I wouldn't say that nothing occurred that week, but honestly? Between Edith calling my parents, our parents, mom and dad, and what occurred the next weekend, the week feels pale.

I am fantastic at reconstructing my past. Like, well, I don't have to tell you. You've read it so far. But that week? It's a hazy shade with a few clear memories of limited scope.

So, don't think of this chapter as a time jump, more like a fast-forward. You will get the highlights of the week, but with Mindy in the sky with Billie, Marge recovering from her diagnosis, and Edith from her evolution, I was left alone. Well, not alone.

I had Olivia, who is starting to become a solid friend. I went two evenings to her house after school for tutoring, but not just for tutoring. It served three important reasons.

First, it reinforced my friendship with Olivia. I was her only friend, and she was my only friend who didn't know about my naturism. This was something unique for me. Second, Edith needed time on her own to heal. When I went to Olivia after school, Edith would have time to just, be. To not react to other people. But she wouldn't be all that time alone. My parents would finish work and spend time with her. She just realized she could love them as her parents, not just as my parents.

If I were jealous, I would object to this, but the reality, is that Edith, didn't want my parents for herself, but rather, she wanted to return the love they gave her by making her my sister.

I did get to know Olivia a little more, but she remained guarded. My father gave her more money, which she took secretly from her mother, and I never got to see her father yet.

After Edith's problems, I couldn't help but to be afraid for Olivia, but she was very different from Edith in many respects.

The main one was the lack of attacks on her self-esteem. The other big one was her hope. Edith only hoped to survive, but Olivia had plans. Big plans, which I wasn't privy to, but which she cherished and alluded to.

I made some progress on learning how to navigate complex geometry problems, but I also made progress in improving our friendship. Olivia can easily switch between being a serious tutor and laughing at a stupid pun, and I like that.

She makes a few, I make a few, and we both laugh, or not, some are not funny, but then, we would look at each other and still laugh. Maybe it's because we are the same age. Mindy is only a few months older, but she is a grade ahead of me. Marge is a year older, and Edith is 2 full years older, well, not a full 24 months. It's less than that, but you know, roughly.

Each time, when I came back. Edith was thrilled to have me back. Both times, she explained that she didn't want to push me away, but that she needed to find herself.

"Relax, Edith. I needed the tutoring anyway"

It's only on Thursday evening that she opened up, while on the Wii U.

Apparently, this is a conversation she had with her therapist, and then, with my father, sorry, our father, and later, with our mother. Now, it was my time.

"Have you heard of the fight or flight response?", she asked me.

"Of course. When confronted with something rough, you can either fight back or run away"

"Yeah, but there are two others. One is freeze. You can become numb, shutdown"

"Like when Marge became non-verbal?"

"I guess. Maybe her trauma reaction is freeze"

"With the way I treated my parents for the last few years, I think mine is fight"

"Could be. Very well could be. Mine, is the fourth one. Fawning"

"Fawning?"

"Yeah, people pleasing, erasing my boundaries, just, like. Ok, imagine Mindy's reaction is flight"

"It could very well be. "

"I know what you mean. She asks a question and then, no longer cares about the answer"

So Edith saw it too.

"Yeah"

"So, imagine that we each cut in an alley, and a teenage boy comes around and wants to hurt us"

"Yuck, so you think I would be inclined to fight him, Mindy would run away, Marge would freeze up, and you would what, like tell him how you want to be his friend so he won't hurt you?"

"Pretty much, But you don't have to physically fight him. You could just be angry at him, yell at him, grab like a pipe and threaten him with it. In short, fight is actively facing the issue with high energy, freeze is going to low energy, flight is high energy to avoid the issue, and fawn is like, deescalating by being positive or something"

"I see"

"Well, my therapist thinks that I learned that pattern as a kid. That fawning helped me cope with my parents, but like, it's preventing me from growing"

"Like my anger blocked me"

"Yeah, and if Mindy stays frozen, her too. We need to switch it up"

"I can fawn. I had a good time with Olivia"

"Good. I am happy for you."

I smile.

"So what will you do?"

"I don't know! That's the problem. Like, to get over your anger, you can find nice people and be nice to them. How do I get out of people-pleasing? Do I need to be angry at people?"

"Well, maybe you can find people who mistreat you, and either fight, flight or freeze?"

"That's what my therapist told me, but like, no one mistreats me because I am too nice to them"

"So stop being nice to people who don't bring you joy"

"Huh?"

"Do you like hanging out with me?"

"D'uh, you are my sister"

"Do you like hanging out with Marge?"

"Of course, one of my best friends, and I think she is yours?"

I skip Mindy as I don't want to pose a problem, they are friends, but I don't want a rift in my group.

"You have other people around you that I don't know, right?"

"Sure"

"Who is the one you like the least"

She thinks. "Lizzie"

""Tell me a little about it"

"Nice girl, but she runs to me for group projects, often over Marge or Mindy when we are in the same class, and then, she barely pulls her weight and is lazy"

"So why not pick Marge or Mindy?"

"But she asks first"

"So?"

"Right. I need to learn to say no"

"Exactly. So, in class, try to think of anyone else but Lizzie to be in a team with, and be with them, not her. Tell her that you prefer to be in a group project with other people"

"And if she gets angry at me?"

"She probably won't, but if she does, tell her that in past projects, she didn't do her parts so you don't want to work with her until she changes her attitude and puts in more effort. You don't shut the door, but you tell her wants he needs to do"

"Even if I never want to do a group project with her again?"

"What if you are forced to by a teacher? What if no one wants to be with her, and it causes her to change. What if she has anemia, and can't focus, but it's cured and does efforts again?"

"Right. So I put boundaries, but without making them feel definitive"

"Sometimes you can. Like with your parents."

But my mother came over.

"May I cut in, girls?"

We both nodded.

"I think that what Julie is trying to say, but doesn't have quite the words yet, is that our responses need to be proportional to the situation. This girl, Lizzie, is using people, so telling her you will not work with her until she stops, is ok. But if she got you into trouble, or bullies you, or hits you, then you need hard boundaries. Including telling us so we can put pressure on the school to enforce their pretend zero violence policy"

"Pretend?", I said.

"I was at the school council meeting at the start of the year. You were not doing well, and I wanted to see if I could get help from the school"

"I didn't know that"

"Well, the answer was basically no. That in school you did well anyway, so you were not a priority. But there was an angry parent there. Their son was bullied, and the school did nothing. The one time he fought back, they banned him from the school, and now, he needs a long commute to another town"

"Wait, I heard that, it was last year, right?", says Edith

"I think so. Well, the father was angry, and rightfully so. They asked him to calm down, and he told them to fuck off, his words, not mine. In short, he had asked the school to act, and nobody was, so the poor kid took matters in his own hands, and got punished for it. That was probably a justified fight response, but it was counterproductive."

We spoke some more, but the point was, Edith was confused. She was proud of being nice, and was basically being told that being nice was a problem.

I did see Marge two evenings. She came to my house, Monday, alone, and Edith, Marge, my father, and I played a board game. All nude, but Edith. My mother was out to see Clara. They are friends, after all.

I went to her house earlier that Thursday, and I was the only one nude. I even ate supper at their place with her father and brother again. He made a comment, I forgot what, but his mother scolded him.

I barely spoke to her father, but he did have a funny story about a permit issue. I remember the story, but I realized as I was writing this that it's not that funny. It's just, I don't know. Marge's father is so unlike Ellie, or well, my dad, or Peter, or James. He is, like, faded.

This was right before the fight or flight response, and I would have said that Ellie was a Fawn person, with some Flight response. That Marge's brother is on the fight side, and her father is clearly a freeze. Even without any issues, he is barely there.

It's sad. At least, Marge has in Ellie a great parent.

Friday, I finally got permission from Edith to just, well, be there with her alone.

"I want to be close to my sister too"

We ended up not even playing a video game, but just reading side by side.

"Channeling Marge," as she called it.

But I learned something. Edith, is growing.

She tried something with my father. Sorry, with our father.

He reads me a story first, and then, goes to Edith. I need more sleep than she does, and she is older, and, well, it's like that. She likes it, I like it.

This week, Edith has been testing the boundaries with my father. She would, sometimes, stop the reading early, to test if he would push for more, and twice she strung him along, once for an hour, and the other time for two. Kylie even came to see what was going on, and sat on the bed to listen to the story. Edith fought back against the urge to please her new mother.

To her credit, our mom never showed impatience.

Maybe they knew what was happening? Edith didn't tell me if she explained it to our parents.

But after we were done reading, I heard a bigger story I had missed, as I was at Olivia.

Carmen, the social worker assigned to Edith, and Cheryl's mother, dropped by to check on Edith. She was proud of her progress, but Edith begged her for a favor. She wanted Carmen to undress, in case Edith wanted to go to the non-landed club with us.

At first, she refused, but after Edith pleaded her case, she accepted. For 5 minutes. Our parents were there too, and they were nude anyway.

I think it did Edith some good, but she was still not ready to go to the non-landed club. Soon, but not right away.

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