I knew I was young, and I knew love was a concept I was still trying to learn, but the way her magic filled my lungs, the way her wisdom turned to song in my ears, the way her presence built comfort, the way she skipped rocks across my ocean made me feel as though love wasn’t a strong enough word. Sometimes songs lose their magic, but she never did. Maybe it wasn’t what grown-ups called love, maybe it was better, maybe it was softer, maybe it was what I wanted. But Mel didn’t owe me any of that, so I knew it was my job to try to put things back in order, on her terms.

“I can’t expect you to forgive me here and now. That’s something I have to work toward.”

“There’s a lot you have to work on,” she said. “You’re so obsessed with the idea of how much you weigh, you’re getting smaller and smaller. You’re going to hurt yourself, and you can’t expect me to sit here and watch you fade to nothing. Look at you, you can barely sit up straight.”

She was right — I was nearly slumped over in my chair. I’d had no energy to fight back when Lewis held me against the wall.

“We can work on it.”

“No. There’s no ‘we can work on it.’ We have to fix this here, and we have to make a plan now. My life was at risk when I was in your shoes, and you’re starting to resemble the skeleton I was. Adrian, you have to promise me. If you want to move forward with being friends with me, or something more, we have to stop this. I showed up today — I showed up here — because I still care about you. Even if you’re being an ass.”

Mel meant so much to me, but my eating disorder was something I couldn’t break. If I could have, I would have.

“I . . . I don’t know how,” I said honestly.

“I know. I know how hard it is, Adrian. But I need you to trust me on this. You are going to hurt yourself and everyone around you.”

Mel had been in the same shoes that I was currently in; she knew exactly how I felt, but I could imagine why she kept those skeletons in her closet.

“My entire life, I’ve been made fun of. I’ve been ridiculed and shamed for being overweight. I don’t want to go back to that.” I began getting teary eyed.

“You won’t go back to how you were, not if you’re surrounded by the right folks. But you have to understand, right now you’re blindly running away from a fire, and every step you take is bringing you closer to a cliff.”

She was right. I couldn’t keep putting my body through this. Mel told me her horror story, and I couldn’t go from being an inspiration to a tragedy. Too many people were counting on me: Mel, Scarlett, Kate, Ryan, Donny, Mom, Dad. I couldn’t let them down.