After Rhys pulls me through the door, I go outside of myself somehow. I don’t know how. I wish I knew how. They drag me to the locker room, the showers. Even the shock of freezing cold water against my body can’t bring me back. I watch them scramble to get me clean. They keep asking Rhys if I’ve been bitten, if I’m turning. He says no but he also says wait—be careful—wait until most of the blood’s off …

They keep me under the showerhead forever. They keep me under until my lips turn blue and the water runs clear and then Cary sets my shoulder. I come back to myself for this, for how dizzyingly awful it feels, how familiar. My shoulder has been dislocated before. My father. He watched videos on YouTube about how to put everything back in place so we wouldn’t have to go to the hospital. So I know what’s coming. More pain. I bite down so hard I think my teeth will shatter. Cary tells me it’s okay, it’s okay, but it’s not and then it’s done, it’s over. I close my eyes and the next time I force them open, it’s like looking at the world through distorted glass. I don’t know where I am at first and then—I remember. The school.

But I don’t know where in the school.

My heart beats fast. I touch my forehead. It’s been bandaged sloppily. I blink until my vision clears and I process all these things at once: the nurse’s office. I am in the nurse’s office on a cot with a thin sheet covering me, my forehead is bandaged and I am wearing a scratchy long sweater that isn’t mine, that I don’t remember changing into. I don’t know what is more distressing to me; someone changing my clothes or the hurt. My bones are screaming, my skin feels raw. I try to take some kind of weird comfort in the fact these feelings aren’t ones I’m not used to. I’ve been variations of hurt my whole life. My heart calms. I look around. The door is wide open and the hall is empty. I try to gauge the time. The room is light enough. Day.

I sit up slowly, carefully.

“Still here.”

Rhys sits in a chair against the wall, in front of a poster about the dangers of crystal meth. It’s a series of photos, the progression of one woman’s face over the course of a year on the drug—from haggard to cracked-out. She reminds me of the girl outside and then I get so dizzy with those memories, I feel like I’m going to fall into the sky. I lay back on the cot and take steadying breaths in and out. Rhys walks over and rests his hand against my forehead but there’s nothing comforting in his touch and he does it so quickly, I wonder if I imagined it.

“How am I?”

My voice is gravel. He presses a bottle of water into my shaking hands. I drink it and miss my mouth. The water trails down my chin and onto this sweater that’s not mine.