CHAPTER 27
OPHELIA
The screen lit my face as I crossed the quad, the cold biting through my sweater, and the wind making little rivers of leaves chase one another across the bricks. I glanced down, and everything inside me went tight when I saw who it was.
Mom.
Oh my gosh.
I froze in the middle of the walkway, my breath puffing out in uneven bursts. That sick, dropping feeling hit before the thought even formed—
Dr. Whitaker.
I’d forgotten.
Again.
My stomach twisted.
I swiped to answer on the second ring, speed-walking toward the student center…my words spilling out too fast. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—I forgot, I lost track of time—”
“Ophelia.” Her voice came through thin and high, like a piano wire pulled too tight.
“Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?
This is your third missed appointment. Third.
The office called me. Your advisor emailed me.
They could put you on medical leave if I push it.
And then you’ll be coming home. No arguments, no excuses… ”
“I’m fine,” I said quickly, my steps slowing as I tried to come up with the right words to convince her of that. “It’s not a big deal. I just—Class ran over one day, and then I’ve had lots of practices, and—”
“And what?” The wire in her voice tightened. “You promised you wouldn’t do this again.”
“I know.” The words scraped my throat on the way out. I stopped outside the building and leaned against the cold brick, trying to steady my breathing. “I know.”
“Then what is going on?” Every syllable landed like a small slap. “You were doing so well. We had a plan. You and I and Dr. Whitaker had a plan.”
I looked down at my shoes. Leaves stuck to the soles, wet and red like crushed petals. “Maybe I don’t need to go anymore,” I finally said, and even I heard how small it was. “I feel…good. Normal.”
“Normal?” The word cracked, like she might laugh or cry and couldn’t decide which. “You don’t get to declare yourself normal and fire a treatment team, Ophelia. That is not how this works.”
“I’ve been sleeping,” I said quietly. “And eating. I—”
“And.”
“I met someone.”
The second the words slipped out, I wanted to scrape them back with my nails. The silence that followed sounded like a building holding its breath.
When she finally spoke, the wire snapped. “Oh, Ophelia,” my mother said, and her voice was shaking now, not soft—angry. Scared. “Not again.”
Wind sliced across the quad, and I tucked my chin into my scarf, people streaming past with takeaway cups and bright orange beanies pulled low.
“I know,” I said, seeming not to have anything else to say to answer her. I took a deep breath, like I could pull bravery into my lungs with the air. “But this is different.”
“It’s always different, according to you.
” She talked right over me, the way she did when she thought she had to pour fear into me fast before I made a mistake.
“You convince yourself of it. And then I’m the one driving to a facility at midnight because you haven’t answered the phone in six hours and a boy’s name is written eight hundred times in a notebook. ”
“Mom,” I breathed, my cheeks burning in shame. “Please.”
For a second my mind drifted, one of those bright flashes that made me dizzy with how real it felt.
I saw the spiral of my notebook on his bedroom floor, my handwriting all messy and diagonal, his name looping through page after page until the margins were full.
I remembered the exact way the light had hit the ink, how small the letters looked when he crouched down to pick it up.
I remembered him closing the book and tossing it back on the bed, the sound a punctuation I could still hear. He hadn’t yelled. He hadn’t laughed.
I felt it now, how he’d cupped the back of my head, thumb pressing little circles into the place where my skull met my neck, the way his chest had risen under my cheek when I cried.
He’d told me I was perfect, like it was a fact and not something dangerously fragile.
For a beat, I almost believed it, and the shame that had been coiled in my ribs loosened enough that I could breathe.
“I’m not doing this again.” My mother’s voice cut through the memory. I blinked, shaking my head as if clearing water out of my ears, and forced myself back to the call.
I heard the sound of rustling papers in the background and the clatter of a pen. She was at her desk in her office, probably typing out an email to Dr. Whitaker as we spoke. “What about your medication…? Have you been taking it?”
I hesitated for a half second, the honest answer skittering through my throat—I hadn’t been bringing the meds with me to Matty’s house because I didn’t want him to see them, so I’d missed every dose this past week—but the thought vanished the second it arrived.
“Yes,” I lied, because the last thing I wanted was her driving up. And the truth was, I’d felt fine without it; being with Matty smoothed the jagged edges in a way the pills never had, like he was fixing what the doctors only managed to bandage.
“Every day?”
“Yes.”
“Show me the bottle when you get back to your dorm. I want to see the count.”
“I’m not a child.”
“You are my child,” she snapped, her voice flaring wide like a lit match.
“And forgive me for not trusting the version of you who thinks falling in love means she’s cured.
You want to stop therapy? Absolutely not.
You know what your diagnoses are. You know what Dr. Whitaker said about structure.
You don’t get to just…opt out because you think you found a boy. ”
“He’s not just a boy.” The words slipped out before I could stop them. “He—”
“Does he even know you exist?” My mother pounced. “And don’t lie to me.”
For once, my breath didn’t catch in my throat. I didn’t have to twist or invent or pretend. “Yes,” I said quietly, a tiny bloom of relief rising in my chest. “He knows.”
It shouldn’t have felt like victory. But it did…because for the first time in a long time, I could tell the truth.
Silence stretched across the line. I could hear my mother breathing, the faint click of her pen stopping.
Then her voice came back, slow and cold. “Just like Nico knew who you were,” she questioned sarcastically. “Just like Tommy…”
The words sank into me, heavy and familiar, and a tear slid down my cheek before I could stop it.
“He knows me, Mom,” I whispered. “And he loves me.”
She laughed then, the sound humorless. “This so-called boy who loves you,” she said mockingly. “What’s his name?”
“Matty,” I answered easily, a burst of warmth filling my chest just saying it. “His name is Matty.”
“Full name.”
“Matthew Adler.”
For a moment, all I could hear was the faint clatter of typing on her keyboard, the sound of her pulling up whatever record she was about to use against me.
There was silence for a second. “The football player?” she gasped incredulously.
I closed my eyes, hating how shocking it was for her to hear that.
Even though I understood.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“You expect me to believe that?”
Something in me snapped. With shaking fingers, I opened my camera roll and sent her the picture Matty had taken of us—his arm slung around me. He was staring at me with a soft smile on his face while I beamed at the camera.
Silence filled the line. For once, my mother didn’t have anything to say.
For about half a second.
“How long?” she finally snapped.
I swallowed. “A while.”
“How long?” she repeated, and I could imagine her eyebrows lifting, the tired, warning line of her mouth. “You missed your appointment today. You missed the one last week. You missed the group session on Sunday that you agreed to participate in. How long, Ophelia?”
“I don’t know. We—we didn’t make it official right away.”
It felt like forever, though. Even though it hadn’t been much time at all. Not compared to the months I’d spent watching him, memorizing the shape of his smile, tracing his name into the margins of my notebooks until it became part of me.
“You barely know him, and you’re throwing away the scaffolding we spent years building.” She laughed then, a low, joyless sound. “Of course you are.”
“That’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair is me being asked to watch you drown. Again.”
I flinched, stung. A couple kissed as they passed by, laughing, and the wind carried their breathless happiness right past me like a taunt.
“I’m not drowning,” I said. “I’m…breathing for the first time in my life.”
She didn’t soften. “Who is his doctor?”
“What?” I asked, confused.
“His doctor. His therapist. There’s no way that he isn’t seeking mental help if he’s dating you. I want names. I want to know he’s not enabling you.”
My throat closed. The world tilted cruelly, as if she’d just confirmed the worst thing I’d always suspected…that loving me meant there was something wrong with him, too. The sting hit so hard I couldn’t breathe.
When I finally managed to speak, my voice was barely a whisper. “He loves me,” I said again, shattered. “He really does.”
I thought of his voice again. It’s not wrong, Ophelia. It’s perfect. You’re perfect. It’s not wrong.
“He makes me better.”
“No,” she said quickly, like slapping a hand over my mouth. “He makes you feel better. That is not the same thing. You can be getting sicker while he masks the symptoms…until it’s too late.”
I stared at the scuffed toe of my boot. I could hear my mother riffling papers again, and the click-click of her pen.
“Okay,” she said, in that tight administrator voice, the one that meant a plan was forming into a weapon.
“Here is what’s going to happen. You are going to call Dr. Whitaker and beg for the next available slot.
You are going to apologize to the group and show up this Sunday.
You are going to text me a photo of your pill bottle with today’s date and the count.
And you are going to check in with me morning and night.
If any of this is not done, I will push the issue with the school and make sure you are placed on medical leave. ”
Ice slid down my spine. “That’s not fair.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s—because—” Because it felt like letting her put a leash around my neck. “Because there’s nothing wrong!”
“That boy is a trigger,” she hissed. “You don’t get to assign him a role that justifies whatever your brain wants next.”
“He’s not a trigger,” I said, and the ache in my chest went hot and messy…anger, shame, love—all of it knotted together. “He’s a person. He’s my person.”
“Stop,” she snapped, and I heard the tremor then, the one she tried to hide under orders. “Stop talking like that.”
I closed my eyes, another tear slipping down my face.
“You named me Ophelia,” I said, and my voice barely carried over the wind. “You said it was because you almost died giving birth to me. Because love can kill you. I know. I know what you think I am.”
Silence, except for her breathing.
“But I’m not walking into any rivers.”
“You never think you are,” she said, softer, and somehow that hurt worse. “You think you’re standing on the bank, testing the water with your toes. You tell me you’re sleeping better. You tell me you’re eating. And then…everything falls apart.”
I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted metal. A couple of girls walked past me, talking and laughing like they didn’t have a single worry.
The world seemed to keep moving for everyone else…while mine always telescoped down to this small, ugly place.
“I’m not that girl anymore,” I said. “I swear. I’m not.”
“Where are you right now?”
I swallowed. “Walking to eat.”
“With who?”
“By myself.”
“You shouldn’t be by yourself when you’re like this.”
“Like what?” It came out harsher than I meant.
“Elevated,” she said immediately. “Breathless. Defiant. That tone.”
I laughed once, because if I didn’t, it would turn into a scream and people would look. “That’s funny, because you just told me that me being with anyone was wrong and unbelievable. So you would think that me being alone would be acceptable to you.”
“That’s it. You’re coming home this weekend. We will reset. We will make a plan. I will drive up and get you tonight if I have to.”
“No.” My throat felt like it was closing. “I’m not leaving. I have the team’s first playoff game.”
“I think I’m beginning to understand why you tried out for the mascot in the first place,” she said coldly.
My insides clenched. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied, but it sounded weak even to me.
“You have twenty minutes to start working through the line items I gave you. If I don’t hear from you, I will call the school for a wellness check or come up there and drag you home. Do you understand me?”
I stared at the black glass of my phone screen, at the tiny, distorted version of myself reflected there—pale and wide-eyed, hair shoved into a messy bun, the scarf I’d stolen from Matty’s closet wrapped too tight around my neck.
“Ophelia.”
“I understand,” I said, feeling completely hopeless.
“Good,” she breathed, and then softer, the wire loosening for a heartbeat. “I love you. Even when you hate me.”
“This doesn’t feel like love,” I whispered.
She didn’t answer that. “Twenty minutes,” she repeated and hung up.