“Yeah. Oh.” I ball up my hand and punch the railing as I pass it during my pacing. I have to do something, have to find a way to negate the danger. But how can I negate the danger when the danger is coming from my own thoughts?

Oh, God. This is my worst nightmare.

“I went to therapy for months before I got better,” I tell Elliott, my voice raw with agony. “I had to learn to accept my fears. To be okay with uncertainty instead of turning myself inside out trying to be certain I was safe. I had to figure out how to let my intrusive thoughts exist without trying to force them away.”

“Well, can’t you do all that now?”

“No!” I shout, wheeling on him. “Because now my obsessive fears might actually come true.” I turn back to pacing. Maybe if I can wear myself out I’ll calm down, be able to control my thoughts better.

Elliott steps forward and grabs me by the shoulders, forcing me to stop. “But they could come true before too.”

“What? No! No, I’ve never been able to make gas cans and farmers market stands and prepper hideouts appear by—imagining them into existence, or whatever!”

“That’s not what I mean. You just said you had to learn how to be okay with uncertainty, right? So your obsessive fears faded not because you were ever able to make sure they could never happen, but because you accepted the possibility that, however small the chances, they might.”

I stare at him. Slowly, my therapy reasserts itself. “Yeah,” I say finally.

“And what you’re doing now, trying not to think about dangerous things. Is it working?”

“Not at all,” I say bitterly. “The harder I try not to think about something, the more I think about it.”

He turns me around, hands still on my shoulders, and propels me toward the bunk beds. “Then stop trying. You can think about all the terrifying things you want. They might happen, they might not, but trying to avoid thinking about them apparently only makes it worse. In the meantime, I’ll concentrate on keeping everything locked and safe and hiding us from the Beings. So between you thinking of scary things and me thinking of safe things, we’ll probably have about the same odds of getting eaten by a Being that we would’ve had if we weren’t able to control anything with our thoughts.”