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Doctor Flores anymore, and as great as that could’ve been, it wasn’t. Not at all.
    Sure, she was smiling, charming, and to the naked eye she was her old self—but she wasn’t. There was definitely something desperate in her happiness. There were other things, too, like how she was really distant at times, and Mel was pretty damn sure she’d smelled pot. She’d told Brick, and he’d dismissed it: ‘No one in Greenville would be stupid enough to give or sell pot to her, and I think we’d know if she was leaving Greenville.’ He also figured she was around pot smokers every time she was at the clubhouse, so it wasn’t strange if she smelled of it.
    Mel still wasn’t so sure. It was like there was an invisible wall between Eliza and everyone, and that wall gave a bleak projection of the old, happy Eliza. Like… like she was putting on a show.
    They’d been warned about it, that this stage could come, and it was very important they made sure she didn’t hurt herself. Mel wasn’t overly worried about Eliza engaging in damaging sexual behavior, though. The only people she met were the club and The Green Kittens, which were all girls, and aside from that she just barely left her room. But there were other ways to hurt oneself.
    Since Brick seemed to be in as much denial as Eliza was, Mel had talked to the counselor on her own. She had one of her own, since she didn’t want to put Eliza’s in a weird position, and had been told to just keep an eye on her. It might be something Eliza had to go through, but if it got out of hand they should discuss further steps. It was pretty much the same as usual, that they had to give Eliza time, and Mel understood that, she just didn’t understand how the hell she was supposed to take a step back and watch as her daughter was still clearly fucking miserable. And it was equally frustrating to have a husband who was just happy whenever Eliza flashed him a smile—apparently that rule also applied for daughters, not just other women. She’d really thought he was smarter than that, but he was probably as much in denial as Eliza was. His guilt had been killing him, and to him Eliza’s new fake sparkling mood was a sign he didn’t have to feel as bad as he had been.
    The only real fight had been when Eliza had asked him for a job, and he’d agreed. So now Eliza was cleaning the clubhouse. Mel didn’t have a problem with having a daughter with a job, even if it was cleaning, but it was so damn obvious she was up to something. Brick had spent the night after the fight at the clubhouse. Mel hadn’t been able to look at him without wanting to punch him, and she’d told him as much.
    The next day he’d entered her office with flowers in his hand, and she’d felt like slamming the damn flowers over his head—repeatedly. They’d fought a little more, and it had continued for two days, every time they were sure Eliza wasn’t anywhere nearby. In the end it wasn’t even about the damn job, it was how he refused to see that something was still really wrong. Eliza wasn’t okay, and the past months Mel had been pretty much alone in the struggle to yank her back to… just anything but the empty husk version of Eliza she now had as a daughter. An endeavor that wasn’t made any easier by Eliza avoiding her.
     
    ~oOo~
    Eliza
     
    The smiling trick I’d discovered about two months earlier was even more effective than I’d imagined. A sweet smile, and they left me alone. Mom was still keeping an eye on me, so I was kind of avoiding her, but Dad was a piece of cake. My old clothes, regular smiles, going out to see ‘friends’ now and then, and a few nights on the couch watching a movie with him—and I was home free. With emphasis on the ‘free.’ It felt good, and it let me deal with things my own way.
    I’d been worried someone would notice I smoked pot, but I’d even gone through a family dinner stoned, and no one had noticed. They were probably so used to seeing stoned people