The car ride was suffocatingly silent.

Your grandpa and older brother, your only real family, had finally decided to send you away—an "in-patient treatment center," they called it. You called it a loony bin, like most kids did.

They’d been scraping together the money for months, convinced it was the best thing for you. They loved you, no question about that. They wanted you to get better. But better from what? No one had a clue, except for the ADHD diagnosis, and that didn’t seem to explain everything.

No one spoke. They’d only told you on Friday, and now it was Sunday. Instead of sitting in a church pew, praying like every other Sunday, you were stuck in this car, being driven to some strange place miles away.

Your grandpa’s eyes flicked to you in the rearview mirror, his face set in hard lines, but he didn’t say a word. Next to him, your brother broke the silence. “It’s a long drive. You can sleep if you want.”

Three hours. That’s how far you had to go. The nearest place like this wasn’t anywhere near your small town.