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glaring down his crooked nose at me, his eyes narrowed and suspicious as he placed my plate before me. I didn’t have time to contemplate this, as I was distracted by what was on my plate or rather, what wasn’t.
    “Walter, what’s the meaning of this?” I asked, somewhat sharply as I gestured to the meager meal before me. Barely a quarter of the plate was covered with only a few string beans, some steamed broccoli and a tiny piece of unadorned chicken breast. Walter hesitated, his sneer disappearing as he glanced to my mother.
    “I asked Eliza to prepare a lower calorie meal for you, darling,” my mother explained as she spread her white napkin across her lap with a quick flourish of her wrists. “You’ve been eating too many carbs lately. You know how quickly you gain weight.”
    Luckily my mother wasn’t watching me as my expression slipped for a brief second. Her comment stung; I watched what I ate very carefully. I also took vigorous tennis lessons, went for long jogs, and still worked out in our home gym almost every day – a fact that she knew well. She’s just trying to look out for me, I thought. In her own way, she was being supportive. I was lucky to have a mother who cared as much as she, I reminded myself but I still struggled to smother the hurt and slightly bitter emotions that were twisting in my gut. My thoughts did little to comfort me though as I was suddenly aware of the puzzling realization that I didn’t believe a word of what I was thinking. Why was I lying to myself?
    “That was very thoughtful of you, thank you,” I replied as graciously as I could manage. My mother gave me another quick, tight smile, her eyes barely flickering my way. My father didn’t even notice the exchange, he was busy eating his steak and potatoes, probably trying to get dinner over with as quickly as possible so that he could return to his real passion, his work. It wasn’t a bad idea. I knew my mother wouldn’t approve of me scarfing down my food though, so I forced myself to take slow, small bites, chewing every mouthful carefully.
    The rest of dinner went by in silence. My father excused himself before my mother and I had finished eating, which was impressive considering he’d been served a portion nearly three times the size of my mother’s. He’d received a call at the table from his legal assistant and needed to return to his office where he would most likely be working until late. He glanced at me as he stood, his expression almost apologetic as he strolled past me. Almost as soon as he left, my mother put her fork down and said goodnight to me, abruptly leaving the dining room by a different door than my father had. I was alone once more; sadly, it was a relief.
    That night was the first time all week that I didn’t dream about dying. Instead, my dreams were haunted by images of black, twisting vines that wrapped around my limbs, burning and scalding my skin where they touched. They coiled around my whole body, trapping and entangling me as they dragged me down into mysterious, dark depths. And for some strange reason, when I eventually woke in a cold sweat, Sebastian’s cryptic words from the day before echoed in my ears, “sometimes we lie to ourselves”.
    I had told myself I was going to stay away from him. I knew that he was not the right kind of person for me to be around, that nothing good could possibly come from associating with a strange misfit like him. But I also knew with a grim certainty that I would end up speaking with him again. There was something compelling about him, something that intrigued me, that struck a familiar chord and I knew I had to figure out what it was about him that resonated so deeply within.
    As I got ready for school that morning, I tried to forget the disturbing and confusing images and emotions from my dreams. As a distraction I began running over in my mind the two strange encounters I’d had with Sebastian from the day before. I almost felt eager to see