AFTER SCHOOL on Wednesday, Moncherie practically pulls me into her office. “I’ve got something to show you,” she says, closing the door behind us with her foot. “Ta-dah!” she sings, and waves her hand in the direction of a big wooden rocking chair with a little cushion on the seat.

I smile. This is so much better than a folding chair. Maybe I’ll actually be able to relax in here with her. Maybe she can actually fix me. Maybe one day I will once again be a normal person—someone without gaping, obvious problems like social awkwardness and damaged hair.

“Hey, wait a second. Wow,” she says, stepping back to look me over. “First mascara. And now a new style. You look very—well, I don’t know what to say.”

You’d think someone who’s twenty-six years old and went to college would be able to think of something nice to say.

“My friend Delia and I went shopping for some new jeans.” And then I wait patiently for her to compliment me.

But instead she just says, “Shopping, huh?” then clasps her hands together and tells me to take a seat. Next she asks me how I felt about the “experience” in three different ways, with this little glint in her eye like she’s a cat ready to pounce on a helpless baby rodent.

Now she’s on her fourth version of the same question. “So, did the experience bring up any surprising feelings?”

I am only half joking when I say, “Well, I was pretty surprised to find some jeans that looked half decent on my weird body.”

Normally when you say something like this around an adult, they start to argue and throw all sorts of compliments at you, which—even if they are complete lies—are still kind of nice to hear. So, of course, it sort of bothers me when she just sits there and says, “Hmm.”

So I add, “It’s kind of hard when you’re as big as I am.”

And instead of telling me how I’m tall, not big, and that one day I’ll probably be happy about it, she just says, “And you feel”—tilting her head to the side and making a sweeping movement with her hands like she’s conducting a symphony—“blank about that?”

“Well, not really blank,” I explain, to my weird-and-getting-weirder therapist. “I mean, I feel like—hello, just stick me in a cornfield somewhere and you won’t have to worry about crows.”

The glint starts to fade. She sits back and sighs. She starts tapping her pen on her notepad. “I meant,” she says, sounding exhausted, “fill in the blank. You’re supposed to fill it in.”

“Oh,” I say quickly. “Sorry.” Okay, so I’m not only not funny, but I’m also a moron.

“Let’s try this another way,” she says after a few moments of uncomfortable silence during which I completely but accidentally pick away the cuticle from my right thumb. “So you have some new jeans.”

“Right.”

“And they’re different from the jeans you normally wear.”

“Yes.”

“How are they different?”

“Because they look okay—I mean, pretty good. I guess.”

She starts to sit up straight again, gaining strength. “And why don’t the jeans you normally wear look good?”

Okay, so much for any sort of compliment. I sigh.

“Because my dad buys them.”

Her eyes start to shine again. “And why does your dad buy them?”

Oh. Right. And here we are. Her right hand, holding her pen, hovers hopefully over her notepad.

But I don’t feel like dealing with anything that will bring her a check mark, not today. I’m actually feeling a little okay with myself, so why ruin it? I mean, looking decent in jeans, that’s a pretty huge thing for someone like me. So I just say, “Because that’s what he’s supposed to do?”

She deflates. I mean, literally. Her breath leaks out and she begins to slump, like a helium balloon three days after a party. Her hand falls to her side, the pen dangling between her index and middle fingers. Her eyes are closed and she has this tight little smile on her face—not really a smile, I guess, just these tensed-up face muscles that make it look like she’s living through some kind of pain, perhaps even torture.

It’s time to throw her a bone. A little one. A Milk-Bone, maybe, not like one of those meaty, gristly bones from the butcher shop. “My mom?” I say/ask.

Her eyes snap open. Wide open.

“Fashion was never really her thing either. It kind of runs in the family.” Like other things, I think, but don’t say—like, oh, insanity. Or like a total inability to lead a normal, acceptable life—you know, that sort of thing. And then I give her this smile that’s supposed to tell her I’m kind of sad, and she starts to nod and give me this little sad smile back. And just before the timer dings, setting me free, her hand creeps up to make another check mark in my file.

Right before I go, she yells out one word: “Fetching!”

I guess my confusion shows on my face, because she says, “Sorry—that’s the word I was looking for. You look very fetching.”

“Uh, fetching is what dogs do,” I remind her.

She is smiling. “No, no. That’s not what I meant. It means something else in the human world. It’s a good thing—it means attractive.”

Attractive. Which is like acceptable, but even better. In fact, it’s sort of like the opposite of misfit.

I smile back. As ridiculous as her human-world compliment sounds, it almost makes her interrogation worth it.