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eyes shut, hoping that when she opened them, she would miraculously be back home. Home was where the morning light wove softly through the blinds and onto the poster of a girl in a white ruffled dress with flowers strewn across her chest. In this room, the steel mesh stopped the light, allowing only a small fraction to push its way through the filter. But even though she hated it here, did she really want to go back home?
    Anna thought back to a year ago, when she bought that poster. During a trip to the Met, she got into a huge fight with her parents in the gift shop. She wanted to buy a poster of The Kiss , but they forbade it. Her mother said that a painting of the man and woman embracing like that was inappropriate for a girl her age, even vulgar. They picked out Mäda Primavesi, and when she came home from school one day, she found that the framed poster was hanging on the wall in her room.
    At first, she hated it. Mäda reminded her of the control her parents lorded over her. But after a week of staring at the portrait as she lay in bed, she started to like the girl. She was supposed to be young and innocent, but the way she stood—her feet spread wide, with one hand on her hip, the veiled look of defiance in her eyes—made Anna start to admire her.
    Mäda wasn’t here, though. Nothing was here except sickness and grief.
    She opened her eyes and found that she hadn’t been magically transported anywhere.
    She lost the will to get out of bed. Nausea gripped her belly. The hopelessness swallowed her up.
    Then she realized it was Wednesday.
    Her parents were coming to visit.
    The panic hit the same way it always did. First the dizziness set in, like she was falling backward a hundred times over. She sat up in bed and looked straight ahead at the desk in the corner to steady herself, trying desperately to stop it before it got worse.
    It was futile, though, and the terror wreaked its havoc on her. Her heart thumped so violently that it made her body shake with each beat. Her hands frantically gripped the sheets on either side of her. With each quick breath, the sick feeling in her stomach spread outward to her thighs, her chest, her arms. She was drowning, but instead of water rushing into her lungs, it was terror.
    She sat in silence.
    It kept getting worse.
    She couldn’t stop it.
    The sheet she was strangling became soaked in her sweat. She shifted position, but it had no effect. The feeling kept going as she sat there, still and silent. She would have done anything to escape, but it didn’t matter if she left the room, or even if she left the ward. She couldn’t escape the inside of her head.
    After a few minutes of enduring the torture, her heartbeat slowed and the sick feeling dulled. But it could come back. She was relieved when she started shaking, because that meant it was over for now. She pulled her legs up, wrapping her arms around them and hugging them close to her body. She wanted to lie down and go back to sleep, but her parents would be there soon and she needed to get ready.
    She forced herself out of bed. The coolness of the floor attacked her bare feet and made her whole body shake even more violently. She grabbed her robe from her closet, slipped into her flip-flops and walked into the bathroom. At least she didn’t have to share one. Everyone here had a private room.
    It was so cold and she couldn’t get into the hot shower fast enough. She stood still, letting the water run over her for a few minutes before shampooing her hair. The warmth felt good. It was always so cold here; the shower was the only place she ever felt warm. She let herself cry for a bit. The shower was also the only place she truly had any privacy.
    Afterward, she dressed herself in jeans, a fitted blue T-shirt, and her gray hoodie, even though it wouldn’t be enough to fend off the cold. She examined herself in the mirror as she pulled her long, slightly damp hair back into a ponytail, letting some of the shorter pieces in