Alice’s lips disappear into a long thin line as she leans forward and squeezes my hands tight.
‘Mia, please listen to me,’ she says calmly. ‘Have you ever talked to anyone about any of this?’
‘About my essay?’ I break her grip to wipe the tears away from my face. ‘Or Ethan?’
‘About your anxiety.’
I hear the word and everything stops.
‘My anxiety? You think I have anxiety?’
‘I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know.’ She stands up and moves from her chair to sit by my side on the bed. ‘But from my perspective,as your friend, you can get very stressed out by things, and I’m not saying they’re not stressful or your feelings aren’t valid, but you sometimes seem to get stressed out to a point where you’re not functioning.’
The pounding in my chest turns solid, a leaden lump that’s blocking off my oxygen.
‘That’s because I’m not trying hard enough, not because I have anxiety.’
‘Oh, Mia, no. You’re tryingsohard.’
‘Too hard?’
‘Well, thank you for proving my point.’ She shifts on the bed, crossing her legs underneath her. ‘What I mean is, you’re pushing yourself too hard and worrying too much. Do you know why you do that?’
‘It’s not too much if I’m still screwing up all the time,’ I counter, the list of everything I’ve done wrong since arriving at Hemden spiralling through my mind. ‘I need to focus, stop wasting time, get on top of my classes. My parents are going to be so mad, even more than they already are. They said I would mess this up and—’
Alice’s hand covers my mouth again.
‘Since this is the only way to slow you down, I’m going to keep doing it until you start listening, all right?’ She raises both eyebrows and I nod obediently. ‘Your parents are your business, and please don’t punch me in the tit, but it sounds like they weren’t totally supportive of you coming here?’
Mouth still covered, I don’t try to correct her, and it feels so traitorous.
‘Is it possible they’re a bit hard on you and that stresses you out?’
This time I push her hand away, vigorously shaking my head.
‘They’re not hard on me, I’m hard on me.’ Reaching for mybracelet, I press each of its sharpest points into the pad of my thumb until I find my focus. ‘They tried to protect me from this, they told me not to come. But I thought I knew better. Turns out they were right. If I fail this paper and Dr Quinn kicks me off his course, they were right.’
‘What’s that poem everyone quotes, the Larkin one?’ Alice frowns with concentration. ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad?’
‘Haven’t heard it.’
‘And now I know what to get you for Christmas,’ she replies. ‘Mia, I can’t pretend I know how strange it must be, being so far away from home but I think I might feel lonely sometimes, even if I had made friends with some of the greatest human beings ever to have walked the earth.’ She clears her throat theatrically and flips her hair. ‘There are people you can talk to at the student centre. Counsellors. I started going last year and it really helped.’
It’s a shock. Alice is always so upbeat and relentlessly, almost offensively happy. I can’t believe she’s the kind of person who would need counselling.
‘You went to therapy?’
‘I still go.’ She takes a sharp breath in then blows it out. ‘That shitty break-up I mentioned. I fell into a bit of a hole afterwards and couldn’t get myself out. Talking it out with someone helped put it all into perspective, gave me some coping skills that didn’t involve driving to his house in the middle of the night and removing his balls with a rusty pen knife.’
‘Jenna’s suggestion?’
‘Jenna’s suggestion. She’s nothing if not consistent.’
I try to reassure her by forcing a smile but I just look like I’ve eaten a bad clam.
‘That’s great, Alice. I’m glad it worked for you but I don’t have the time.’
‘It’s fifty minutes a week. You have the time.’
