I’m about to go upstairs and nap to the sound of rain pounding on the roof when, I swear on Jenna’s grave, I hear a distant shout.

Help!

“Valerie?” I call uncertainly. “Mr. Larson? Did you hear that?”

There’s some general clanging from the café and a muffled “Hear what, now?” from Mr. Larson. Valerie startles me with her close-in-proximity sigh as she makes her way up the stairs to the second floor.

“I didn’t hear anything,” she says.

“I thought I heard somebody calling for help.”

“Only the storm, girl. The wind plays tricks up here. Help me collect the emergency flashlights, won’t you?”

“Sure,” I say, but I’m conflicted.

I know I heard something, a cry for help carried on the back of a clever wind. I stand suspended between Valerie’s retreating form and the stairs, between reality and another realm, where imagination and actuality are nearly indistinguishable.

Anybody?

The voice is louder. Like it’s right by my ear.

I didn’t know when Jenna died. I didn’t feel a disturbance in the Force or have any kind of premonition, and I hate myself for it.

Help!

“Are you coming, Amelia?” Valerie calls.

I don’t answer; I just run.

It makes no sense, but I sprint down the staircase and out the front door, losing my worn-out flats in the squelching mud and not caring. What if I’m right? What if somebody needs my help?

I’ve never been athletic, but my legs are sure and strong as I race across the flooding two lanes of deserted road, down the hill to the beach that earlier today was filled with kids wading in the shallows. There is a pull inside me, a stirring that feels like intuition mixed with knowing how a story is supposed to end, chapters before the conclusion. The pull is telling me where to go. In the distance, a lighthouse lamp winks in and out of the torrents of rain and the high, high splashing waves.

I’m coming! I don’t say it aloud, but somehow the wind will carry it where it needs to go. Hang on. I’m coming.

The rain is falling in sheets and I’m soaked through when I reach the edge of the lake. The waves are diligent in their insistence that they could hold their own in the roughest of oceans. I can feel their spray through the rain. They crash against the base of the lighthouse with such ferocity that I’m sure it will go tumbling into the water. Even I, a keen whale watcher, cannot conjure any dorsal fins poking up from the choppy surf.