Chapter 1

My therapist asked me how things had gone at the party.

“Horrible, actually,” I said. I’d been seeing my therapist for a year. It started as family therapy, but my parents kept missing appointments, and before long it was just me going.

Dr. Avila sighed. “I’m sorry to hear that. Did your date not have a good time?”

“She had a good time, a great time, actually. But not with me.” She’d left the party with someone else, some college kid. When I saw her leave, I’d left, too.

“What do you think happened?” my therapist asked.

“A BWM five series,” I said, “that’s what happened.” My date and I had arrived on the bus. I couldn’t compete with a BMW. “There may have been some coke involved as well; it’s hard to tell, because she was also drunk.”

“I think there’s something you’re not telling me,” Dr. Avila said.

She always knew when I wasn’t telling her something, even if I didn’t know it. But this time she was wrong, just plain wrong.

“Not much I can say. I brought a girl to a party, and came home alone.”

“Tell me about the girl,” Dr. Avila said, throwing me a softball. But I deliberately whiffed.

“Not much to tell. We only had the one date.”

Dr. Avila shook her head. “You told me that already. Let’s start with something simple. What does she look like?”

She’d been hot. That’s why I’d asked her out. Half Mexican, half Italian, her skin dark olive, with a ripe, curved body that wanted to burst out of whatever she put on.

“Miles,” Dr. Avila said.

“Yes?” I said.

“I was asking you what the girl looked like.”

Her hair was ink black, and it flowed in waves, and when she walked--

“Miles,” Dr. Avila said, “look at me for a minute. Give me some eye contact.”

Dr. Avila was out of my league in every way that mattered—smarter, older, someone who had her life together, had everything in control. That made it worse, somehow. I wanted to impress her, even though I knew I couldn’t, not really. Instead, I kept catching myself noticing the way her skirt hugged her hips, or how her heels made her legs look like they went on forever. It was embarrassing, but it wasn’t my fault that my therapist was--

“Miles.

“Ok ok,” I said, “the girl, she looked like you. She looked a lot like you. Fine, you got it out of me. She looked like you.” My face burned, and I dropped my eyes.

“I see,” Dr. Avila said, her voice calm and steady. For a moment, she didn’t say anything more, and the silence felt heavy, almost unbearable. Then she continued.

“We’ve talked about this before, Miles. It’s called transference. Sometimes, patients develop feelings for their therapist—it’s a normal part of the process. These feelings, as uncomfortable as they might seem, are important for making progress.”

I nodded, staring at the floor. Her words made sense, but they didn’t make me feel any less ridiculous. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

“There’s no need to apologize,” she said, her voice soft. I couldn’t see her face, only her shoes, but I heard the understanding in her voice, and it made me want to cry. “We’re just exploring what these feelings mean. That’s what this space is for.”

I stared at her red, red shoes, and her toenails painted to match. “How can you stand it,” I said, like I was speaking to her feet instead of her, “how can you let me keep coming here, when you know what’s going on my head, the things I’m thinking.”

She laughed lightly. “That’s my job, Miles, is to know what you’re thinking, even if you don’t. Now getting back to that girl, other than the fact that she reminded you of me, was there anything else about her that attracted you?”

“No,” I said. There’d been nothing, nothing at all, other than the fact that the girl was hot as fuck, which, when you’re eighteen, is pretty much all that matters. Dr. Avila was smart, but sometimes I wondered if she really got what it was like to be me.

I heard the sound of my therapist’s pen tapping on her notepad. She uncrossed and crossed her legs, but I willed my eyes not to move upwards. “Would it help if I put you under?” she asked, her words breaking the silence, breaking the spell. I raised my eyes, my gaze landing on on her mouth as she spoke. Her lipstick was ruby red, a shade or two brighter than her shoes.

I shrugged again. “I dunno. I never know if it helps. Hell, when you hypnotize me, I never even know that I’m hypnotized.” That was a bit of a fib, because I liked being hypnotized—loved it. It felt like surrender, but not in a scary way. It was trust, pure and simple. Trust in someone who seemed to know me better than I knew myself.

Her pen stopped tapping. “I think I will,” she said. “You’re particularly distracted today.” Her words hung in the air, soft but certain, and I shifted in my seat. She wasn’t wrong. I heard her open a desk drawer, and then softly close it again.

The first time she hypnotized me, it had taken her twenty minutes, but now Dr. Avila had conditioned me, and she could put me under in an instant, with just a sound.

“Miles,” she said, “look up.” I looked up, and saw the clicker in her hand. “Listen,” she said, her small hand tightening. I heard a click. That’s all it took to hypnotize me now, just one little click, and I was under.

“Think about what we talked about,” Dr. Avila said when she released me thirty minutes later, after she’d emptied my head, cleansed me of my secrets, after she’d turned me inside out. “Think about what I said. And don’t forget the homework I gave you.”

“To try new things, and to write about it. To journal,” I said.

“The journal,” she said. “Listen,” she said, and there was another click and I was under again, but only for an instant. “Listen, try something new, every day, and bring me your journal next week.” It was like a command, but it was a command to set myself free.

“Ok,” I said, and then she let me go, really let me go this time. I walked out of her office feeling great about how things were gone, and sad that it would be a week before I’d hear her voice again.

“It’s your clothes,” Barry said, “you gotta do something about your style.”I’d been complaining to him about the girl who left the party with another guy, and Barry was telling me that the answer to all my problems was clothes.

“Easy for you to say,” I said, “you’re surrounded by pricey clothes.” Barry owned a small menswear store next to the dental office where my mom cleaned teeth. I couldn’t afford to shop at Barry’s. I shopped at thrift stores.

“Don’t knock it until you try it, kid. You should always at least try it before you say no.”

“How am I gonna try it?” I said. “And why bother, if I can’t afford it?”

Barry leaned back against the counter, smirking. “Credit,” he said. “You can buy on credit.”

I laughed. “Thanks but no thanks. My mother would freak if I tried one of your suits on.”

Barry had been married twice, divorced twice, with four kids. I’d seen him driving around town in his convertible, a good-looking woman in the passenger seat. But my mom said he had to be gay because he liked clothes, and she didn’t want me talking to him. Maybe that’s why I kept hanging out at his shop—to prove her wrong, or just to piss her off. Dr. Avila was wrong sometimes, but my mom? She was always wrong. That’s why I was in therapy.

Barry crossed his arms, shaking his head. “It’s not about the money, kid. I’m not trying to sell you something. I’m saying if you walk into a room wearing something sharp, people notice. They listen. You feel different. Trust me, clothes can change everything.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “Even if I wore one, I’d just look like a thrift-store kid playing dress-up.”

Barry laughed. “Then don’t dress up. Dress different. That’s all I’m saying, try something different. Look, come back at five when I’m closing up. Just try something on, see how it feels, how you look in the mirror. If you don’t like it, fine.”

After my mom got off work, I told her I had things to do, that I wouldn’t be home for dinner. Homework.

“I never seen you do homework. You bring home straight As but I never seen you doing homework.” My mother didn’t mention my marks very often. She never even looked at my report card.

“It’s from Dr. Avila,” I said. She’d told me to try something new, and Barry had been trying to dress me properly for ages.

“Dinner’ll be in the oven when you get in,” she said.

“Didn’t think I’d see you,” Barry said, when I walked into his small shop five minutes before closing. He closed the door behind me, the latch snapping. He flipped the small sign that hung in the window. Now it said “closed” to the rest of the world, but inside, it said “open”.

I walked over to a rack and touched the sleeve of a jacket, feeling the fabric under my fingers.

“Not that stuff, Miles; that’s a bit run of the mill. Pedestrian. I have something else in mind for you. Come on,” he said, waving me forward.

The back of Barry’s store was its own room, a fitting area, with tall mirrors and soft lights. A dark, leather couch sat in the middle of the space, dominating it.

“I have to close the door,” Barry said, “if people see I’m inside, they’ll think maybe I’m still open, and start knocking.” He closed the door, and it made the same sound the front door had made when he closed it, the latch snapping, but the sound louder in the smaller space. “Listen,” he said, “I have all kinds of things to show you, if you give me a chance, ok?”

My mom was so, so wrong about Barry. Sometimes, she said he was a womanizer, then she’d forget, and say he was gay. She couldn’t see that he was just a good guy, a guy trying to help me out, a guy I could trust.

“Ok,” I said. I was only going to try on a suit or something, no big deal. After that I’d head home for whatever dinner my mother had left in the oven, or the fridge.

“Try this first,” he said, passing me a jacket.

“Nice jacket,” I said, feeling the cloth under my fingers, light and smooth and expensive.

“It’s not a jacket,” Barry said, “it’s a blazer.”

Whatever it was, Barry helped me put it on over my shirt, the same one I’d worn early that afternoon in Dr. Avila’s office. The fabric settled against my shoulders, unfamiliar but somehow comforting.

“It’s a bit big for me,” I said, feeling the looseness of it, the way it caressed my skin. “Seems more like your size than mine.”

“Not at all,” he said, with a slight smile. “But the sleeves are a bit long.”

Barry stepped closer. His fingers brushed lightly against my wrists as he adjusted the blazer’s sleeves. I swallowed, unsure if it was the jacket or his touch that made my skin feel warmer.