Free Banana Split by Josi S. Kilpack Page B

hair off her neck. Makeup wasn’t even worth considering—the heat and humidity would make it an oily mess within an hour—but she did put on some SPF 15 moisturizer and a pale pink lip gloss with sparkles in it that caught the light.
     
    She was staring at the woman in the mirror, still not sure she knew who she was, when her cell phone rang from the bedroom. For an instant, she was tempted to let it go to voice mail—she’d done that many times over the last several weeks—but then she remembered Pete was going to call with the social worker’s number. She hurried to the phone, then paused when she saw that it wasn’t Pete. It was Gayle.
     
    Sadie bit her lip, realizing she hadn’t talked to Gayle like she’d promised Pete she would. Right now seemed like such horrible timing, but she couldn’t justify putting it off. She took a breath as she brought the phone to her ear and sat down on the edge of her bed.
     
    “Hi, Gayle,” Sadie said, remembering her goal to be brave every day. Since writing it down, she’d already had many opportunities to test her resolve. This was one more challenge she had to face.
     
    “Sadie,” Gayle said, sounding a bit surprised that Sadie had answered. “How are you doing?”
     
    Sadie considered the list of assurances she could use to explain herself and put Gayle at ease. However, there were more reasons not to do that than supporting justifications to keep pretending everything was okay. “Actually,” she said, feeling nervous and hating it, “things have been a little rough.”
     
    “Really? What’s going on?”
     
    Sadie took a breath and laid it all out there.
     
    “Oh. Wow,” Gayle said when Sadie finally ran out of words. Sadie braced herself for the inevitable “Why didn’t you tell me?” comment, but instead, Gayle shored up her best friend status and said, “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
     
    “So am I,” Sadie said. She then told Gayle about the therapist and about Charlie coming over. “I’m feeling all . . . mixed up about everything. Pete’s trying to find the social worker. I feel so anxious and driven and scared. It’s confusing.” She left out that she also felt incredibly vulnerable.
     
    “I struggled with anxiety after my divorce,” Gayle said, sounding embarrassed. “I look back now and can see there was some depression mixed in, but it was awful, not being able to trust your reactions to things, being afraid and not knowing why, not being able to see ahead or make sense of things that happened.”
     
    Sadie’s throat thickened, and she nodded before realizing Gayle couldn’t see her. “I’ve never felt like this before,” she confided. “I’ve always been a strong person.”
     
    “You’re still strong,” Gayle said. “Anxiety doesn’t make you less than what you are at your core, but it’s really hard to see you amid everything else that’s going on. And coming up with coping mechanisms to deal with it just compounds things.”
     
    “Coping mechanisms?” Sadie repeated.
     
    “Things that protect you from the anxiety,” Gayle clarified. “Like not going out as much to avoid things that seem scary, or drinking too much, or getting angry so no one can see you’re so scared—things like that.”
     
    Sadie automatically listed the coping mechanisms she’d developed to avoid her own anxiety—not making friends, not being honest with the people who cared about her, and isolating herself. She hadn’t seen them as things she was doing to avoid scary situations that would trigger her anxiety, but with Gayle’s definition fresh in her ears, she could see them for what they were.
     
    “I’m so sorry you’re facing it,” Gayle added after a pause.
     
    “But you got better?” Sadie asked, needing hope.
     
    “I did,” Gayle said. “For the most part. I still have moments, but I know how to deal with them now, and I know why they’re really there. And, believe it or not, I think I’m