Page 34 of My Heart to Find

“It does.” He laughs, but I know that laugh and it’s not a positive one. “Anyway, that’s enough of us feeling sorry for ourselves. What’ve you got planned this week? Any new pages for the comic?”

I try to concentrate on my drawings, my art, try to talk to Raymond about it, but my heart’s just not in it now. I can’t concentrate on it. Only my illness—and how I’ve only got another three months of money left for treatment. I’ve been trying not to think about what will happen when the money runs out.

I’m going to get worse again. I know it.

I always try not to think about the times the brain inflammation and Lyme have been really bad. How dark it can make me feel. Howhopeless. Way more than it is now, and this is bad enough. But right before we decided to go privately, I really was at the end of my tether, suicidal. The memory of those feelings and thoughts are a black pit inside me. The fear of it happening again is enough to scare me so much that I have nightmares about it happening, and I wake up soaked in sweat, heart pounding, convinced that this world is all too difficult for me.

*

DAD ARRIVES HOME, TWOdays later than expected and a week since his last stay with us. Whenever Dad’s here, we eat at the table. Sitting there, on a chair that I don’t feel is safe, so close to my family—people who I know are safe, but the OCD tells me aren’t—has me nearly shaking. But I have to do it. I have to try and be normal. Dad wants to see progress being made. Wants to know that him and mum selling their shares of the family business was worth it, else he gets annoyed. So, I have to pretend I’m better. Or getting better, at least.

“Pass the salt, please,” Dad says, eyes on me. He’s got the same eyes as Esme, dark blue and piercing, the type that make you go cold if you look directly in them. I’ve got Mum’s eyes—dark brown. But Mum’s eyes look healthier than mine. There’s life in hers.

I look toward the saltshaker, but Mum grabs it for me and slides it across the table to Dad. She always tries to help me like that.

Dad doesn’t say anything, just seems to take forever grinding sea salt crystals onto his dinner. It’s vegetable lasagna—what used to be my favorite. For dessert, we’ve got the strawberry mousse that Esme made in her food tech lesson earlier today. My stomach feels heavier just thinking about all that cream. I find dairy harder now, especially in large quantities.

“What film are we going to watch tonight?” Esme asks, shoveling lasagna into her mouth, because it’s tradition that on the days Dad returns we all watch a film together after dinner.

My stomach roils at the hours I’ll have to be brave for. The four of us crammed in the living room together—it’s a small room. And Riley will be there too. Mum tries to keep him away from me, but last time he sniffed my foot and I panicked.

“You choose,” Dad tells her, smiling.

He doesn’t smile at me like that now, and it makes me cry. Because I’ve broken him, made him like this. My illness causes him stress, and he just wants me better, and I’m trying, but I can’t get better quickly enough to please him.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Cara

“HI.” IT FEELS STRANGEtalking to Damien on the phone the next day, knowing that he’s interested in my best friend. That I blew my chance with him. That all I can be is his friend.

But a friend is better than nothing.

“All right?” he asks. His voice sounds richer on the phone, somehow, like a dial’s been turned up.

“So, did you find a mutual friend with Marnie?”

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