Dance with Me

thud … tap …
thud … tap.
Moaning, she pushed through her terror. She ran through the kitchen, and
she slammed and locked the back door. Then she sprinted as fast as she
could back up to her bed.
Once there, she tried to convince herself she was making everything up.
In all the months she had been seeing her, Rhonda had never put her back to
Samantha before. Was this some kind of test?
Samantha frowned and tried to figure out what was going on. She looked
around the room. It was plain and neat, the kind of room Samantha liked.
All it had in it was a thick tan rug, Rhonda’s listening chair—a cream-
colored plush chair with a low back and fat arms—a tan-and-cream striped
sofa, and a child-sized wood table next to a trunk filled with toys. The room
was interesting to Samantha because it extended out from the house, like a
box, hovering about two feet off the ground. Three of the box’s sides were
glass.
A long sigh from Rhonda made Samantha blink, and Rhonda finally
swiveled back to face her.
“I’m sorry,” Rhonda said. “I’ve been trying to figure something out.”
The crinkle between her thick black brows was unusual. Rhonda didn’t
frown. Mostly, she smiled too much, in Samantha’s opinion. It wasn’t
normal, especially for someone who listened to other people’s problems all
day.
“I like figuring things out,” Samantha said.
“I know you do.” Rhonda brushed back her long black hair.
Samantha stared at Rhonda’s big brown eyes. “So what are you trying to
figure out?” she asked.
“I’m trying to figure out how to keep your mom from sending you to
someone else.”
Samantha jerked her head up. “Why does my mom want to send me
someplace else?”
“Because you’re not making progress with me.”
“What’s that mean?”

---

Rhonda leaned forward. “Samantha, I know something is stuck in your
head. A thought. A belief. Something you keep thinking is trapped there, in
your brain, and you’re not letting it out.”
Rhonda was right, but Samantha didn’t tell her that.
Samantha stared at her neatly tied navy blue sneakers. She liked things
to be in their right places. She didn’t like messy.
Change was messy. Therapy was messy, too. Before she’d started seeing
Rhonda, her mom had taken her to two other people who were “there to
help her.” Both had wanted her to play with a messy pile of toys in a messy
room. She’d begged her mom not to make her go back.
Finally, her mom brought her here. She didn’t love it here, but she didn’t
hate it, either. Rhonda was different. This room was different. Samantha
was okay with them both.
“We had a fight,” she said.
She had to tell Rhonda what was stuck so her mom wouldn’t make her
go someplace else.
“You and Susie?”
Samantha nodded.
“Okay.” Rhonda scribbled on her notepad. That used to bug Samantha—
the scribbling—but she’d gotten used to it.
“It was about Gretchen.”
“Who’s Gretchen?”
“The doll my mom said we had to share.”
“Whose doll was it?”
“Mom gave it to both of us, together.” Samantha rolled her eyes. “I hated
that. I want mine to be mine. I don’t take Susie’s stuff, so I should have my
own stuff.”
“Okay.”
“But Mom said we had to share.”
Rhonda nodded.
“So I tried to explain to Susie that we should each get Gretchen for a
certain time. When Gretchen was with me, she’d study.”
Rhonda smiled and nodded again.
“Susie got upset about that. She said Gretchen didn’t like to study.
Gretchen liked to go to the zoo. She wanted Gretchen to hang out with her
stuffed animals all the time. She said if Gretchen had to study, she’d be
sad.”

---

Samantha stopped and remembered Susie standing in her room, hands on
her hips, her lower lip jutted out. When Samantha insisted that Gretchen
needed to study, Susie threw a tantrum. She cried, “But she’ll 
hate
that!”
“So what happened?” Rhonda asked.
Samantha swung her legs. “When I tried to put Gretchen in front of a
book, Susie grabbed her and ran off. She …”
“She what?”
Samantha counted her breaths the way Rhonda taught her. It was
supposed to help with the feeling that bugs were crawling up her legs.