Chapter 1
Nadia
The mansion looked like it had eaten the last five house-sitters and was waiting for dessert.
I parked my extremely average, slightly dented Corolla at the bottom of the gravel driveway and stared at it. The place loomed before me, all gray stone and towering windows. There were gargoyles.Actualgargoyles. Someone had definitely paid extra for the gothic add-ons. The hedges were so overgrown I was sure generations of wildlife were inhabiting them.
I took a long sip from my iced coffee, which was sweating like me in spin class, and told myself the same thing I’d told myself all week: “You’ve survived worse.”
I thunked my forehead against the steering wheel and groaned. “You can do this, Nadia. You’re brave. You’re semi-functional. You own a cardigan with kittens on it. That counts for something.”
I needed this summer job. Teachers don’t get paid nearly enough, and my savings account was a cruel joke. This house-sitting gig paid enough to cover my bills, and maybe I could even splurge on a fancy planner I’d abandon by August.
I reached over to the passenger seat and flipped open my notebook. Tucked inside was the folded handout I’d made for myself,
SUMMER PROJECT: Take Up Space
My handwriting screamed from the page in Bossy Purple marker:
I am not too much. I am me.
I do not audition for cliques.
I don’t transform myself for bullies.
My weird is welcome in my own life.
Two truths before a joke.
I choose rooms that like me loud.
I can be kind and keep my boundaries.
I smiled at it. Then I immediately rolled my eyes at myself. “Okay, therapy homework, don’t fail me now.”
My therapist and I had decided this would be mySummer of Healing. I’d get fresh air, solitude, maybe a tan. A creepy mansion wasn’t theidealsetting, but it was the available setting, and I was going to embrace it. Or at least give it a quick side hug and hope I didn’t get tetanus.
The truth was, being neurospicy meant I’d spent most of my life trying to earn space that already belonged to me. ADHD made me say yes to everything before thinking, anxiety made me rehearse conversations that never happened, and together they’d turned me into a walking people-pleaser with a guiltcomplex. I called ithyper-empathy.My therapist called itbad energy management.
I rested my forehead on the steering wheel for a second. I had worked hard to break old patterns, but my thoughts kept drifting back to the last school I’d worked at. It always started with the same tight feeling in my chest. The one I got every time I remembered how the veteran teacher clique decided I was a problem before they even learned my last name.
They never confronted me directly, but they didn’t need to. They watched me walk in with enthusiasm and made it clear they disapproved. I was too eager. Too friendly. Not deferential enough. My students liked me too much. I didn’t fit into their hierarchy, and that alone was enough to set them against me. They rolled their eyes when I spoke. They treated my new ideas like acts of war. They left me off email chains. They picked apart the way I arranged my classroom. They commented on my emotional tone.
I kept trying to earn a place anyway. I stayed late, worked harder, kept believing if I proved myself, they would ease up.
Then I made one small mistake. A date entered wrong on a shared calendar. Nothing serious, but they took it to administration, accused me of being scatter-brained, and presented a list of every time I’d struggled to focus in a meeting. Admin agreed with them because it was easier than questioning the veterans. After that, I was placed on a corrective plan. Colleagues avoided me. My classroom no longer felt safe.
I kept trying to fix it. Kept trying to fixmyself—a futile effort that had followed me through my whole life. I had always worked for approval that never came; tried to be easy to like, easy to manage, easy to understand. I kept pouring myself into people who did not give anything back. The school only made the pattern louder. Their judgment felt familiar in a way I hated. It pushed every old instinct to bend and soften and apologize.
Every friendship, every almost-relationship, every time I had given away too much of my time, my focus, or my peace, came from that same glitchy wiring that made me love too fast and crash even faster. But that experience finally showed me what it cost. That was the moment that forced me to stop repeating the same cycle.
This summer, that was changing.
I had a plan.
A clear, laminated-in-my-mind strategy for how not to lose myself to other people’s chaos and judgments again.
I had acquired a new teaching job at a new school and was dedicated to working toward becoming my best self this summer. Nothing was going to get in my way. Not a bad habit, not a breakdown, not even a haunted house.
