Chapter 5

It was on the drive home from another session with Dr. Williamson that I put my finger on it.

God he’s good. He’s just so helpful - you’d think that someone as old as Dr. Williamson (he must be like, 80) wouldn’t know anything about being a teenager, but somehow he just gets it.

I’m so glad Mom and me found him. We really needed it.

Anyway, it was after another one of his sessions that I worked out what had been stressing me out lately. I mean, my life is pretty stress-free; when I’m not laying around in my bra and panties, I’m taking selfies for Instagram or going to the mall with my besties.

We do a lot of shopping. Mom lets me borrow her credit card (well, she doesn’t yell at me too much when I steal it out of her purse, anyway) and so sometimes I buy clothes for my friends as well. I’m so glad I met them.

Anyway, so the fact that I was stressed at all was pretty weird. I’m more used to being bored than worried, y’know?

But on the way home, I worked out what had me all frazzled:

Mom.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t exactly sit around all day stressing about my mother’s well-being. God, how lame do you think I am? But the fact is, I knew she wasn’t supes happy, and I think I’d worked out why.

She was lonely.

Now, this isn’t Clueless - I wasn’t about to go around setting up every middle-aged sad-sack I knew. But it was my mother, and so I couldn’t help but wonder if there was anything I could do to help.

I was literally in the middle of asking myself exactly that when Mom spoke up, and ... I mean, it was almost weird. Like she could read my mind or something.

“Tiff,” she said hesitantly, without taking her eyes off the road for a second. “How would you feel about giving me a makeover?”

I bit back the sarcastic retort that I normally would have relied with, and replied softly.

“Sure thing, Mom. We’re going to get you totally babeing.”

I may have been a bit generous with that response. I mean, my mother is a billion years old - how babeing can you really get, when there were literally dinosaurs around at your birth?

I’m exaggerating, but not by much.

By the time we were done, I was starting to regret volunteering so enthusiastically. I mean, I did what I could - I used more than half a dozen different makeup colors - but what looks rocking on someone my age doesn’t necessarily work on an ... older woman.

The end result looked like exactly what it was - a middle-aged woman trying desperately to recapture the youth she could barely remember.

I turned to Mom to apologize, but to my surprise, she was beaming.

“Wow,” she said, her eyes aglow. “Tiff ... this looks amazing. You’ll have to show me how you did all this.”