I am so disturbed, I consider canceling my meeting with Bryce tomorrow. I don’t want to be in the sunken place when I see him. I close my eyes and lean my head back against the wall. I try to think of what to do. There is a portal spinning in my room and I’ve just talked to my eight-year-old self in the bathroom mirror. I’m going mad, just like my brother, I think. Should I call someone? Jennifer? Connor? Earnell? My mother?

Thoughts of my mother whirl in my mind, conjuring her presence. I feel her everywhere suddenly. “Momma, I’m scared,” I cry out. I summon another of her Bible verses. This time from the Book of Psalms. I bow my head and clasp my hands so tightly that the palms turn white.

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me. Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. May the Lord and all his glory and light be with me. Amen.”

I inhale fully and a deep calm surges through me. This is not the end of me, I say to myself with renewed courage, this is only the beginning. The words are not my own and come from somewhere deep inside—the ancestor place, the wade-in-the-water place. Even though I don’t fully believe, I trust them. I have no other choice in this moment.

I rise up off the floor and stare once more in the mirror at my face, which looks irradiated, like a Black phoenix, but without the pomp and circumstance fantasies of some man. This is a creation of my own accord, of my own making. My eyes are flames, burning. Not with lust like Earnell’s, but with a power I never knew was in me. Chosen One, my reflection whispers to me. She is here. My eyes close.

A tunnel of motion. Forward.

A strange fog permeates the air around me, as if the entire campus has been submerged in steam. I am standing in line at Ladles, the only ice cream parlor on campus, uncertain how I got here. The last thing I remember is passing out on the bathroom floor after praying to my mother’s God, which feels likes it was only a few minutes ago. The awning over the shop is usually bright pink with white ice-cream-cone letters, but today it’s lime green with pink letters. And the parlor itself looks different, sparkling and luminous, despite the fog. I turn in confusion to a younger teen standing next to me and fire off a series of questions.

“Have you ever seen the sky look like this? Why does the shop suddenly look brand-new? Also, is it Tuesday? Is Bible study over? Is there still a week until midterms?”