Prologue
OPHELIA
FOURTEEN YEARS OLD
Isat on the scratchy carpet just outside the door, my knees hugged to my chest so tightly they ached. The hall smelled like burnt coffee, and the air conditioner kicked on every eight minutes like clockwork, loud enough to almost drown out the voices behind the half-cracked door.
Almost.
“She says she loves him.” My mother’s voice sliced through the white noise, all edge and tension, like she was trying to cut the word out of her own mouth. “And not in a silly, teenage crush way. She says it like she means it. Like she’d die for him.”
My stomach clenched so hard I thought I might throw up right there on the beige carpet.
“Fourteen-year-olds have crushes all the time,” the therapist commented gently.
“She doesn’t just say she loves him,” Dad cut in, his voice tight, like he hated being here but hated what I’d done even more. “She followed him home. She wrote him letters. She got into his locker somehow. This isn’t a schoolgirl crush…It’s obsession.”
I wanted to disappear.
My fingers dug into the fabric of my jeans, trying to rip something—anything—to stop the memories from crawling out.
But they came anyway.
It was last Tuesday. I’d stayed late after class because I knew he always started his walk home fifteen minutes after the final bell.
I waited behind the vending machine, pretending to dig around for a dollar I didn’t have.
When he finally walked out, alone and laughing at something on his phone, I followed.
Just a few steps behind.
He never noticed me. I made sure of it.
I knew where he lived. Of course I did. I’d memorized the map the first time I looked him up online. But that day…I just wanted to see if he went straight home. If he smiled when he walked in. If his mom hugged him.
Because I wanted to be that. The one he smiled at. The one he let in.
When he opened the door and turned around like he sensed me…I ran.
“Her behavior is escalating,” Dr. Whitaker said then.
Calm. Measured. Like she was reciting a grocery list instead of dissecting my soul.
“We’ve spoken before about her diagnoses, but I think it’s time to review.
Obsessive love disorder is not officially recognized by the DSM-4, but the pattern is clear.
She’s exhibiting signs of borderline personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and an attachment disorder. ”
The word disorder lingered in the air like the smell of antiseptic.
I couldn’t see them from where I sat in the hallway, but I could picture it—the way my mother would fold her hands in her lap, nodding too quickly, eager to prove she understood.
My father’s jaw tight, his eyes on the floor.
Both pretending they hadn’t already failed whatever test this was.
They would be acting as if they knew exactly what she meant, as if there was a neat bullet point in my file that could sum it up: Age six, began exhibiting symptoms.
Disorder.
They made it sound so small. Contained. A thing that could be boxed up, labeled, and filed away.
They called it when I first exhibited symptoms.
I called it the moment everything started leaking through the cracks.
I dug my nails into my palms, wishing I could claw the words out of the air before they reached me, before they reminded me of what I already knew…I was broken.
“She manipulates people to feel close to them,” the therapist continued. “She imagines entire relationships that don’t exist. It’s not about the boy, really. It’s about control. About filling the hole inside her.”
I covered my ears…but it didn’t work.
“I found her notebook,” my mom said, and I could hear the sound of paper being shoved across a table. “Pages and pages of their name together. ‘Ophelia + Nico. Mrs. Nico Alvarez.’ His schedule, his mom’s phone number, even his little sister’s birthday.”
A tear slipped down my face as I pictured their hands on those pages, touching the parts of me I never meant to show.
They’d read it.
They’d seen it.
All those pages I’d filled in secret—every scrawl, every looping heart, every whispered fantasy that I thought would make the feelings smaller—now turned inside out under the fluorescent lights.
I could picture the therapist tilting her head, her lips pursed in clinical concern. My mother’s hands quivering just enough to seem like she cared…my father sitting in frozen silence.
The panic was everywhere, swarming under my skin. My heart hammered so loudly I thought they’d hear it through the door.
I wanted to claw my own chest open and scrape out whatever made me this way.
The words in the office dissolved, replaced by the scratch of a pen.
I wrote it all in purple pen. The glittery kind that smelled like grapes.
I thought it was romantic.
I thought maybe if I learned everything about him, like his favorite gum flavor (cinnamon), the way he always tied his left shoe first, the fact that he always let girls go first in line…he’d see me. He’d realize I was the one who understood him best.
It wasn’t stalking.
It wasn’t.
It was love.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
“She doesn’t see anything wrong with it,” my mom said, bringing me back to the present. And I could hear the way her voice shook with rage. “She thinks it’s sweet. She told me last night she thinks he’s her soulmate. Her fucking soulmate.”
I pressed my forehead to my knees, squeezing my eyes shut so tightly it made stars burst behind my lids.
They weren’t wrong.
They weren’t wrong about any of it.
And that’s what made it worse.
Because I had felt it. The second Nico smiled at me that first day of seventh grade—when he passed me the pencil I dropped and said “Here you go”—I’d felt it in my chest. That thud. That zing. That connection.
It wasn’t just a crush. It was an obsession.
And I couldn’t turn it off.
“Has she ever hurt anyone?” the therapist asked.
“No,” my dad said quickly, too quickly. “But she’s hurting herself.”
“I think we need to consider a more structured environment. At the very least, intensive therapy. This isn’t something she’s going to outgrow.”
My stomach twisted even more. The air seemed to leave the hallway all at once, replaced by a low hum that pressed against my ears. Structured environment. The words felt heavy, important…like they were supposed to fix me, even though I already knew nothing could.
It was my sentence.
I didn’t know what a “structured environment” was, but it sounded a lot like a prison. And maybe I deserved it.
Because love wasn’t supposed to feel like this.
It wasn’t supposed to hurt this much.
The room blurred, and suddenly I was somewhere else again.
I stole Nico’s hoodie once.
He left it in the locker room during gym, and I snuck in during lunch and slipped it into my bag. It smelled like his shampoo, minty and clean, and I wore it to bed for a week straight.
Every night, I pretended he gave it to me.
That he whispered I looked pretty in it.
That he missed me when I wasn’t around.
But one day, Laura saw me wearing it. She was a girl in his friend group. She pointed and laughed and said, “Why are you wearing Nico’s hoodie?”
I said, “He gave it to me.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re such a freak.”
I sucked in a breath like surfacing too fast, the pain in my chest blooming so violently I thought it might split me open.
I was a freak.
A broken, twisted, obsessive freak.
And I hated myself for it.
Not because I didn’t believe in love…I did. I still did, even now, sitting outside this horrible office with my whole life exploding inside. But because I knew deep down he had never looked at me the way I looked at him.
He never would.
“I want to be clear,” the therapist said then.
“This isn’t her fault. These are the symptoms of deeply rooted mental health disorders.
With the right therapy, medication, and structure, she can learn to manage the impulses.
But she’s going to need support. And patience.
And for you both to stop reacting with disgust.”
There was a pause.
“Right,” my mom said flatly. “Support. Patience. For the daughter who makes up imaginary relationships with boys and calls it love.”
That word again.
Love.
It made me feel like I’d swallowed glass.
Because what I felt…it wasn’t cute.
It wasn’t butterflies or blushes or locker notes.
It was hunger.
It was loneliness with teeth.
And now they were talking about meds and structure and maybe even facilities, like I was a problem to be managed. A bomb they were scared might go off again.
The therapist kept talking, and my mom’s tone turned cold, precise. “We’ll do whatever we need to,” she said. “We can’t live like this anymore.”
My dad sighed, the sound of a man who was already done with the situation, and wanted to leave.
But I didn’t hear the rest.
Not really.
Not over the blood rushing in my ears and the echo of my own voice, remembered from just two nights ago when I told Nico I loved him.
Not to his face, of course. I whispered it to the picture I’d printed off the school website.
The one where he was mid-laugh on the soccer field, wind tugging at his hair.
I’d pressed my lips to it.
Called it our secret.
Now that secret felt diseased.
I jumped as my mom slammed the car door hard enough to make the frame shake. She didn’t look at me, just stormed up the porch steps, her heels striking the wood like gunshots. My pulse tripped over itself, dread tightening my throat as I followed.
The keys jingled violently as she jammed them into the lock, muttering under her breath. I hesitated on the porch, glancing back at the car.
My dad was still in the driver’s seat, hands slack on the steering wheel, his eyes fixed straight ahead. The engine idled softly, exhaust curling into the cold air. He didn’t look at me. Didn’t look at anything. Just sat there, like if he stayed still long enough, the whole day might erase itself.
I’d lost him. I could see that.