Some people in town think he’s psychic. He just shakes his head with a sad wrinkle between his eyes. Some things you just know, he says.

Bitterness presses my lips together. Mom was a reclusive alcoholic whose depression became a heavy shroud with every dark, cold winter. Everyone knew she’d never stay in a place where the sun flirts with the farthest horizon, out of our reach for months at a time. Or in a town bounded by the cold waters of Prince William Sound and dwarfed by rock and glacier and forest that stretch for miles and miles in every other direction. My fingernails dig into my palms. And I wasn’t enough to keep her sober or make her stay. Nobody had to be a psychic to see that coming.

But Dad was right about me, and now I’m Rapunzel, trapped in a tower of notebooks and calendars. I pinch the pen between my fingers until the ridges dig into the bone, try to breathe through this sudden bout of anger that slides over my scalp. It was my choice to come back to Whittier. I wanted to live here because I’ve always loved this close-knit community. After Mom left—after my best friend in the entire world ran off, after I lost everything—it was the people in this town and Dad who never deserted me. Whittier will always be my home. I just never thought it would be my prison too.

Rain hits the window, and I watch as it spreads down the glass in wide rivulets. I keep breathing, letting the moment thin until it trickles away, just like the rain. When I glance up from my notebook and look toward the water, I see the dark body of an orca hurl itself above the surface, twisting black and white in the air before slamming back into the water. The familiar rush of excitement floods me, and I jot a quick note: Saw an orca breaching today. This wild beauty is just another reason I love Whittier, even if the majority of town lives entirely in one building.