It’s Wednesday. As promised, Dr Reeves drops by for a coffee. She stays forty-five minutes. We talk about what I’m eating and how I’m sleeping. I decide not to tell her I spent yesterday in my pyjamas, building castles out of cookies and spit.

After we’re done discussing Mom, the weather, what the world would look like without worry, she reminds me how to breathe, which is much easier to forget than you’d think.

She’s gone approximately six minutes before I hear the squeak of the letterbox.

Neighbour,

Impromptu Eric Rhodes Day party at my house Friday night, 7.30 p.m.

Hope you can make it. Parent-free place! There will be beer!

Thank you, Jesus, for weekends.

Luke

Oh. God.

This is not good.

This. Is. Not. Good.

Beyond the fire and brimstone, everyone has their own idea of hell. Shopping, doing tax returns, fish-nibbling-at-your-feet spa treatments, or having to spend an eternity surrounded by people who click pens.

I screw up the neatly folded note I just found on my doormat and hurl it down the hall. I stare at it, lying in the middle of the floor, a ticking time bomb loaded with perfect handwriting. Then of course I stomp over, snatch it up, and dunk it in the trash, because I can’t handle both impending party and mess stress right now.

I do laps. Walk in circles around our kitchen, being careful not to step on the pale beams of light the mid-morning sun is throwing through the window.

A party. With beer. Next door. This is my hell. We are at DEFCON 1. I can’t think of anything worse. Oh no, wait. Yes, I can. A party with beer next door and me being home alone.

There are going to be people from my former high school fifty yards away. Tons of people. Flooding out of his front yard and into mine. I know my high school career was shorter than the lifespan of a fruit fly, but what if someone remembers me? What if someone remembers this is where I live? What if they want to come over? What if they want me to come out?

My head is about to explode and decorate the kitchen with pieces of petrified brain.

Drunk teens spewing vodka shots in Mom’s rose bushes, trashing the street, probably getting high. The police will come. I saw something like this unfold in a movie once.

‘Norah. Norah!’ A familiar voice infiltrates my cyclone of despair.

‘Mom?’ I look down at the phone receiver in my hand, Mom’s tinny tones still emanating from it.

I don’t even remember dialling.

‘Mom. Mom.’ I jam the phone against my ear. ‘Mom. He’s having a party Friday night. What do I do?’ If she were here, I’d be clinging to her shirt collar.

‘What?’

‘It’s Eric Rhodes. There’s going to be beer.’

‘Sweetheart . . . Eric Rhodes is . . . dead.’

‘What? No.’ Frustration makes me flap. ‘I know that.’ Eric Rhodes, the founder of our small town, has been dead about a billion years. This coming weekend is something we do to celebrate his birthday. No, not we. Not I. Not ever.

My tongue is twisted up, feels ten times too big in my mouth. It’s probable I’m not making much sense. Panicked, not to be confused with intoxicated, though the two often present as something very similar.

I take a breath. ‘The new boy next door,’ I say like a kindergartener learning language. ‘He’s having a party Friday night. He invited me. There will be beer. He said that, wrote it on the invite . . . in perfect handwriting.’

‘You got asked to a party?’ my mom exclaims in a voice that implies she’s going to magnet my invite to the fridge door the second she gets home. She’s completely missed the point.

‘Mom.’

‘Right. Sorry. They’ve got me on some crazy painkillers over here. An hour ago I swear I was floating above my bed.’ She giggles.

Oh. This is so not good. Well, at least not for me. For her it sounds pretty euphoric.

‘Mom, you’ll be home by Friday, right?’ Oh God, please let her tell me she’ll be home by Friday.

Pause. Longer pause. My hair is going grey.

‘The doctor that came to see me this morning – he said I might be here until Monday.’

My nails dig into my palm. I squeeze until the taut flesh on my knuckles feels like it’s going to split. ‘He went on and on and on and on about putting pins in my bone. Said something science-y about my wrist healing wrong,’ Mom slurs, and she either swallows water or slurps back some drool. I jam my fist into my mouth and bite down. I absolutely refuse to whimper into the phone.

My mom is hurt. She does not need me to fall apart. Plus, I don’t want to freak her out. She sounds pretty jazzed, and I remember reading about this girl who had a heart attack and died while she was high. That probably works differently with medical highs. Legal drugs. Pain meds . . . but then, you can get addicted to pain meds. I hope that doesn’t happen—

‘Sweetheart? Are you still there?’

Mind melt. There’s too much to think about.

‘I’m here.’ I slam the heel of my hand into my forehead, the equivalent of spanking my brain for misbehaving. ‘My head’s a mess. I don’t know what to do about the party.’

‘Well, I think the first thing you need to do is take some deep breaths.’ She tries to walk me through what a deep breath should sound like, but all I hear is her hyperventilating. Think Darth Vader in labour. Still, it works because my OCD uses my lungs to correct her off-kilter pace.

‘Remember what Dr Reeves says about being unable to control everything? Norah, honey, my sweet baby girl, I’m afraid this is beyond your control.’

The beyond-your-control speech is my least favourite of all the pep talks. It’s the hardest one to corrupt. It’s immortal, the adamantium of arguments. There is no ‘but . . . but . . . but’–ing my way out of this one. Sometimes, things are going to happen and the only way out is through. Like childbirth; it doesn’t matter how afraid you are, that baby has to be born.

I sit on the kitchen floor. Mom’s voice turns to whale song as she talks me down off this impossibly high life ledge. At least she’s a smart stoner.

We talk for two hours, and she convinces my broken mind that I am safe. Even if the party turns into the hybrid love child of freshers’ week and spring break, it won’t affect me if I just stay locked in my room and ignore it. This is a wave I have to ride, but at least I can do it buried in a blanket fort.

It’s a good talk, a little wordy, a lot off-topic. But when the advice comes, it’s easy, obvious. Like always. And, like always, by the end of it, I’m wishing I could have slowed my mind down sooner and processed this like a normal person. That’s the dream.

‘One last thing before you go,’ Mom says. ‘A boy asked you out?’

I look over at the trash can, envision the crumpled piece of paper turning to rot in yesterday’s garbage.

I don’t know.

There was no time to analyse that. But there should have been. There should have been excitement. Excitement should have been bigger than fear. I wonder how many of my former friends would have been freaking out over being invited somewhere by a boy instead of sinking in possible party-apocalypse scenarios. Depression blows on the back of my neck, and I feel cold to my core.

It can’t come in.

I force a smile and clear the clump of sadness from my throat. ‘I mean, technically, yes. But it’s a party, with lots of people. So does that technically mean he’s asked out everyone he sent an invite to? There are many subcategories to consider.’

‘Wow. Dating has subcategories these days?’

‘Of course. God, Mom, sometimes it’s like you’re a dinosaur and we don’t even watch TV.’ She laughs. Really laughs. It’s hard not to notice that she enjoys the normal snippets of conversation we share. So few and far between, they really stand out.

I spend the rest of the day trying to finish an English paper.

Yeah, right.

The flashing cursor on my blank page blinks at me with a sense of urgency. I’m supposed to be dissecting the morals and motives of Lady Macbeth, but my brain is too stewed to translate Shakespeare.

I’m forever an overachiever . . . unless there is something else to think about. You can chart my bad months by checking out my report cards. Like the semester Mom thought we were going to have to move and my grades slipped.

I’d love to see out my homeschool career with a 4.0. It sounds odd, cruel even to suggest, but shining in one of the recesses of my mind is the idea that being intelligent will force people to see past my crazy parts. Maybe even make them obsolete. I don’t know. That’s probably dumb, but no one remembers Charles Darwin as the guy who suffered from panic attacks. Ludwig van Beethoven isn’t the bipolar composer, he’s the composer who was bipolar. I’m sure it’s not as simple as all that. I just want to have proof that I can think straight, that I am more than the girl who believes that odd numbers will cause a catastrophe.

Unfortunately, right now studying is about as likely as skipping to the store.

Instead, I hack at my keyboard until my restless mind composes a passable tune before I drag my butt off to bed.