Dr. Bright listened patiently as I described these dreams, detailing how wonderful it felt to be inside them, controlling the world of my own making, the joint worlds that I make with my family.

“Did you ever read any fantasy novels when you were a kid?” I asked, trying to find another way to explain what diving feels like.

“Some,” she said. “Why?”

“I read all the Narnia books growing up. Did you ever read those?”

“Yes, I did. Mar—my brother was a big fan.”

I clocked that slip-up in the moment. I don’t know why she would have been reluctant to say her brother’s name, but it sounded like his name was Mark. The same guy who came in at the end of one of our first sessions! Presumably the same person who was responsible for the family emergency in the fall. I don’t know why this feels like a mystery to be solved, but there’s something about the whole thing that itches in the back of my brain. Whenever I think of Mark’s face, which I only saw for about forty-five seconds, I feel like I’ve seen it before.

But because I couldn’t put my finger on it enough to ask any specific questions, I just kept going.

“Right, okay, so you know the gist,” I continued. “I loved them because that idea of climbing through a wardrobe and finding another world was just amazing. And then watching things like Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz … when you’re a kid, you hope that there’s some magical land out there for you to stumble into. And, as you grow up, you realize that there isn’t. And I don’t believe anyone who says they’re fine with that, because it is crazy disappointing. But I found mine. An actual magical world. And I can access it whenever and anything is possible there but it’s also completely safe because it’s not real. But it feels real. And I can’t give it up. I won’t.”

“No one is asking you to,” Dr. Bright said soothingly, making me think that maybe all of that had come out a lot more passionately than I had intended. “As I said, we can’t treat this like other, non-Atypical addictions. Your ability is part of you.”

“Can we stop calling it an addiction?” I asked. I had just heard it SO much at this most recent AM stay. “It makes me feel like a failure or something.”

“Rose, before you went into the AM, there were days when you were only awake for two or three hours. You were missing work, not talking to your family, or Emily—”

“I could have stopped it,” I insisted. “I mean, I did stop it. Yeah, it helped to go to the AM, but I did the work.”