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“We’ll work our way down,” she says, glancing over her shoulder as I jog up the stairs behind her. “Room by room. They’ve got to be here somewhere.”

She offers to cover the third floor on her own since there’s nothing up there besides the home gym and a small washroom. I start by retracing my steps to my room and double-check the bed before tearing through the closet. I keep cooing and calling the cats’ names the whole time.

I don’t know how Priya and Shal aren’t awake now. I’d be worried they’re having some sort of prolonged negative reaction to the weed if there were space left in my brain to worry about anything but the cats.

I leave my bedroom looking like it got ransacked and sprint across the hall to check the guest bathroom. My anxiety is churning up gory images of the cats drowning in the bathtub. I know I didn’t even take a shower last night, but my brain tries to tell me I must have been so high I don’t remember going for a soak and deciding to plop the cats in for a rinse.

“It could happen,” I tell myself even as I’m peering into the empty tub.

I yank open all the bathroom cupboards for good measure and check behind the thick, dark green drapes framing the window, but there are no cats to be found.

When I dash out of the bathroom, I find Andrea careening towards me.

“I did my room and this bathroom,” I tell her.

She nods and comes skidding to a stop before pulling open the door of a walk-in storage closet and disappearing inside. We race through the rest of the second floor, tag-teaming each door and shouting confirmation when we’ve cleared a room.

I even crack open the door of the bedroom Shal is sleeping in and find her sprawled on top of the blankets fully dressed, with an arm slung over her eyes to block out the sunlight streaming through the open curtains. I whisper-shout the cats’ names and pad inside to do a quick sweep of the closet. Shal mumbles something as I’m retreating back to the hall before letting out a loud snore and shifting to nuzzle her face against her pillow.

By the time we make it back down to the ground floor, my breath is coming in short bursts that leave me so dizzy I have to stand gripping the staircase banister as I sway on my feet for a second. Andrea is already bounding off through the house, leaving me to take over the kitchen and foyer. Once the room has stopped spinning, I get started on examining every possible nook and cranny a hairless cat could have wriggled its way into.

I can’t stop picturing what Sandy’s face will look like when I tell her the cats are gone. My dad’s boss is forever going to see him as ‘that guy whose daughter lost my wife’s beloved pets and crushed her spirit beyond repair.’ I’m pretty sure smashing every sculpture in this mansion would have been a better mistake than losing the cats.

I can’t even look after two tiny animals for the summer. How the hell am I supposed to manage starting university and living life as an actual adult?

I slam the door of the cupboard under the kitchen sink shut so hard it rebounds and smashes into my shin. I yelp and bend down to rub my leg, sniffing to hold back tears that have nothing to do with the pain.

My therapist is going to tell me losing the cats has nothing to do with me starting university, but right now, I don’t care about all the mantras and mental health exercises I’ve spent the past five years stuffing my head with.

When it comes down to it, I’m just not ready for life the way everyone else seems to be. It’s like other people slid into existence with a set of instructions already encoded into their brains that I’ve spent the past eighteen years trying to learn through trial and an overwhelming amount of error.

I can’t even have basic conversations without getting everything wrong and ending up exhausted by the end. It all just takes so much effort, like I’m stuck in analogue mode and everyone else has gone high-speed digital.

I think it’s possible you might be neurodivergent.

My therapist’s voice rings out above all the swirling thoughts in my head, the words making my already shallow breath freeze in my lungs.

It’s been over a year since she first said that to me, and the statement still hits like a bucket of ice water pouring down my back. She always asks if I want to talk about what that means or how it might be affecting me, but I tell her ‘maybe next time’ every single time.

Therapy was supposed to help me feel normal. I don’t want another label like ‘anxiety disorder’ slapped on my forehead so it can glare at me every time I look in the mirror.

I don’t want another word for how different I am, for how freaking hard it is to get something—anything—right.

I turn to grip the edge of the sink, the porcelain cool under my fingers as I curl them around the lip of the basin. My shoulders are shaking, and I taste bile in the back of my throat.

“I’m gonna be sick,” I mutter, bracing for the first heave.

“Naomi!”

I look up and find Andrea skidding into the kitchen, her socked feet sliding on the tiled floor. Her eyes are wide, and most of her hair has escaped from her bun to hang in wild, burgundy-tinged tendrils down her back.

“Come here!”

She beckons with a finger before careening back out of the kitchen. I push the nausea down enough to follow her, not daring to trust the excitement in her voice, not when I’ve already resigned myself to the tragic demise of both cats.

I find Andrea standing at the foot of the couch where Priya is still lying with a pink blanket covering her body from head to toe. The soft rise and fall of the fabric assures me I don’t have to worry about killing my best friend too, even though she sure is sleeping like the dead today.

“What is it?” I whisper to Andrea, who’s now grinning at me like I should be jumping for joy.