Now, standing again on the mesa in the ’Verse, Bugz opened a video recording of the interaction from her saved files. The security camera footage she’d hacked from the school showed two teenagers walking together. Bugz remembered how she’d looked up to the girl. The popular one. As the video approached the moment when her now former friend body shamed her, Bugz snapped the video window closed and looked back to the sunset. Why the heck did I rewatch that? she asked herself.

Darkness swallowed the light of dusk. The night sky looked so much more vivid in the ’Verse. Here, the Milky Way seemed to pulse with activity. Ringed planets appeared as though within reach. Shooting stars illuminated the land every few minutes.

The wind picked up and howled in the distance. Bugz tried to focus on the beauty around her, but found her thoughts dragging her back to the girl from the security camera footage. Bugz suspected there was some flaw at the core of her being. If only she could locate it and remove it, she could heal herself, like a surgeon.

The anxiety loop roared to life inside her head again. Bugz wondered why she kept dwelling on negative thoughts like these. Does everyone do this? Perhaps she simply couldn’t get along with other young women. No, that’s not true. She’d just spent the weekend before hanging out with her cousin Ally. Her beautiful cousin Ally. Bugz thought of the cut marks she’d noticed on her cousin’s arms. Ally had rolled her sleeves down as soon as Bugz asked about the scars on her biceps, changing the subject. But Bugz knew what they meant. She’d heard kids at school talking about ‘cutters.’ For a moment, Bugz imagined plunging a knife into her own arm. She shook her head violently, shuddering at the thought.

Bugz took a deep breath. She’d always assumed people who felt the way she felt at that moment could trace it back to some sort of deep childhood trauma. Yet there was nothing in her own life that she could point to. Sure, life on the Rez wasn’t glamorous. In fact, the gravel roads, mixed-breed dogs, and homes with cheap siding often looked like poverty to outsiders. But she’d grown up in a loving home wrapped with all the supports of a vibrant community and culture. She figured she had no right to feel like this.

The Floraverse sky lit up as a meteor dragged its green-and-yellow tail toward Lake of the Torches. Bugz sighed, her heart as heavy as a million pounds.

CHAPTER 15

“What do you see, Feng?” his aunt asked. She slowed the SUV to a crawl as they entered the main town site on the Rez. “Are you logged into the Floraverse?”