My sponsor looks like she just walked out of a dark alley after kicking some serious ass. Leather jacket, long red hair, thick black eyeliner.

“I’m Jo.” She holds out her hand. “And no, I’m not related to Jessica Chastain, but thanks for the compliment.”

She does look a lot like her.

“Hannah. Not related to … any famous person.”

Jo laughs, a bark more than a laugh. I like it. “Glad we’ve established that. Let’s get the fuck out of here. I hate hospitals. What do you say?”

I smile, despite my earlier decision to hate whoever my sponsor is. “Yeah, okay.”

Getting a sponsor was my choice. It’s not as common for people my age to have one, but the group therapy thing just isn’t cutting it. And when I want to use or when I just need to talk this shit out, I need someone I can call who understands what I’m going through. Mae tries. Nate tries. But they don’t get it. I need someone who gets it. Not a therapist or a doctor, someone I pay to listen to me bitch who looks at the clock when we have five minutes left. I need to see someone in front of me who is surviving this. I need proof that I can, too—actual evidence. I’m starting to sound like Mae.

I have been at McLean Hospital for the past ten days. It went like this: an extra day in the hospital on suicide watch (even though they didn’t say that’s what it was), three days of detox again, then straight to McLean for ten days. This is where girls who like pills and tried to kill themselves go. The brochure said McLean is for people with acute psychiatric problems. Is trying to kill yourself an acute psychiatric problem, or just a rational response to the chaos of the universe? I channeled Mae when I asked the psychiatrist that. She smiled and wrote a prescription for Zoloft. I now take many pills each day so that I don’t take pills. Zoloft for Sad. Suboxone to get off opiates. Sleeping pills I don’t remember the name for. Something else for anxiety. Drew really should consider becoming a pharmaceutical suit. He’d make buckets of cash, way more than dealing. But I don’t want to think about Drew because I crave him almost as much as the pills.

“You hungry?” Jo asks as we step into the elevator.

I shrug.

“Yeah, I get it. Depression’s a bitch,” she says. “The key is to find a few things worth living for. I found one, and it’s near your place. You a Zaftigs fan?”

The Jewish deli near Aunt Nora and Uncle Tony’s was one of Dad’s obsessions.

“Good bagel chips,” I say.

“Worth living for,” she says. “Let’s do it.”