It happens so fast. The witch’s fingers send a feeling like ice through my arm as she curses me. My memories begin to leave me, not in a trickle but in a wave. I observe them as they go:

My mom, sitting at the window, saying, “He’s out there swimming, waiting for me.”

My mom as a girl in a cloud shepherd’s misty hands.

My mom and my dad in the photo in the attic, looking at each other with so much love.

Watching D’quan Daniels eat a dirt sandwich in the second grade.

Telling a story to Germ on the phone to help her sleep.

Germ and me racing in the yard.

Germ on the first day of kindergarten, huddled at the foot of the door.

Germ wearing eyeliner for the first time.

Ebb and me sitting on the cliff and watching the sea.

Homer Honeycutt saying, “Only the witches would have you think there is more darkness in the world than there is light.”

So many memories, all beginning to blur and fade away. I feel tears running down my cheeks as I watch these visions turn to iridescent dust and fall through the air, gathered on the wings of the moths that flutter all around me.

And then I can’t remember why I’m crying.

And then I feel myself lifted by the moths, carried through the halls of the cocoon as if on a moving, fluttering bed.

And then I forget to notice anything at all.

CHAPTER 29

I wake in the dark, in a round cave with no door. There is just the tiniest flicker of dim light coming from a small hole in the stone ceiling far above me.

I sit up slowly, trying to remember. Why am I here? Have I been here before? Can I walk? Can I stand? I remember vaguely the faces of a blond freckled girl and a dead boy and a woman who sits by an attic window watching the sea, but not what they mean to me or why they are in my head.

I only remember that I’m trapped and that there’s no escape and that I’m small. And I remember the witch. Memories of the witch are still in my head.

I don’t know how long I’ve slept. It could be hours or days. My stomach feels empty, but I don’t remember if it’s ever felt this empty before.

I stare at the wall in front of me, lit just barely by flickering light from the hole above. Then I fall back asleep.

For who knows how long, I wake and fall back asleep. My dreams are vague and shapeless and they seem to stretch on for years.

I wonder if you can disappear just by wanting to—just by sheer lack of wanting to be.