I love the smell of wood and rain.

Some nights I sleep in the shed. On days when I have to see my doctor, a spear of sunlight wakes me up as Momma cracks the door open.

“Sawyer! Sawyer Adalwolf!” she screams on repeat. It’s no wonder I hate the sound of my name.

I always have to talk to someone. It’s not a six-foot-tall Italian man anymore, but an old man who wears grandpa sweaters and falls asleep on me.

His name is Dr. Scott. Dr. Scott has said I suffer from severe clinical depression, and it “may be something else,” but he “has to see.”

Our first exercise was journaling, hence me writing these.

The car ride to the office was silent today because Momma doesn’t talk to me about it much—she talks to him about it.

To me, she says, “I’ll be back to get you in an hour,” as I dump myself out of the car and enter the Hapeville Hospital lobby, where everyone is sullen, ashamed, or petrified. Sick people and their stressed relatives eat food-court food and contemplate their mortality.

I take the elevator to the sixth floor, where Dr. Scott greets me with a forced grin. We sit across from each other, like opponents, him in the chair, me on the unsupportive couch cushions. The silence is patronizing.

“Sawyer.” The doctor purses his lips and checks that his silver-blond hair is pushed behind his ears every time we talk.

There are minutes of silence, with just my name hanging in the air, with the white noise of his sound machine. “I need you to work with me if you want to get better,” he says.

It’s bittersweet—the connection between his paycheck and my wellness. He really doesn’t care that I am better, but I have to seem better.

Today, he leaned out of his chair and tossed a pen and pad on the couch next to me, like he was prompting a dog with a bone. I was supposed to write my goals for the school year or something.

If I could’ve been honest, I’d have told him, “My one hope for the school year is that everyone else survives.” He’d have found it alarming, so I didn’t write anything down.

“I think you should try talking to someone new when you’re finally ready to go back to school.” His suggestions were so very simple. “Make a new friend. Just start with a hello.”

“I don’t want to make new friends.”

“Why not?”

“People don’t like me.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It’s true.”

“Okay,” he said. “No friends, then. What do you want to do this year that’s challenging, or exciting, or would motivate you?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you enjoy school?”

“Not at all.”

“Nothing you enjoy? No favorite subject?”

Dissecting frogs in biology was fun for me. That’s it.