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returned to my seat, the cushy recliner opposite Dr. P.
    â€œLook, it doesn’t matter who I hang out with. I’m lying to them. All of them. And the more we hang out and talk, the more people seem to like me—I mean, the me they think I am.”
    â€œYou don’t like lying?”
    I thought about that for a minute. I knew lying was wrong. Immoral even. But I was doing it for the best of reasons. It was so easy to believe that made it right.
    â€œI do and I don’t.” I spread out my hands. “See, the thing is it’s working . All that crap didn’t follow us to this town. I don’t worry about my mother out alone or about my father losing business or Jack Murphy ringing the doorbell to bury a bullet in my brain.”
    â€œDan, you’re not a good bad person and you’re not even a bad good person. You’re normal, flawed just like everybody else. Does that make sense?”
    Kenny groaned in my mind.
    She shifted in her chair, crossed her legs, adjusted her glasses.
    She waited a moment and asked, “Dan, what do you think makes a person good?”
    Her voice held no humor, though she still smiled. I wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but I propped my ankle on my knee and thought about it. My mother—she was good. My dad. Brandon. They were all good.
    â€œGood people,” I began, “do good things. Bad people do bad things.”
    An eyebrow arched at me, and Dr. Philips angled her head. “That’s very simplistic, don’t you think?”
    I lifted a shoulder. It wasn’t simple, not at all. “It should be.”
    Dr. Philips waved her hand, indicating I should continue. “Tell me…what’s an example of a bad thing?”
    Without hesitation, I replied, “Killing someone.”
    â€œOkay, now let’s consider the reverse, say, the driver of a car involved in an accident that kills his passenger. Is he now a bad person because of this?”
    â€œWell, no, of course not, but—”
    â€œWhat about if that driver had, say, fallen asleep at the wheel? Is he bad now?”
    Yes! He should have stopped at a motel if he was so tired. Well, wait. Maybe he didn’t realize how tired he was. Hell. “He made a mistake.”
    Dr. P. pointed a finger at me. “You got it. He made a mistake. It doesn’t mean he’s a bad person.”
    My temper surged at the moralizing tone in her words. “Okay, look. I know where you’re going with this.” I waved my hands. “Everybody makes mistakes. Yes, sometimes killing someone isn’t bad. Doesn’t make it good either.”
    Dr. Philips nodded.
    â€œDan, people aren’t just good or just bad at their most fundamental level. Everybody, every one of us, has the potential for both.”
    Oh.
    Hell no.
    This…this wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I slumped lower in my seat. I couldn’t look at Dr. P. I knew there was bad in me, had known it for years. I could see it, and its name was Kenny. And that was why I kept him a secret. When she gasped and uncrossed her legs to lean toward me and take my hand, I sort of had to look at her. “I think you’ve misunderstood me, Dan. I’m saying you’re not bad and never were. You did something that wasn’t so nice, but neither was it evil, so I wonder why you persist in believing yourself to be.”
    Her words and the Hallmark tone that carried them twisted my lips into a sneer. “Not so nice? Really? Dr. Philips, the judge didn’t sentence me to nine months in juvenile detention because I broke the ‘not so nice’ law. He did it because I did something so…despicable,” I said as my sneer spread. “He wanted me off the streets to protect people.”
    Dr. Philips peered over her glasses and smiled. “Again, overly simplistic. Dan, the truth is the crime you committed was malicious and you deserved to be punished,” she