“Have you ever tried to remember how someone looked to you before you knew them and just… not quite been able to remember it? That’s…. I don’t know. If I try, if I close my eyes really tight and I concentrate really hard I can almost picture him in a pair of red shorts, brown leather flip flops standing at the service desk talking about how he had to wear a shirt at the pool because of his tattoos. But it’s like, I can’t actually picture it, I mean I can, but all I can picture are the facts, you know? Like, I can’t really remember what he looked like. I remember flashes, like extreme close up shots of his teeth or the tattoo on his left hand; the black and purple spade with flames on the fleshy part between his thumb and forefinger. I remember the piece but I just can’t picture the whole…” She bent her head and twisted the tip of her right sneaker into the bodiless commercial carpet. “I just… there are so many reasons I’m here. How do I know where to start?”

“Well, you could start at the beginning.” In stark contrast to the slouching demeanor of the girl sitting across from her, the woman in a tailored grey pants suit was polished, stone-faced and clearly trying her best to maintain what she thought was a gentle and understanding tone.

“Yeah, but what the hell would the beginning be? You want to know how when I was like two and a half I let myself and my uncle’s dog out of the back yard and took him for a walk? I hardly see how that’s relevant, or would you like to know how when I was 14 I was living on a diet of Chipwiches and Snapple from the vending machine and how I quit cheerleading because I couldn’t hold my flyer anymore because I just didn’t have the strength due to malnutrition and the whole time all my family noticed was that I was looking so great because I was thin? “

“What’s a ‘Chipwhich’?”

The girl’s expression changed. Clearly amused, she said, “It’s this really awesome ice cream sandwich thing that has soft chocolate chip cookies for the outside and vanilla ice cream in the center and then the ice cream is coated in chocolate chips. I don’t think they make them anymore, which really sucks because the shit they do make is nowhere near is good. I mean, the cookies aren’t as big and no chips on the cream is just plain lazy in my opinion. I used to love how the solid frozenness of it used to pull the top wire of my braces out a little bit. I don’t know why but that was just a really satisfying feeling – rearranging the wire of my braces so that the pressure on my teeth changed. I mean, I used to just pull forward on the center of the top wire and I could just move it that way, you see the wire was cut wrong on the right side of my mouth so that it totally used to just stab me in the cheek like all of the time. Apparently seeing that a wire is sticking out like forty million inches from the back of the bracket is hard or something. It must be nice to be able to go to school for something, charge tons of money to render a service and just be absolutely awful at it but no one really cares because hey, you’re licensed.”