Back to the new Sarah.

Zack led Sarah over to a bench with their food. She was looking in wonder at the fireflies that had come out.

"Sarah, do you remember the talk we had a few days before your treatment?"

She smiled. "Of course I do! God, that feels like a million years ago. I can't believe how miserable I was. Zack, this is the most incredible-"

He cut her off. "Do you still feel like you're... a different person? I know you say you're the same, but I want you to think hard. Are you really the same person you were then?"

She thought carefully. "I think so. Kind of. Like, are you same person you were in high school? In a sense you are. Your identity hasn't changed, you're still Zack. But you're also very different. It's like that - I don't feel like I'm not me anymore but at the same time my whole outlook has shifted so dramatically that I feel new. Not different, new. Like you took an old tarnished piece of silver and restored it. It's the same piece of silver but it looks radically different."

"Do you think the old you would feel the same? Remember, this isn't going to last forever. If the depressed you could see how you're behaving now, what would she say?"

Sarah took his hand and clasped it to her chest. "Zack, it doesn't matter what she'd say. She was me, just blind and stupid with mental illness. I mean, the lies I told myself! That I'm ugly, stupid, unlovable. That everyone hates me, that I'm a waste of space, that the world would be better off without me. Whatever I would have thought of this, it would have been completely distorted by the depression. I'm me now and I was me then. So let's stop with the abstractions and just enjoy ourselves, ok? Our food's getting cold."

They ate in silence for a while, then Sarah spoke up. "I've got an idea. I'm gonna write a list of all of the things I wanted to do or ask for but was ashamed. Don't worry, I'm not gonna show you the list. I'll go through and pick one or two that I really don't think 'old me' would be too upset about you knowing and we can try them, yeah?"

Zack was curious. "Um, I didn't know you had stuff like that."

She winked. "Oh, come on. You don't have anything like that? Nothing you've always thought about but didn't want to mention? Surely there's somebody you'd like to fuck or something you'd like to try but only in your fantasies. I'm not asking you to come clean with your fantasies but I wanna come clean with mine. Only a few, though."

Sarah finished up her gyro and threw the wrapper in a nearby trash can. Wiping her mouth and hands, she got out her phone and began to type. Zack was surprised. "You're making the list now?"

Not looking up from her phone, she replied. "There's at least a few things I can think of immediately." She put the phone away and smiled impishly at him. "Now let's home and see what kind of trouble we can get into."