Take me with you! Natasha almost screamed. Please! I’m not like these other people!

She lies in bed and stares at the tiled ceiling. So this is what it’s like to be committed to a psych ward. This is where she really is. She feels like she’s suspended above her body, watching herself in this stiff, cold bed.

Without her phone, Netflix, or music, all she can do is think. Maybe I can somehow use this in a stand-up routine. She used to reassure herself this way whenever anything shitty happened. At least it’s material. Dad always claimed Natasha had a knack for making the most concerning situations entertaining in retrospect, whether it was how she negotiated getting a D raised to a C or the way she talked back to misogynistic family members in India. You refuse to play by any rules, Dad would say with a mixture of amusement and disbelief.

To Natasha’s surprise, she feels a sharp, aching pang for her family. Mom’s probably gazing up at her own ceiling, her thoughts spinning like the fan as Dad snores next to her. Suhani’s sitting up in bed, her face stained from the blue light of her laptop as she makes an action plan to ensure Natasha has the best possible hospital stay. Maybe she’s even on the phone with Anuj. Zack is next to her. He and Suhani will be okay. They have to be. They’re her ideal couple. If they can’t make it, there sure as hell isn’t any hope for anyone else.

Her thoughts are interrupted by her roommate murmuring, “What time is it?”

“I dunno,” Natasha says without peeling her eyes from the ceiling. “Super late.”

“Natasha?”

Natasha’s head snaps up. How does her roommate know her name? She slowly turns and registers the features one at a time. Thick, dark hair that’s matted from hours spent against a pillow. Petite and perfect-postured frame. Rings of eyeliner.

Holy shit.

Alexis Diaz.

Her role model, Alexis Diaz!

The Alexis Diaz is her roommate on the Atlanta Memorial Inpatient Psychiatry Ward. How?!

“Wha . . . what are you doing here?” Natasha clutches her sheets. If she was a character in an old Disney Channel movie, Alexis would be a fun and friendly figment of her imagination.

But she’s real. And here. The woman whose videos Natasha’s memorized, whose Wikipedia page she turns to for motivation, that woman is in her own uncomfortable bed right next to Natasha.

“Wow, what a coincidence, right?” Alexis smiles and scoots to the edge of her bed.

“That is one way to say it.” Natasha isn’t sure why she laughs. Is it because of sheer surprise? Nerves? “You’re literally the last person I ever expected to see here.”

Alexis nods. “I checked myself in a couple of days ago because I knew I was getting to a bad place.”