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I dropped into the patched leather chair beside the prison-style barred windows, the olive peasant dress I’d changed into during a quick pitstop at home catching on my beige high tops as I crossed my feet.

As I bent down to adjust the fabric, a chill plucked a shiver from me.

Even with the leafy greenery and lavender scent sticks and crocheted pillow behind me, the room still felt as cold and unhospitable as a jail cell.

My fingers tapped the armrests as the rhythmic splash of water striking tin rooftops filled my ears, despite the cloudless sky.

I’d swapped out my indie rock playlist for a nature soundtrack after the Voices succumbed to the catchy soprano.

My world and their words muted by the husky vocals, the riffing harmonica, and some of my own scream singing.

Which I definitely belted out in public more than a few times on my way here.

Whatevs. I’d been heard shouting much worse.

My throat seemed to prickle at the thought.

I brought my fingers to the tender nodes below my jaw, applying a light, circular, pressure.

Swollen. From stress, or too much fighting with things that weren’t even really there.

I clipped out a sigh.

I didn’t hate the Voices.

But the Voices weren’t real .

It was just my mind using the world against me, bending the sounds and shapes and tastes and smells so I was forced to hear nothing but the sarcastic outbursts of the first, the silky views of the second, the harsh truths of the third…

and their appeals to revisit a decade-old memory—something I was expected to do by everyone, it seemed.

But I wouldn’t touch with a hundred-foot pole.

At the brusque click-clack of heels, I pulled the headphones from my ears, resting them around my neck.

A woman observed me through thin, round tortoiseshell frames as she took a seat in the chair opposite me.

Her big brown eyes glittered with curiosity like a California sea lion, behind bangs of raven ringlets.

As she rolled her shoulders a shadow vaulted behind her, its tip grazing the ceiling before folding in on itself.

Ah, another new one.

Despite my surprise, I wouldn’t let myself so much as shift a toe and accidentally reveal my frustration.

I also wouldn’t let myself linger on how much younger and prettier she was than anyone else I’d met with—she couldn’t have been more than ten years older than me—or how she had one of those outwardly kind faces that looked warm, familiar, even though I’d never met her before.

I returned the look, waiting for her to make the first move.

I didn’t just give it up for free.

That I’d learned the hard way, thanks to her lovely colleagues, who’d made me feel like my truths were part of a well-crafted sob story.

The ones I felt like telling them, anyway.

If it were up to me, we’d spend the whole hour in an epic stare down.

Maybe then I’d be taken seriously.

My opponent broke first, in unknown defeat.

“It’s nice to meet you, River. I’m Doctor Fairmore.”

I couldn’t mask my satisfied smirk.

She fiddled with the silver medallion she wore around her neck, embossed with an angel blowing a trumpet.

“I’m going to be taking over for Doctor Churchill, as you two discussed on Tuesday.”

Right…

I must’ve glazed over that part.

As I now did with Fairmore’s background, her accolades, and whatever personal details she’d shared—something about her goddaughter?

—zoning out until I heard, “But enough about me. Do you have any questions, or is there a specific topic you’d like to start with?”

Her patience seemed authentic enough.

Still, I clipped out, “No.”

A pen clicked.

“Let’s talk about what’s on your mind right now. What are you thinking about, River?”

My fingers twirled in my lap as the tip of the pen scratched against a fresh sheet of paper.

I blew out an uneven breath as my ankle started shaking, and the nervous energy overtook me.

I turned towards the window and met my own bitter stare, the curl of my lip and the deep line between my brows giving away what I wouldn’t say.

From somewhere in the room, I heard the faint hint of a murmur, even though the walls were thick and practically soundproof.

It caught on the passing summer breeze and rattled my nerves like the gentle wind did the glass in the windowpane.

“I’m thinking about the surf.” Not a complete lie—five seconds ago my tidal watch had started flashing over the epic wave height along the Santa Cruz coastline.

Plus, I needed to say something before the murmur turned into a voice and the voice turned into the entire room shouting at me.

My new doctor clasped her hands over her camel-colored pencil skirt.

“Why are you thinking about that?”

“’Cause I like surfing.” Duh .

“And I’d way rather be doing that…” I added under my breath.

She pursed her lips, the muscles in her face tightening as she narrowed her eyes.

I met her glare dead on, waiting for her wrath—there had to be a punishment for being so cavalier about everything.

A monster had to be behind the mask of that round, rose-tinged ebony face.

One capable of complete cognitive destruction.

After an insufferable moment of scrutiny, her expression shed some of its firmness.

“How long have you been surfing?”

Not the fiery reign of judgement I expected.

But maybe that was her plan, to look at me and stoke more hope than stars in a twilit sky.

Then snuff it out and treat me like the problem, not the person I was.

My nails flew between my teeth.

“Are you really asking me about this right now?”

Her attention flickered briefly.

“Yes.”

“Why?” I tore at a cuticle.

Her gaze was dark as midnight yet sparkling with possibility.

“Because I want to get to know you.”

Shock jolted me still.

After years of enduring the churn and burn with others who deemed themselves worthy of the teenage psychological persuasion, Dr. Fairmore totally caught me off guard.

She was so…nice. Genuinely.

None of it made sense, especially the thawing hatred in my gut.

“Why do you want to get to know me?” An arch-shaped brow rose in question as I asked, “Don’t you just want to punish me, diagnose me, and move on?”

“It’s not my job to discipline you. It’s my job to understand you and help you figure out the best way to manage your sensory episodes, so you can live your life.” Her words were sharp, no bullshit, lined with promise, no matter how hard my mind raced to distort them.

“I want to start with you feeling comfortable.” She sounded so sure of herself.

Maybe she was sure of me, too.

“I know it will take time. You’ve been through a lot—for a while now.”

A while didn’t even begin to cover it.

“Since I was eight.” Word vomit.

It came out so fast I couldn’t stop it.

Dr. Fairmore leaned in.

“Who taught you how to surf?”

“My dad.”

One side of her mouth kicked up in a smile.

“What is it about surfing you like so much?”

I was already softening, but now I melted.

No therapist had ever asked me that before—well, no one had ever asked me that with such interest .

As if she…I swallowed a lump forming in my throat.

As if she actually cared.

I closed my eyes and let the drab doctor’s office fall away, trading the springy cushions and hardwood floor for the infinite depth of the ocean and the rhythmic movement of the tide.

Even just imagining it, the sounds of everyday life seemed to dull, like a radio with the volume turned all the way down.

I should probably be scared of the force that took my mother that clear June morning, but it only made me feel closer to her.

“When you’re out there, it’s you and the water.” I inhaled deeply, imagining the crisp, salted air filling my lungs.

“You don’t hear anything but the pounding of waves. You don’t think about anything except paddling as hard as you can. And when you’re standing on your board, with the momentum behind you and the wind in your hair…the rest of the world seems to fall away. It’s the closest to flying you’ll ever be.”

“It must be nice to feel that kind of invincibility.”

“That’s just it—you’re anything but invincible.” My words tumbled out faster as I met her incisive stare.

“Mother Nature can screw you over at any time. But regardless, you put your faith in the water, let her wash away your vulnerabilities, and go.”

Dr. Fairmore slightly tilted her head.

“How does that make you feel?”

“Alone.” Powerful.

Blissful. Quiet.

“Why do you like feeling alone, River?” She stared back at me evenly.

The question rippled off the silence, gaining momentum with every pounding heartbeat.

And soon it echoed in the room, all around me.

It hummed in the floor lamp’s flickering bulb, so blinding it dotted my vision even when I looked away.

It rang in the water dispenser’s leaky tap, so loud that every drip drip made me cringe.

It screeched in the chair as I burrowed further into it, a sound so similar to nails on a chalkboard—oh, those were mine clawing at the leather.

When my lips remained sealed, Dr. Fairmore bent forward and closed the space between us.

“Do you feel safer alone? Because then no one can leave you?”

Sweat beaded my hairline, my palms, the back of my neck as I fought to get ahold of my senses.

Then the first voice tunneled into my eardrums with the tick tock of the wall clock, surer of the situation than I’d ever been: “She knows, Watcher.”

Of course she knew I saw my mom die.

It was all in my file.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

A strained sigh made it past my clenched jaw as the second voice carved her rebuttal into the grind of my teeth—an attempt to try and pad the brutal truth, but really it just stressed me the F out.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing? Watcher, there is something buried under all that pain—face it and release your power.”

Right now, the only thing that needed release was the endless string of swear words I had for them.

I bit my tongue, knowing how well that would go over with my therapist, watching her new patient curse the air.

Dr. Fairmore raised a speckled mug to her lips.

The third voice billowed in the steam she blew off the liquid, seething with the heat.

“How many times do we have to ask her to revisit the day Mira died?” My thoughts exactly.

“Nothing ever changes, she sees what she wants—and she wants to live a lie.”

I blinked, slow and controlled, zeroing in on the pressure, fighting the urge not to roll my eyes.

No shit I didn’t want to revisit the day that she left—the day the Voices entered.

“Please stop,” I whispered, only adding in the pleasantry for my therapist’s sake.

Dr. Fairmore reclined, obviously thinking this response was meant for her.

I wanted to explain, but my mouth went dry.

I made the best first impressions.

“Are you trying to cause a divide?” the second voice countered evenly with the clink of the doctor’s oval pink nails against the ceramic—a fidget so innocuous she didn’t even realize she was doing it, so she couldn’t know that it bored into my skull.

“Can’t you see?” the third voice snarled, pulling inflections from the screaming patient next door.

“There already is a divide! Us against her. By all means, try it with the mental replay. I’m just done believing anything will come from it. She never actually lets herself feel.”

Oh, I felt it.

All the way to my bones.

I wore the guilt like a second skin.

A memory appeared in the forefront of my mind—for a fleeting moment, I thought it was an image of myself.

I studied the woman it showed me a little closer: her butterfly sleeves flaring with the brisk curl of her arms as she collected shells on the beach.

Beauty marks dotted an oval-shaped face, her skin glowing as if it caught the light of a permanent sunset.

There was a soft bounce to her hair, and wispy bangs framed a stare bluer and more untold than the deepest part of the ocean.

I grazed my jaw, tracing a resemblance that didn’t exist beyond photos and dreams. The woman wasn’t me, but a person that would always be a part of me, locked in a moment I’d never escape from.

It’s funny how much life can change in the calm stillness between heartbeats—one flutter we were chasing dragonflies and splashing in the shallows, the next it was storming and we were caught in a rip current.

I could only imagine what Dr. Fairmore might be thinking as she watched me struggle to say the words, so lost in my head, her brows creased with sympathy.

“This seems to be a painful topic for you. We can change direction, for now, if you want?—”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” I choked out, unsure who I was talking to.

The Voices. My therapist. “I didn’t want her to go.” I didn’t want her to swim out after me.

Nearly ten years to the very day later, my head still shook, like I couldn’t believe it.

She’d swum around the wharf.

She’d trained in an Olympian pool.

She’d surfed next to all the local legends.

It didn’t make sense that she’d drowned, it didn’t?—

The next words from my therapist came out so hushed I almost took it as ambient noise.

“Who did you not want to go, River?”

I’d never say it.

I struggled to even think it.

But after that memory…

her face was all around me.

“My mom.”

Mom. The word sounded foreign, off-limits, like I didn’t hold the privilege of speaking it.

I recoiled further into my chair, half expecting the memory to be swept away, just as she had.

But it did something much more sinister—it changed.

My mom’s jubilant gaze dimmed.

Her lips curled, her teeth bared, not into a smile, but into a cry of pain.

The blood left her face, leaving her translucent, like she’d just seen a ghost. Or maybe that was what she was becoming.

A tidal wave of grief crashed upon me at the thought, breaking me into a million pieces.

My butt molded the seat, but it felt like I was falling through it.

My ears rang, bitten by the shrill winds of a fake descent.

I lightly tugged on a lobe, using the opportunity to look anywhere but in front of me, and feverishly blink away the icy cold of an invisible wind.

Nothing was working.

Fairmore was waiting.

I was stuck. I gripped my stomach as it dropped, as if stuck in a free fall, despite being on solid ground.

A question, from what felt like a lifetime ago, reverberated across my mind.

BECAUSE THEN NO ONE CAN LEAVE YOU?

LEAVE YOU?

LEAVE YOU?

“Yes!” With the word, my body unclenched, and the air became still and tepid around me.

I stole a glance at my therapist. She remained staring, unmoving.

Then she reached forward.

Not for my hand, thank God—she must have known I’d be sensory’d out.

But to offer me something.

A tissue.

Tears dotted my skin like dew.

When had I started crying?

I took the offering and gave one in return.

“Yes. Being alone means I don’t have to feel the pain of anyone leaving.”