Dreaming feels different now. It feels like something clicked, like I’ve figured out the shape and dimensions of the dreamworld, even if I haven’t nailed down all the rules. Every dream I have now seems to be lucid. More often than not, I’m waking up in that blank void, a comfortable place now, and I just know. I know I’m dreaming. And I know I’m in my own head too. There’s a soft, warm edge around it. I don’t always know where the edge is, the doorway that has sometimes appeared in that space hasn’t materialized, but each time I’m in that emptiness I try to find it. With my hands reaching out and feeling for a seam, with my mind trying to control what’s around me, with my eyes trying to perceive something that’s barely there. I haven’t cracked it yet, but I have the feeling that if I keep going back, eventually I’ll be able to find the seam and open the door.

I’m not entirely sure if I’ve dreamdived at all since being here. As Owen promised, they’ve kept me away from other patients. My room is on a long hallway full of doors that I’m assuming lead to other, similar rooms. I’ve heard barely a peep from either side and have yet to see anyone else when I venture down the hallway, so I think I have the whole place to myself, not just my own room. I wonder if they’ve shuffled everyone into one corner of the building so that I have this place to myself or if there just aren’t many inpatients at the moment. I should have asked Owen on Friday when he gave me the tour.

“There are two basic types of programs we run here,” he’d said, walking me past the cafeteria right off the main lobby. “We have inpatients, such as yourself”—he smiled at me when he said it, like we were in on a secret together—“and outpatients. You’ll eventually be an outpatient, coming here for annual checkups and to continue group therapy if you’d like.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, “I think Aaron did that for a while. I don’t know why he stopped.”

“It’s not required. Of course,” he added, “some people find group therapy most fulfilling, others prefer the one-on-one approach. We have someone we can recommend if you’d like to continue your own therapy once we leave.”

“Is therapy really that important?” I asked skeptically. “I mean, it’s the annual physicals and stuff that really count, right?”

“Therapy is vital,” Owen said solemnly. “You have to keep your emotional and mental well-being maintained in the same way you do your physical body.”