Chapter 8
Eight
I stare at the city block like it’s the first time I’m seeing it.
Because in a way, it is.
But I can’t see it for what Alex wants me to. Can’t flip some switch in my brain that suddenly makes me feel things instead of just observing them.
And maybe I don’t pay attention to my surroundings like she says. Maybe I’m just a girl on a mission who doesn’t listen.
But what does that even look like?
I feel frozen on this city block outside the restaurant. Like if I start walking, something fundamental will change. Like I can’t go back to the Dylan I was before.
Which is probably the point.
Fifteen years I’ve been walking through this city performing fine. Performing confidence. Performing unbothered.
What happens when I stop performing and just... feel?
It’s about a forty-minute walk home. Not terrible. Not great.
And I’ve walked before. These streets aren’t unfamiliar. But I’m trying to view them as Alex would.
And for some reason I can’t.
So I begin to walk.
No earbuds. No podcast to keep me company. Alex was pretty strict about it. She laid out her rules, and I’m following them because she thinks I have no intuition.
No, that’s not right.
She thinks I’m not accessing it.
There’s a difference, apparently. One I’m supposed to figure out on a forty-minute walk through Philadelphia in February while a serial killer somewhere in this city knows my name and my boss covers up murders and I’m carrying a dead woman’s ring around my neck.
No pressure.
But the thing is, I’ve lived in the city my whole life. Walking with awareness is second nature to me. My mom always just told me to walk with confidence. To walk like I belong exactly where I am and deserve the space I’m in.
“Fake it till you make it, baby girl.” Mom used to say. “Predators can smell fear.”
So I learned not to show it.
I’ve always lived that truth.
I spent a long time practicing that walk too. Shoulders back. Chin level with the sidewalk. Never once dipping my head. Eyes forward. Purpose in every step.
Even when I felt off, I kept my chin level. Kept moving like I owned the block.
Once in line for coffee, some woman even turned to me and complimented me on my confidence.
I guess I just pretended for so long that I became that confident woman I wanted to be.
But hiding fear isn’t the same as not feeling it. And feeling it isn’t the same as trusting it.
I was twelve when I learned to do this. When Daddy died and the world stopped feeling safe. When I realized that knowing something terrible was coming didn’t protect you from it happening. So I built this armor. This walk. This version of Dylan who belongs everywhere and fears nothing.
I performed her so well I forgot she wasn’t real.
And now Alex is asking me to shed that armor and feel everything I’ve spent fifteen years pretending not to feel.
So what am I missing?
I pass a corner store on 9th. The owner is outside smoking, leaning against the brick. He nods at me. I nod back automatically.
Keep walking.
A shout behind me—some guy yelling at his friend—and I step to my left as someone rushes past me. Kid on a skateboard, can’t be more than sixteen, sailing past like the sidewalk’s a highway.
Wait. Was that it?
No. I don’t think that’s what she’s referring to.
That was just... awareness. Normal city-living awareness. Don’t get run over by skateboarders. Don’t walk into people. Basic stuff.
Alex believes I’m not tapping into the core of my intuition.
But how can I tap in when I have no idea what that even looks like? Alex lives on vibes and tarot cards and knowing things. I just... exist. Put one foot in front of the other. Survive.
Why does that suddenly feel so depressing?
Frowning, I pause at the streetlight and wait for the walk signal.
I blink.
And sounds rush at me.
Not that I didn’t hear the sounds prior to that moment. But I hear them differently now. Like I’ve been filtering them out this whole time and suddenly the filter’s gone.
A car engine three blocks over. Bass thumping. A dog barking. Wind rattling a loose gate. The hiss of air brakes from a bus on Broad Street. My own breathing. My heartbeat.
It’s suddenly loud.
Okay. That is new.
I focus on the sounds, letting them filter through me instead of bouncing off. And that little change—so fucking simple—changes everything.
The walk signal appears. I cross.
A shiver worms its way through me. I wasn’t cold ten minutes ago. But now? Now I’m freezing.
The temperature dropped, right? It’s February. Of course it’s cold.
But I don’t think that’s what this is.
Because I’m feeling it now. Not just experiencing cold—feeling the change. The shift. The difference between the block I was on and the block I’m on now.
And once you start feeling things this deeply, can you stop? Can you ever go back to just walking through the world without sensing its texture, its energy, its warnings?
Alex lives like this every day. No wonder she burns sage constantly. No wonder she needs crystals and tarot and rituals. She’s not being dramatic—she’s protecting herself from drowning in everyone else’s everything.
Shaking my head, I cross over to the next city block. This one is a little darker. Fewer streetlights. More shadows.
And I feel it.
The difference.
Like walking inside after a storm. But I’m walking into a rundown neighborhood instead. My ears pop—that pressure change you get in planes or elevators or when something shifts.
The neighborhood changes. More residential. Brownstones and row homes. Cars parked tight against curbs. Fewer people out.
I turn a corner onto a darker block.
And there he is.
A man smoking a cigar on a stoop.
He’s older. Maybe sixty. Wearing a Flyers jacket despite the cold. The glow of his cigar lights his face in orange every few seconds. Salt-and-pepper beard. Tired eyes. The look of someone who’s lived on this block his whole life and seen everything twice.
He nods to me.
I nod back.
It’s a simple interaction. One I’ve had a thousand times before in this city. One I just had not ten minutes prior. That silent acknowledgment between people who share space. I see you. You see me. We’re both just trying to get through the night.
But this time—
I feel it.
Not just see it. Not just acknowledge it and move on.
I feel his eyes on me. The weight of his attention. But not in a dangerous way. Not in the way that makes my skin crawl and my keys find my fist.
This is different.
He’s... watching over. Not watching me specifically. Just... present. Aware. Making sure the block stays safe while he finishes his smoke before going inside to whatever life waits for him there.
Protective. Tired but watchful. The kind of man who’d step out if he heard someone scream.
That’s impossible to know from a nod and the way someone sits on a stoop.
But I know it anyway.
The same way Alex knows things. That certainty that comes from nowhere and everywhere at once.
Holy shit. Is this what Alex feels all the time?
Strange.
I keep walking, but the feeling stays with me. That awareness. That knowing.
No wonder she’s exhausted by the end of the day. If she’s picking up everyone’s energy, everyone’s intentions, constantly reading the room without even trying—
All those times she steered me away from certain streets. Insisted we leave bars early. Knew someone was dangerous before they did anything wrong. I thought she was being paranoid. Dramatic. Too much.
She was protecting me with this. With the exact thing I’ve been calling crazy for fifteen years.
I’m almost giddy with it. This new awareness. I can’t wait to tell Alex. To explain how the sounds changed and the temperature shifted and I felt that man’s protective energy like it was a tangible thing I could touch.
She’s going to be so smug about this. So insufferably proud.
I don’t even care.
I pick up my pace. Eager to get home. To burst through the door and tell her everything. To admit she was right. To—
I’m two blocks from home when I feel it.
Wait.
No, that’s not right.
I don’t just feel it. It hits me. Like walking into a wall in the dark. Like that moment in a horror movie when the music cuts out and you know—you know—something terrible is about to happen.
It starts at the base of my spine.
That feeling.
But this is different.
In the stairwell, there was fear, yes. But there were also... options. The stairs going down. The door to the stacks. Ways to escape if I needed them. My body was scared but it knew safety was possible.
This feels like someone stole the exits.
Like whatever’s coming, there’s no running from it.
It reminds me of being a little girl. Before Daddy died.
Having to go into the basement for something—probably clean laundry—and then running up the steps like hellhounds were nipping at my feet.
That primal childhood terror that something’s behind you and if you don’t move now it’s going to get you.
It’s that feeling.
Only amplified. Adult-sized. Real.
The serpent at the base of my spine—because that’s what it is, I can feel it now, an actual serpent coiling around my vertebrae—sends a ripple outward. Up my spine. Through my limbs. Wrapping around the back of my neck like hands.
Like someone is standing behind me. Gripping my neck with meaty hands. About to squeeze.
But there’s no one there.
I spin. Check behind me.
Empty street.
Just shadows and streetlights and the distant sound of traffic.
A ringing begins in my ears. High-pitched. Insistent. The kind that makes you think you’re about to pass out.
Goosebumps ripple across my flesh under my coat. My mouth goes dry. My throat starts to close—that automatic response I’ve had since the stairwell, since the trauma, since my body learned fear has a physical shape.
It’s just anxiety, I tell myself. You’re freaking out because Alex made you paranoid. Because you’re thinking about Marcus and Dahlia and murder and—
But my body isn’t listening to logic.
My body is screaming.