But things weren’t fine. Lacy was taking out her cards again. Joey saw the sterilized card on her bedside table, the tree limbs casting it in stripes of darkness.

“Joey?” she said to him one night. “We’re still a team, right?” It was the first time she’d sounded like herself in weeks.

“Yeah, we’re still a team.”

“Well, that program I’m going to isn’t helping.”

“It’s supposed to take time.”

“I met someone nice at the program. He’s older, and he’s been through this stuff, he understands what I’m dealing with. He told me it’s not safe to just quit smoking like I did. Really bad malfunctions can happen.”

“Who is he?”

“Just a human who also smoked fluff. He lives with some other guys in Saline. They all know how to deal with recovery. He told me to contact him if I needed help, but I can’t even text him for support. Mom and Dad took my phone away. Can I use yours?”

Lacy’s eyes looked soft in the light, like he remembered from back when they still talked about pirates and X-Men movies. “You’re not supposed to use a phone.”

“I just want to text him to see if he can come talk to me. I’m hurting, I need friends. You’re my brother, right? You’ll help me, won’t you?”

Joey reached down to where his clothes lay, found his pants, and shook out his phone. “Okay,” he said, “but you have to give it back.” And when, an hour later, she quietly opened her window and crawled onto the roof and down the oak tree, he didn’t say anything—just watched as she got into the car at the end of the driveway and disappeared, far from the constellations that arced across the ceiling and far from his parents, who were waking him in the morning, asking where Lacy was, the sound of birdsong spilling into the room.

The police found her abandoned in a motel room along the state road to Saline. They brought her back that evening, and his parents took her into their arms while the cops advised they shut her down. That night, Joey heard his mother telling Lacy how much she meant to them. “Like so many people, your father and I couldn’t have babies, but you’re both our children,” his mother said, inserting a sterilized card into Lacy’s armpit. “Please, just stay in the program for us.”