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I just saw this and it’s everything to me right now. I don’t know if you feel better or if you’re still in the same place, but I wanted to let you know that I’m there, too, and everything you said is my life every day.

I pause, reading back over what I wrote. There’s something else I want to say, something imperative that I need to convey to burnedoutgirl, but I don’t know what it is.

I don’t have anything to offer you back. I can’t write poetry and I don’t have any good advice because I’m drowning. But I wanted to tell you that you’re powerful.

I send it before I can second-guess myself or end up telling her about my epiglottis. I know I’ll spend the next few hours jumping every time I get a notification, grabbing my phone to see if she answered me. I know I’ll be disappointed when it’s Ethan asking me if I got laid last night, or Hailey telling me she knows I didn’t, but there’s a chance that burnedoutgirl will answer me.

I know that it’s unlikely, but not impossible.

And for the first time in my life, that feels like a good thing.

Twelve

Ava

Working at Restoration Acres is either a nightmare or a nursery rhyme, depending on the day. Right now, I’m walking around with a squirrel perched on my head and a bunny tucked under my arm while I wait for their cages to dry. I’m supposed to put them in a holding cage, but the squirrel had run up my arm and refused to be disentangled from my hair, while the bunny had jammed its face into my armpit. I don’t have the willpower to argue with either of them, so I’m using my free hand to line the bunny’s cage with a fresh towel when my phone rings. I pull it out of my back pocket, then pop the bunny into her cage and answer right before it goes to voicemail.

“Hey, Ava, it’s Dr. Kathy Hildebrand. Did you forget about our appointment?”

“Oh, um . . .” I didn’t technically forget about the fact that I was supposed to have therapy after school today. I just sort of chose to come to Restoration Acres instead.

“It’s okay,” Dr. Hildebrand pushes ahead. “We can do our session over the phone. Can you talk right now?”

“Uh . . . kind of? I have a squirrel on my head,” I say, dropping down into the office chair and spinning it nervously side to side.

“You must be at work. Your mom said you’re spending a lot of time there.”

“I like it here,” I tell her, but don’t add that one of the reasons is because it’s depressing as hell at Restoration Acres and I don’t have to pretend like everything’s fine. I also don’t say that Widow is emotionally shut down and pragmatic and I kind of want her to teach me how to be that way. I don’t think a therapist would find that to be a healthy route for working on myself.

“It’s good to find meaning in your work,” Dr. Hildebrand says. “How have you been feeling, otherwise?”

Like shit is the real answer. But if I say that, she’ll ask me why, and that’s the real killer with depression—most of the time I don’t know why, which means I can’t fix it. Today, though, I’ve got a menu to choose from. I might not have killed Panda, exactly, but the fact is that if I never got this job, Widow’s dog would still be alive.

“Becca called,” I say, adjusting the squirrel as he slides to the left, one paw raking down the side of my face. “She’s still pissed at me, said I made a false accusation.”

“Do you think that’s accurate?”

“No,” I tell her, surprised when the word comes out so smoothly. “I don’t think I was wrong.”

“Okay, that’s good,” Dr. Hildebrand says. “Hold on to your convictions. Navigate by them.”

“Right . . .” I take a deep breath; it’s rough and shaky, slipping out between my teeth along with a low, shuddering sound. In the incubator, the red light flickers.

“Ava?” Dr. Hildebrand asks. “Is there something else?”

“Yeah,” I admit, hand going to the spot under my throat where the collarbones don’t meet up. “While I was talking to Becca I got this weird feeling, like something inside of me stretched too far and it snapped. Is that a thing?”

I find different ways to ask Am I crazy? every time I talk to Dr. Hildebrand. And, because she’s good at what she does, she knows it.

“You’re not crazy,” she says. “That’s actually a fairly common symptom of depression.”

“What does it mean?” I ask, tipping a little too far back in the office chair. The squirrel leaps free, jumping to the desk, then skittering up a beam into the exposed rafters.

“Like most things with mental health, it can mean different things for different people,” Dr. Hildebrand says. “I’ve had some clients who felt like it was a physical symptom of an emotional breakdown. Others feel like they’ve hit a breaking point, and a cascade of emotions follows the snapping feeling. People also associate it with overwhelm, like a dam breaking inside of them, and some think the snap is the moment when they lost hope.”

“Mine’s more like there’s something tethered to me inside, and it broke.”

“And what did you feel in that moment? Overwhelm? Stress?”