The snow looks so beautiful. It’s like I’m in a fairytale.
If I were a princess, I wonder which one I would be… Maybe the Swan Princess? No, I’m not brave enough… The LittleMermaid? Yuck, then I have to be aroundfish.Oh! Maybe I’m Snow White. I do like apples…
Gosh. My feet hurtso bad.I really need to stop agreeing to cover Sam’s shifts after rehearsal, but they have a lot more friends than I do, so it wouldn’t be fair to keep them from them when I see Mia all the time.
Oh my God. What if that bump I just stepped on was actually a baby rabbit? What if I killed it?
Am I going to get arrested for bunny murder? Do they arrest people for that?
I have to go back to save it. I have to help it. I?—
“Evangeline,” Mia said softly, wrapping her hand around my arm and squeezing gently with a tight smile that showed her worry in the corners of her eyes. “You all right?”
My head whipped around to the bump only to find nothing there at all. I blinked a few times to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, but when no dead baby bunny appeared, I let out a gentle exhale. “Yeah… Yeah, I’m fine.”
Mia’s eyes were all-knowing before she turned back to her date, thankfully giving me space to exit the labyrinth on my own.
I tried to please everyone. Even my own head. But there, I always failed, no matter how hard I tried.
Most people, when I told them I had obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, always chuckled to themselves before saying, “Yeah, I’m pretty organized, too.” And while I could definitely see why they thought that OCD was just being clean or tidy—because I was both of those, as were many people in my online support group—that wasn’t everything.
OCD felt like… Well, it felt like living with a constant swarm of bees surrounding my head, each of them a different thought or anxiety that would sting and sting me until I fell to the ground. Sometimes, I would try to swat a bee away, but that would only make it angrier. It would attack me harder andharder and harder until I screamed and begged for it to leave me alone. So it was easier to live with the buzzing and hope I didn’t get stung.
It wasn’t just noise. It was athreat.
My thoughts latched onto things. Little bumps in the road, something someone said to me earlier in the day, the feeling that I would never be good enough to make my dreams come true. It was all about fear. Fear that I wouldn’t amount to anything, fear that I would hurt others, fear that I would hurt myself. I couldn’t pick up a knife without being terrified I would slit my own throat. I couldn’t drive a car without having a panic attack, because every pothole was a person. I couldn’t do anything without beingafraid.The fear had become so normal that it controlled every part of me.
Mia knew this about me and had trained herself to watch for the signs that I was on the verge of a spiral. I suspected that her younger sister, Charlotte, who was one year below me in the dance program at my former university, had asked Mia to keep an eye on me. Though she was a few years older and a few years deeper into her ballet career, we went together like silk and glitter.
So I didn’t mind it when she tore me from my thoughts, even if sometimes ignoring them with her made them louder.
“Let’s do something fun!” she said, clearly trying to distract me. “How about a snowball fight? It’s perfect weather.”
I glanced down at my outfit. It was adorable, but if I got hit with one snowball, I would be soaked to the bone. My fur-lined coat was the perfect shade of ballet pink, my favorite color, matching the cute bow I tied half of my hair up with. My white tights completed the outfit along with my pink boots. Jules had practically shoved a pair of gloves on my hands, so I did have those, but they were made of delicate, white lace—not good for a snowball fight.
But me being me, I just smiled and said, “Sure! Sounds like a great time.”
When Carmelo nodded his agreement, we all split up. I ducked behind a streetlight and began to imagine myself caught in the warm, yellow glow by a handsome man who would wrap me in his arms and kiss me until my whole body flushed. A man who’d take control from my wretched illness and leave my mind empty and my body breathless.
I tried to picture a face for my prince, but whenever I tried to think about it, the details went fuzzy. Like I hadn’t yet seen the one who would be right.
I was so caught up in my daydreams that I failed to notice a snowball flying my way until it landed on the back of my head, covering me in white.
“AH!” I screamed when the cold dripped down the back of my coat and beneath my dress—again, Ireallydidn’t dress practically.
Mia, who was hiding behind a majestic elm tree, giggled before crying out, “Oops! Sorry, Eva! If it makes you feel better, your hair still totally looks amazing.”
“I know, but— urgh! I’m all cold now!”
Mia opened her mouth to reply, but was interrupted by a snowball hitting her square in the chest. Carmelo laughed loudly, and I took that as my cue to run. If I got far enough, Mia wouldn’t be able to hit me. Her tall, lithe body contained absolutely no muscles outside of the ones she used for dancing.
I turned around to check if they were running after me when?—
BAM!
I ran into something hard, something very, very,veryhard and immovable. I smacked into the ground, knocking my head against the hard thing I ran into, which I was beginning torealize, despite my slight concussion, was a person cursing under their breath.
Crap.
