“Caleb,” she says gently, “you’re making excellent progress—you’re picking up on nuances and layers that you haven’t been able to reach until now—but, given what happened with Adam this week, you need to be careful about blurting things out.”

“Why?”

“It’s important that you keep your ability to yourself,” she says, before launching into a new mindfulness exercise that she wanted me to try for that week. I want to keep asking about it but something in my gut tells me she won’t say more.

So here I am, Monday morning, standing in the doorway to English class, bracing for battle. My hands tighten on the backpack strap slung over my shoulder as I take a beat. I’ve got a few minutes before class starts. I can do this.

I give myself a moment to adjust to the feelings swirling around the classroom. There are only a few people here, with more filing past me as I stand next to the door, so I’m able to cut through all the noise pretty quickly to find what I’m looking for.

Adam is sitting at his desk, earbuds in, writing in his notebook. The vast, empty vortex isn’t there today, thank god—in its place is a calm, blue pool. It’s not tranquil and nice, like the kind of placid peace I find when I meditate in therapy. It’s an ocean that’s deep and mysterious in that way that’s scary but also sort of comforting. I’m letting it wash over me and I feel settled in my body one second and like I’m too big for my skin in the next.

After a moment adjusting to the back-and-forth tide of his feelings, I decide it’s safe to approach.

He either senses my movement or feels me staring (which I guess I have been doing for, like, a minute) because Adam looks up and my feet falter for a second. But the Michaels don’t back down, so I keep walking toward him and the deep blue clears away as something warm and pulsing rises up. It gets caught somewhere in my rib cage and the nerves hit me all at once. I’m scared to talk to him now but I can’t look away and my feet keep carrying me toward him. I’m about to blurt something out when suddenly Caitlin appears in my field of vision.

“Hey, Caleb.” She smiles, flipping her hair casually over her shoulder.

“Oh, uh, hi, Caitlin,” I stammer, totally wrong-footed. God, she just popped out of nowhere, how did she do that? The warm pulse in my rib cage stutters out like a dying star and splatters across my insides, leaving a dripping ooze in its place.