Ayanna’s brain stewed in anxieties. The doors had disappeared two years ago, so there was no point in speculating. Accept the things you cannot change and gather the wisdom to see the world in all its possibilities. She could stop trying to look through and ignore the dead and try to find Olivia among them. It had been two years, could Olivia still be alive? Ayanna pressed her right hand over her heart, hoped it would calm her down. The hardest thing was to decide which world she wanted to accept: a world where her sister was alive but struggling without help or a world where her sister had died two years ago.

For a little while, Ayanna scrolled through the strange-sightings forum, hoping again for a sign. A door discovered in an idyllic grove, a ring of mushrooms, a dank basement. Instead, it was a long discussion about the number of people who claimed to have seen lights in the distance drawing them in and sometimes becoming a man’s shadow. Mostly, the man stared. But some said he came closer and spoke their names like an evocation. He stayed in your dreams after if you didn’t give him money or a secret. The man stood in the corners, laughing, while you dreamed about your days. Everyone wanted to be interesting enough to be cursed. Everyone wanted to believe that even the unreal could be controlled. But whenever the extraordinary came into their lives with all its unruliness and depth, they always tried to look away because it couldn’t be bought.

Ayanna sighed. She wanted the pill to immediately kick in, to give her the promised feeling of intense obliteration she longed for. Ayanna deleted her rant that the supernatural did not operate under the logic of capitalism. “Don’t post while getting high,” she muttered.

You were supposed to take this pill intentionally, not while scrolling on Reddit, Ayanna reminded herself. When the elders in her church had taken it, it was part of a sacred ritual. First you prayed for everyone you loved and could ever love. Name them: Olivia, Dad, Grandma. Tell yourself what the therapist encouraged: I love myself. I love being alive. I can build a life. I am not alone, there are people who care for me. Ayanna. Ayanna. Ayanna. I want to love myself. She wanted to be enough of a cheeseball that she could name every person she had met at the party. Will my heart be open to them and maybe their future friendships? Was the only way forward to be as earnest and open as you could stomach? Ayanna stretched out on the floor, tightened all her muscles for fifteen seconds, then relaxed them. Did it again while naming herself as one of her loved ones. She didn’t believe herself but she tried.