Diana.
You have to fight to get a breath.
“Well, I’m not going to repeat all that. But, basically, Diana is embarrassed for me and it is causing her extreme discomfort. Like, abunchof discomfort. Does that sound familiar to anyone?”
Nobody nods. Especially not you because the nameDianais now stuck on a loop in your whirling brain, and a pit in your stomach is threatening to swallow your whole body.
“Case!”
You feel yourself jolt upright in your seat. It’s possible you make an unflattering noise of some kind when you do this, but you don’t hear it over the cranking gears of your own internal machinery.
“Yes?”
“Yes, what?” says Silas.
It takes you a few seconds to remember what the question was.
“Yes,” you say again. “It… uh… sounds familiar to me. And yes, I’m super embarrassed for you.”
He stares at you and shakes his head. His eyes stay locked on yours, and you can also feel four other pairs of eyes stuck on you now.
“Well, that’s bad news,” he says. “Because that’s not going to work for us.”
“What isn’t?” says the tracksuit guy.
“Embarrassment, brother! We have to find a way to get rid of that real quick.”
Silas motions to the bus driver, who turns the song back on.
“On this trip,” he says over the jangly music, “we’re goingto be together for a long time, trying to make some progress on this thing we’re all struggling with. Everything we do is going to be kind of embarrassing. The sooner we can be open with one another, the more progress we’re going to make. You understand?”
A hand goes up.
“Yes, Fran?” says Silas.
“No offense. But wasn’t there supposed to be, like, another therapy person on this thing besides you?”
Silas nods.
“Yes,” he says. “There was. But unfortunately, she had a medical emergency and she can’t make it on this trip. So it’s just us, adventurers. And I’m here to tell you: We are enough. We are enough!”
You hear his words, but he might as well be speaking underwater. So you close your eyes and give in to the zoning your brain is so fond of, and when you come to full consciousness again, your ears pulsing, chest tight as a drum, everyone is getting off the bus. You have, it seems, been given permission for one last pit stop.
You don’t really want to move, but curiosity about Diana pulls you from your seat. And as you head toward the thin rectangle of daylight at the front of the bus, you finally see her clearly, just a few feet away. Her jacket has the same row of safety pins near the collar. Her curly hair still hangs barely over her eyes. You stop, and then you just stand there with your arms at your sides. She doesn’t block your path, but she doesn’t exactly move out of the way either.
She did the same thing every time you met her in the hallway of your house, usually when she was leaving Sean’s room, spritzing on perfume to cover up the weed smoke or tucking her shirt backinto her jeans. And if you happened to meet eyes with her, she often gave you the same deadpan expression she’s giving you now, and she never, ever got out of the way.
“Hey, Case,” she says.
“Hey, Diana,” you say.
THREE
You will never forget the way you met her because of two things. One: It was your sixteenth birthday. And two: You were on the roof of your garage. The two were related. You’d decided long ago, after a childhood birthday party where only two people showed up, that you would never again risk the humiliation of a great big blowout fiesta with a guest list a mile long and enough food to feed the neighborhood. From then on you kept birthdays painfully low-key:
German chocolate cake with your family.
Maybe a movie.
