Every sentence adds a new and unexpected dimension to the world. When it ends, I type OMG I LOVE YOU. I wish I could be more articulate, wish I could let her know how her words fill my heart and carry me away.

Despite everything that’s going on in my real life and how painful it all is, with Sam there is always something extraordinary waiting for me, always a beautiful place where nothing hurts.

My mom calls in sick to work on Monday. When she sees the worry on my face, she is busted: she admits to me that she’s not actually sick; she’s calling in because she’s too sad and upset to face the workday.

My dad’s response is predictably the opposite: he buries himself in work, holing up in his office at home and leaving for campus early.

I want to call in sick or hide, too, but I can’t do either. So we all do what we do: I try to be good and helpful, and my mother obsesses about Jonah’s schedule and meds while waiting for a report on how his first night went, and my father loses himself in trade routes and trees and Jesuit missions.

The ride to school with Cammie is quiet, my stomach a tangle of nerves over not just my parents and Jonah, but over the terrible thing I need to do today, which is break up with Hunter. Midmorning, I text him, asking if he can meet me after school by the sculpture in the quad. He responds that he has a captains’ practice until five thirty but could meet me after that.

I think about basketball season, and for a moment I almost second-guess what I’m about to do. Even before we started going out, I loved watching him play — he has such an ease on the court, such grace. I loved being the girlfriend of the star of the team — the player all the girls screamed over. It occurs to me that it gave me an identity, a place to belong. And it was fun for a while — the butterflies, all the firsts . . . But I think I was more in love with being Hunter’s girlfriend than I was in love with Hunter.

He deserves someone who loves him in all the right ways, who wants the same things he wants. And yet, as sure as I feel about that, it takes all I have to press through the day, knowing what’s coming at the end of it. The feeling of dread weighs heavy.