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Take This to Your Grave

Page 10

by Genna Black

Calla: I also can’t believe you’re going home after all this time.

Serena: I am going to a location that technically qualifies as my former legal residence.

Lila: On a scale of one to “I have already dissociated,” how bad is this?

Serena: It’s fine.

Lila: That wasn’t on the scale.

Serena: I will be there briefly.

Serena: I will not unpack.

Serena: I will not engage. Especially not with the Casket Case douche canoes.

Serena: I will leave before my mother asks me if I’m eating enough or loving anyone.

Calla: She’s going to ask both of those things immediately.

Serena: As if the answers have changed since the last six hundred times.

Lila: And the other thing.

Serena: There is no other thing.

Calla: Serena.

Lila: You don’t have to go if you’re not ready.

Serena: I am attempting exposure therapy without a therapist.

Calla: That sentence alone tells me you need supervision.

Serena: Fine, Lila can be my therapist.

Lila: I can’t be your therapist. You’ve slept in my guest room.

Serena: I fail to see the ethical conflict.

Lila: Theo made you pancakes in his underwear. There are boundaries we cannot uncross.

Lila: Also he has explicitly forbidden me from psychoanalyzing and/or diagnosing our friends at the dinner table.

Serena: This isn’t a dinner table.

Lila: Spirit of the law, Serena.

Serena: Imagine me sighing theatrically.

Serena: I have arranged for Tamsin to come with me.

Lila: Oh thank god. She’s going to bully everyone who has ever wronged you. Would literally pay money to be there if you run into Baryn.

Serena: That is the hope.

Calla: Text us when you get there.

Calla: Also if your mother brings out old photo albums under the guise of dusting and starts narrating alternate timelines.