21. This Is Trying Everything
Mina
Schizophrenia.
I’d never expected that word to make me so hopeful, especially not so soon after Mom had invoked its perpetual threat.
Schizophrenia.
It’s hereditary. That’s the real reason Mom would never take me to a psychiatrist. If schizophrenia did turn out to be the term of choice for what I had, it would haunt her for life as much as me.
And if Haley was telling the truth about Mr. Perkins, there was every chance she was carrying the gene, which meant there was also a chance, small but significant, that I’d been wrong about her, that she was telling the truth about everything.
As far as I could tell, Haley was as normal and functional as people came, both before and after her disappearance, but if there was something wrong, something small an
