Gary Brandt delivers his most heartbreaking and morally complex episode yet in this chapter from The Dimension Of Mind Dot Com when a chance encounter with Jenna outside a church reveals the devastating reality of government-sponsored addiction recovery programs.
What starts as playful banter—with Jenna jokingly calling them 'demon girls' and warning they'll 'burst into flames on sacred ground'—quickly becomes a sobering glimpse into a system designed to fail.
Living in a tiny apartment with her girlfriend Janice, Jenna reveals the program's cruel mathematics: they give her 30 milligrams of methadone when she needs 200, forcing her to supplement with street drugs just to avoid withdrawal, while simultaneously providing her with Xanax and Soma that she trades for the fentanyl pills she now smokes instead of shooting heroin.
The clinical cynicism is breathtaking—the clinic knows she's 'dropping dirty' on every drug test but pretends not to know to avoid liability, creating what Jenna brilliantly calls 'lie-ability.' Brandt's genius is in showing how the girls' cosmic intervention has created a new form of suffering: keeping Jenna alive in a system that profits from her continued addiction rather than her recovery.
But the real emotional depth emerges through the complex layers of love, resentment, and spiritual connection that bind these former enemies together.
Ella's tearful apology and declaration of love meets Jenna's honest response—'You love me? Ha! Bullshit!'—followed by her admission that 'I still sort of do' hate them, creating one of the most authentic portrayals of complicated human relationships in young adult fiction.
The mysterious element of Jenna appearing in their dreams becomes spiritually profound when Helena explains it as 'spirit memory'—their shared near-death experience created bonds that exist beyond conscious awareness, with Jenna's spirit remembering what her brain cannot process.
The heartbreaking detail that Jenna's apartment contains nothing but 'old ratty shoes and torn-up jeans' because she's sold everything of value for drugs, combined with her warning to 'stay the fuck out of my dreams,' shows Brandt's masterful balance of hope and harsh reality.
Ella's diary entry perfectly captures the moral complexity: she doesn't know if her feelings are love or pity, while acknowledging that 'relapse is part of recovery' and all they can do is 'send her our love, even if she doesn't want it.' It's a devastating meditation on how good intentions can create new forms of harm, and how true compassion sometimes means accepting that saving someone might condemn them to a different kind of hell.