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Please let her be lucid. Let her behere.

She’s lying on her bed, wearing a shirt so big she’s almost lost inside of it.

He goes up to her bed, barely breathing.

Suddenly she sits up. And her dark eyes brighten when she sees him, and she smiles.

“Hello there, Jordan Hassan,” she says.

He’s so relieved that he feels his knees almost buckle. If he could pull her into his arms, he would.

“You’re okay,” he whispers. “You’re here.”

CHAPTER 65

“You’re here,” Jordan said for the third time at least, and I could hear the warmth in his voice.

“Tada!” I said, like I’d just completed a magic trick.

He laughed. “I’m so happy you’re back.”

WasIhappy to be back, though? That was harder to say.

I was tired of being locked up. Tired of my shapeless clothing and laceless shoes and the Almighty Schedule and the chemistry experiments of my medications.Oh, Seroquel makes your tongue twist around inside your mouth? Let’s try Latuda for a while!

And this world just felt so much dimmer, so much more muted than the other one. Like all the life and color had been drained out of it. Jordan Hassan was the one ray of brightness.

I didn’t mind coming back tohim.

“I was sorry we didn’t get to see the movie the other day,” he said.

I remembered trying to make myself look pretty—or at least bordering onnormal—and felt a cold shiver of embarrassment. Why had I bothered to pretend? What was the point?

At least Indy hadn’t seen me. He always shouted “Sanity drag!” whenever he caught anyone trying to dress like they cared about themselves or their lives. “Why showertoday,” he’d say, “when you’re just going to have to do it again tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I was bummed, too,” I said. “But I was, um, called away.”

Jordan sat down on Sophie’s bed, which was empty because she was getting ECT.

He smoothed her blanket and frowned, and then his mouth opened and closed a few times. Either he was doing an imitation of a fish underwater or else he was trying to decide whether or not to say something.

“What?” I said.

“Can you go to the castle on purpose?”

Maybe the question shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. “No,” I said.

But recently, I’d noticed, when I felt the first tugs of that other world pulling at my mind, I could sort of …lean into it. It was hard to describe, but sometimes if I breathed right, the spiral could suck me down faster.

Away, away from all of this.

“Because sometimes,” Jordan says, “it seems like when you’re threatened, or scared, you sort of go—”

I cut him off. “Do me a favor, and don’t pretend you’re a shrink. You’re a college student. A psych major.” I didn’t mean to be harsh, but it was true.

“Sorry.” He jiggled his legs a little. Ran his fingers through his dark hair. He seemed almost nervous.

“Do you have another question for me?” I asked.