“But the whole thing about the power restoring your sanity?” I dip a bagel chip in my soup. “I don’t know about that.”

“This is how you win step two: You eliminate anything and anyone in your life that fucks with your serenity. You feel me?”

I frown. “Yeah, I tried that. I fuck with my serenity. But eliminating myself is, I guess, not an option.”

“Not an option,” she agrees. “You have any friends who used who’ve died?”

I shake my head.

“You live in this world long enough, you will. I’ve lost a lot of friends. Sometimes they die on purpose, sometimes not. Either way, we use because we’re not dealing with our shit. And at the bottom of our pile of shit, the foundation of our pile of shit, is the shit lie we tell ourselves: that we are shit. Sound familiar?”

I nod.

“You and me, we’re gonna figure out how to make you not feel like a pile of shit. Because I bet that’s when you throw back those pills. It’s certainly why I did.” She pulls up the sleeves of her shirt. She’s covered in old-school-looking sailor tats—anchors and ships and mermaids—but if you look closely …

“Track marks,” Jo says. “That’s what the pills will lead to. They almost always do. Heroin’s cheaper, easier to get, and the high hits you quicker. Same drug as your pills.”

I never thought about myself that way—as the kind of girl who would stick a needle in her arm. But if someone had come into my room during detox with a syringe, I wouldn’t have said no. They made me detox again, after the angel, and it was just as bad as the other two times. Third time is not a fucking charm.

I’m so tired.

“I don’t think…” I swallow. “I don’t think I can do this.”

Jo pulls down her sleeves. “How many days sober are you?”

“Ten.”

She holds up her hand. Black nail polish. Chipped. (I like her.)

“Count your fingers, Blue.”

“What?”

“You like Janis Joplin?”

I shrug.

Jo pulls out her phone. Scrolls through it. Then she hands me her earbuds.

“Put these on. Close your eyes.”

“Here?”

The look she gives me reminds me of Mom’s Kali statue.

“Girl, you rode the dragon in the middle of the Boston Public Garden. Are you really getting bashful on me now?”

I put the earbuds in. Close my eyes.

Soft electric guitar. Then, Janis’s whiskey-smoke voice, singing to a sad girl she calls Blue who’s at the end of her rope.

Sit there, count your fingers. What else, what else is there to do?