I sat down beside her as she began to flip through the pages. “Really? I thought this was a group people came to because they wanted the help,” I said in confusion. Kristie chuckled good-naturedly.

“I wish. That would make my job a heck of a lot easier. But no, some of these people have been court-ordered because of drug possession, usually a misdemeanor. Some are first-time offenders; others have been through the system a few times. You always hope they learn something from what you’re trying to teach them, but I can’t confess to being that naïve,” she said, handing me a stack of name tags.

“Wow, that sounds pretty jaded, Kristie,” I teased. Kristie snickered.

“I’ve been doing this group for almost five years. I will always have the hope that I’m making a difference, but I’m only human. And I’ve seen too many people end up at the bottom to think otherwise. But we keep on trucking. Because giving up isn’t an option,” she said sagely. I couldn’t say anything to that. I understood feeling jaded, but I was determined to feel the hope all the same.

“Do they all go to LU?” I asked. Kristie nodded.

“This group is for students. I facilitate several other groups in town as well. But we keep this one separate and just for the college community. These kids are dealing with issues that are very different from those of the addicts I see in the other meetings. The pressures, the expectations, and the failures of university life go hand in hand with their addiction.” I nodded.

Kristie wrote her name on one of the tags and peeled it off. She stuck it to the front of her shirt. I followed suit and then put a name tag and pen on each seat. I had a vague idea of what to expect from the group. Having an addict in the family gave you a front-row seat for that particular brand of f**ked-up.

But still . . . I was apprehensive.

And it all had to do with a night three years ago. A desperate phone call in the middle of the night that I had so quickly dismissed as inconsequential. Followed by days of guilt and fear when my fifteen-year-old sister, Jayme, never came home and the realization that her phone call hadn’t been so inconsequential after all. Then finally the morning when I had opened the door to find two police officers on our porch. Their sympathetic faces as they told us that Jayme had been found dead in some skeevy alleyway. Cold and alone. It was that moment that everything I had known, my entire world, was flipped on its axis.

I hadn’t handled my grief well at first. I had berated and abused myself. My guilt ate me alive. My parents blamed me for not taking care of my little sister. I blamed myself for spending so much time on my sanctimonious soapbox that I had been blind to what was really going on.

In the aftermath, my relationship with my parents deteriorated into barely functioning. And I had made it my mission to find a way to fix the pieces inside me that were broken and to live a life that mattered. A part of me was convinced that helping others would in some way help me move on from the devastation of my past.

So I came to Longwood University wanting to escape and to focus on becoming a drug-addiction counselor. It was far enough away from my hometown in North Carolina to feel like I was in another world. Yet it was close enough that it would be impossible for me to ever truly escape what had happened. Because I needed the daily reminder. It was motivation. It’s what got me out of bed every goddamned morning.

It made me a fighter.

But it didn’t change the fact that I was scared. I worried like hell that I’d never be able to do enough for the people who needed my help. That I would never be able to stop the slide once it began. The fear of failure was acute and debilitating.

Kristie made it all seem so easy. I appreciated the way she displayed such competence. She must have sensed my unease because she kindly patted my arm.

“We all have our crosses to bear, Aubrey. Yours led you here. And I know that is a good thing, for you and for the lives you’ll make a difference in,” she said knowingly. My smile was tight, and I wished I could believe her. But self-doubt was like a mosquito buzzing around my ear. The more I tried to swat it away, the more determined it became to suck me dry.

Before long the group members began to filter into the room. It was a relatively small group. We were expecting only twelve people. I didn’t know all of their stories. Kristie had filled me in briefly on the few who had been in the group before. But for the most part, the group would consist of newbies. Four had been court-ordered after being brought up on misdemeanor drug charges. The rest were here voluntarily, which was a bit of a relief. Hopefully that meant they’d be more open and accepting and less combative.

The seats began to fill. There were two girls I recognized from one of the sororities on campus. To say I was shocked to find them in a substance-abuse support group was an understatement, though if there was one thing I had learned in my life, it was that addiction didn’t discriminate.

A guy and a girl, obviously a couple, came in behind them. They seemed unsure and more than a little nervous, and a selfish part of me was relieved that I wasn’t the only one freaking out.

I needed to do something more than stand by the wall trying to blend in with the scenery. If I wanted Kristie to sign off on my volunteer hours, I had to jump into this experience with both feet. Who cared if I got wet?

I approached the couple with what I hoped was a welcoming smile. The guy seemed very protective of his girlfriend. His arm was around her shoulders, and she was pressed into his side as if he could shield her from everyone else. He had short, cropped dark hair and hoops along the outer shell of his ears. His jeans had holes in the knees, and he wore an old Black Sabbath T-shirt.