The nurse writes two names on the Magical Whiteboard. Magical because if your name appears, ta-da! You get to go home. My name’s not there. Neither is Danny’s. I have been here for either 25, 47, or 133 days. I lost count because my methods (ballpoint on arm, blood on wall, holes poked into Brad Pitt’s face) are not scientific. Nothing about my life has been scientific. Maybe that’s the problem.

Mainly this place is a lot of teenage living deads, plus me and Danny. We have four activities each day: group therapy, Judge Judy, gluing, fights. And so far it is GOING GREAT!! This is a direct quote from the letter they forced me to write to Grandma. I also wrote about the time me and Danny had a fake wedding in the resource room. I did not mention the fake honeymoon in the janitor’s closet, when we kissed and whispered stuff and it was clammy and intense and I wanted to do more but the nurse caught us and that was that. I think about that kiss still. Danny’s hair was greasy, and he had sharp chin stubble, but his lips were soft and it felt like desperate love. 

Danny said we will always find each other and I said ok.

One day my name appeared on the Magical Whiteboard. I couldn’t believe it! I thought it was a side effect of the drugs. I made Danny read it out loud about 50 times and then he started hyperventilating and SCREAMING my name and I said dude you don’t got to yell and then he ran to his room and I think he was crying and the nurse said get all your things together and put them on this cart. So I rolled the cart to my room and I put all my things on it: a pink hairbrush, a stuffed bunny, and a paper plate mask with one eye hole. The nurse saw this and cracked up laughing. Then we got on the elevator. I never said goodbye to Danny.

Now I'm lying in the back seat of Grandma’s Cadillac. I don’t know how I feel. How about “darkly optimistic.” I wipe the tears off my face with my shirt and look out the window. I don’t know Danny’s phone number or his last name or where he lives or anything. We’re on the bridge now, passing over the river. I remember seeing the river from the drive here, which was either 15, 62, or 165 days ago. But there’s no river anymore. Just cracked orange dirt and bits of trash.

Where did the water go?