"I can't believe that you're leaving," Renée whines on Sunday as we're all sitting outside at one of the picnic tables on the patio. "We're going to miss you so much, Johnny."

"Don't sound so happy for me," He jokes with a small laugh, flipping his hair out of his face.

"We are happy for you," Mia assures him with an encouraging smile. "It's just that we're going to miss you so much."

"Well, don't worry yet, alright? We still have a full week before I'm leaving, so just don't think about it right now," Johnny tells them with a small shrug. "And even when I'm gone, I'll like, send letters and stuff and you can call and we'll stay in touch."

"I know, but we've been the Three Musketeers for so long and... I mean, you were the one who welcomed me here when I was terrified of everything and you were just always there for me and I just don't know how we're going to get on around here without you, Johnny," Renée sniffles, obviously really upset about Johnny's newly announced freedom.

"Ana's here now, she can take my place as the third musketeer," He tells her. "I promise, Renée, it'll be okay. I'm not just going to abandon you guys- maybe I can even come visit sometimes or something. And when you get out, we'll hang out all of the time just like we do in here only it'll be ten times more awesome."

"Don't pretend like I'm getting out anytime soon," She mumbles, rolling her eyes before she stands up, her hands shaking and her eyes turning red.

"Where are you going?" Mia wonders with a worried frown.

"I'm just going on a walk," Renée says quietly before she sniffles, wipes tears from her eyes, and then hurries inside. Mia stands to her feet and quickly follows behind her, leaving me alone with Johnny outside.

"She's taking it well," Johnny sighs, leaning forward with his elbows resting on the wooden table in front of him.

"She just needs some time to adjust to the idea," I assure him and it feels odd for me to have to be assuring to somebody else because usually, it's the other way around with people trying to assure me- to make me feel better. "But I'm sure that she really is happy for you."

"I know she is," He nods. "I just feel bad, leaving them here and everything. She's an amazing girl, she's just very dependent. Even if I wanted to, it's not like I could stay here anyway."

"It'll be okay," I tell him, trying my best to be comforting although, I'm sure that I suck at it because I have no idea how to be comforting at all. "I know I don't know you guys very well, but I have a feeling that it'll work out. I'm afraid that I won't be much help though."

"What do you mean?" He wonders, cocking his head to the side curiously.

I shrug and start chewing on my bottom lip. "I just mean that I'm not a very good person for giving advice or really being a friend or anything. I'm just kind of here but I'm not incredibly useful."

"You put yourself down too much," Johnny tells me. "You're pretty great. It really does kind of suck that we didn't get to know each other better before my departure."

"If only I tried to kill myself sooner," I joke, even though we both know that it's nothing to joke about and he sends me a disapproving frown for my ill-mannered joke. "See? I told you. I'm terrible with sincerity."

"You'll do fine," He assures me with a nod. "Like I said, you put yourself down too much."

"Right," I let out a long sigh, hoping that he's right- that even without Johnny here that I can fit in. Renée and Mia are really awesome, I just felt like I got along really well with Johnny but without him here, I worry that I'll just flounder in the social complexity of the rehab center.

"I'm starting classes at a university that's just about an hour away from here in the fall, so I'll come visit you guys a lot," He continues. "So make sure you tell Renée that, just in case she won't talk to me anymore."

"She'll talk to you," I tell him. "It'd be crazy of her not to."

And I'm right- Renée does talk to Johnny but I can tell that she's panicking a lot about losing one of her closest friends. During Johnny's last week at Bernard's, Renée either spends her time with Johnny, Mia, and I or she's spending her extra time talking to one of the open therapists just to make sure that she doesn't slip back into a deep depression.

"She has separation anxiety," Mia tells me on Wednesday when I ask her about Renée being gone for so long. I thought it was strange that she was taking Johnny's freedom so terribly but this makes sense. "Her dad left her and her mother when she was seven so this is really tough for her."

Renée at least doubles her therapy times each day, which upsets her even more because she wants to spend all of her time with Johnny before he leaves on Saturday but Mia had talked her into seeing a therapist again every morning before her mandatory PM session just to make sure that she doesn't do something that she would later regret.

I didn't feel close enough to Renée to console her because I'd only known her for a little over a week, so Mia spent a lot of time consoling her friend, which meant that I'd had a lot of time to spend between just me and Johnny. He is a really cool guy and I'm going to miss him when he leaves, even though I haven't known him for very long either. I obviously won't miss him as much as Renée will, but I'll still miss him quite a bit when he leaves.

On Saturday, we're all sitting in the common area, playing BS again because I finally figured it all out and I'm actually winning now. We're all so quiet because we know that we only have about an hour before Johnny is being picked up by his mother to take him back home.

"Don't forget to come visit," Mia tells him right after Renée wins a round of the game so Mia starts to shuffle and deal the cards out again.

"Of course I'll come visit," Johnny assures her. "I'll have to get settled at home first but then, I'll come see you guys. Just because I'm getting out doesn't mean that we're going to stop being friends, you know."

"We know that," Mia nods. "It's just crazy to think that you're not going to be here to hang out with anymore."

"Well, before you guys got here, I hung out without you, so I'm sure that you guys will live," He tells us. "Trust me, it'll be okay."

"We're really happy for you, Johnny," Renée says with a forced smile as we start our next hand of cards. "And you know that if your dad gives you any trouble, just let us know and we'll give him hell. I'm not sure how, but we will."

"Thanks for that," He laughs, nudging Renée with his shoulder.

We play a few more games of cards while Renée and Mia reminisce about memories they've had with Johnny. Like when Mia arrived at Bernard's and Johnny found her in a corner of the courtyard making herself throw up, he stopped her and took her into the nurses for help and then that's how they became friends. Renée showed up a month and a half after that and she had grown to the group when she got lost in the therapy wing and ended up in the males' bathroom.

"I met you when you guys bombarded me in the hallway on my first day here," I add as kind of a joke since it happened almost exactly two weeks ago, so it's obviously not really reminiscing, just remembering, but I felt like I wasn't really contributing to the deep goodbye and although I'm not too close to Johnny, I feel like we could have been really good friends if we had longer to get to know each other and I'm really sad to see him leave while also being very happy for him too.

"That was because Johnny here thought that you were pretty," Mia teases her friend with a wide smirk on her face.

He looks down at the table and then glances up at me, his brown eyes hiding behind his bangs a little bit as if he's suddenly shy. "That's true. I thought that I'd have longer to get to know you though."

I blush, looking down at my fumbling hands that are holding my hand of cards. "I didn't know that," I mumble.

"Well, luckily, Johnny has good taste in girls because you're pretty awesome," Renée says with a small smile. "And now you're stuck with us."

I'm about to say something in response to that but before I can get something out, one of the nurses approaches our table and a silent sadness washes over all of us because we know what she's here for.

"Johnny," He speaks quietly. "Your mother's here to pick you up. Are you ready to go?"

He nods, standing up from his seat and adjusting his blue scrubs that he's about to change out of so that he can leave the building without looking like a marshmallow.

Renée and Mia stand up as well, so I do too, and then we all take turns giving him one last goodbye hug before he is ushered away by the nurse and all we do is just watch him go.

"I'm really going to miss him," Renée sniffles as she chews on her bottom lip to attempt not to cry, but it fails so she just sits down again as Mia sits beside her, patting her back to try and comfort her as much as possible even though Mia is upset as well.

I sit back down too, putting all of the cards back in the box because I don't think that anybody is in the mood to play cards anymore. I try not to think about what Mia had told me, that Johnny thought I was pretty and that was the reason that they had approached me that first time in the hallway. The thought of somebody thinking of me as 'pretty' makes me unnecessarily nervous and I don't like it. I had one boyfriend, when I was fifteen, but I broke up with him because he was too serious. Not only about life, but he was really serious about our relationship and we were only freshmen in high school. He was thinking about going to college together and stuff like that and it really freaked me out so I broke up with him at the end of freshman year, which was about three months before the incident.

I don't know what would have happened if Johnny stayed here longer with us, if he would have tried to flirt with me or something, I don't know what I would have done. I've been through loads of intense therapy so I don't have an irrational fear of males, which I used to have after the incident, so being around Johnny didn't freak me out. I could even hug him, which is kind of a huge deal considering how terrified I was of the male race just a few years ago. That is, with the exception of my brothers and my dad but they don't really count.

However, just because I can share a friendly hug with Johnny doesn't mean that I'm okay with dating somebody or letting somebody think that I'm pretty. I don't think that I'm terribly hideous or anything, it's just that it makes me nervous when a guy thinks that I'm pretty or looks at me in some weird way. And then there's the whole issue with kissing or holding hands or anything that has to do with being a couple.

Sure, I've improved my paralyzing anxiety but that doesn't mean that it's anywhere near gone. There's no way on God's green Earth that I'd ever be able to deal with romantic feelings of any kind at all. It's pathetic and I know that, and it's humiliating that I'm eighteen years old but I'm too terrified of half of the human race. I can't help it though, but it's not like that makes it any better.

Johnny was a really cool person though, and that's how I started getting over my fear of men, by thinking of them as people and not just big mean monsters. And I'm really going to miss him.

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Song: Fallin' by Macklemore

Picture: Theo James and he plays Penn (Ana's older brother)