I don’t tell her that when I go there wherever there is, it’s like disjointed fragments of a dreadful illusion. It constantly enters my mind that I died and came back, and I won’t share such thoughts. I won’t mention the intrusions, the sensations and images that suddenly seize me when I least expect it. The cues are imperceptible. The spitting of a cigarette lighter, of a hose spraying. A movement in the corner of my eye.

Then out of nowhere, suddenly, violently like a seizure, the tugging, the screaming pain reverberate inside my brain. It was as if my leg was in the jaws of a shark, yanking, swimming away with me. I accepted my fate. I was about to drown. Then everything went empty and dark like a power outage. And suddenly, crazily, I hear it again.

The C-sharp cord of an electric guitar.

My eyes land on my phone absently gripped in one hand, at the message at the top of the display:

LucyICE Message.

I enter my password and go to my messages, and this one is just like the other. A link and nothing more. But it can’t be from Lucy. How can it be? There’s no way. She’s standing not even six feet from me. She recognizes the alert tone that she knows so well, and meets my eyes.

Next she looks at her own phone, then at me. “I didn’t just text you,” she says.

“I know. Better put I didn’t see you do it.”

“You didn’t see me? I just heard the alert tone for my ICE line, my second line on this phone.” She holds it up and looks baffled and wary. “And I didn’t send you anything.”

“Yes. I’m aware I didn’t see you touch your phone.”

“Why are you talking like this?”

“I’m just commenting on what I did and didn’t see,” I reply.

“Have you assigned that tone to anyone else?”

“You customized my ringtones, created this one for me because it’s unique, Lucy. No other caller in my contacts list has …”

“Okay,” she interrupts impatiently. “What number is showing up?”

“There isn’t one. It just says LucyICE, which is how I have the number labeled in my contacts list. And if I go to contacts now and look? There.” I hold up my phone but don’t let her get close. “It looks exactly as it always has. LucyICE.” I recite the phone number. “And that’s yours.” I look her in the eye. “Is it possible someone’s hijacked it? Specifically is it possible someone has found a way to hijack your In Case of Emergency line so it appears you’re calling or texting urgently when in fact you’re not?”