“When you’re happy too?”

“I guess . . . but what’s wrong with letting loose?”

“Tell me how you feel when you ‘get down.’”

Again, it was another opening for a joke. Like, I should’ve said something about getting down at a dance club. After all, how could I describe what I felt in those dark moments when spirit’s shadow seized hold of my soul? And even if I could find the words, how could he understand? How could anyone truly, truly understand? No one could, and that was part of what made things so bad. I always felt alone. Even another spirit user couldn’t completely understand my experience. We were all in our own personal hells, and of course, I couldn’t actually mention spirit specifically.

Yet, I found myself talking to Einstein anyway, describing everything as best I could. After a while, he stopped typing and just listened, occasionally asking me to clarify my feelings. Soon, he shifted from how I felt when depressed and wanted to know how I felt when I was happy. He seemed especially interested in my spending habits and any “unusual behaviors.” When we’d exhausted that, he gave me a bunch of questionnaires that asked variations of the same questions.

“Man,” I said, handing them back. “I had no idea it was this hard to qualify as crazy.”

I saw a glint of amusement in his eyes. “‘Crazy’ is a term that’s used incorrectly and far too often. It’s also used with stigma and finality.” He tapped his head. “We’re all chemicals, Adrian. Our bodies, our brains. It’s a simple yet vastly sophisticated system, and every so often, something goes awry. A cell mutation. A neuron misfiring. A lack of a neurotransmitter.”

“My girlfriend would love this,” I said. I nodded at the paperwork. “So, if I’m not crazy, do I still get the pills?”

Einstein skimmed through the pages, nodding as though he was seeing exactly what he expected. “If you like, but not the ones you came in for. Your situation is more complex than just depression. You exhibit a lot of the classic symptoms of bipolar disorder.”

There was something sinister about the word “disorder.” “What’s that mean? In words that don’t begin with ‘neuro’?”

That actually got a smile from him, though it looked a little sad. “It means, in very simple terms, that your brain makes your lows too low and your highs too high.”

“Are you saying it’s possible to be too happy?” I was starting to get very uneasy about this. Maybe the fact that his patients canceled on short notice should’ve been a warning sign that he wasn’t a very good doctor.

“It depends on what you do.” He opened up the packet of papers I’d filled out. “You spent eight hundred dollars on a record set recently?”

“Yeah, so? It’s the purest form of music.”

“Was it something you’d been wanting for a while? Something you’ve been searching for?”

I thought back to when I’d walked past the handwritten sign on campus. “Um, no. The opportunity just came up, and I thought it was a good idea.”

“Do you have a history of other impulse purchases?”

“No. Well, I mean, I once sent a girl flowers every day for a month. And I also had a giant box of perfumes sent to her. And then I bought my current girlfriend some custom perfume that kind of cost a lot. And I technically bought a car for her. But you can’t judge those,” I added quickly, seeing his wry look. “I was in love. We all do things like that in pursuit of the fairer sex, right?” Silence answered. “Maybe I should just take a money management class.”

He gave a small, nondescript grunt. “Adrian, it’s normal to be happy and sad. That’s human life.” I definitely didn’t correct him there. “What’s not normal is to be so drastically sad that you can’t go on with typical activities or to be so happy that you impulsively engage in grandiose activities without thinking through the consequences–like excessive spending. And it’s definitely not normal to switch so quickly between these drastic moods with little or no provocation.”

I wanted to tell him that there was  provocation, that spirit did these things to me. And yet, did the cause matter? If fire users burned themselves with their magic, it didn’t change the fact that they needed first aid. If spirit was causing this bipolar thing, then didn’t I still need treatment? My mind spun, and I suddenly found myself caught up in a chicken‑and‑egg dilemma. Maybe spirit didn’t cause mental illness. Maybe people like Lissa and me were already “off” chemically and that’s what made us gravitate to spirit.

“So what do you do about it?” I asked at last.

He took out a small notebook and scribbled something onto it. When he finished, he tore off the top sheet and handed it to me. “You get this prescription filled and take it.”

“It’s an antidepressant?”

“It’s a mood stabilizer.”

I stared at the paper like it might bite me. “That doesn’t sound right. Is it going to ‘stabilize’ me so that I don’t feel happy or sad? So that I don’t feel anything?” I stood up abruptly. “No! I don’t care if they’re dangerous. I’m not giving up my emotions.”

“Sit down,” he said calmly. “No one’s taking away your emotions. It’s what I said before: We’re all chemicals. You’ve got a couple that aren’t at the right levels. This will adjust them, just as a diabetic would correct their insulin. You’ll still feel things. You’ll be happy. You’ll be sad. You’ll be angry. You just won’t swing unpredictably into such wild directions. There’s nothing wrong with this–and it’s a hell of a lot safer than self‑medicating with alcohol.”

I sat back down and stared bleakly at the prescription. “This is going to kill my creativity, won’t it? Without all my feelings, I won’t be able to paint like I used to.”

“That’s the cry of artists everywhere,” said Einstein, his expression hardening. “Will it affect certain things? Maybe, but you know what’ll really interfere with your ability to paint? Being too depressed to get out of bed. Waking up in jail after a night of drunken debauchery. Killing yourself. Those things will hurt your creativity.”

It was surprisingly similar to what Sydney had said about how I’d be able to accomplish things. “I’ll be ordinary,” I protested.

“You’ll be healthy,” he corrected. “And from there, you can become extraordinary.”

“I like my art the way it is.” I knew I sounded childish.

Einstein shrugged and sat back in his chair. “Then I guess you have to decide what’s most important to you.”

That required no thought at all. “She is.”

He stayed quiet, but his expression said it all.

I sighed and stood up again. “I’ll get it filled.”

He gave me some information on side effects and warned that it could take trial and error to get things right. Walking out of that office and going to a pharmacy, rather than a liquor store, took more self‑control than I’d had to muster in a while. I forced myself to listen as the pharmacist talked about dosing–and warned me against alcohol while on the prescription.

But when I got home, I didn’t have the courage to open the bottle. I put on a record at random and sat on my couch, staring at the bottle in my hand, more confused than I’d ever expected to be. This mood stabilizer was a mystery. I’d thought I’d go in and take something like Lissa had, and even if I wasn’t a huge fan of pills, at least I had her as a reference. But this? What would happen? What if Einstein was wrong, and I stopped feeling any emotions? What if it didn’t do anything except cause the ghastly side effects he’d said were extremely rare?

On the other hand . . . what if it didn’t stop spirit but did  curb the darkness? That would be a dream come true. That was what Lissa had originally hoped the antidepressant would do. The complete numbing of spirit had been a surprise. It was impossible to think I might still keep the magic yet stay in control of my life. The idea was so tempting, I opened the bottle and put one of the pills in the palm of my hand.