Page 58 of Hello Stranger

“I don’t want a new normal!” I interrupted. “I want theoldnormal.”

“The trick,” Dr. Nicole continued, not letting me throw her off, “is to look for the good stuff.”

“Fine,” I said, thinking about it. “I’ll try.” Then I added, “And I won’t call the cops on the Weasel. Yet.”

“And maybe stop calling him the Weasel.”

“But heisa weasel.”

“You’ll definitely keep thinking that if you keep thinking that.”

I sighed. Anothergotchamoment. “Confirmation bias?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“That’s my girl,” she said.

Twelve

DID THE GREATDr. Oliver Addison, veterinarian sex god, work a miracle and restore my geriatric bestie to perfect canine health?

Kind of. Mostly.

Though he did warn me that Peanut would be “a little tired” for a week or two.

Sure enough, on the day Peanut came home from the clinic, all he wanted was to curl up under the bed and nap.

But I wanted to hang out. I’d missed him.

I’d missed him so much, apparently, that all I wanted to do was lie on my tummy, half under the bed myself, watching him sleep and reassuring myself he was okay.

Look for good things,Dr. Nicole had said.

Peanut being home is definitely a good thing,I thought as I watched him.

But there was another good thing under that bed—one I’d forgotten about until I pushed it aside to get a better view of Peanut.

A box I’d kept for years, with my mother’s roller skates inside.

I hadn’t seen them in ages, but I decided to pull the box out and open it up.

My mom loved to roller-skate. The two of us used to skate up and down our block, listening to Top 40 on her little portable radio, and singing along, and waving to the neighbors. My mom could skate backward, do the moonwalk, spin around on one foot, and do the grapevine. Plus a million other things. She used to pull me with a rope behind her and call it water skiing. It was our favorite thing to do on weekends.

She had her own skates—white leather with pink pom-poms on the toes. And she’d bought me a matching pair when I was little. This was the nineties, and most of the world had shifted to Rollerblades. But not my mom.

After she died, I inherited them.

Byinherited,I mean, I took them out of her closet before Lucinda donated everything to Goodwill.

I never wore them. After I lost her, I never roller-skated again. And my kid-sized skates got lost somewhere along the way, like things do.

Wherever I went, though, I kept my mom’s skates close—in that box under my bed. Not to wear. Just to have. Just because holding on to them felt like holding on to a piece of her. Just because, even though I never even looked at them, if I could save one thing in a fire—besides Peanut, of course—I wouldn’t even think about it.

One hundred percent those skates.

I wondered if they would fit me now. What size had my mom’s feet been? It bugged me that I didn’t know.

And I didn’t have anyone to ask. I could almost hear my father saying,What the hell kind of question is that?

And then, as soon as that thought popped into my head, I was on my way to find out.

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