Shady Harbor was kind of like preschool. There were people constantly following us around to make sure we showered and ate and wiped ourselves. We’d have assignments each day like, Draw a picture of you in your favorite place! If you could dream of being anything, what would it be? Even though I was in the teen ward, and even though I had a tutor to help me with my schoolwork so I wouldn’t fall behind, I felt like a toddler. That was good, because even on my best days, my mind was so consumed by Declan that I struggled to find the will to brush my teeth.

“Thinking is what kills us,” Juliet had said. “So the trick is filling your time. Fill your time with tasks, even menial ones, and you won’t dwell so much on potentially damaging thoughts.”

She was right. My first nights there were the longest. They’d stripped the drawstrings out of my sweatpants and taken the razor from my toiletries bag. Left alone, all I’d done was stare up at the ceiling and think of him. I thought of him with such intensity that my retinas might have burned his image on the water-stained ceiling over my bed.

And I wanted to die too.

“You need to make a plan,” she’d told me. “Imagine yourself in another year. What do you want to happen? Where do you want to be?”

But I couldn’t see myself anywhere without Declan.

Eventually, they got me sewing Christmas stockings for disadvantaged kids during free time. I went to therapy classes where I had to put my thoughts and feelings into artwork. At group, we didn’t talk so much about what was bothering us, but about who we were, what we liked, what we were hoping to get back to. I started filling trays with food I liked to eat instead of being force-fed disgusting mac and cheese.

I started to learn how to live for myself. And I started to make that plan. But it didn’t really formulate in my mind until I saw that picture. THIS ENDS HERE.

I am better, miles better than I’d been. But it will never be good enough. Not until things are set right. And maybe not even then.

But I should try, right? For Declan, I should try.

“Mrs. Weeks went into labor last night,” my father tells me as I come downstairs. “Bill asked me to keep an eye on the house while they’re at the hospital.”

“Oh,” I say. Mr. Weeks never seemed to trust Kane with that. Not that Kane ever burned the house down. If Declan had been around, Mr. Weeks wouldn’t have worried for a second. “I’m going to get ready for school.”

He laughs. “You haven’t looked outside, have you?”

I raise an eyebrow, then stumble to the nearest window. There’s a fine blanket of snow on the ground. Hallelujah.