Almost There

- 13 -

Dr. Mark usually did this; he offered topics of conversation, and if Tess wasn't ready or interested in something, he didn't press her to talk like her parents did. Although it was counterintuitive, this made Tess more willing to talk to him about a variety of things. "It's been a little hard."

He leaned back in his chair. Tess could just see the corner of his yellow legal pad sitting on the desk, mostly out of her view; she knew he would jot down notes unobtrusively during their session. She sometimes wondered what he wrote in there about her, but she never asked. He didn't prompt her to continue, just waited, looking at her with quiet interest.

"I met a friend," Tess said, drifting away from the stressful stuff. "Her name is Jacqui. I only have her in one of my classes, but she's really smart. And she's got a lot of friends. I'm not even sure I can remember all their names."

"That's an interesting observation."

"Hmm?"

"Well, one of the first things you mention is that Jacqui has a lot of friends. You don't consider them your friends, too, Tess?"

She gave a short laugh. "No. It's hard for me to make friends on a good day, and...you know."

He gave her a knowing look; he didn't smile, but his eyes crinkled with a touch of amusement. Tess knew what he was going to say before he said it, because she'd heard it before.

"I don't know, actually," he said. "I can guess what you mean, but it's always better for you to share with me."

"You know, it's just stressful. It's a new school and everything. I have so many classes, how can I even think about making friends? I don't care, anyway. It's not like I have time for much hanging out."

"What about the girl from your summer school class, Rebecca? Have you kept in touch?"

"Oh, yeah. We've texted a bit. I don't think I'll get much chance to hang out with her again this year. She works after school, and I'm going to drown in homework."

Dr. Mark nodded, and then he waited.

"Mostly I'm thinking about my classes and how I'm going to survive this year. The homework is...more challenging than I expected. More than I remember."

"What do you mean by 'challenging,' Tess? Do you mean the curriculum is difficult, or do you mean it's challenging in a different way?"

Tess was silent for a moment. Dr. Mark had a way of navigating through her words, which she often felt were jumbled and sometimes nonsensical, and probing for the details of her thoughts and feelings that she wouldn't consider on her own. "I think both."

"It's your senior year. It's natural that the work is more difficult than it has been before, especially with college on the horizon. Try not to be too hard on yourself if you feel the curriculum is rigorous. Other students would likely agree with you."

"I know." Tess thought of Jacqui, and how she'd confessed that she was often hard on herself, too.

"Is there more to it than that?"

"I guess there's this feeling that I'm not going to be able to do well enough to graduate. And there's this...worry." Tess looked away, focusing on a cactus she kept on her desk in her room. Its pot was blue on one side, with a frowny face painted on it, and yellow on the other, with a smiley face. She looked into the glossy eyes of the smiley face. "I don't know all of what's tangled up in there, but it's worry about graduating, worry about failing...but also worry about someone finding out what happened. The accident. And worry about worrying."

Dr. Mark glanced toward his pad of paper and Tess saw his arm move as he jotted a note. "There are a couple things you said that I'd like to ask you about, if that's all right."