"Chandler, can you open the door please?"

Dad's gentle voice came from directly behind my very much locked bedroom door. I sat against the headboard of my bed with my knees pulled up to my chest, refusing to verbally respond. My silence was a pretty definitive answer to his request.

After I'd opened the front door and saw Mom for the first time since August, I did what any mature 16-year-old girl feuding with her lying mother would do: I slammed it shut and locked it. I'd then marched back into the kitchen and casually informed Dad, "You should text your girlfriend that your ex-wife is here."

That one-way conversation transpired approximately thirty minutes ago, and I didn't need to ask Dad if Dr Teá Daley was still coming to the townhouse for brunch. He'd obviously warned her before she unknowingly stepped into a war zone, and automatically become a target for the opposition.

Brunch itself was predictably the first casualty following Mom's invasion. The thought of Dad's vegan French toast still sitting out on the island triggered my stomach to grumble in mourning. In retrospect, I should've snatched up a slice before launching a full-scale retreat into my bedroom. If I made it out unscathed, I'd celebrate by microwaving the French toast and some of the vegan bacon.

"Well, now that the legendary Chandler Whisperer has tried and failed to negotiate, I'm going to go get the spare key."

Mom's designer heels clicked on the hardwood floor as she retreated down the hallway. The sound was foreign yet hauntingly familiar. I wished I could be mad at Dad for letting her inside, but I couldn't. That wasn't rational, and even though I was definitely mad at the way Saturday was unfolding, I couldn't be mad at him.

I wiped my stupid runny nose on the sleeve of my new sweater, an innocent victim, and glanced over at my phone. It sat face-up and unlocked on the duvet beside me, with my messages open to Trip McKenna's contact.

TRIP MCKENNA, 10:30 PM: that's tough, but there's a solid chance you'll see them again in playoffs when you can play the full 50 minutes 💙

I stared at the text for a beat before deciding that addressing the lacrosse game again seemed unimportant. Besides, Trip's message was from last night when I assumed he'd finished his essay and it was, as he'd phrased it in his message, no longer bothering him.

CHANDLER ENGLAND, 9:24 AM: my mother showed up at my house and i'm probably 1 brain cell away being clinically insane

CHANDLER ENGLAND, 9:25 AM: can i call you?

"You don't know where the spare key is anymore," Dad stated, sucking me back into my parents' conversation.

There wasn't a single trace of hostility or snarkiness in his voice, but I knew that was the whole damn point. Outward diplomacy was his MO, with pointed hostility laced far beneath his words. You had to really know him in order to decipher it, and Mom certainly did.

Dad: 1, Mom: 0.

Mom's heels stopped clicking, and the abrupt silence was jarring. I imagined her pausing to absorb the blow before slowly turning back around, hands on her hips and masquerading as entirely unbothered.

"Never lead with your insecurities," she'd ingrained into me as a young girl. That was nearly an insurmountable task these days, but I knew it would always stick with me.

"Then you go get it unless Chandler decides to act her age and unlock the door so she can have a mature conversation with her parents," Mom said, the epitome of cool, calm, and collected. Obviously, she'd directed the latter half of her response at me, but I was still entirely committed to remaining behind my locked bedroom door.

"Threatening her isn't going to help your crusade," Dad retorted, still maintaining his even-keeled tone. "Chan, why don't you take some time and then come down for brunch."

"Brunch was supposed to be with Teá," I called out, my voice not nearly as level as I'd wanted it to be.

"Dr Teá Daley?" Mom chimed in before Dad could answer. Her musing voice would surely visit me in my nightmares. "I've read her books. Brilliant woman."

"Not now, Gretchen." I could almost hear Dad's measured eye roll.

"Not now what, John? Believe me when I say that I'm very much above casting petty insults at your love interest."

"Only because you've always been far too preoccupied with casting all of those petty insults at me."

"Oh, well now that you've mentioned it, it's actually been a while since my last one." Mom paused, entirely deliberate. "You were always just unavailable enough to be irresistible. It's total catnip these days."

For a moment, I existed outside of the context in which Mom delivered those words, and a shiver moved between my shoulder blades as I realized that I sounded a lot more like my mother these days than I cared to admit.

Dad gave an uncharacteristic scoff. "You're equating me to catnip when you're the one who put an end to our marriage?"

Suddenly seething and fired up on adrenaline, I hopped off of my bed and stalked across the room to throw open the door. Screw the silent treatment; I'd heard conversations like this one far too many times before, and I wasn't about to sit through another one.

"You're supposed to be filming something somewhere in the Scottish Highlands," I told Mom, not bothering to keep the hostility out of my voice. If anything, I wanted her to know that she had no right to simply show up at a house that wasn't hers anymore.

"For another month. I'm aware." Mom, still somehow being the epitome of calm, cool, and collected, detonated whatever resolve I might have had to remain poised into a million fragmented shards.

It also didn't help that seeing her for the first time since August only seemed to reinforce just how closely we resembled each other. I'd inherited Mom's angular bone structure and brown hair that now seemed to be the exact same length as mine.

But maybe I was my mother's child in more than just the obvious ways.

"Then why are you here?" I demanded. All the emotions I'd kept stitched up inside me for months bled into my voice. "Why are you in Boston? Why are you in our house?"

"Because I found out via email from Cannondale's headmistress that my daughter is being bullied," Mom stated simply.

I inhaled a breath that felt like ripping out those same emotional stitches. That word had been thrown around in relation to this situation before, of course. There was just something grossly unsettling about hearing it fall from Mom's lips. It was like she'd somehow bestowed actual legitimacy and severity onto the word whereas before I'd felt almost desensitized to it.

Being bullied implied that I was a victim - someone who couldn't stand up for herself. I refused to believe that I was a victim, targeted and pitied and almost always receiving blame for being a victim to begin with.

Desperate to deflect my attention away from my own intrusive thoughts, I forced myself to focus on something else. At present, that something else was the fact that while Mom was looking at me, she was speaking to Dad.

I twisted in my slippers to face him, failing to conceal my confusion. After we met with Headmistress Harvey, Dad informed me that Mom had agreed that I needed a break from Cannondale. I remembered how stunned I'd felt, believing my parents had come to a very inconvenient agreement resulting in me missing school and lacrosse practice. Them agreeing was an anomaly.

"I thought you spoke to Mom before Nantucket," I said in the most measured voice I could muster. I couldn't risk sounding accusatory, and have Mom think that she had room to drive a wedge between us.

"I did," Dad confirmed.

Mom snorted, her attention zeroing in on Dad. "Well you couldn't have been any more frugal with the details."

"He didn't have the details, I didn't even say anything," I defended, only to realize a second later that I was only going to make matters worse for myself. The only person outside of my usual social-orbit who I voluntarily divulged my situation to was Dallas Gunther in Nantucket.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that the trip to Nantucket cleansed my soul or that Dallas and I somehow helped each other overcome emotional obstacles in our respective lives. But I would be lying to myself if I ignored the feeling that there had been a nostalgic-fueled finality to our last-minute embrace in the driveway as though that was the last time we'd be that version of ourselves again. And while maybe that was the case, neither of us could change that.

"This is the problem, John," Mom claimed, her voice quiet even though she had to know full well that I could still hear her. She sighed softly as she finally focused on me again. "Chandler, if you're not going to open up to me, you need to be willing to open up to your father."

"Problem?" I scoffed. My fingernails dug into my firmly crossed arms. "You're classifying me not being open enough as a problem?"

Mom opened her mouth, but Dad rendered her silent by simply setting a hand on her forearm. "That's not what she's saying-"

"That's literally what she just said, Dad," I cut in. My gaze lingered on the hand he had on Mom's forearm, and I swallowed hard.

"Those surveys are total mean girl crap, and I won't tolerate it," Mom said, and Dad's touch hand fell away as she took a few measured steps in my direction. I wondered how close I would let her get without completely breaking down. "If I need to hire a private investigator to resolve this mess, I will do it in a heartbeat."

A crazed little snicker escaped me. Hire a private investigator? There was no world in which that would happen at Cannondale. Clearly, Mom had spent too much time in Hollywood.

"Okay, you do that, Mom," I rolled my eyes.

Mom shared a look with Dad, and something intangible seemed to pass between them. "What can we do to make this better, Chan?" She asked, turning back to me with a new softness in her eyes. "Because if there is something you want us to do, please know that we will do it."

I glanced over Mom's shoulder to where Dad stood. Meeting my gaze, he gave an affirming nod that effortlessly echoed her sentiments. I inhaled a breath, my gaze sinking to my slippers as I realized that I didn't have an answer for them. It wasn't just a matter of wanting something to be done, but also deciding what should be done. And maybe not knowing what that something was only compounded my frustration.

I was standing before both of my parents for what felt like the first time in years, and I couldn't resist comparing myself to them. They were both monumentally successful in their professional lives, both driven and respectfully ambitious, both capable of resolving bullshit even when inflicting it upon each other. Meanwhile, I was just a 16-year-old whose icy facade of confidence and self-worth had shattered into splintered bits of glass and sharp edges.

A hand fell lightly on my shoulder, and as my gaze snapped up, a tear burned a path down my cheek.

"Chandler," Mom sighed out. "Love, why don't you take some time to think about it, and then we can revisit this later."

"Fine," I choked out, avoiding Dad's gaze. "If that's what you want, then fine."

As I turned to retreat into my room, Mom gently caught my arm. A dainty silver Rolex I'd never seen before glinted on her wrist. "It's good to see you, Chandler. Your hair is getting long, it's lovely."

I instinctively reached up for a lock of my hair, wishing it didn't suddenly feel like it was weighing me down. "Thank you," I murmured for the sake of guaranteeing my immediate escape.

After seeing that Trip had yet to respond to my texts, I took a shower. I didn't objectively need to as I'd just done so last night after my lacrosse game, yet it felt like the best way to cleanse myself of all the self-loathing festering inside of me.

But how could you wash off a feeling?

I could feel it pounding in my skull, rattling down my spine and crawling into my ribs. In some obscure way, it didn't even feel like it was my feeling. I had somehow become a tourist in my mind, unfamiliar with the emotions and problems weighing me down. I had no say in choosing which ones stayed and which ones faded away.

Upon wrapping myself in a plush bathrobe, I used a hand to wipe away the steam from the mirror. Judgment waited for me in my reflected steely gaze, as inescapable as my shadow on a sunny day.

I doubted I would be able to explain to myself or anyone why I decided to do it, or even if there was a precise moment when I made my decision. After removing a pair of scissors from the bottom drawer of the vanity, I ran a comb through my hair, taking care to position my part in the middle. I tilted my chin up, down, and side-to-side as I evaluated the angles of my face. The very angles I'd inherited from Mom.

"It'll grow back," I informed my reflection, and picked up the scissors. A blurry, fractured reflection of myself flickered across the blades as I momentarily inspected them. They weren't at all dull, so at least I had that going for me.

Riding on a wave of twisted serotonin, I made the first cut. I didn't watch the dark strands fall to the floor because all that mattered was that I already felt lighter.