Chapter Thirty

We were to meet back in the treatment room in the morning for the final day with the virtual-reality equipment and trial medication. We would be leaving tomorrow afternoon on our last adventure in the motor home, for what Dr. Crimm referred to as "continued processing and termination of therapy." I had just over twelve hours to decide if I wanted to take the medication, or pass and end the experience without ever opening the door to my trauma and allowing the others inside.

I found a sapphire-blue notebook on my bed when I returned to my room. Clipped to the front was a black ink pen. I quickly opened the cover of the book and found a message written inside:

Koralee,

This is for the words that sit like seeds in your gut,

Seeking the light but still lost in the dark.

This is for the words that twist and tangle as they rise,

For the ones that fill your chest so full you fear you can't breathe.

This is for the words that have climbed their way to your throat;

For the ones that choke you as you try to swallow them down.

This is for the words that have bloomed in your skull,

For the ones that take up the space where you used to feel you existed.

This is for the words that will always be enough for me,

For the ones that should be enough for everyone else—especially you.

This is for the words that weren't enough for your friends,

For the ones whispered and the ones screamed, the ones too intoxicated to be spoken and those too scared to break free.

No. No. No.

This is for you, Koralee.

For all the words I know you'll find one day and those you already have.

I can't wait to see what you'll do with them when you start to believe in their power.

—Dr. Crimm

I pulled the notebook close to my chest and hugged it there. My eyes closed and tears gathered in my lashes before growing heavy and running down my face. Shima pulled a few tissues from the box near my bed and handed them to me. Cautiously she moved to give me a hug. Her arms wrapped gently around me and I didn't fight it. I missed that contact; I needed it more then than I needed anything else.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"No," I answered honestly. "But I think one day I will be." I laughed softly and she joined me. Aideen moved in and pulled us both into a hug. From the outside we must have looked like a blob of limbs all tangled together, but I knew in reality we were so much more than that. Those girls were the reason I was going to be able to face my fears.

"Am I interrupting?" Marco asked from the doorway. The three of us separated and I motioned for him to come inside.

"No. What's up? Where are Ken and Damien?" I asked.

"Taking a shower. I wanted to stop by and see if you would talk to me for a little while. Maybe we could go for a walk. I just want to make sure you're okay with taking the medication tomorrow."

I put the notebook down on top of my pillow. "I'll be back in a little bit," I told the girls. We stepped out into the hallway and began a slow walk in the direction of the crafts room. "Have you thought more about tomorrow?" he asked.

"Yes," I told him. "I want to do it, but I'm still terrified."

"About what's on the inside or the outside?" He motioned to his head first and then at the busy hospital around us. Kids were moving in and out of their friends' rooms and staff members were checking in on them and delivering medications.

"Both—but mostly inside now, I guess." I shrugged. "I trust that Dr. Crimm wouldn't let anything happen to me, but I'm not sure I can go through that night again and the days after. I'm also not sure I want everyone to see what happened."

"We all choose to be in that room with each other. We know we aren't there to watch the highlight reel of our happiest times. We're there to do some hard work. I'm not proud of what you're going to see, either, but I trust you." Marco turned and faced me when we reached the open door of the craft room.

I peeked inside and found it empty. Without thinking, I extended my arm and took hold of his wrist. "We can talk in here."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," I answered, tugging him inside, where we'd spent that first evening making my brother's card. The crippling anxiety I'd felt that night was absent, although there was still some apprehension in my gut. I wasn't afraid of Marco. I wasn't fearful that he'd turn on me, but I still felt generally unsettled in my own skin. That was the reason I wanted to go through with the treatment.

"I can go first," he offered. "I'll take the pill first so you can have more time to get calm up there before you take yours." He ran his hand over his head, the close-cropped hairs flipping upright as they passed beneath his palm.

"What if I have a panic attack? Maybe if I watch you go first I'll freak out and not be able to go through with it." I bit my lip.

"Then I'll go after you. That way I can watch you for a while without anything in my system. Maybe it's better that way." His hands slipped into his pockets and he waited for me to think it through.

I felt myself starting to spin. My sense of calm was being crashed by the thought of Marco watching my deepest secret in full color: the dark room and the loud music, the smell of alcohol and the heavy feeling of regret.

"Koralee," he said, and I covered my ears. Reality clashed with flashback and I heard my name coming from the lips of a boy I wanted to wipe from my brain. I wanted to block out the sound of his voice, the remembered heat of his drunken breath on my neck.

"Koralee." This time it was more insistent and the world started to go black at the edges. I closed my eyes so I wouldn't have to see hisface—the one that still haunted me sometimes when I tried to sleep. "KORALEE," Marco tried again. "Bubbles. Big bubbles. You're safe. I'm with you."

Marco's hands slowly moved up over mine, still covering my ears. His thumbs moved across my skin. "In," he guided me. I opened my eyes and watched his strong chest expand. "Out," he gently commanded. "3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . ." Another soft brush of his skin against mine as he moved his hand further, letting it graze the back of my head over my hair. I felt myself leaning into him. "Again," he whispered, as his other hand nudged mine away from my ear. "Big, steady bubble. In," His voice now sounded familiar and soothing.

"Okay," I managed to say on a rush of strangled air escaping from my lungs.

"3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . ." He counted slowly for me as I imagined my lips releasing breath into a bubble that grew and grew between us. My hands hung at my sides, but that didn't feel right. I lifted them tentatively and let them rest on his hips, tethering me to him as I listened to his voice. "Again."

Marco's hands were the first male hands I'd allowed on my body since the night my life changed forever. I never imagined I'd feel the touch of someone like him again, but in that moment, it was everything I needed. His strong arms flexed with each stroke as he ran his hand over my head and held me steady as I shook. On the sixth exhale, I rested my forehead against the solidity of his chest.

"I'm sorry," I apologized.

"Don't be," he told me.

When I stepped back, his big eyes were looking down at me. His hands had moved to the sides of my face and he smiled reassuringly before letting them fall away. I wasn't sure what the right answer was, but I knew we'd get through the treatment just like the others had. It didn't matter which one of us went first because eventually we'd both be in it together. I understood why Dr. Crimm insisted on the buddy system and knew that while I might have felt closer to the girls, I wanted Marco beside me during my nightmare.

That night the six of us ate dinner together and then went back to our room to play a game of cards. A few of us sat on the floor and the rest were scattered around on the beds. Damien shuffled and dealt the hands and we used torn scraps of paper from my notebook rolled into tiny balls as currency to bet. Days ago, I'd never have guessed this could be fun. Not just being in treatment, but being disconnected from the world outside, with no lurking possibility of a mean social-media post or a vicious rumor waiting to spill from the mouth of a friend you thought you could trust. It was just six kids and a deck of fifty-two cards, and I was happier than I'd been in months.

"Did you ask him or did he ask you first?" Shima asked Ken from behind her cards. We'd been talking about everything in our lives like nothing was off-limits.

Ken's smile made me smile, too. He seemed to light up with he talked about Leo. "I asked him." He set two cards down on the floor. "It just took a while to build up the guts to do it. I had to be sure. I noticed him looking at me in gym. Sometimes when I caught him, it would take longer than it should for him to look away. And when rumors about me started going around, he was one of the only guys who didn't talk shit or call me names."

"Did you get the feeling he liked you?" Damien asked as he dealt him more cards.

"You mean like gaydar? You know that's not real, right?" Ken teased.

Damien rolled his eyes. "I didn't mean gaydar. I just wanted to know how you knew he liked you. I don't know what that's like."

Ken picked up the cards. "He would find reasons to be with me. He'd smile at me and purposely touch me, even though he'd play it off like it was an accident. He was interested in what I was doing all the time—and I don't mean in the way a friend would ask what you were up to. He'd want the details."

Damien listened to every word. His hands were quick with the cards, but his head struggled with how to pick up on the little signals that someone was into him. Ken looked at the cards in his hand. "What about you, Damien?" he asked. "Are you going to call Keisha?"

"Should I?" Damien asked. He held the deck in his hand, the game paused for a moment while he listened for his answer.

"What's the worst that could happen?" Ken answered. "If I could find the courage to ask a boy on a date in my hometown, you can ask out a girl who clearly thinks you're awesome."

"True," Marco agreed. He set down only one card and Damien took a minute to realize he was the dealer and had a job to do.

"I guess the worst thing is she could say no and I'd be humiliated." Damien tossed Marco a card.

"She won't say no," Shima told him. "But even if she does, she doesn't seem like the kind of girl that would be mean about it."

"Why don't you practice what you'd say?" Aideen suggested. She folded her cards and tossed them all into the middle. "Pretend I'm her and ask me out."

Damien looked around the circle and each of us nodded, urging him to give it a try. With a big sigh, he quickly asked, "Can I take you out?"

Aideen smiled and leaned forward. "Try it again. This time look into my eyes. It might help if you have a plan of where you want to take me, too. Maybe somewhere you know she'd like."

Damien rolled his shoulders and took a deep breath. He looked over to Marco and Ken. "I don't know how you guys are so good at this." He tapped his head a few times and then looked at Aideen the way she'd coached him to. "Would you like to go to the coffee shop with me to get your iced coffee with caramel?"

Aideen clapped. "That was perfect. You're a fast learner." Damien's cheeks flushed slightly as Marco and Ken offered up fists bumps.

Shima cleaned house when it came to the poker game. She had the largest pile of balled-up paper bits when the announcement was made over the PA system that it was time to go to our rooms for the night. We helped her gather up her winnings and tuck them into her socks so she could save them to play again another time.

"I'm going to miss this," Shima said as Aideen and I pushed the final two paper balls into her socks.

"Having paper in your socks?" Aideen joked.

Shima's lips were a flat line across her face. Her expression was one of gratitude and appreciation. "Having people I can talk to that know the real me." She looked down at me as I released her sock and punctuated her reply with a nod. "Also the feeling of family. I haven't felt it since I lost my mom." She looked around at everyone. "You all feel like family now and that's going to be hard to lose again."

"You aren't going to lose us," I assured her. "We're going to keep in touch with each other forever. No matter what." I stood up and gave her a hug. Aideen and the boys stepped up to do the same.

"You guys are my ribbon," she said, in reference to the forest her mind could never seem to forget. "You're the reason I can find my way out. When I'm with you I don't feel alone."

The final announcement was made that we were to return to our rooms and Aideen, Shima, and I said goodnight to the boys and walked back to our room in slow, measured steps so Shima's currency wouldn't spill out onto the floor. We laughed at the careful way she dragged her feet along the slick tile, and also at the lumpy appearance of her socks sticking out from beneath her pants. If only all the things we carried for family, friends, and ourselves, were as weightless and easy as tiny paper balls tucked into a sock.