When I went back inside, I learned Dad didn’t buy the last-minute Hail Mary save I’d pulled off. He put more stock in Aidy’s words from the night prior, and explained to me that I needed to pack a bag for camp. Aidy came downstairs to stand beside my dad, her eyes pained but certain. Plans had been made, and there was no room for changes in execution.

“You need to be there, Olivia,” she said. “You need to find yourself again.”

So, I’ve been going through the same motions I did five years ago. Taking the classes, speaking with new therapists and counselors and support groups. Swimming. Eating a thousand of the little yogurt parfait cups they make. The new ropes course is nice, my dad was right about that.

It’s not the same as it was five years ago when I balled my fists and shouted, “You don’t understand,” every time they tried to tell me my Marley was a coping mechanism. A response to the trauma I’d suffered. Everything but a person.

Now I’m using my time here to find my own interests again. Make the most of the next few weeks posted up in cabin four. The other people here, as young as seven and as old as seventeen, are all the strange kind of normal, which is to say they’re the kind of people I appreciate. I don’t mind Camp Califree. In fact, I quite like it.

It’s never been about hating it.

It’s always been about leaving home.

But I have to remember who I am without Marley on my shoulders. Even though I don’t carry her anymore, I still keep her with me in different ways. And I want my family and friends to see that it’s okay for me to do that. I want to iron out all the kinks in my truth and present them with something that’s completely mine.

I want to show my sister, who held me so tightly when I left and whispered to me, calm as the sky before a tornado, “Let yourself heal.”

I want to show my parents, who kissed my forehead and waved me off, then leaned into one another like bookends without a book to hold.

I want to show the other kids on Albany, who write me letters and send me gifts. The rock from Ruby sits beside me now. She drew a star on it for me. And a tiny letter M.

I want to show everyone, from the other residents of Cadence to complete strangers, that things that are lost are not gone.