The Opposite of Falling Apart

By Micah Good

To get back up sometimes you have to fall down, hard . . .

What's the point of pretending nothing has changed when everything has? It's the last summer before college, and Jonas Avery knows he should be excited. Instead, he hides out at home, avoiding his friends, his family, and everything that resembles his old life. Because nothing will be normal again—because of The Accident, when everything started falling apart.

Brennan Davis knows she needs to stand up and face her anxiety—the deep, dark, debilitating dread that rules her everyday life. Because what stops her from going out into the world and just living is going to get a whole lot worse. She’s leaving for college in the fall, where she’ll be confronted with even more to worry about.


When Jonas crashes into Brennan—in a harmless, albeit embarrassing fender bender—the two teens connect in ways they never expected. As friends, they help each other overcome their biggest falls and faults, and soon discover that while love can't fix everything, it's sometimes a place to start.

Sensitive, wry, and unabashedly authentic, The Opposite of Falling Apart isn't about finding perfection in another person or fixing the things we think are broken. Instead, Micah Good has penned an enchantingly honest novel about accepting the very pieces of ourselves that make us unique, whole, and undeniably human.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Feb 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781989365076

Micah Good

Micah Good has been writing since middle school. She’s been posting stories on Wattpad since the summer before her freshman year of college. Her work has been featured and has won a Watty Award, and she was invited to participate in Wattpad’s Paid Stories program. She currently lives in the midwestern United States, where she is pursuing a career in nursing. She loves getting lost in a book, which might make her relatable, or at least someone who you now know likes reading.

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The Opposite of Falling Apart

Micah Good

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Summer 2014

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Fall Semester 2014

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Spring Semester 2015

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Dedication

To my mom and dad:

I always dreamed of dedicating a book to you.

I practiced doing it, in stapled-together pages and isolated documents on my computer.

Now, finally, this is all for you.

And to Kadin, brother and friend:

Rhys rhymes with geese.

SUMMER 2014

1

JONAS

Jonas had done two things when he’d come home from the hospital for the first time after The Accident.

1. He’d taken a permanent marker and scribbled out the lower half of the left leg on his Bones of the Human Skeleton poster, which had hung on his closet door since fifth grade (when he’d decided he wanted to be a doctor).

2. He’d looked at the newly-altered poster and cried, for the first time after and the only time since.

He was looking at the same poster now.

Jonas?

His mom’s tone was familiar. It was the same tone she’d been using with him for the last year. It was as if she was tiptoeing around him, walking carefully to avoid stepping on something sharp like glass shards or a Lego brick. His gaze fixated once more on the mass of permanent ink on the poster that obliterated the left tibia, fibula, patella, half the femur—irrevocable, unshakable. It won’t go away! he’d screamed in his head, that first day, as he angrily smeared ink on the poster. This won’t ever go away! And that was when he had cried.

Are you there?

Jonas sighed into his phone, the static breath rebounding in his own ear. Yes, Mom. Here.

Okay, she said. Look, I know you haven’t really driven since, well, you know. She paused before pressing onward, her tone diplomatic. Your sister forgot the waiver for her summer camp, and you know they’re leaving later this afternoon. I really wouldn’t ask under any normal circumstances, but I have a big meeting at work today and I can’t get away to bring it to her.

Jonas thought about his sister being unable to zip-line or white-water raft or any of the other things she had been going on and on about doing at summer camp since school had first let out back in May. He thought about his sister, so excited to go off and do something, the first thing their parents had had any extra money for, what with Jonas’s stack of receipts for doctor’s appointments, hospital stay, therapy, and prosthesis (which hadn’t left his closet since the day he’d gotten it).

I was just wondering if you could take it to her.

Easier said than done. Jonas frowned, massaging the place right above his nonexistent left knee, where the rest of his leg should have been.

Jonas?

He pictured himself saying no and then pulling the covers over his head to block out the outside. Okay, Mom, he said instead. After all, he’d put her through enough, hadn’t he? He could do one thing for her, right? And for Taylor, who had kind of been the forgotten one in all this mess.

Okay? You’ll do it? Jonas could hear his mother’s relief through the phone. He also didn’t miss the hope in her voice. He wondered if she had expected more arguing. She’d been trying to get him to leave the house for something, anything, since the end of the school year (really, since Jonas’s Great Tragedy). He could also hear the concern in her voice. He knew she’d be worried that she was asking too much. Jonas felt bad—the uncomfortable feeling of guilt squeezed at his insides. After all she’d done for him, she shouldn’t have to worry about asking too much. She shouldn’t have to worry that her son couldn’t handle a little thing like a quick errand.

Okay, he said again. Maybe she’d believe him a little more after he said it a second time. Maybe he’d believe it a little more too.

He could practically see the smile on her face. Thank you, Bird! she exclaimed. Jonas closed his eyes and tried not to cringe at the childhood nickname (You’re so skinny, like a bird! his mom used to say). He could picture her smiling an actual smile (not tired or forced) and he felt a little better about himself for once. His mom was continuing, her words humming in his ear. Taylor said the form is either on the counter or on her desk in her room. If you could just take it—they’re meeting in that parking lot behind the school, you know the one.

Jonas knew the one. He didn’t think he’d forget it. He and his older brother, Rhys, leaving school. That same parking lot around four thirty, post Rhys’s track practice. Crash. The sound of crunching metal echoed in his head.

Yes. He forced the word out. Got it. He swallowed and closed his eyes.

If you could just take it there and give it to her . . .

Yeah, all right, he said. There. All right. Something other than okay.

All right. A pause. I love you, Jonas.

Jonas pictured his mom. In the year since his accident she’d seemed to shrink somehow. Her dark eyes didn’t hold as much light and there was a little streak of gray in her dark hair, which she always tried to tuck behind her ear. Jonas thought that maybe the worst thing of all of this was what it had done to Elise Nguyen-Avery. He held his breath a moment before letting it out and replying. Love you, too, Mom.

Jonas hung up and dropped his phone on the bed next to him.

He stared at the ceiling’s bumpy plaster for a few moments, as if gathering his strength. Then he sighed and flung the blankets back, sat up, and swung his right leg over the side of the bed, ignoring what remained of the left. Pretend it’s not there. Don’t look. (When it had first happened, there had been moments when he almost forgot. He wished he still had more of those moments—the forgetting. Of feeling nothing for a while.) Standing and using the edge of his bed for balance, he tripped over to his closet, where he hesitated, staring at the poster’s ink-mangled leg once more before pulling out the prosthesis from the dark corner he had shoved it into.

He sat back down on the edge of the bed and examined the prosthetic leg. A part of Jonas hated the thing. It was a poor substitute for what he was missing. He frowned, then situated it against the stump. No, that didn’t feel right. Wasn’t there supposed to be a sock or something that went on before the prosthesis? A stump liner? Jonas shuddered a little; for some reason, he’d always hated that word. Stump. Stump, stump, stump. He had tried to get used to it, lying in the hospital bed in the pediatric unit (there were clouds and stars and stuff on the ceiling tiles; he wasn’t old enough for the adult unit yet) and thinking it over and over in his head, but it didn’t work—didn’t sound right. Trees had stumps. Legs weren’t meant to have stumps.

After a bit more digging, he managed to find the practice liner they’d given him when he’d first gotten the prosthesis. (Wear it a little every day—get used to it. He hadn’t.) He put it on and refitted the prosthesis. It felt loose, and he was a little worried that the suction between the liner and the prosthesis wouldn’t hold. Somewhere there was a new liner, one fitted to his leg a few months post-accident, after his leg had atrophied a bit. Shrunk. The thing—stump, leg—had actually shrunk.

Jonas’s gaze moved to the floor, unable to look at the leg for very long. It will be fine, he muttered into his empty room (empty house, really). It’s only for a little while, after all.

Jonas stood, wobbling for a moment, keeping all his weight on his good leg. After The Accident (Jonas’s Great Tragedy was always referred to as The Accident), he’d gone through the motions: minor inpatient therapy, practice wearing the liner, trying on a prosthesis. He’d gone through the motions because after he did, he felt less guilty when he looked at his mom. The motions had stopped when his mom had suggested getting the permanent prosthesis. Something about the word permanent had made everything sink in. So he’d given up on replacing his missing leg with metal and plastic. His mom hadn’t; she’d had him fitted and worked with a prosthetist to order it, hoping that once he had the leg, he might show a little more interest. He’d taken it almost as a challenge. Think again. It had spent most of its time in the corner of his closet, gathering dust. Jonas preferred the crutches. He’d gone to therapy long enough to learn how to use them properly. Why pretend everything was normal when it clearly wasn’t?

He tried putting some weight on the leg, drawing in a sharp breath at the pain that shot up his left thigh (like his lower leg was still there and was currently being stabbed). Jonas stumbled slightly, then clenched his leg with his hand and straightened it.

You can do this, Jonas, he told himself, breathing a little heavily from the pain. Was he going to hyperventilate? Stop it, he ordered his uncooperative body. Had it been this painful before? He couldn’t remember. His rumpled reflection in the mirror on the back of his closet door revealed a boy who was a shadow of who he’d been before The Accident—pale and a whole lot thinner. He’s back to eating like a bird! He’d heard his mother express her frustration with him to his father in hissed whispers coming from their bedroom down the hall. He tried to smooth back his feathery dark hair (his mom’s hair), which was stubbornly sticking up on one side, where it had had face time with his pillow last night. Then he tried on a smile that, when combined with the dark circles under his eyes, made his reflection look only slightly unhinged.

He left on his plaid pajama pants and threw on an old Washington U (St. Louis, Missouri: est. 1853) sweatshirt his dad had given him when Jonas had been accepted there (his mom and dad had met there—family tradition?). His dad was more muscular (filled out, as his mom would say), and his old sweatshirt made Jonas look a little like he was going for a swim in it.

He stopped looking at himself in the mirror when he couldn’t bear it anymore. It was odd, seeing himself with two legs again. It made his chest ache a little.

He picked up the crutches again and headed to the kitchen. He tried to think of things in steps.

1. Get up. (Complete.)

2. Get dressed. (Complete.)

3. Get down the hallway.

He was thankful that he was on the ground floor, at least, and didn’t have to navigate the stairs with crutches. After The Accident, Rhys had been forced to give up his bedroom downstairs and take Jonas’s old upstairs bedroom (the odd space over the garage where the air conditioner didn’t quite get in the summer and the heat didn’t quite get in the winter). Rhys hadn’t complained, and Jonas knew it was because he still felt guilty for being the one driving, and for not being injured in the same permanent capacity that Jonas was. Jonas let him feel guilty. Sometimes he felt bad about it, but most times he thought it was a poor substitute for what he himself had lost. It was complicated. He didn’t exactly blame Rhys, but he didn’t exactly not blame him either. Jonas had tried to explain this aloud to the counselor his parents had had him go to after it had first happened (until he’d refused to go and his mom, after a lot of tears, had given in) but had failed. After that, he hadn’t tried to explain anything to the counselor.

There was the permission slip, on the counter.

1. Pick it up.

2. Make it down the step into the garage.

The paper crumpled when he tried to hold it and the crutch at the same time. He slowly navigated the step down into the cool darkness of the garage. The keys for the Bus were on the wall next to the door, just like always—just like they’d been when Jonas still drove, where he would pick them up almost every day. The Bus was an old Honda Odyssey with sliding doors that didn’t work and a hole rusted through the door to the trunk. The air conditioner was also on the fritz, on top of the vehicle’s other charms—but it was loyal, and it continued to start and run without fail. There was almost something comforting about it.

Jonas opened the driver’s-side door carefully. You can do this, he told himself again, before opening the garage door and putting the key into the ignition, bringing the engine to life (all six minivan cylinders firing). He proceeded to give himself a pep talk that would have rivaled a football coach’s rallying cry minutes before the homecoming game (well, at least what he thought that would sound like; he wouldn’t know).

Jonas tried not to picture how many days had started with him grabbing the Bus’s keys off the same old hook, shouting good-bye to his mom, and driving off to school or to soccer practice because he was sixteen and newly driver’s licensed and he could. He tried not to think about how now he couldn’t—about all the times he’d tried since he’d recovered from The Accident (when everyone was gone and he was safely alone), only to end up in a cold sweat, unable to leave the driveway. He could have kept trying—could have worked up to it, as the counselor had said—but he just didn’t see the point anymore. And you’re afraid, his irritating inner voice shot back.

After The Accident, there were a lot of things Jonas found himself unable (or unwilling) to do. It was too easy to be reminded of what he was before he was reduced to being a teenager with only one and a half legs. After The Accident, the way he saw the world had been skewed. To him, people were always either a) trying too hard to pretend he was normal or b) going out of their way to try to help him. Help carrying his backpack after school, help opening the door to whatever store he happened to be going into. One well-meaning friend had even offered to take his arm and help him walk, much to Jonas’s embarrassment.

He was tired of people looking at him like he was less him than he had been before the semi hit the passenger side of his brother’s car. He already felt like he was somehow less than he had been before—he didn’t need other people reinforcing that.

So he withdrew from everyone. Jonas with two legs had never been incredibly social, but he’d had friends, at least. He had since distanced himself from them. It was too easy for them to make comments like, Can’t believe Coach is making us run laps today, or even the completely innocuous, Break a leg, before a presentation at school. Jonas would give anything to run laps aimlessly around the soccer field, or for his leg to ache with something other than phantom limb pain. He was tired of being reminded. He was tired of his friends realizing he was there and then turning to him and apologizing awkwardly. Really, he could handle the comments. What he couldn’t handle were the pitying looks that came afterward, or the way their words trailed off when they caught his eye, because that was what reminded him that he was different now.

Jonas always thought he would be fine if people would only act like they had before, but a small part of him, that annoying inside voice, wondered if he would really be okay if people acted like nothing had changed. What’s the point of pretending nothing has changed when everything has? But he couldn’t stop trying to pretend, at least in front of anyone outside of his family.

So he didn’t go places with friends anymore. He didn’t go hang out at the mall or go to the movies. He didn’t watch their soccer games. He didn’t drive.

He just existed, as if suspended in the moment in which he had regained consciousness only to realize he was short an appendage.

He slowly backed the Bus out of the garage and then down the driveway. He shifted the vehicle into drive and headed down his street. This wasn’t so bad, right? Not so bad (he felt very much like a fifteen-year-old again, learning to drive his parents’ minivan. He still remembered his dad: Easy on the brakes, Jonas. Then Elliot Avery would grin, even though his nervous energy was dissipating into his hands, adjusting his seat belt. You’ll give me whiplash!).

Jonas had never been sad about the leg. The one time he’d cried was more out of anger than anything. He always wondered if it was just that the shock had been so terrible that it had yet to wear off, even almost a year later. It just . . . was. This was his situation now, and he didn’t feel like being sad would help anything. Besides, Rhys had cried enough for the both of them. Jonas had never known his older brother could cry that much—could cry at all, in fact. (Rhys had gone to visit the counselor—Dr. Andy—after Jonas had stopped seeing her. Supposedly it had helped. At least Rhys didn’t cry anymore.)

His mother still cried sometimes. Especially after an unsuccessful day of trying to get Jonas to show some interest in something other than watching the Star Wars movies over and over again (and wishing that there was some way he could get his hands on a robotic leg of a quality à la the hand that Luke Skywalker got after having his own chopped off by a lightsaber) or playing video games on the PlayStation his parents had gotten him after The Accident, mindlessly defeating enemies until his head emptied of all the worries about what his first year of college would bring. I don’t understand! I just want to help him and I don’t know how! he’d heard his mom cry to his father one night when he’d snuck down the hall for a drink, a phantom on crutches in the darkness. (He’d gone back to his room without the drink, and with guilt squeezing his insides again.)

He pulled the Bus to a jerky stop at the stoplight. This was it. The last thing between him and the main road.

The light turned green and he shakily accelerated, turning rather ungracefully but managing to stay in his lane, which was a plus. Jonas mentally added another point to his first-time-driving-again score.

After several turns, he was about ready to convince himself that this really was okay after all. His muscle memory was starting to kick in, and his braking and acceleration weren’t so shaky and halting. (Plus, his hands weren’t as sweaty.)

In hindsight, maybe he’d spoken—or thought—too soon.

At that moment, a semitruck passed in the left lane. Jonas held his breath. His vision wobbled a bit, sparking in and out of static, like a radio with a bad signal. He imagined that the truck was coming into his lane and ended up swerving dizzily, only to find that the truck was firmly where it belonged, and it was just the spinning of his head that was warping things. It was flashes—a semitruck; the shocked face of a man named Paul Whitford; Rhys crying and saying Jonas’s name over and over again, like the more times he said it, the more likely he’d be to get a response.

Was he dying? Or just having a panic attack? The horizon line was wonky, and Jonas desperately pleaded with himself not to pass out. He was so busy holding his breath and vise gripping the steering wheel as he watched the truck, trying not to give in to a flashback to the moment when everything had gone black, that he didn’t notice the red light in front of him.

When Jonas did notice the light, he panicked. Everything went from slow motion to 2x speed—he went for the brake with his right foot, which seemed abnormally sluggish for the speed at which everything was happening, while his left foot, the one belonging to the unwieldy prosthetic leg, somehow got stuck under the pedal. Shouldn’t have done this. Shouldn’t have done this, was all he could think, over and over as he slammed down the brake, pressing it as far as it would go with his shoelace caught around it and his prosthetic foot jammed up under it. His thoughts switched from Shouldn’t have done this to I’m going to die now; this is it to What if I lose my other leg? No-legs Jonas?

The van came to a stop, but not before bumping into the car in front of him, jolting it slightly.

And everything stopped but the ringing in his ears. Shouldn’t have done this.

2

brennan

Brennan hadn’t felt like going to work today.

Not that she felt like going to work any day. Her last summer before college was speeding by, the days blurring together, too slippery for her to grasp hold of the time and hold on.

Brennan would have spent the entire summer holed up in her room, writing. Instead, she was spending the summer working, trying to save money for college expenses. She glanced at the pennant she’d pinned to the wall above her desk in hopes of rousing some excitement—some sort of spark—for school. For college. SIUE. Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Brennan felt a little sick thinking about making it her new home. It was a nice school—really nice; on visits, she’d almost felt like she could belong. Back at home, though, the feelings faded in the wake of anxiety.

Brennan pulled her hair up into its usual knot on top of her head. She could almost hear her mother. I wish you’d actually put some effort into your hair, for work at the very least. Brennan, the disappointment. If she saw herself that way, would her parents see her that way too? Sometimes she wondered. She stared at the stubborn flyaways around her ears that refused to be tamed. It wasn’t that she didn’t care at all about the way she looked. She did care, somewhat. It was just that she had come to the conclusion, at the start of high school, that people weren’t worth her putting extra effort into dressing herself up and hiding who she really was. Her black leggings and T-shirts were easy to grab even on an anxious morning; they didn’t take thought. Thoughts were something that tended to cause trouble for Brennan. What if I look silly in this shirt? Is this skirt too short? Will people notice that my sweater has creases where it was folded?

Letting the thoughts lead her around by a leash hadn’t helped when she’d been a freshman, after all. After her family moved when she was in middle school, Brennan had left behind her school and the friends she had made. Instead, she was homeschooled. It was sort of a relief—Brennan had always found it hard to make friends, and after having all the effort she’d put into it at her old school wiped away, she was perfectly fine with being at home.

That was when her love of writing had started. She’d had so much time to write what she wanted and how she wanted. Her mind was filled with stories—with fantasy worlds, half-formed. Without a laptop, she wrote by hand, her handwriting growing more sloppy and slanted the faster she wrote, as she tried to keep up with her racing mind.

Then she’d been a freshman, they’d moved back, and her parents wanted her to go to actual school, as her then-best friend had called it. She was reenrolled at her previous school.

Brennan had been excited. She’d gotten new clothes, new binders, and new notebooks. She’d daydreamed for days about being able to see all her old friends. Then she’d shown up on the first day of class only to find that everything was different. Her friends had gone on with their lives without her, because of course they had. What had she expected? It wasn’t as if they’d just stop time in their sixth-grade year and everything would be the same now that Brennan was back.

Her best friend from the homeschool group her mom was a part of had enrolled in school as well. Brennan took comfort in this; at least she’d have a person. But when they showed up on the first day of school, her friend met someone new and they hit it off, immediately leaving Brennan the awkward plus one. You know, the one who had to walk ahead or behind when the sidewalk wasn’t wide enough for three people.

That year had been when the anxiety had started. The first time Brennan had had what she later discovered through some Googling must have been an anxiety attack, she had thought she was having a heart attack. She’d stood in the bathroom stall, back against the cold metal door, her breath coming quick and shallow, her hand on her chest in an effort to press away the deep ache and keep from falling apart. Can fourteen-year-olds have heart attacks? she wondered. And then I can’t get a breath. I can’t breathe. Eventually, it had settled in long term as a knot in her stomach, where it liked to make her feel like she was about to throw up. It gnawed at her stomach every day, for seemingly no reason. She was sick, she told her mom. You’re fine, her mom would say, after pitying Brennan initially. Brennan didn’t blame her; she had to be tough; had to force Brennan out of her comfort zone lest she become a total recluse. And so Brennan was grateful to her mom, at least somewhat—even when her mom forced her out of the house and into a job the last summer before her first year at college.

So Brennan scraped together all her anxiety, tied it into an ever-present knot of sick in her stomach, and went to work behind the deli counter of her local grocery store. Needless to say, she wasn’t one of those people who left for work excited, loving her job. By the end of the day, she’d be dirty and food splattered, feet aching from standing for hours with only one break. On top of that, she was usually starving, because the anxious demon in her stomach wouldn’t allow her to eat in public. What if you get food poisoning? She would counter with I can bring my own food, to which it would reply But you feel SICK. If you eat, you’ll THROW UP and everyone will think you’re D-I-S-G-U-S-T-I-N-G.

For now, Brennan tried not to focus on how she’d feel at the end of the day. She was too busy gathering strength for the beginning of it. And it took a lot of strength, carefully gathered, to push down the nausea at the back of her throat and get out of the car, slam the door, and speed walk into the store before she changed her mind and turned to run.

Currently, Brennan was trying to write a summary for a novel. There was only one problem: How could you write a summary for something when you didn’t know exactly where it was going? When you didn’t know the ending?

She was stuck. She’d written the beginning of Ing’s story about ten different times (in first person, third person, present, and past tenses) and she still couldn’t tell exactly what was going to happen. When are you going to just pick something and soldier on? asked Brennan’s friend, Emma, via Facebook Messenger. They’d met sophomore year. Emma liked what Brennan liked. Emma had her life on track—she wanted to be a chemist someday. Sometimes, Brennan wondered if she’d maybe thought some of Emma’s on-track-ness might rub off on her. Brennan hadn’t had any idea what she wanted to do until the last week of her senior year, and she still wasn’t entirely sure.

You should shadow your aunt, her mom had said. Brennan’s aunt (her mom’s youngest sister) had just recently graduated with a doctorate in physical therapy. It was an idea, and Brennan grabbed hold of it like a lifeline.

Really, Brennan didn’t see how choosing your major before going off and actually experiencing things made any sense. And sure, you could go undeclared, but that just felt like too much pressure for Brennan when everyone else seemed to know. Left and right, everyone at her high school was declaring majors. Brennan had felt like the weird one whenever people asked her what she was going to major in. She’d always tried to avoid the subject. She would have gone for English if she thought she could make a career in fiction writing. There was the problem, however, that Brennan couldn’t bring herself to post anything for people to actually read, other than the carefully culled bits of scenes that she sometimes sent to Emma when she was feeling especially brave. There was also the problem of the luck involved in writing—you might make it or you might not. Brennan didn’t know if she had what it took to make it, and no one else could tell her if she did or didn’t, since she wouldn’t let anyone actually see what she wrote.

Physical therapy was convenient because SIUE had a bachelor’s program to prepare for physical therapy school, and Brennan had a scholarship for SIUE.

Brennan had written to her aunt last night.

Dear Aunt Kim,

Too formal. Aunt Kim was family.

Hi, Aunt Kim!

Better; at least more friendly, like maybe she actually wasn’t nervous at all about shadowing.

I’m interested in pursuing physical therapy when I go off to college. I was wondering if I might be able to shadow you a few times before I go down to school for the fall. I’d love the chance to see what a physical therapist does, and how they interact with their patients.

That had seemed all right.

If you have any time available, please let me know. I’m off Mondays and Wednesdays, so those would be good, but if you need to do other days or times, you can let me know and I can try to work something out with my boss.

Hit send, Brennan whispered. Don’t freak out.

That had been when she messaged Emma, trying to distract herself by talking about the logistics of her novel. (Or story, because Brennan wasn’t quite ready to call it a novel. Something about that seemed too real.)

When are you going to just pick something and soldier on?

Emma, like Brennan, was an introvert, and so both were content to have occasional in-person meetings supplemented by hours of Facebook chatting.

Not sure,

Brennan had typed back, partially offended by Emma’s blunt questioning, and partially feeling called out because Emma was right.

I feel like I’m almost ready,

she finally responded.

I just want it to feel right, you know?

She couldn’t explain how important it was for Ing to be just right, because she was the antithesis—the opposite—of Brennan in every way. She was what Brennan wanted to be, if she were a character in a young adult novel.

She sent Emma little scenes sometimes, but never anything full—fleshed out. Emma would send them back, editing the little typos that her friend was very prone to making in her all-fire hurry to get the words from her head to her computer (it was so much easier typing than writing by hand, but sometimes Brennan’s hands still couldn’t keep up with her mind).

Today, for no particular reason, Brennan was especially nervous about going to work. Even the drive from her house into town hadn’t managed to calm her down. Your pulse is RACING, her mind said. CHECK IT. Brennan didn’t want to check her pulse. It felt like giving in. So she breathed in and breathed out and clenched the steering wheel so tightly her fingers cramped. Check. Your. Pulse. Her mind was screaming now, and her breathing was speeding up. She imagined that her mind was laughing at her, standing next to a sign proclaiming 34 Days Since Last Incident and preparing to flip it to zero.

Brennan pulled to a stop at the light. She adjusted the air conditioner so it was pointed straight at her face, cooling the heat in her cheeks and calming her a little. The voice was a little less loud, but still there. It can’t hurt, she argued with herself. It isn’t giving in. It’s just proving your mind wrong, because the pulse will be normal, and you’ll know you’re fine. She tried to focus on the color of the light. It was one of the busier intersections in town, and she knew the light would stay red for some time. She sighed, forcing herself to unclench