Summer. The July before freshman year. Around then, I’d imagined someday being old and shrivelled and having someone ask me about my first love – and it would have been her, all braided pigtails and gap-teeth and the most ridiculous snorty laugh I’d ever heard.

Oh. That’s what this feeling was.

Absolutely not, my own fucking brain. God. What was happening?

The momentary lightness was suppressed by a tidal wave of grief.

Dad. Dad sitting at the foot of my bed with his hand on my ankle, which I can feel, but just barely; my nerves have gone haywire and are now firing at random intervals. How can a body fine-tuned to keep you alive so gleefully tear you apart?

It’s freshman year. My parents have found out. I’m too far gone to ask how, but I know they have, based on the way Dad lumbers into my bedroom like he’s on his way to his own funeral. I’ve spent the previous few days at school being harassed. Pushed. Pointed at. In class a teacher mentioned Lesbos and everyone snickered. It will go on relentlessly for weeks, weeks, until after Christmas break when it’ll calm down, become a weekly occurrence instead of daily, and then they’ll all forget, because Sydney Whitaker is quiet, uninteresting, doesn’t even flinch any more; it’s not fun to terrorize an indifferent mouse.

All I can say to Dad is that I didn’t want it to happen like this. I didn’t want it to happen at all, but especially not like this.

Dad says that my strength is incomparable, but I don’t feel particularly strong; I feel rotten, used, embarrassed. I’m sure that I’ll never feel worse than I do in this moment.

Oh. Just you wait.

I waited until Mom had gone to sleep because I didn’t want her to ask questions about what I planned to do.

I wasn’t going to open it, you know. I was just going to see.

I tugged on the handle of the filing cabinet, but the door didn’t budge, so I rummaged through the other drawers and compartments until I found a key that looked small enough to fit.

The files were organized alphabetically, by last name. There might have been a hundred patients there; I kind of squinted my left eye so as not to see the first names, then found the end of the Bs. Byers. Conley. Copeland.

Opened my eye all the way: June.

I positioned the manila tab between my forefinger and my thumb and traced over Dad’s handwriting, the nearly illegible half-print, half-cursive. I would never open the file. How could I? As I crouched there, Dad was probably slamming his ghost-hands on to my shoulders and wailing, ‘Paaatient confidentiaaality, Syd!’ Just touching the folder made me nervous. But here she was.