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As confused as I had perhaps ever been in my life, I slowly backed away, toward the bathroom and my room down the hall.

“Pssssst,” Allie said as I walked past. “Did you get me fries?”

“Nope,” I whispered back and reached out to close her door.

Alone in my room I pulled my phone out again. “Lacey, I need you,” I told it, like she could hear me. I could tell Sarah but once the word Darius left my mouth she’d either laugh or hang up on me and I wasn’t sure which one would be worse.

I carefully plugged it in, using a combination of other implements so as not to touch it with my skin, and much to my relief saw it charging. I watched the bars bounce back and forth, and then I jabbed at it once to turn it on.

Darius was right—I couldn’t let this, whatever it was, control me. I had to learn to control it. So I sat cross-legged in front of my phone, like I was some kind of snake-charmer and it a snake, humming tunelessly to myself, attempting to look like anyone meditating I had ever, ever, seen on TV.

“Okay. I can do this,” I announced to the universe, closed my eyes, and picked my phone up.

In a second I was:

there again

Flickering images of Sarah?—

nu phone, told u!

—my mom crying, yelling, from soft to loud, “Where are you?”“Where are you?”“Where are you???!!!”like echoes in a horror film.

Pictures, so many pictures—Sarah, Lacey, and I on a swing-set by the elementary school, jumbled together shoulder to shoulder wrapped in chains, all of us in front of the cafeteria mural sticking out our tongues, the three of us crammed into the backseat of Sarah’s mother’s car before any of us could drive.

Words drifted in and out like overlays, blurry against the rest until I concentrated on them.

OMG did u c?—

got a tampon?

I know I heard?—

she’s always kissing ass?—

Liam broke up with her!

—could Coach Stevens suck more?

—no, its a technical impossibility

—my mom hates me

—come over tonight and watch it with me!

I gotta get home before?—

see you tomorrow, babe!

—love u bye!

—love you!

—text me back!

I had only been in the ocean once, when I was five, when we’d driven as a family all the way down to the Gulf. But I’d never forgotten the way it’d felt, how the ground didn’t seem groundy beneath your feet, always silting back out to sea—and that was how I felt right now, like I wasn’t standing on dry land. Memories raced up with the photos, bright as day, then faded twice as fast and voices from voicemails I’d saved—Dad, Allie, Lacey—got loud then soft, drifting near and far like passing trains.

I let myself fall into it all like I’d fallen into the sea that day, the waves taking me for a tumble, end over end till I made it back to dry sand and then I was just me again, just looking at the screen of my phone, exhausted like I’d just swum to shore from a long way out.