Chapter 1 1.
I’d give anything to be the girl people see when they look at me: Chase Ohara, student council president, captain of the best cross-country team in the state, and clear favorite of her teachers. Expected valedictorian, voted most likely to succeed. A future with her last name etched in gold atop skyscrapers, multimillion-dollar bonuses, Congress or the Supreme Court perhaps. Or insider trading scandals if she goes astray.

They look at me like I have this—this power. Like I’m in control.

What they don’t know: It’s 2 AM on the fifth night in a row that I haven’t been able to sleep and the world feels like it’s spinning away from me. I get up from bed and the ground sways.

I think about that Chase, the one people think they know. I used to feel like her, or more like her. Like I could do anything, be anything. Like life was laid out for the taking and all I had to do was reach.

Now I reach for the Altoids tin in my bag, shake it. I’m low, but not desperately so. I pop it open and drop a small pink pill onto my tongue, swallow it dry.

At my desk I wait for it to take effect, hoping for the rush, that small burst of electricity. For it to lend me its strength as I stare past my laptop screen to the printout pinned to my wall. “It’s not the end of the world,” my mom had told me when she found out, but she didn’t know what she was talking about. “We won’t tell your dad.”

I told him myself on our next weekend together. Dad remained silent, but his expression said it all, and in that instant, I knew I wasn’t the girl people see when they looked at me, the one who could do anything, be anything. Or at least I wasn’t that person to my father—not anymore.

I slip out quietly to avoid waking Mom and my little sister, Aidan, and hit the pavement for a run. All the houses are shuttered and dark, the streetlights alone guiding me under the black sky. I like the solitude, no music, just the strike of my heel against concrete. I run three miles before my mind calms to a soft hum and it’s just me and the night, the early November air cold against my skin. I’m not Chase Ohara, future power broker, but just me, a girl alone, as lost as everyone else.

But then I turn onto a bigger street and see a large grocery truck make a tight corner ahead. An image flickers into mind. It only lasts half a second, but it’s mesmerizing—I can see myself taking a single misstep, my foot striking the edge of the curb at just the wrong angle.

I trip.

Fall in front of the truck.

And I’m no longer Chase Ohara, expected valedictorian, voted most likely to succeed. No longer obsessed with SATs, grades, Stanford.

That glittering future with my name atop skyscrapers, gone. This pain inside me, gone.

I let the truck fly past me, feel a blast of cold air in its wake, and I’m left unsteady on my feet. I try to push on, shake the image from my mind and force my legs to move, but at the end of mile six, my chest seizes. Hands on thighs, I can’t drink in enough air to keep the bile from burning its way up.

Coughing, I collapse to the curb less than two miles from my house, head hung heavy between my knees. I walk the rest of the way back, panting the whole time.

Sometimes, I think there isn’t enough air in this town. Not enough air in the world for a girl like me.