I think about what River said, at Dharma Bums. About feeling everything no matter how bad it is. About waking up from the trance.

I sit up, lean my pillow against the wall. Cross my legs and close my eyes.

“Okay,” I whisper. “Let’s ride.”

I ride the breath like a wave, not the wave, just one that brings me to the shore of myself, again and again.

In.

And out.

In.

And out.

I sit and sit, the thoughts sometimes racing, other waves that crash against my mind, never ending, but I let them go, let them crash.

H20 and NaCl—water and sodium chloride. That’s all a wave is. Elemental. Shifting. Changing.

Not permanent.

Not me.

The more I fall into the breath, the more I realize that the thoughts are just on the surface of me. I dive deeper. Sink. Beneath the waves—beneath the wave.

Stillness.

Quiet and deep.

Like all of space is inside me.

They say that the ocean is the closest environment to space we have on Earth, and more than half the human body is made up of water, so maybe our bodies know the language of the dark, of the deep, already. We just need to listen.

I listen.

And then: I feel.

Without the distraction of the thoughts, I can feel … everything.

What Dad did—to Mom, to us, to that little baby in Rebecca Chen’s belly far away in Los Angeles, and what Micah did to Nah, and what Nah and I did to each other, the lying.

I feel the weight of the ocean in my chest.

I don’t push it away.

I don’t work the problem.

I ride the wave.

In order for an object to float, it must contain some trapped air. That is the only way it can rise above the surface.

Eventually, the breath pushes me

up

up

up.

The wave recedes. For now.

I open my eyes.

Somehow, the darkness is a little lighter.

There’s a tap on my window. Then another one.

I turn.

Ben is framed by yellow curtains, flakes of snow swirling all around him, as though just by meditating I’ve summoned him.

He spreads a gloved hand on the frosted pane and rests his forehead against the window and I can feel him through the glass.

The cold in me turns warm. Like soup.

I crawl out of bed and pull the window open. He is covered in snow. There is a storm behind him that must have started after Nate brought me home from the orchard. That long, silent car ride.

The wind is a knife, and it cuts through my thin T-shirt.

My moon lamp catches in Ben’s eyes so that the night sky is now inches from my face. I don’t feel the cold anymore.