Dr. Bright is always telling me to meditate, and I don’t think I can really claim to be doing that, but it’s the same idea. Meditation is just so boring. Who wants to sit in silence and think about nothing? How do you do that? I guess that’s the point—clearing my mind is supposed to help me figure out how to balance emotions so that I can be around other people without blowing my lid—but yikes. What a yawn.

So, no, I’m not meditating, but I am trying to clear things out a bit. I have to wait for everyone to be asleep before I can wipe my body of feelings that aren’t mine, which means that I’ve been staying up late and then getting less sleep, which makes me less able to balance, which then makes it harder to clear stuff out. It’s not the perfect system, but until I can drive myself to the middle of nowhere, it’s all I got.

And, hopefully, I will be able to do that soon. Mom and Dad are still insistent that I stick to the learner’s permit and only drive when they can be there to help. They’re worried about road rage, which, yeah, okay, I get it. Maybe being on the road with a bunch of other people while operating heavy machinery is not the best idea for me. But, god, it’s annoying to have to take the bus everywhere.

Anyway, back to the nightly ritual of obsessing over Adam. Maybe obsessing is the wrong word. I’m trying to … puzzle it out.

I pull the track list he wrote for the playlist he made me out of my pocket. It’s crumpled from me shoving it in and out of my pocket for the past four days. I smile as I play with the frayed edges of the paper, reading it for the hundredth time.

Just something to keep you company on the bus—Adam