I thought he was joking for a second—I don’t know what kind of joke he would have been making, but you know how dads are. They find shit funny that no one else does. So I brushed it off, saying, “I don’t think she gets to use their kitchens while under observation, Dad. I think we’ll just have to keep fending for ourselves.” But instead of trying to joke about how he’s such a great cook and could totally pull off the complicated dishes that my sister does (he’s not and he couldn’t), he put his book on his lap and looked up at me, his bushy eyebrows scrunched together.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “Use whose kitchen?”

I stared at him for a second, waiting for him to let go of whatever bit he was trying to do, but he just stared right back at me.

He didn’t remember. My sister has been gone for over a week and it was like … it was like that hadn’t been happening for my dad at all. Once I reminded him that she was at the AM, getting help for her dreamdiving, he nodded a bunch, like he was trying to listen to something really far away and then gave this, like, hollow laugh before walking upstairs to get his wallet (which—that’s weird too! normally he would just use his telekinesis to bring it down and it’s like he forgot about that too) and then going to the grocery store. That’s where he is now and … I don’t know, I feel like I should have gone with him?

I’m scared, you guys. I’m going to talk to him and my mom about him getting looked at, but … I’m scared.

OCTOBER 7TH, 2016

I did it. I found the seam and stepped through that invisible door and what greeted me on the other side was better than I could have imagined.

Something happened last night, something broke wide open and let a cool, sharp breeze into my head, throwing everything into perfect focus, bringing it all into the light. That doesn’t make any sense as a metaphor—how could wind shed light on something? And yet, it makes perfect sense to me as a thought, even writing it down in the harsh light of day. That’s the world I’m dealing with now—the world I live in. Wind can be made of light, light can make sound, sound can be tasted on the tip of your tongue. I’m Dorothy, the tornado has pulled me up out of drab black-and-white and dropped me in a Technicolor world that has rules I can’t even begin to understand.