“I know,” she said, her eyes bright with earnestness. “You should be proud of yourself for getting help when you needed it. That’s an extremely difficult thing to do. And Rose, you’re not a failure. Addiction is not failure. Struggling is not failing. As long as we keep trying, we don’t fail.”

I swallowed, wanting so badly to believe that. I nodded, unable to find the right response.

“How are you feeling about other aspects of your life?” Dr. Bright asked after a moment. “Outside of the dreamdiving.”

“Good. Fine,” I said, unconvincingly. Dr. Bright fixed me with that powerful stare of hers and I cracked.

“I don’t know.” I sighed heavily. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t straddle the two worlds, you know? That I could just pick: dreamworld or real world. And I don’t know which I would pick, it changes day to day, but it’s exhausting to jump back and forth.”

“How do you mean?” she asked, her head tilting to the side.

“It’s like I belong in both places and also don’t belong in either. And that’s not a new feeling—being in an Atypical family and having to hide that, I always felt like I was living two lives. Hell, even being gay in a mostly straight world feels like that sometimes. But this is different from all that.”

“In what way?”

“It feels more concrete. It’s literally two different worlds. The way I relate to people now is completely different. I can bring information from the dreamworld into my real life if I want, but then there are times when I don’t want the other person to know that I know something. Especially if it’s someone who doesn’t know what I am.”

“Have you told Emily yet?”

“No. I’m going to. I really, really am. I just keep chickening out. And I hate it! I don’t want to be this cowardly person anymore. But it’s just so much harder than I thought it would be. And we’ve been dating seriously for nearly three months now and I know I have to tell her but the longer I wait, the more guilty I feel and the less I want to tell her so I keep putting it off and it just goes round and round.”

“Do you worry she’ll react badly?”

“I have no idea how she’ll react, that’s the problem.” I laughed joylessly. “I told her I have a form of narcolepsy, which was already weird enough—”

“Thousands of people have narcolepsy. It’s not weird—”