“Okay, I want you to try to find Darilyn first. Reach out and look for her thread.”

Sarah Beth closed her eyes, inhaled through her nose, held the breath, and then exhaled to relax and center herself. In the background, she heard the gurgling of the fountain and let herself float in her mind and . . . nothing. No threads.

Irritated, she sighed.

“What’s wrong?” Corbin said.

“I can’t find her. In fact, I don’t find any threads.”

“Just try to relax.”

“I am relaxed,” she said and opened her eyes. “I think that might be the problem, actually.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it seems like the times when I need to find someone are when it’s an emergency. Like if Uncle Jed’s in danger, or my parents are in trouble, or something bad is about to happen. I think I’m only good at this when there’s stress and urgency.”

“Yeah, given your background . . . that totally makes sense.” Corbin rubbed her temples and then looked at Pastor Dee. “Maybe with her, the Sanctuary is the wrong environment?”

“No, no, no,” Sarah Beth said before Pastor Dee could answer. “I like it here. I was just, you know, talking. I can do it—I know I can.” She shut her eyes. “Let’s keep trying.”

“All right,” Corbin said. “Why don’t you try picturing Darilyn’s face. Sometimes that helps me.”

“Okay,” she said, imagining her roommate flashing one of her superior smiles.

“Any luck?”

“No . . . But she’s on the soccer team, which means she’s probably on her way from practice to our dorm room . . .”

She shuddered, felt an acceleration, and snapped into the main dormitory hallway for the middle school girls. A trio of familiar faces were heading her way, Darilyn walking in the middle of two other seventh graders, all dressed in their practice uniforms. Sarah Beth tried to move out of the way, but before she could, Darilyn walked right through her. She whirled, noting the wispy, iridescent thread trailing behind her roommate.

“I found her,” she announced, victory in her voice.

That’s cheating, Corbin said, suddenly standing beside her in the hall. You projected, but the exercise was to find Darilyn’s thread.

Her thread’s right there. How is it cheating? she fired back.

Projecting and locating are not the same thing, Corbin said. You deduced she was going to be here because you’re familiar with her schedule and you knew this was the route she’d take.

So what? I call that problem-solving.

And I call that knowing the answer and working backward to prove it, Corbin said. But in the real world, 99 percent of the time you’re not going to know the schedule and location of the person you’ve been tasked to locate. That’s the whole point of the exercise.

But that’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack, Sarah Beth said, deflating.