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pinkie to thumb, left to right.
    â€œSit still,” Mama hissed.
    Nineteen surged in me, looking for a suitable target. I tried to keep from thinking about it. I rose from my chair.
    â€œFin? What’s going on?” she asked.
    I bolted out of the waiting room. The receptionist gave me a funny look when I ran past, but I didn’t stop until I reached the door. I had to get out of there, away from all those people, breathing my air.
    I walked to the car, though I couldn’t unlock it.
    Mama was there a moment later. We stood in the parking lot, watching the river of cars. I counted three blue sedans in 4/4 time before she spoke to me.
    â€œDr. Calaban is waiting,” she said. “Are you going back inside?”
    I didn’t have the energy to say no.

Happiness of the Garden Variety
    A ll sunsets are frauds. Don’t tell me otherwise. When I stared at the posters blitzed throughout the shrink’s waiting room, I got a shorthand glimpse of happy endings. Their horizons dissolved like tissue paper, though I knew the sun doesn’t actually “rise” or “set.” It’s just a figure of speech. Ms. Armstrong says that sunsets contain lithium. That’s why it feels good to watch the colors caramelize.
    STD? Who, me? read a cartoon-infested pamphlet flopped on the table. Abstinence or AIDS, read another, making it sound like a choice between the two. I sat next to Mama, counting to three as I read the letters forward and backward. STDAIDS AIDSSTD I counted letters until they no longer made sense. When I reached thirty, a nice roundnumber, I slid my eyes to the boy in the next seat. He thumbed through a woman’s magazine and opened a spread called: Your lifetime horoscope. Where you will be in ten, twenty, thirty years. I was more concerned about the next five minutes. A soft, blond girl in the hallway kept sneezing into the same tissue. The office was probably crawling with germs. I needed to wash my hands.
    â€œFin,” said Mama. “The lady is speaking to you.”
    I looked up.
    â€œFrances?” said the receptionist. I cringed at the old-fashioned, little-girl sound of my name. “You’ve never been counseled before?” Her sentences had an upward-tilting quality that made me grit my teeth.
    She gave me a smile and a test, the sort where you scribble in the bubbles. My answers looked wrong, no matter what I wrote. Sometimes, never, or often were my only choices. Sometimes do you feel guilty without explanation? Do you never think things will go right? How often do you feel sad, blue, or down in the dumps? It didn’t seem fair, asking those kinds of questions. Anyone could jot sometimes and sound as if their brain had gone haywire.
    â€œ Have you lost interest in things you once enjoyed ?” the test prodded, almost daring me to say no. My interests changed on a constant basis. I couldn’t even listen to a new CD without getting sick of it within a week.
    â€œ Do you wonder HOW you could commit suicide ?” asked the next question. Maybe I was wrong, but I couldn’t help believing that everyone had thought about killing themselves, if only out of curiosity. Of course I had wondered about it. At least, if I planned my death, I could have some control over things, like what dress I’d be wearing and how my hair would be arranged. I didn’t really consider how I’d attempt it (the movies always made it look so messy, especially when it involved slicing your wrists), but I liked to imagine my parents reading my good-bye letter.
    â€œWe were too hard on her,” Mama would say, adjusting my barrettes.
    â€œI should’ve spent more time with her,” Dad would chime in.
    â€œHave you done this before?” I heard a voice call out.
    I lifted my gaze from the test. The voice belonged to a malnourished-looking boy who was slurping a can of Iron Beer, a Cuban soda that could’ve been mistaken for booze. He