These were Kimmie’s thoughts when she woke up in the morning. It was a revision of a longer quote by Maya Angelou, “I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass,” which was printed and framed above Kimmie’s bed in her private room at the Desert Vista Wellness Center. She shortened it and added the expletive to give it some oomph when she wrote it on a pink Post-it and stuck it to her bathroom mirror. She stared at the Post-it every morning while she brushed her teeth. It was supposed to be inspiring, and it was: it inspired her to keep the fires of her man-hating anger burning brightly.

When Kimmie arrived at the Desert Vista Wellness Center in Arizona with her mom three weeks ago, she thought the place was a spa where they would be getting beauty treatments and lounging in the sun by the pool. What she soon learned was that while the wellness center did have a pool, there were no beauty treatments to be had. This spa was more for the mind than the body.

Kimmie did not object or even cry when she learned her mother had brought her there under false pretenses, but instead found it validating. Something had to be wrong with her for her mom to do something so drastic. What she didn’t know, and what her mother didn’t tell her, was that the weeks after the party when Kimmie was depressed and refused to go to school had set off some red flags at Spence. The only way for her to get back the semester’s tuition was if Kimmie was put on medical leave and enrolled in a program. Danielle worried the school might think Kimmie had gotten into drugs or alcohol, but Dr. Becker and the new therapist, whom she had visited at Dr. Becker’s suggestion, alerted the school that Kimmie’s issues were emotional, not behavioral. Kimmie had exhibited all the classic signs of depression: crying, loss of appetite, sleeping her days away. There was talk of putting her on medication right away, but Kimmie’s father refused and demanded to hear other options.