My mom was so mad. She started yelling at the doctor and begging him to let me stay closer to home. He said it was out of his hands, that the patients had to go where there was room.

After Des Moines, they said I was well enough to go home. That lasted about a week. I don’t remember much about it, but in the middle of the night my mom caught me in the dark, standing on my desk with my ear pressed to the air vent, talking to someone who wasn’t there.

That was when I was sent to the Iowa Institute of Mental Health in Claiborne and that’s where I’m at today. In a locked adolescent psych ward, in a rec room where sometimes I’m allowed to use a pen and, if I’m being really good, I might even get a scissors. And I’m trying to be good. You get more stuff that way.

At the time, I thought it would be better to die instead of being left behind. Sometimes I still feel that way. I remember hearing a dog bark and I remember seeing Skittles run by—and yes, I know that Skittles isn’t real. Never was. But I still see her sometimes. And I hear things, too. I try to ignore them if I can and I don’t tell anybody, not even Dr. Kim.

When I meet with Dr. Kim, we don’t always talk about that night or Joseph Wither even, but between the medicine I’m taking and talking with him, sometimes I feel better. But usually I don’t.

Last time my family came to visit, Kendall told me Mr. Dover quit being a teacher and moved away. She also told me that Jordyn got in big trouble by the police for lying to them and that she has to go to counseling and check in with a parole officer for kids and that Violet moved away. Good.

Kendall treats me like I’m a broken doll. I don’t like it. Sometimes I wish she would just call me a pest like she used to. She feels so bad that she and Emery pretended to be Wither. But I feel bad that she tried to kill herself. Sometimes I wish she wouldn’t even come to visit me at the hospital. We don’t know how to act around each other anymore so most of the time we don’t do anything or say anything. We just sit there quietly.

My mom and dad were the ones who told me they were suing Dr. Gideon. They thought she acted recklessly because she didn’t alert someone soon enough when she learned that I had been talking with someone pretending to be Joseph Wither. My dad said Dr. Gideon committed malpractice because she failed to protect me from harm, which I think is hilarious. Maybe my parents should sue themselves.