“But what if she stops sleeping? Eating? What if she loses her job or suddenly gets sick and there’s no one there to help her?” Every time I try to dismiss a worry, three rise to take its place. I don’t just need to get some space from her — I need to know she’ll be okay.

“She’s a grown-up. She’d figure it out,” he says. “Her problems aren’t all your problems.”

Doubts swirl in my mind. How many problems are my mom’s, and how many are just my worries and projections? They’re so tangled up — our lives, our genetics . . . our routines. And I’m doing exactly what she does: seeing catastrophes around every corner.

I need to know that she’s okay, but maybe there is a better way to do that than the constant checking, the enabling, the worrying.

I want her to know that I love her immeasurably, but that I can’t show her that love by accommodating her illness.

“Maybe you’re right,” I admit. Maybe the only way to sort things out is to get some space. The thought scares me to death. But maybe like Mom, it’s time for me to be brave. She somehow got by in all the years before I came along, and it might be easier for me to figure out my own issues if I get some distance from hers.

“Damn right, I am,” he says, finishing off his Dr Pepper in a giant gulp before tossing it over his shoulder into the recycling bin.

I can’t help a small smile at his brash confidence. I hope he’s right that space is the answer. Other than Will, there’s very little in my life I wouldn’t be grateful to get some distance from right now. The idea of running into Zoe when I return to school tomorrow physically pains me. I don’t know how I can face her and relive the humiliation of being rejected.

And as Will hands me a controller and launches some sort of dreadful military first-person shooter that I would never in a thousand years play of my own volition, I’m surprised to find that the distraction, and his company, are exactly what I need.

The absence of Zoe still aches inside me, fierce and bright as the gunfire in our game. Every thought of her is a bullet, and every wound just shy of fatal. But as desolate as I feel without Zoe, it means so much that Will is there for me, and that I can always count on him.

I have never been so grateful not to be alone.

Zoe

The week creeps along with no sign of Sam. She doesn’t respond to messages, and I don’t see her anywhere, even at school. It’s as if she’s invisible.