“I like that you’re dwelling on the good things, Victoria, and that you’re giving me an excuse to turn things toward a better note as we wrap up. Does anyone else have something to share?”

Tristan raised one hand a little, and Mrs. Yamada nodded, giving him permission to say.

“It’s not positive,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s alright.”

“It’s fine. Go ahead.”

“What Victoria was saying, how she was saying she was happy, seeing the kids happy, and how she felt energized after. I don’t have that. I don’t have a way to recharge when I’m not at one hundred percent.”

“You definitely have things you’re passionate about,” Rain said.

“I like people, parties, noise, really letting the walls drop away and having fun. There are things I’d want to go out and do which I can’t. Things I’m not comfortable talking about with Kenzie present.”

Kenzie smiled at him. “Rude stuff. I’m not that young.”

“I know you probably know, I’m still not comfortable talking about it like this,” Tristan said.

“You say Kenzie but you don’t even mention me,” Chris said. “I’m perversely pleased by that. You mean fucking, right?”

“Please, Chris,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“I mean stuff,” Tristan said. “Stuff I can’t do because of my situation. I did some of it back before the trigger. More like sophomore high schoolers stealing their parents booze and having way too many people in a house while the parents are away, but that was the time of my life. It was when I was the most excited to be on this—on that planet. Now I can’t do stuff like that, the pressure release valve is screwed up for the same reasons I’m screwed up.”

“The Case Seventy stuff,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Now me passing out drunk might mean I screw up the time window for passing back control, however many alarms I set, and I can’t do that to Byron. I can’t go have a one night stand because the way things are mean I’d be involving him in it as a bystander or voyeur.”

“Can you find new outlets?” Sveta asked. “One thing I’ve learned over the past little while is that I still had a lot of growing to do. It’s easy when you’re in a bad place to think ‘this is it, this is me,’ but there’s always more out there.”