“Kimmie, what we talk about in here is privileged, so I’m not going to tell your mom. The only time I have an obligation to tell her anything is if I think you’re a danger to yourself or others. So tell me, did you drink or do drugs at the party?”

Kimmie decided she didn’t care anymore what he thought about her and started talking, realizing that once she did, she couldn’t stop. It felt good to finally have someone to confess to. Kimmie told him how she had been having a tough time now that she was a “civilian” again, no longer an Olympic hopeful but instead just a regular teenage girl. Who knew going to school at Spence would be way more challenging than waking up at 4:30 A.M. and getting to the ice rink for practice? She had never minded her early morning routine, mainly because when she was alone on the ice, she had a lot of time to think.

Kimmie admitted to suffering from insomnia for the first month of school because she hated how the other girls were whispering about her. And she felt too old to make new friends. Sure, she had it a little easier than most new students because of Lolly, but it was still hard. Lolly was often too busy with her upperclassmen friends. Kimmie liked her older sister, but their early tween years had been so different, with Kimmie always traveling for competitions and rarely spending time at home, that they weren’t as close as they could be. Kimmie felt like she was woefully behind when it came to her social development and was struggling to catch up.

“I’m not used to being not good at stuff,” Kimmie wailed pitifully. “Teenage girls are even judgier than ice dancing judges!”

“Never has a truer statement been made,” Dr. Becker replied sympathetically.

Kimmie eventually told him that she tried Molly on New Year’s Eve and she’d tried cocaine for the first time at the club, throwing her sister’s boyfriend under the bus in the process as the one who gave her the drugs. She then listened as Dr. Becker explained what a coke hangover was like and how, by doing it, Kimmie had blown all the dopamine storage units in her brain. Which was absolutely the reason why she was so tired and needed a few days to recover.