She was flicking her lighter incessantly and cursing it for running out of fluid. She asked me if the medicine was working. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d crushed most of it and sprinkled it over a nest of hornets.

I don’t want to not feel, and the medicine makes me not feel a thing.

Momma said, “I think you’re in a good place to stop the talking.”

I found that interesting. It’s been four weeks of therapy and hundreds of weeks of bad parenting.

It’s not just the treatment center that embarrassed Momma—it’s having a kid in therapy at all. She’s rushing to pretend I’m better when mostly I’m still the same person I was.

She is ashamed of herself, I think. Talks about moving. We never do. I think Momma secretly likes it here, hiding from everyone.

She’s a waiter. Nice-enough job. She should make better dinners and give me more money on my birthday. She doesn’t. She checked on me at Hapeville only to harass my crisis counselor about when I could leave. Threw a fit when Tom said I’d have to decide that for myself.

“We’re gonna get you out of therapy.” She went to the junk drawer and searched for something, not looking at me at all. “That sound good?”

Underneath the scissors, matches, and plasticware were the forms Tom sent me off with that advise “no proximity to guns, rope, extension cords, or anything that can be fashioned into a noose; a six-month treatment program with a therapist; and regular check-ins with a psychiatrist.”

She located a match, slammed the drawer shut, lit a cigarette.

The trouble with my mother is she’s too busy pretending problems don’t exist to ever really fix them.

Jake

After my date with Allister, my body feels featherlight and anxious.

I toss under the sheets at 11:59 p.m., desperate to hold on to the final dredges of the day’s positivity and maintain this excitement. My brain is not made to hold on to hope for very long. My eyes are designed to capture the tragedies of total strangers. So when I’m happy, I only imagine how long it will take my balance beam of joy to run out and when I’ll inevitably hit the ground.

My phone rings—the 12:00 a.m. ringtone. I press snooze.

I’m plagued by this fear, which is starting to feel certain: Sawyer will show up with a floating knife. He will murder me in my sleep and leave my sheets with a stain of me. I don’t know if I’d prefer that, or for him to murder more strangers and lead me to witness them until my mind turns so gruesome, it detaches from all things positive and my body becomes a shell of trauma.