September Fall. Jenny Plumb

      "You're going to be late," Victoria said as she parked the car.

      Sadie rolled her eyes before opening her door and awkwardly maneuvering the crutches out to the curb. "No, I'm not. But who cares if I am. I shouldn't even have to go. That nurse is a bitch for making me come to this."

      Victoria shook her head and sighed. "Maybe you need an anger management class more than you think you do."

      Sadie pressed her lips together, to keep her response to herself, and worked on situating herself so that her good foot was on the curb along with her crutches.

      While she was doing that, her mother walked around to the passenger side and helped her daughter balance as Sadie pushed herself up out of the car.

      Once she was up, with her crutches in place, Victoria let go and started walking to the driver's side. "I'll park, and then walk you in."

      "I don't need you to walk me in, Mom. Just go. Pick me up in an hour." Refusing to look back at her mother, Sadie started moving towards the glass doors in front of her. She knew she was being mean, but she couldn't take another second of her mother's hovering. As she pushed the handicapped button for the automatic doors, she heard her mother's car drive away behind her. Good.

      In the lobby, she looked at the little placard that listed the names and corresponding offices of the people who worked there, along with a map of the building. She found the conference room on the map and started down the hall. The door was propped open, and a woman stood at the front of the room behind a small podium, a television sat beside her on a stand with the word 'welcome' on the screen, and at least fifteen people were scattered in chairs around the room.

      Her eyes stopped on a young man near the back of the room staring at his phone. Adam Griffith was here? A small moment of panic went through her, but she mentally forced the words I don't care into her brain. So what, if the last time he'd seen her, she'd had long brown wavy hair that went down to the middle of her back, and now it was short cropped and lay limp against her head? So what, if she'd been wearing the perfect amount of makeup and her nails had been professionally manicured, and now she had no makeup and her nails were bitten down to nothing? So what, if she'd been wearing either her cheerleading uniform or, at the very least, a stylish summer dress, and her outfit today was a tee-shirt and a pair of sweats with the left leg cut in half for the cast to fit though? At least her athletic build and tiny waist weren't gone yet.

      "Here for anger management class?" the woman at the podium asked.

      "Yeah."

      "You're in the right place. Go ahead and have a seat."

      Fuck it, she thought and made her way to the back of the room to sit directly next to Adam. He looked as attractive as ever, with his wavy blond hair, sky blue eyes, and broad shoulders.

      After situating her crutches on the floor next to her chair, she plastered a smile on her face and said, "Hi."

      He looked up from his phone for a few seconds to make eye contact and then directed his eyes back to his device. "Hey."

      She stared at him for several seconds as realization set in. He doesn't even recognize me.

      He glanced at her and narrowed his eyes. "What?"

      "What?" she repeated back to him and realized she'd been staring. She quickly turned to face the front. "Nothing. Sorry. I didn't mean to stare." Maybe he just needed a moment to remember, a second glance to jog his memory.

      He grunted and turned back to his phone.

      She kept her eyes forward without really focusing on anything and wondered if this was a new low point. She'd thought rock bottom had come a couple of weeks ago when the doctor told her that all her aspirations to become a professional cheerleader were gone forever, but apparently there was always room to fall further. She and Adam weren't close friends, but they had slept together once. Sure, it was two years ago during a party, and their quick, drunken fuck had been admittedly bad, but he should at least remember her face. He had a reputation for sleeping around, but that wasn't really an excuse not to know her at all, because she'd cheered for every one of the football games he'd played in over the past two years at Northern Oregon University. She'd yelled 'Go Otters!' a million times while he'd been on the field.

      Before she had the chance to tell him who she was, the woman at the front of the room started to speak.

      "Hello, and thank you all for coming today. I'm Dr. Megan Stryker, and I'll be your teacher for the next four weeks, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Each class is an hour and a half, for a total of twelve hours of class time. You have to attend all the classes to receive a certificate of completion. There will be one, and only one, make-up class, on the Saturday following the end of the last class. If you miss two classes, you'll have to take the whole course again. For those of you who are here as part of the court system, bring your papers up at the end of each class so I can sign off. For those of you who are here on your own accord, you will get your certificate of completion at the end of the final class."

      Dr. Stryker focused on the laptop in front of her on the podium, tapped on it, and a second later, the television beside her had a class outline on the screen. After talking about expectations and what they would be learning over the course, Dr. Stryker put up a new page with the agenda for today's class.

      Sadie let out a little groan when she read the second item on the list: Introduce yourself.

      Adam glanced over at her, but she kept her eyes forward, and he went back to looking at the teacher.

      The first item on the list was the class syllabus, and after Dr. Stryker had gone over that, she walked around to the front of the podium to address the class.

      "We're going to go around the room, and everyone needs to give the reason you're here. If you want to share that it's court ordered, feel free to do so, but that's not required. I do, however, want to know the events that led you here. I know it may seem difficult, even impossible to some of you, but the more honest you are today, the more you're going to get out of this class by the end of it. Everyone in this room, myself included, has done things they're not proud of, and I'm not here to judge your past actions. I'm here to help you find new ways to cope with the anger you feel during certain situations. Roughly eighty percent of the people who take this course are here because they've assaulted someone, so don't worry too much about judgments from your fellow classmates, either."

      She gestured to the left side of the front row, to a middle-aged man in a suit. "We're going to start with you. Please tell us all why you're here."

      "I got in a fight with a valet at a restaurant. He brought my car back with a big scratch on the driver's door, and then when I yelled at him, he told me it was there before he parked it."

      Dr. Stryker nodded. "That's an understandable reason to be angry with someone. Not only did he damage your property, but then he also lied about it."

      "Exactly."

      "What did you do when he lied?" she asked.

      "I demanded to see the manager, and when the asshole said he was the manager, I shoved him. He stumbled back, tripped on the curb, and fell on the cement. There were bystanders. They called the cops."

      "Okay, thank you for sharing." Dr. Stryker gestured to the next person in the row and asked for her story.

      At first, while Sadie was listening, she was worried that her story would make everyone hate her. But by the time Dr. Stryker got to the back of the room, she was no longer ashamed of her story in this group of people. After the child abusers in rows three and seven told their stories, nothing she did could compare. And the spousal abusers in rows two, five, and seven weren't much better.

      But it was still a little nerve wracking when Dr. Stryker gave her an encouraging smile and said,