“THE STARS AT NIGHT! ARE BIG AND BRIGHT! “ Jake bursts into song, piercing the quiet as we drift into the deep end of the swimming pool, deep in the heart of Hill Country, Texas. And it’s true, the stars really are big and bright and beautiful against the pitch black of the country sky, and everything does seem a little bigger in Texas. 

I am 17, in rehab, and for perhaps the first time in my entire life, I feel safe. When I first arrive at Starlight Recovery Center, there are only three other minors and I’m the only girl. Together, we are among the first to participate in the treatment center’s brand-new adolescent program.

The TV in the common area plays Forrest Gump on a maddening loop. We delight in torturing the tutor the Kerrville Independent School District sends to babysit us each weekday. We hunt for cigarette butts left behind by adult residents and harvest their unsmoked tobacco. I play so much chess I accidentally become decent at it.

My room is just across the hall from the nurse’s station, which means that I’m allowed to have other kids in my room so long as we keep the door open. We sit cross-legged on the floor and make art with the chalk pastels I brought from home. Jake, who is only 12 years old, confesses that he doesn’t know how to slow dance, so I offer to teach him after evening chores. We sway back and forth across the freshly-mopped linoleum, and I’m reminded of what it feels like to have a brother.

Several days later, my therapist calls me into her office to break the news that I’m being moved to a different room. Just as I open my mouth to protest, she interrupts — “I can’t think of a good way to put this,” she admits, “so I’ll be blunt.”

The reason I’m being moved, she explains, is because one of the boys was caught jacking off outside my window the night before. Unbeknownst to me, he had bent my mini blinds into a makeshift peephole during a recent art session. A night tech found him standing in the bushes outside my window, peeking into my room with his pants down.

“How embarrassing for him,” I mutter. I decide not to say anything to him about it.

The third week of rehab is traditionally followed by “family weekend,” which is when an addict’s family members are expected to visit the treatment center to participate in “knee-to-knee” sessions and aftercare planning. My family weekend turns out to be such a disaster that my therapist decides to keep me in treatment several days longer than originally planned just so that I’ll have a chance to “process” it. I feel obligated to complain, but the truth is I don’t want to go home. I’d stay at Starlight forever if they’d let me.

Jake’s discharge date, on the other hand, has already come and gone. He waited patiently by the front door for several hours, but nobody ever showed up to take him home.