Chapter 2
By the time I reached Tahoe city limits, my lungs felt like they were full of salty water. The edge of each breath burned, and Jack’s final words haunted me.
Fine. But no more chances, Fey, do you hear me? You screw this up and it’s over. No more help. You flunk out and you come home, and I will decide where you go from there. That’s the deal.
Hands slick with sweat, I veered into the nearest parking lot and threw the car in park.
He’d said yes. Reluctantly, but still. I let that reality wash out the soot of his threat.
Everything—my hope of escape, my health, my future—hung on a tiny yet seemingly unachievable fact: This all hinged on me now.
My nails bit into my palms, leaving behind half-moons, as the increasing storm drowned out my heavy sigh.
If I screwed this up—who was I kidding, when I screwed this up …
Anxiety wrapped around my throat like a vise, reminding me in rapid succession of all the times I’d done just that: failed.
My biological father left because of me.
An unwanted child. His leaving broke my birth mom.
She tried to hold it together after that, but inevitably, I broke her too.
She lost her ever-loving mind trying to find a way to help me adapt.
To fit into society. But no. I wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t even try, and now she was …
she was in that awful fucking place, and I—
My sobs came out in uneven bursts, tears blurring my vision. I couldn’t do this. The pressure was too much. I was an idiot for thinking this was possible. That I could rise above my nature and—
Breathe. Find your center. Ground yourself.
I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the intrusive thoughts to quiet.
Come on, Fey. Focus. One thing I could hear: I noticed the wind whistling past my window.
One thing I could smell: I inhaled the dull scent of fresh rain and pine.
One thing I could touch: I squeezed the edge of the leather seat and picked at the stitching.
One thing I could taste: I rummaged through my center console and shoved a sour gummy in my mouth—a trick my first therapist had given me for rerouting the brain during a shitstorm of rapid thoughts.
The punch shocked my system enough for me to get my first full breath. And then another. And another.
Last, one thing I could see: I opened my eyes again, my gaze landing on a hand-painted sign above the nearest shop window. Home is where the heart is.
I swallowed the gummy, sliding the gear shift into reverse.
No chickening out, not this time. I could do this, but it would take all of me.
I felt it in my bones. A little longer, and I’d finally have what I always wanted.
A home of my own. A degree leading to financial independence.
Freedom. I veered down the road and picked up speed as I merged onto the highway. One more chance.
No pressure.
I pulled into my apartment complex late that night, and my eyes may as well have been packed with sand.
Invisible pieces of glass scratched at my vision, my legs nearly giving out as I ascended the stairs to the second story.
Thank God I didn’t have roommates or I’d get an earful about the necessity of rest and rejuvenation and blah blah blah.
But I’d gone longer than this without sleep.
Six days, actually, before I face-planted on my bedroom floor, thoroughly spent.
I’d slept around thirteen hours, if I remembered correctly.
Silver lining? When you’re that tired, you crash like a rock.
No nightmares. No whirling thoughts. Just sleep.
Which once again was my aim.
My phone buzzed, an email notification popping up as I tossed my keys on the kitchen counter.
Appointment Reminder: Session with Lola Windsor at 9 a.m. tomorrow.
A sigh coursed through me. Don’t get me wrong, Lola was nice, but she did that thing that grinds my nerves.
She was more of a how does that make you feel kind of gal than a let’s discuss practical tools type.
And after nearly two years in active therapy—the last two months being with Lola—the feelings thing didn’t jive with me.
How does that make me feel? Well, considering I just told her my anxiety feels like an elephant slowly stepping on my chest, I’m going to go with … I feel anxious?
I silenced the alarm and made my rounds, opening the windows and balcony sliding door to the midnight air.
The cold jolted me to the bone, and goose bumps sprawled up my arms. A welcome discomfort.
Though I’d gotten a jump on packing for Saint Peter’s, hoping my plan would go off without a hitch, I’d saved the worst for last: the closet and kitchen cabinets.
Apparently, I was a glutton for punishment, given that I had a few hours left to box up the remainder if I wanted to make it in time for Monday’s classes.
Factoring in my seven-hour drive south to Eureka, it was time to get ’er done.
With the chill of the night and my looming deadline in mind, sleep would be easily evaded.
Though just to make sure, I dug in my closet for my little helper: a hole-riddled sweater so scratchy it rivaled poison ivy.
While it irritated the skin, it also irritated the mind.
No chance of sleep now.
A few hours later, I laid the final box to rest in my truck, shoddy tape job and all.
The eerie emptiness of the apartment taunted me.
Such a small space, yet such big emotions lingered.
Confusion and numbness, loss and defeat.
The longer I stared, the heavier my head grew, eyelids drooping in tandem until I couldn’t handle it anymore.
I made my way to the balcony and placed myself in the wicker chair, tilting my head back to stare at the night sky.
So beautiful: the endless dark. For some reason, the distance between stars seemed wider than usual, and I wondered for a moment if they ever got lonely.
If being so close and yet so far from other heavenly beings made them ache.
Like how, on occasion, I ached. Yearned for connections I could do nothing about but deny myself.
It was safer that way, keeping the world at arm’s length.
But I’d done it once before … let someone in.
Let someone see every broken and shattered piece of me.
In the end, it ruined her and cracked me to my core.
The wound still festered years later, despite me having stuffed that part of my past down, rarely letting myself remember it. Or her.
First love is inevitably painful, but when you knew that you were the reason why someone no longer wanted to exist?
Someone you cared for deeply? That your selfish fears were what caused them to hurt themselves?
Well … I don’t think you ever truly heal from that.
In simple terms: Broken people break people.
Considering I seemed incapable of healing—after all, I was my mother’s daughter—I wouldn’t make the mistake of letting someone get too close again. I’d protect them from me.
Even if I ached like the distance between stars until I burned out.
A shudder ran up my spine, familiar and odious. The unease only a nightmare could provide.
Shittttt. I tried to pry my eyes back open, but the dream swept in as it always did, shrouded in a black veil, my sanctuary fully formed at the center.
My willow tree: the sole light in the darkness since I could remember.
Its opalescent branches swayed like a gentle offer to conceal me from the developing nightmare.
From the beasts who stalked within. My throat tightened.
Calm down. You have to calm down. Breathe. You might still be able to wake up.
I flitted through the hazy abyss, hunkered below the branches, and tucked my knees to my chest. The willow’s illuminated leaves wove between my fingers, latching tight to soothe me while the scene spun together like pixels on a television screen.
As the bare landscape neared completion—my dream world’s signature violet sky swirling about violently—the ground stirred and pushed me forward.
I rose in submission, grasped the willow’s trunk for stability, closed my eyes, and fought the motion sickness rising. The dream had settled.
This is happening.
Reluctantly, I took in the sight built around me. My hand no longer grasped the trunk of my safe willow but instead clung to rotten wood panels. I was perched atop a rickety, hole-laden porch with a sure lean to the right. My jaw clenched.
The game had begun.
I summoned my courage, removed my hand from the wall, and started toward the deck’s edge, lacing my fingers around the crooked rail for support. My palms grew slick. Stilts jutting from the structure suspended me ten feet above murky, still waters.
“Lovely,” I whispered into the moist air, my stomach sour.
The dream’s outskirts filled in sharply and with a jerking motion, making it far more unsettling.
A solid stone cliff claimed three-quarters of the lake’s edge, the fourth side encompassed in thick fog.
Through the gloom, I made out three other houses linked by a floating wooden walkway.
If I could make it down there before the beast showed up, maybe—
Sudden movement on the nearest home’s porch caught my eye.
My body stiffened, readied for an attack, when a strange white wisp flitted into view.
It hovered at the porch’s edge. Though it didn’t have eyes, I felt its stare burn into me.
With haste, the vapor ball hurled itself over the rail, shot across the black waters, and disappeared into the tree line atop the cliff face. Gone.