Avery, I felt like I'd taken five steps back in everyone's eyes. The furtive glances my way started up again, and the deafening silence when I walked into a room with more than one person in it made a reappearance. But I was really tired. I didn't feel like throwing myself into a hundred things. It hadn't helped before, so I really didn't see how it would suddenly cure me of missing Dev and Harm and the constant debilitating worry I felt for what might be happening to them. I took a couple days off of school to "sleep," but what I was really doing was staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out a plan to get myself under control. I flat-out knew my worrying wouldn't help anyone. Harm would lecture me about it if he knew I was letting it get the better of me, but I just felt so far from Dev and Harm that it consumed me. On day three of I-just-need-to rest, Sonya stayed home from school with me, and before I could say no, she'd pulled Gary into it as well.
