She did not tell Professor Collins about the Olivia of it all, but she described again walking not out onto the golden path but instead into the vast wilderness with its long, blue grass, its perpetual blue sky. There were lights among the grass, and they spoke to one another. Some knew who they once were, some knew all the things they had been, and a few refused to acknowledge their new realities, speaking about going to the office or about stocks as if they could not see anything around them. Ayanna described seeing what seemed now in retrospect like a vast parade of them moving toward the silver mountains. Some of them were shapes and spoke in languages unintelligible to her. I know this sounds crazy, she said more than once, until Professor Collins told her to stop saying that. I see them still, sometimes, all the time if I’m being honest, I just work really hard to ignore them, Ayanna admitted. She told the professor about the ways the meadows made her understand the color blue, how there were berries growing there, how a door had formed from what looked like bugs. She paused, thinking about her sister’s arms around her stomach, her head against her back, her dress, the strip of it that she couldn’t throw away, the weight of Olivia as they stepped in unison through the new door. I keep looking for Olivia in the dead; I keep trying to ignore the dead because I don’t want to see her, Ayanna thought, but did not say.

The professor’s eyes were soft. Ayanna realized she was still standing and talking. And had she been talking too quickly? She had the feeling of having finally said something important, but still saying it sideways, so the boulder remained, but she could feel the beginning of an important erosion. Ayanna felt the urge to leave and do her after-therapy routine, writing down everything clarifying in her palm-sized journal, then eating a bunch of popcorn in an attempt to feel only salt and butter rather than emotions.

“Let’s take a minute and have some tea.” Professor Collins turned on a kettle. She produced two mugs, a box full of teas that looked expensive compared to Ayanna’s usual two-dollar box of night-night tea.

“Do you think there’s something special in tea, something we don’t know about”—Ayanna tried to get comfortable in the chair, but it was impossible—“that actually makes us feel psychologically more in place? Like a chemical that interacts with our brains like Zoloft or Lexapro?”

“Don’t overthink things.” Professor Collins was going through her bookshelves while the kettle burbled to itself. “Sometimes, people just need to feel good and reassured. It’s a lesson I wish I had known at your age. Find ways to have small pleasures that don’t directly hurt other people. Don’t teach yourself to tear apart everything you like.”