100 Days of Cake Read Online Free PDF

it as typical teenage stuff at first. But then ADF the high school guidance counselor called Mom and me into her office and explained that, nope, there was nothing garden-variety about my running out of a swim meet after months of training, or about dropping advanced art, or my GPA tumbling from a 3.7 to a 1.7. Mr. Walton used the D word—“depression”—and that hurled my mom into this completely uncharacteristic panic. Mom is a go-getter, not a panicker. If I hadn’t already been totally lost and scared, seeing my put-together, perfect mother clutch her chest and blather hysterically about how she’d had no idea—well, that certainly would have done the trick.
    Mom took me to my geriatric pediatrician, Dr. Calvin (who’d been old when he was her pediatrician), and he wrote me scripts for a low-dose antidepressant and some anti-anxiety meds, offered me a toy from the chest of plastic trinkets for the little kids, and told us I needed therapy.Mom got Dr. Brooks’s name from one of her regular highlights clients. Apparently Dr. B. had helped the woman’s son, and the kid had gotten his act together enough that he’d been able to turn things around and had gotten into Florida A&M. This impressed Mom. My mother may not have gone to college herself, but it’s a very big thing for her that V and I go. I think it has to do with proving something to her own mother.
    Anyway, the first couple of sessions with Dr. B., I just sat there, arms and legs crossed (sitting was, it turns out, slightly less uncomfortable than lying down), and gave one-word answers to the questions he asked about my family and school and what might have changed for me. So much of what was going on was stuff I couldn’t even begin to explain to myself, even if I’d wanted to. Then one day Dr. B. noticed me tucking my earphones into my backpack, and he asked about what kind of music I listened to. We started talking about some of the nineties bands that I knew about from Alex or my mom, and it turned out that Dr. B. had actually seen a lot of them when he was in high school and college. For the next session he brought in some Stone Temple Pilots bootlegs, and we talked about those, and gradually, talking about other stuff got a little easier.
    Now I’m a total convert. The dude is awesome. And even though he knows all this crazy stuff about me, he doesn’t treat me as if I’m a Fabergé egg. ADF a lot of peoplein my life either cut me off or started talking to me in a syrupy voice, as though I would crumble into a billion pieces if they said something to upset me. But Dr. B. acts like I’m an actual human, not something that’s going to shatter.
    â€œWhat’s a Flaming Dante?” He points to my shirt.
    â€œOh.” I blush. “It’s Alex’s band.”
    â€œYour friend from work, huh?” he asks, and I nod. “I take it he just read The Divine Comedy ?”
    â€œWell, his friend did,” I mumble. “You’d like the band; they sound kind of nineties.”
    â€œYou talk about him quite a bit, and now you’re wearing his shirt; is he becoming more than a friend?”
    I shrug. Even though I couldn’t wait to talk to Dr. B. about all of what happened with Alex and T.J., now it just sounds like high school drama.
    â€œMolly.” Dr. B. cocks his head. “You know this only works if you tell me what’s going on.”
    â€œI don’t know. I feel bad because I think he wants us to be more than friends, and I’ve been blowing him off.”
    â€œHe asked you out, and you said no?”
    â€œTechnically.”
    â€œAnd this has happened before?”
    â€œI think. It’s hard to tell sometimes.”
    â€œSo you say, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ and he still keeps asking you out, and then he makes you feel as though you’ve done something wrong by rejecting him?”
    â€œIt’s not exactly like