“Sixteen.”
She clears her throat. “Sixteen years old,” she continues. “Okay, I’ll ask the same starter questions and then I’ll switch it up. Where were you born?”
“Lorial, New York.”
She makes a face.
“What?” I ask.
“I’m just surprised.”
“About?”
“Lorial is so different from Tinsley, that’s all.”
I understand what she means because it’s the same thought I had when my mom told me we were moving. “Very. I’m surprised you even know what it’s like there.”
“It’s not another planet.” She laughs. “Next, when’s your birthday?”
“September fourth.”
“Okay, Beyoncé!” she says.
I bow in my seat. Deanna giggles.
“And favorite color?”
“I don’t have one,” I say matter-of-factly. “I love black though.”
“Clearly,” she says, eyeing my outfit. “Very cute though.”
My cheeks get warm.
“Ready for a big one?” she asks.
Surprisingly, I am.
“What’s your biggest fear?” she prompts, looking directly at me.
I inhale deeply. Knowing what I’m carrying—the secret of where I spent the last year—I’d planned to give the kind of surface answers that would deter anyone from asking follow-ups. But now that she’s opened up, I want to respond in kind.
“My biggest fear,” I repeat, buying myself some time to think. “I guess… I guess it’s that I’ll never be as good as people want me to be,” I say, thinking of my mom, who might never forgive me if I don’t amount to something.
Deanna looks at me with wide eyes, and I worry I’ve revealed too much. I’m coming up with a joke to undercut the seriousness of the moment when she finally speaks.
“Seriously, Jasmine, thank you for sharing that,” she says. “That’s literally how I feel all the time.”
Now it’s my turn to stare at her. I don’t know how to respond to someone who can actuallyseeme. Director Brewster told me that “there are no good apples in a barrel of rotten ones.” She didn’t see us at all. To her, I was just another uniform, taking up a bed until I was old enough to be sent to jail.
It’s quiet for a minute before I speak again. “My mom has a pretty clear vision of me in her head, and I feel like I spend all my time just trying to make sure I match that,” I say. “And based on our relationship, most of the time I don’t.”
Deanna nods thoughtfully, taking me in. The clouds shift outside, and then a burst of sun streams through the window, warming my face. I find myself doodling in the corner of my journal just to avoid staring too long at Deanna’s brown eyes, which seem to be changing to hazel in the light. I feel her energy shift.
“Tell me, why did you really leave boarding school?”
I lock on her eyes. “Honestly, I’ve learned not to questionmy mom’s decisions even though sometimes I wonder if she regrets making this one.”
The truth.
