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Every time I thought about the promise I made, my heart swelled with excitement, constricting my airways.

What if he didn’t mean what you think he meant?

“What then, Barnabas?” I cut a few more rhubarb stalks, removed the large leaves and added the stalks to my basket.

My pet looked over from where he sniffed an interesting patch of earth, cocking his antlered head at me.

“You’re right. Then I will at least know. No, let me get a few more. Nobody likes a dry rhubarb pie.”

He turned his focus back on the earth before him, digging with his front paws and pulling out a fat worm.

“Good boy,” I said and reminisced about Nikolai calling him that last weekend.

“I just want to be called a good boy, too. Is that too much to ask?”

Barnabas huffed, half the worm dangling from his mouth.

“Right? It’s a reasonable wish to have for a four-hundred-thirty-three-year old.”

Eleven

Nikolai

BackinVeitsreuth,Iwasn’t sure anymore that my mind hadn’t been playing tricks on me.

Ithadfelt real. But what if my brain had invented Jules as some sort of trauma relief?

Your brain is like that.

It would make sense, too. Jules had been too cute, too perfect, and too kind to me to be real.

To take my mind off him, I threw myself into training. I still wasn’t on the roster, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be my best.

I destroyed myself at the gym when I wasn’t on the ice or taking walks in the court gardens, whichsort ofpassed as a forest. Well, it did for me, and I loved colouring in another of the tree outlines on the workout tracker Dr Schmidt had given me. My brain saw right through his scheme, but it still worked every time. The buzz I got when I managed to keep my streak was a little embarrassing.

I also picked up a book, a queer romance book with an interspecies love story, from the Little Free Library we had at the rink. Ollie was such a caring person. I bet he left it in there. Leave it to him to send treats for the team and stock our free library. Damn. It felt like it had been ages since I’d hung out with Bo and Ollie or any of my teammates.

Two days before the game, I had another appointment with my neuropsychiatrist. For the entire bike ride through the city on my way there, I contemplated telling him about Jules. But in the end, I chickened out.

I didn’t want him to think I was so desperate that I’d invented an imaginary friend.

“Hello, Mr Lorenz,” he said and invited me into his office. “Please take a seat.”

“Thank you.”

Schmidt settled in his blue office chair, leaned back, and smiled at me.

“How have you been?”

A reluctant grin spread on my face. I tried to stop it but couldn’t. Not that I thought he’d take me less seriously if I grinned, but a persistent voice in my head kept telling me that I was depressed and depressed people didn’t smile.

When I’d said the same thing on the phone to my mother she had called me out on my ableist bullshit.

My grin widened.

I love my mum.

“I’ve actually been doing pretty well.”