Page 105 of Everything All at Once

The answer seemed obvious:yes, I want to be immortal.

But an obvious answer wasn’t necessarily the right answer.

Sometimes you had to be even more careful of the obvious answers; they snuck up on you while you weren’t looking. They were effortless.

And they were so tempting. It could be so tiring, feeling scared of everything. It could be so nice not having to carry that weight around anymore. Like a journal filledwith anxiety-ridden thoughts, an exercise from a past therapist (“Write out the demons every night before you go to bed, and that way they’ll have a harder time following you into your dreams.”).

The talk last night with my parents had gone better than expected. Maybe they were just happy it wasn’t anything as serious as they’d knee-jerkingly been expecting.

They talked among themselves, listing doctors they knew, therapists they knew. We would call someone on Tuesday.

“There is never, ever a reason to be ashamed to ask for help,” Mom said later, sneaking into my bedroom after everyone had gone to sleep. “You could have come to us sooner. I’m happy you came to us now, of course. But in the future, okay? There’s no shame between us.”

Did I feel shame? I don’t know. I guess I must have, a little, or else I wouldn’t have waited so long to tell them.

My mother sat on the edge of my bed and rested her hand on my forehead (always cool, her hands).

“What was your one big cry?” I asked her.

“Oh my,” she said. “I’ll tell you sometime soon, okay? It’s not a story for just before bed.”

She kissed my cheek, and I fell asleep without thinking of anything scary, without thinking of any of the ways I could die before morning.

I had only one dream, but it wasn’t so much a dream as a sort of prophecy. Sometimes our subconscious figuredthings out before us. Sometimes we had to just wait to catch up.

I texted Sam in the morning, holding the letter from Aunt Helen that I wasn’t quite ready to read.

Can you meet me today? Are you busy? Noon?

I sent him a pin with an address.

I’ll be there.

I didn’t tell him to bring the box, because now that he had it back, I didn’t think he’d be letting it out of his sight anytime soon.

I was worried my parents would look at me differently in the morning, having had time to really think about it and get used to the idea that their daughter was so out of control of her own emotions that she was having panic attacks.

But they were completely normal.

Dad made eggs and pancakes, and we ate at the table on the deck, Mom already dressed for gardening with her big floppy hat taking up its own chair, Abe carrying his plate around with him while he played a one-person game of croquet.

“I think we should take a vacation,” she said. “We haven’t had a nice vacation in a long time.”

“I’ve been doing research on Scandinavia!” Dad said hopefully.

She gave him a long, funny look. “A beach, Sal. I wantto go to a beach. I want to sit in the sand and drink piña coladas out of coconuts.”

“Oh, that kind of vacation,” Dad said, slightly crestfallen but still on board.

“Next year we can go to Scandinavia,” she promised. “This year: Hawaii.”

“I’d go to Hawaii,” I offered.

“Well, if Lottie will tag along, then it’s settled,” Dad said, smiling, winking, collecting our dirty plates and bringing them inside.

“I’m coming too!” Abe shouted from the yard.

“Do you have plans today? Do you want to help me pick beans? So many beans. I thought I’d make a casserole,” Mom said.