My parents did know Mrs. Sanchez, who they called Gabriella, but they didn't know she was my social studies teacher. They will officially meet her as my teacher at the next parent-teacher conference, but that's in a few weeks.

Both of them listened with attention to my recollection of the moves, which I demoed for them. My mother even taught me a few more and helped me refine my shape.

Seeing her dance nude felt weird but nice.

I wondered if I could even practice dancing with Mrs. Sanchez at the club, both of us nude. Maybe if my mother joined us? No, that would be even weirder.

Why am I suddenly self-conscious about that?

I told them about my teacher's reaction to my short story, which, of course, forced me to read it to them out loud.

I think I terrorized my mother at the conclusion, but my father was proud of me.

"Will you read it in class?"

"Perhaps only the winners, I think?"

"Can I provide suggestions on how to pronounce it? How to voice the characters?"

I look at him, almost rolling my eyes, but then, I realize. "Yeah, I would like that"

The reality is that during my Ritalin era, I should have learned how to do that. I would have approached my oral presentation with care and learned what was effective and what wasn't.

He smiled.

He asked if he could demo how he would do it, so I gave him my laptop, and he began reading.

Now, I told you how he could make bedtime stories exciting. How he was a good storyteller. But that evening, in the kitchen, he told my story in a bone-chillingly perfect way. It's like he managed to pick up all the nuances I tried to put in the story and effectively put the right emphasis.

When the end finished, he placed it in an entirely different mood than I anticipated. I put a sort of evil killer tone in my voice, like when you tell scary stories by the fire at night.

No, he played it casually. He didn't sound like a maniac when he read the last sentence. "I know I killed you both, but it's not because I don't love you. Sometimes, you just need to do what you need to do for love" in a scarily kind and loving way.

If you think my mom hated me for telling the story, she was furious at his version.

"If you think you can just kill us like that and be happy, you are dead wrong, mister"

"Hey, I didn't write this one!" he says.

"So it's my fault?" I said.

He looked at me, worried, but I laughed. "Sorry, I didn't pick the subject. The teacher wanted a twist, and it's what I thought of. At first, he was keeping them locked up, but I was out of words for their reaction and explaining that they were locked, so I just had him kill them instead"

My mom stood up and hugged me. "Sorry, I'm just a little on edge"

After the hug, I told her. "Anything to worry about?"

"No, it's just work stuff. We are trying to sign a few more clinics, and it's hard. We don't have the magic number for profitability yet"

"I thought you made progress last year"

My father replied. "We did, but it's a race. We got good prices on the competition, so they are trying to get better prices to regain their clients. We have a low operation cost, but they all have more volume rebates than us. They can stomach a loss for a short term to win back clients, and we can't just offer additional rebates. They have an operating budget, but we don't"

"What about direct selling?" I asked. This was another initiative. It's the one that would employ Charlie. Now you know why... it's because he is dating their other daughter.

"It's slow to pick up. It's getting there", said my mom.

I practiced reading, but I soon went to call Olivia.

Her own story was getting nowhere, and it was soon due.

It featured a girl growing up in an abusive family who discovers she was adopted and is, in reality, a lost princess. I suggested maybe making it more punchy by changing, well, everything. Fine, not everything.

Instead of being a princess, she is the daughter of the leader of a terrorist cell. It's still a sort of princess, in a way, but in a bad way. And instead of being mistreated, she is just isolated. And instead of not knowing she is special, she had memories of her father and has even made a portrait of him in her locked bedroom.

It still feels like every bit of the original story, only, when she manages to escape, instead of it being in the loving arms of a royal family, she is used by the government as a pawn against her father.

Olivia loved it. It was like a double whammy. Instead of just "You are a princess and saved", it's "You are saved, and now, your desire for freedom burned you".

Fine, it wasn't all mine. It was also based on some of Olivia's ideas.

I proposed to make it more grounded in our world. Instead of a princess, daughter of a diplomat. She added "evil diplomat," and I proposed "leader of a terrorist organization." She proposed that maybe the people who took her wanted to save her. I think it was a way for her to sort of rationalize her living predicament.

She wasn't taken care of properly. But she was alive. She had a roof over her head and the ability to make money to supplement her parents's failings.

We elaborated on our social studies essay. It was clear that Lyndon had checked out. We had a sort of double assignment. The rediscovery of Plato and Aristotle, well, that meant knowing more about Plato and about Aristotle.

Olivia wanted Aristotle, so I focused on Plato. Lyndon was supposed to focus on the rediscovery, but both of us knew we would have to pull his weight.

But I had found some neat stuff on Plato.

"So, okay, Plato was all about perfect ideas, like he thought everything in the world was just a shadow of some more perfect version. Like, a perfect triangle exists in your mind, but the one you draw is always kind of wonky. During the Renaissance, people got back into that whole thing about ideal forms, and it made artists try to paint things way more realistically. Like, they thought they could reach for that perfection again.", I told Olivia.

"Oh, that's weird.", she replied. "Aristotle was kind of the opposite. He was more like, let's look at the real stuff in front of us. He wanted to study nature, classify animals, and figure out how things move. That's why the Renaissance scientists started experimenting instead of just believing old books. Aristotle made them feel like it was okay to poke at the world and measure things."

"For real? See, we don't need Lyndon. People in Europe suddenly found books from the Muslims who had copied them, and it changed, well, everything.", I said, excited.

"Yeah, so Plato made people dream about perfection and beauty, but Aristotle made them actually check stuff out in real life. I think we got the gist of it. Maybe it's why she put them together?", said Olivia.

"Must be. She is my dance coach. I'll see her tomorrow for lunch to practice, just before the social studies class. Perhaps I can ask her if we got it?"

"Oh, you are so lucky. She seems so nice. Yeah, do it. And Julie? Thank you so much"

"For what?"

"For the help. For being my friend."

"Thank you for being patient with me while I was on Ritalin"

"Yeah, well, that was easy. My mom is on antidepressants. I have experience in dealing with people taking those pills"

"Well, that sucks"

"They don't work for her. They just stone her."

"Yeah, I don't think it worked that much for me"

"Are you kidding me? Julie, you became so good at school"

"At the cost of my friends"

But she scoffed. "School is hell. People all act like the friends we make in school will last for a lifetime, but honestly? When I get enough money, I'm leaving this city behind. This state. This... shit, maybe even this country. There is only one redeeming quality to this shit hole"

I was stunned. I knew she had it rough, but I didn't realize it was that bad.

"What?"

"You are here," she said.

This stung. She stood by my side no matter what.

I thanked her. I told her she was one of my best friends too. She turned silent.

We soon hung up, and I realized my mistake.

I told her she was one of my best friends. But I was her best friend because I was her only friend.

She kept everyone else at arm's length. I was the only one who managed to really see her house and to become a friend.

So I was sitting in my bed, with my laptop on my thighs, wearing my pajamas. Well, a pajama. I actually got rid of the one I wore non-stop while I was weaning away from Ritalin. Well, rid of it is a big expression. I stuffed it at the back of the bottom drawer of my dresser. The one where I put winter stuff.

I didn't know why I only wore a single pajama, but I am happy I did. I only had to hide one of them to hide my trauma.

I had never heard of intermittent fasting, and today, I could find a ton of articles from Google, but back then?

Still, I could find a few ways to do it. The one that Mrs. Sanchez used was time-restricted eating. She basically ate a light breakfast but otherwise only had one meal per day.

There were other methods. Alternate-day fasting meant eating every other day. 5:2 fasting meant two light days (the weekend) with less than 25% of your normal calories and 5 with normal calories. Periodic fasting meant more than 24 hours in a row.

I considered each of them and realized that my options were rather limited because I was a minor, and thus, I had adults supervising my diet.

I knew I could drastically cut the calories for my supper. I cut the dessert and began taking smaller portions. I think I now eat perhaps 30% of what I used to eat for that meal while on the pill and perhaps even a little less than what I ate before my puberty? Not counting that I used to take desserts.

So, that was my baseline. I could give all of my lunches to Olivia without my parents realizing it. It would help her tremendously, and it would give me more time with Mrs. Sanchez.

Breakfast was simple. My parents barely monitored it, and I could wake up before Edith to fake eating it.

On the weekends, I would eat normally so I could have an inverted 5:2 diet. 5 days with perhaps 25% of my previous calorie intake and 2 days of eating normally.

It does say it's not recommended for children, but thanks to Alesse, I am not a child anymore!

Satisfied with my decisions, I changed my alarm clock and researched other base dance moves.

I knew five of them, but I could find hundreds!

Fine, some like aplomb is just standing up. But others are cool. I practiced quite a lot in my bedroom, with the worm being the funniest.

There are a few that I took more effort on, like the 5 numbers ballet position. First is the heels that touch and toes that point outward, with rounded arms. Second, have the arms stretched and the legs split.

Third is like the fifth, but one arm is straight and one is raised. 5th is both raised. It was all weird, but I liked it.

Apart from ballet, the glissade was cool. You do a small leap to the side, almost gliding. Many of the names of the moves have accents. Are they in French?

At some point, I tried a few jumps, and my mom came to ask if I was alright, but I told her I was just practicing dance moves.

Her face lit up, and she asked if she could help me.

I felt weird. I spent 18 months pushing both of my parents aside. So much so that they stopped undressing at home.

And now, my mom was asking if she could come nude into my room to help me practice dancing, and she was the one feeling anxious about my answer?

That stunned me. But I still welcomed her in.

She helped me with a few of the moves, but she admitted having forgotten a ton of them. Her biggest contribution, however, was to help me make them more fluid.

I would see her practice them with such grace and with such elegance, and I knew, watching her nude body, that I was hoping to get back to that.

To being able to be comfortable enough in my own skin to just dance in the nude.

We had fun but were eventually interrupted by my dad, who was coming for the bedside story. I laughed that he was too early, but between Olivia's phone call, my research, my practice alone, and then with my mom, well, the evening passed!

After the parent switch, my dad read me my story, but then I had to go brush my teeth and even decided to shower while he read Edith her story. Yes, even at 16, he still did, and honestly? I hoped that he still would for me.

Fine, sometimes, when I can't sleep in my apartment, I call him, and he reads me a story, even though I am 22. I have a fantastic dad; what can I say?

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