. Now, I was saying what I wanted, no hesitation, no uncertainty, no asking what someone else thought of my ideas.

Grinning at me, Noel clapped her hands together. "So ready to give you a new look!" she'd cheered. Then she'd gotten busy with highlighting and washing and cutting and drying and styling. When she'd finally turned me to face the mirror, I'd smiled huge at the same time tears burned my eyes. 

"You're a miracle worker," I'd exclaimed, touching the perfectly styled layers, the highlights adding depth and sheen to lift the mousiness. I felt good.

That was a feeling I'd been working hard to achieve over the last three months, which had been spent at work, in therapy, with Chelle and Stasia, at my new apartment and on long walks that ended up with me sitting by the river with my dog. Since moving out on my own, I'd wanted a dog, and so I'd finally gone to the local pet shelter and looked for a dog that met all of my apartment's breed restrictions and weight limits.

And that is how I ended up with a fawn-colored French bulldog with the ridiculous name of Springy. I was kind of stuck with the name since she was three years old, but I soon realized why she got her name the first time she got excited and began springing up and down. She didn't bark much, if at all, and since I lived close to work, I could run home for lunch and give Spring a short walk.

Keeping with the theme of her somewhat shortened name, I bought her a leaf-green collar with little daisies embroidered on it, and her leash was light pink with tulips on it.

Spring and I had a lot of long talks, mostly because she kept twisting her head this way and that as I spoke to her, as if she was really understanding me, and I thought it was just about the cutest thing I'd ever seen.

I was thinking about my latest session with Monica. Three months ago, I'd asked her a question about whether Quest could have actually blanked out fucking Mary-Lou Dawn. I'd told her what he'd told me about remembering the moments before -- when he had enough presence of mind to pull out a condom and roll it on -- and the moments after, when he pulled out, took off the condom and pumped himself until he came on his hand.

She had said, without talking to him she could only guess. But from what I'd told her, she said people had been known to snap under serious stress and do something so out of character that they repressed certain events, like he'd repressed the actual act of fucking that bitch. Monica also mentioned dissociation and said it's one way a person's mind can deal with an overload of stress and people could blank out an event and have no recollection of it.

When she explained that, I'd nodded, but said nothing. I thought about her words off and on for the next three months, but after that session, after I moved into my own place, I concentrated on me for three months and never mentioned Quest to her in our sessions.

One of the things that had come out in my discussions with Monica was the fact that I no longer wanted to run the bank I was being trained to take over.

"I think," I told her guiltily, "that it was one of those things that I just took the easy road on. I worked at the bank after school and during the summers. It was easy, it was something that I was good at and it just seemed like the path I should take."