“The school I was working at closed its doors. And the Dirk thing, it’s for the best.” Understatement . . . Brynn shook her head. “But I’m okay. Really. I’m just . . .” Bonkers. Completely unhinged. Homeless . . . “A-okay.”

“She’s whiter than you,” Raina told Olive. “And clammy but chilled.”

“I see it. Sweetheart, breathe,” Olive said calmly to Brynn. To Raina, she said, “Call 9-1-1.”

“No!” Brynn said. Or tried to. But of course now she really was hyperventilating.

Raina was on the phone with 9-1-1. “Hi, yes, my daughter’s having a heart attack.”

“I’m not!” Brynn wheezed as little black dots danced behind her eyelids.

Olive held both of Brynn’s hands. “Breathe,” she said again. “Breathe with me.”

She was trying. But she couldn’t seem to draw air into her lungs, which was now intensifying the sharp throbbing in her chest. Ripping her hands from Olive’s, she pressed them against her ribcage, trying to ease the pain.

“Oh my goddess,” Raina whispered helplessly, and ran to the door. “What’s keeping EMS?”

A few minutes later, two uniforms stood over Brynn, helping her onto a gurney, putting an oxygen mask over her face. She no longer had her glasses and couldn’t see past her own nose.

“Honey,” Raina yelled as Brynn was stuffed into the back of an ambulance. “We’re going to be right behind you, okay? I’ve got your glasses.”

Brynn held out her hand, but couldn’t reach them.

“Just relax,” one of the EMS said. “Your only job here is to keep breathing.”

“I’m fine!” Brynn tried to yell through the mask.

But no one was listening. So she gave up and stared up at the interior roof of the rig that was a blur and did the only thing she could. She breathed.

Forty-five minutes later at the hospital, a doctor and nurse were standing at her cot.

“Looks like it was a panic attack,” the doctor said.

Brynn sighed. “That’s what I tried to tell everyone.”

“We had to be sure. Your moms were adamant.”

This was true. They’d been unbudgeable. Brynn had finally made them go to the waiting room because they’d been driving the hospital staff nuts. She sighed. “It doesn’t matter. They needed an excuse to cry because I’m home and they missed me.”

The doctor looked confused. “It’d have been a lot cheaper to just say that to you.”

“Yeah.” Like the entire five grand of her insurance deductible cheaper . . .

Half an hour later, she was cleared from her little cubicle in the ER. Her moms had been told the good news and were in the waiting room while she changed back into her clothes. Finally she was winding her way down the white hallways toward the waiting room when she stopped in front of a candy machine, catching sight of her reflection in the glass.