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I shrug and get on with the assignment, telling him, “It is, and the thing I find most peaceful about this is the troll’s bulging eye.”

He can’t hold back his smirk, which causes me to smirk too, and before I know it, we are laughing.

“This is what you spent the last hour doing?”

I shrug. “It was a stupid assignment anyway.”

His smile lingers for a moment longer as if my making a complete joke out of this class is entertaining. His attention drifts back to my painting, and he looks it over for a moment before shaking his head at the absurdity of it all. “His eye looks possessed by the devil.”

“We’re supposed to be practicing positivity, remember?”

“Okay,” he says, stretching out the word as he tries to conjure one nice thing to say, and I take pleasure in how difficult this task is for him. It takes a moment, but he finally gets there. “Your, um, brush strokes are ... well, they’re smooth, and the paint doesn’t look goopy.”

My brows quirk. “You’re horrible at this.”

“Well, you did me no favors by painting”—he gestures toward my canvas—“that.”

“Your turn,” I say as I place it back onto the easel, but he hesitates. “Come on, show me.”

He picks up his work and passes it over to me facedown, muttering, “I didn’t think we were going to be sharing these.”

When I flip it over, I have to bite my cheek to keep myself from smiling. He’s fidgeting so hard that I get the feeling he actually took this seriously.

“I’ve never been really good at art,” he defends.

Gee, I couldn’t tell.

It legit looks like the drawings I used to do in kindergarten. He’s painted the Puget Sound, with brown wooden boats and tiny black stick figure people standing on them. But the kicker is the bright yellow sunshine that has an actual smiley face.A smiley face.

“Can I ask one question?”

“I’d rather you didn’t?”

“Okay cool,” I respond. “Why is the sun smiling?”

“I don’t know. Because we never see it, so it’s exciting when we do.”

I nod because I get it. “What do you find most peaceful about this place?”

He shrugs as if it’s no big deal, but he’s still fidgeting, giving himself away. “I guess it reminds me of my dad.”

I scan his painting once more before piggybacking off the compliment he gave me, saying, “I like your use of brush strokes and how the paintissuper goopy. The texture gives it more dimension.”

“Whatever.” He swipes the canvas out of my hands and places it on the easel. “You need to throwthataway,” he says, pointing back to my picture. “It’s creeping me out.”

HARLOW

Brushing my teeth, I stare down at the sink, watching the minty blue toothpaste being washed away into the drain.

There’s a heaviness today.

I can feel it inside me, like someone dumped a barrel of bricks into my hollow body. It’s an ache that’s impossible to ease; an agony to be weathered, not subdued.

The day has just begun, and I’m already wishing it would end.

I cup my hand beneath the running water—slurp, swish, spit. Morning routines are simple enough, but when they feel like climbing mountains, the effort doesn’t seem worth it. I want to crawl back into bed, but that isn’t allowed here at the Hopewell Recovery Center.

Hopewell.