Dorie Winslow realized too late that she had completely missed the signs that something was seriously wrong with her daughter. A good mother, she chided herself, would have noticed. Even if that good mother were overworked, underpaid and frustrated by her overprivileged and undermotivated students at West Fork State, an institution better known for proximity to three Colorado ski resorts than rigorous academics.
But what had she, an obviously lax mother, done? She'd been so preoccupied with her personal problems that she'd passed off the dramatic transformation in Phoebe's wardrobe and CD collection as just another adolescent phase-change, the newest experimental persona in the "who-am-I-this-year" game. After all, pastel baby tees, pink lip gloss, and the surprisingly harmonic music issuing from Phoebe's room were a welcome change from last year's torn black t-shirts, venous- blood- red lipstick and the heavy metal dissonance of Marilyn Manson. Dorie was so relieved that her daughter now looked like a throwback to the Eisenhower years rather than a contestant in a Little Miss Goth pageant that she didn't think to ask why.
BIO
Susan Washburn (www.susanewashburn.com) lives in southwestern Colorado. Her past publications include a nonfiction book, Partners (Atheneum 1981) and My Horse, My Self: Life Lessons from Taos Horsewomen (Casa de Snapdragon 2015). She has contributed articles on the behavioral sciences to several national magazines as well as Psychology Today, where she was once an editor. Her poems and short stories have appeared in literary journals and her essays have been featured in The Broad Street Review. Susan has a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley.
