“Subconscious,” Kit says, following the creek’s edge. It’s a new word for her, insomuch as she’s become intimate with it recently, searching for the source of her anxiety. A lot of people say the reason the root is so hard to locate is because it’s buried in the subconscious.

And until the night before the big game? Daphne was buried too.

Yes, that’s right. The two willowy syllables have forever been in the background, Kit thinks. Maybe even the subconscious of Samhattan. This feels true. The way people know the name but don’t remember hearing it. The way people say it but don’t know why. Before a few nights ago, Kit never had context whatsoever for the name.

Why not?

She tries to remember the first time she heard it. Did her parents speak it? A babysitter? Maybe it was a teacher. A neighbor. A family friend? One of her friends? She doesn’t know. And for the first time in her life, she wants to.

“No,” she says. “You don’t.”

That’s right. Because Natasha said (in the dark, Kit remembers, can hear the words on Natasha’s tongue still) if you think about Daphne…

…she comes.

Kit looks over her shoulder. Quick. Back to her friends gathered.

She wants to tell herself this is dumb. But just like she can’t just tell anxiety to go away, she can’t quite get rid of this train of thought. Can’t get out from under it. Tied to the tracks, it feels.

When Natasha started her story, nobody on the team said, I’ve heard of her. Nobody said, Oh, Daphne has a story? Nobody acknowledged having previous knowledge at all. But also Natasha spoke as if everyone there had heard of her. As if…as if…

“As if Daphne is a Samhattan secret.”

That’s right. This feels right. In the same way some articles just feel right in their description of anxiety and panic attacks, this idea rings true.

A Samhattan secret. A thing everybody knows about but nobody questions. A name familiar to all but with no figure, no features, no face. God, her name really is like the wind! Blown into town, crossing the cemetery in Samhattan’s center, pulling that graveyard air with it, out into town, through the streets and open windows of the buildings and homes, into the bedrooms of every girl and boy to ever call Samhattan home.

Why hasn’t Kit ever thought about this before? Her actual story?

You guys, Natasha had started. It’s the way she starts all stories. So…you know Daphne, right?

And nobody said yes. And nobody said no. And Kit, walking alone now, is afraid of this. Scared by the idea of a whole town shutting out a name.

Well, her story is actually kinda fucked-up. In a really big way.

She has a story? Kit asked. Just a question at the time. It was funny, in a way, to think she had no image, no idea what the name, recognizable somehow, actually meant.

In hindsight, and now that she’s really thinking about it, it feels a little…crazy.