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L ast night’s pain rolled into the morning, seeming to seep into the atmosphere, coloring all of Santa Cruz Bay.

By late afternoon, storm clouds gathered on the horizon, waiting to tuck the skyline into their sheet of gray.

I watched the cumulus collect while I nestled into the hide of the chair I’d designated for myself in my therapist’s office, the only thing about this purgatorial sentence that welcomed me with familiar and comfy arms.

My phone distracted me from descending into my own layers of Limbo—which I should have been doing, in search of the Voices, to get answers—but I aimlessly scrolled instead.

A text popped up. Javi.

What are we doing today?

he asked.

Just got out of class.

Now I’m at therapy, I typed.

Then I have work. Ugh.

Cupping my jaw, I made a sad face and snapped a quick selfie.

He hearted it immediately after I sent it.

Fine, valid excuse. What about tomorrow?

My thumbs pecked feverishly.

Summer school in the morning.

This whole summer school thing is really ruining our plans.

I sighed. IKR? I can meet you at the lighthouse after class tomorrow?

Deal. Not to give you fomo or anything but…

A perfectly curated pic of milky cold brew, a bean bag, and a stack of comics taunted me from the screen.

The jealousyyyy. brB crying.

Javi flooded the thread with cry-laugh emojis.

I exited the app, turning up the trancey track resonating through my headphones so it was no longer background noise.

Continuing to avoid the oath I’d made to myself—the Voices could wait.

A little more daydreaming wouldn’t hurt.

The door to the office opened, but I didn’t notice until Dr. Fairmore’s apple cheeks and indigo cat-eye rims came into my view.

“How are you, River?” her mauve tinted lips mouthed, words muffled by the music.

“Doing okay?”

Eh, just missing some telepathic Voices and have potentially been hallucinating.

Oh, and my best friend leaves for college soon, my last episode almost killed me but other than that, fine, totally fine.

Actually, the endless list of not-okay things had me rubbing my temples.

I removed my headphones just in time to hear, “I saw the surf’s up.”

Oof, nobody says that except total rookies and characters on TV shows.

An irrepressible cringe scrunched my nose.

The motion seemed to jump from my face to my therapist’s, like she knew how forced and awkward it came out.

“That was corny,” she admitted, her natural rosy undertones flaring, searing her cheeks.

With a self-deprecating shake of her head, she took a seat in the armchair across from me.

My heart sputtered. Did she—was she—cracking jokes with me.

At her own expense?

When her color evened out, she addressed me again with a cool expression that slightly raised her brows and lips.

“Anything specific you’d like to start with, or do you want to pick up where we left off?”

The wall clock filled the silence.

I listened intently: to the ticking, to her mulling, to the scrapes on the leather seat from my restless fingers.

She’d done this last time, disarmed me with her unexpected humanness.

Kind, but not lacking confidence.

Focused, but not in a creepy way that made me feel like a science experiment.

Expectant, but not demanding answers.

Although her straight posture and unwavering gaze did make it clear she demanded my respect.

I could give her that.

She’d actually earned it.

I still hated therapists, but I found it hard to hate her.

I averted my eyes towards the window, feeling defeated.

The wind had picked up and brushed the first drops of rain into long slashes against the glass.

My exhales grew longer, the heaviness lifting from my chest.

Maybe she really was different than the others.

Maybe I should give her a chance.

Our last conversation had seemed to draw out the Voices.

The bud of an idea formed: if I let her in, could it coax them out of hiding?

“River,” Dr. Fairmore stressed my name like she had already repeated it, “is everything alright? You seem distracted.”

The aged leather lounger must have memorized my exasperation, because I flung myself back into a perfectly indented shape.

“Sorry, I just have a lot going on.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Dr. Fairmore spun a hammered medallion, its white gold chain dangling to her ribs—the same one from our last session, the angel with the trumpet.

“This is what I’m here for.”

She closed her file.

It was the smallest flick of her wrist, but the gesture was louder than anything she’d ever said.

It was an invitation to be, to speak, to do whatever I wanted, with no scribbling pen to take my words out of context just to plot my next diagnosis.

Time to test my theory.

Tugging on the pockets of my high-rise jeans, I swallowed and began.

“Summer school, work, it’s been a lot. Less episodes”—I pressed my lips together, fighting the truth; like being tortured by invisible flames and seeing monsters in the night was any better—“which is crazy…”

“Why is that crazy?”

“Because with the…” I gulped.

Here goes. “Anniversary of my mom’s death, you’d think I’d be experiencing more of them. Not less. And now they’re…it’s like they’re gone.”

Curiosity lit the amber flecks in Dr. Fairmore’s brown eyes.

“What do you mean ‘gone’?”

I sighed, trying to ignore the flicker of concern that furrowed her brows for a literal second.

I was looking for that—something in her body language to derail me so I didn’t have to go through with this.

Stop it . Stop it stop it stop it.

“As if that part of me has poof! vanished.” My fingers balled and extended, mimicking a firework burst. “Something I’ve wished away for so long, but without them…the world doesn’t feel right. It feels wrong.” I gnawed at my lip.

Maybe I was giving too much away.

Dr. Fairmore let my words hang in the air for a beat.

“When did this start?”

“Last week, around my birthday.” I replayed the final convo with the Voices in my head.

GET OUT OF MY LIFE!

That’s not the worst idea you’ve had.

We are better off without you.

Dr. Fairmore leaned a little closer, resting her forearms on her knees.

“Let me ask you something, River. Why is this upsetting to you? Is it not what you wanted—what you’ve been working towards—for your episodes to lessen, in frequency or severity?”

Fair point.

It’s what my file said.

It’s what I’d always said.

I wondered when I’d actually stopped wanting that.

“Because I-I feel like…some faulty version of myself. Like I lost the main thing tying me to…”

“Your mother.” Her voice cracked on the words.

She took a sip of water and cleared her throat.

I dipped my chin but couldn’t bring it back up.

A tear slipped, whether in sadness or in shame, and I didn’t try to hide it.

Because it was all true.

No one else had witnessed her death—except us, me and the Voices—and as they took their first breath, she took her last, like her final exhale had formed them.

“River.” When I met Dr. Fairmore’s gaze, she trembled with a hesitation I didn’t think possible.

All I’d seen from her was confidence.

“There are…ways to get them back.”

Her words almost knocked the wind out of me.

Were we talking about the same thing?

Did she know? She had to know.

I didn’t ask her to clarify.

Instead, I sucked in a ragged inhale, trying not to show how breathless I’d become.

Still, my voice came out raw.

“How?”

“Allow yourself to feel. And listen”—the word sent a full body shiver through me—“to your emotions before pushing them away. That’s where the power lies—where you can confront the things you have pushed deep down inside of you.”

I was ready to, oh God I was ready to.

But I was also scared.

I reached for my necklace, a beacon of warmth against my ice-cold skin.

My heart thumped beneath it so fast I swore the pendant jumped.

Dr. Fairmore cleared her throat.

“Can I see your hands?”

The ones I’d been wringing in my lap, those ones?

“Why?”

“So we can do a breathing exercise. Sometimes a moment of peace is all you need to reconnect to your truest self.” She presented her hands, casting twin shadows that grew above our heads and folded around me.

But the space didn’t cool.

If anything it…warmed, the billowy shade a cocoon until it retracted back into her shoulders.

I blinked. A few times.

Just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.

Must have been a shift of the storm.

The shadows were gone, but her palms waited before me.

A quick once-over revealed no claws or talons or any other indication they’d be tearing me to shreds.

Before I could stop it, I placed my fingers atop hers, flushing at how bitten and nubby my nails were compared to her manicured tips.

That weird sting of familiarity I’d felt the first time I’d met her struck me again.

I shook it away, obviously just desperate for some form of connection.

“Close your eyes.” Her voice lost its tremble, poised and self-assured again.

“Lower your head to take the strain off your neck. Good. Now take a deep breath.”

With trembling lips, I sucked in the air, staring at the blank space beneath my shut lids.

I willed myself to latch on to this untapped quietness.

But I’d never felt so vulnerable in my life.

I was as good as naked.

“Think of somewhere peaceful that totally relaxes you. Imagine yourself there.”

There was only one place capable of that.

Patterns from the natural light filtered into the room, ebbing and flowing before my eyes even though they remained closed, swirling until they settled into a mirrored horizon—glassy blue above and below: the ocean.

“Exhale. Envision something you’d be doing in this special place.”

A board appeared, the bright white deck popping against the water’s blue-green.

I slid onto its middle, lining up my belly with the stringer.

And paddled.

Muscles burned as they lifted me—“Another big inhale”—into a crouch where I rode, and I reigned, and as I entered the barrel of the wave…

I simply became. I simply became the element.

Something soared with me in this frosted green cathedral.

Power, like I’d never known it.

It coated me like the salt spray, kissed me like the rush of the wind, spoke to me like the roar of the ocean.

Here, that power had an outlet.

Here, that power had a voice.

And here, I’d muster the courage to tread the last memory of my mom—and I’d find the others.

Every fiber in my being told me this was it, as the weighty tug of reality pulled me back to the dreary office, and I opened my eyes with a gasp—like I’d actually surfed the perfect wave when the reality was, I hadn’t left the chair.