From across eternity I am called. An infinite nothingness shattered into a fractal landscape and cast across all reality. The bits and pieces move and pulse as they answer the call.

They are me.

They are not me.

They come.

Footsteps echo along the dark street. Storefronts are smashed, with glass and other debris littering the street. The pale moonlight guides me through the fallen poles, shattered buildings, and other ruin that blocks the way. I have to see, have to see what I did. I don’t doubt my choice, but that doesn’t stop the guilt and pain of heart I feel toward this place.

A different echo causes me to stop. A rock tumbling along the asphalt, or something similar. From between two buildings a shadow emerges. Tall and lean, the person approaches with an arrogant walk. There’s a squeezing in my chest as the person steps into the moonlight. A person who has pursued me throughout realities.

He smiles in that arrogant way he has. There’s more grey in his hair than before, but he still manages to make himself look stylish. It makes my stomach churn. He opens his mouth and says, “What’s up, lil hipster? Going to work, or taking the day off to spend with me?”

But the voice and words are wrong! They don’t match this monster. Blue eyes and blue hair flick through my memory, running away before I can form a name.

From a nearby doorway, another shadow steps forth. Blonde hair over blue eyes and a warm smile, she looks at me and her smile deepens.

Like the other person, her name eludes me.

I want to remember them.

I need to remember them.

But not him.

Never him.

Another person steps from the shadows, like the image that flicked through my memory. Her cocky grin pulls at me. Before I can move, another person appears. Then another. Soon there are dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of people crowding the narrow street! They press against me and demand my attention. Their voices are a roar in my head that won’t stop. More and more come. They press and jostle me in the narrow street.

But through it all, his eyes find me. They follow me. A threat. A promise. “This is your legacy.”

Light floods my eyes, painful and bright. I cry out and fling an arm across my eyes.

The moment I move the press of the bodies disappears. Pain still lances my head and breathing is difficult.

“Are you ok?”

Slowly, I lower my arm to look at the bearer of that singular voice. I struggle for my breath as I realize I’m no longer on the ruined street of Arcadia Bay. Instead I lay on my back. Over me crouch those I should remember. Those I want and need to remember. Their smiles and concerned looks capture me.

But their names won’t come. Like they’re locked away from me. In frustration I struggle both in mind and body to bring forth their names. But they fade into nothingness before I can retrieve them. A sob bursts from me as they leave.

Alone.

Always alone.

A memory flashes through my mind, vivid and potent. A shabby motel room. Clothes piled on the dresser. The two women, or girls, speaking, but I can’t hear or recall their words. Behind them, a younger woman with blonde hair looks on with half-closed eyes.

Then they’re gone, buried under a flood of memories. The images and sounds come too fast and powerful to see or understand and leave me shaking.

I push myself to a sitting position, then bury my face in my knees.

Where am I?

The soft hum of distant traffic and a few barking dogs tell me I’m in or near or town. But this place is so unlike what I’ve experienced. There’s a sense of incompleteness and impermanence that claws at my mind.

What am I?

At any moment I expect reality to shift again. But it doesn’t. Or maybe the shifts are too subtle for me to detect. I raise my head to look around.

The room mocks me with with its familiarity. As with the women, the location eludes me. Ghostly images appear and disappear as I look around. Green eyes crinkle in delight. Great purplish wolves charging. Women arguing. Women holding each other. All taunt me with the promise of knowledge and relief if I could just remember them.

But I can’t.

The appearance of the area suggests I’m in a bedroom. Maybe one of my bedrooms? But in which life?

The whirlwind of sound and images running rampant in my mind sweep aside the questions quicker than they can form. I bury my face in my hands. My fingers claw at my hair, pulling at large clumps as frustation and confusion mounts.

Who am I?

The creak of a door opening echoes throughout the house or building I’m in. My head whips up, tears streaming down my face from pulling my hair. I look at the door, a mixture of expectancy and fear charging me. Footsteps approach and I look around for a place to hide or escape. But there is nothing except the closet.

Then the door to the room moves and it’s too late to escape! I prepare myself for the unknown.

A person steps into the room, facing the other direction. They wear a heavy dark coat and blue jeans. A beanie covers their head, but I think I spy a bit of hair peeking beneath it. Blue hair and my breath catches.

Blue eyes find me across the immeasurable gulf between us. “Max!” There are things I don’t recognize in her voice, but all I focus on is the relief and excitement I hear. Another person enters the room behind her. I catch a glimpse of blonde hair before the first woman is kneeling in front of me and she is all I see.

She’s so close, kneeling within arms length. But she doesn’t touch me. Her hands raise and different emotions flit across her face. But her hands fall and she whispers the name again.

The name crashes against the whirlwind in my mind, shaping it and pushing it. From the chaos, two words emerge. Two names that describe the woman who kneel before me. Two names, and a third. Mine.

I am Max.

The blonde, Kate, is next to her. Chloe. As I think the names, a thrill runs through me. My hair stands on end and I shiver.

The look of open honesty and concern Kate gives me pulls me from the chaos that threatens to sweep me away. I reach for it with my mind, for her, for the joy and relief I see in her.

“It’s… it’s really you,” Kate breathes. “After so many false leads and mistakes…” Her hands reach toward me too, but stop like Chloe’s did. Then she covers her face and breaks into tears.

I try to move. I want to move! But I’m locked there. So close to them and my body chooses that moment to do nothing. A gulf immeasurably deep and broad separates us. A gulf of impossibility and time and circumstance. Then Chloe reaches across it to touch my hand.

For the briefest moment, I am here. Connected. Permanent. And I get a glimpse of what here is. What I made of it.

Destruction. Ruin. Grief. Pain.

The moment passes almost before it begins. Kate’s words confuse me, but my mind is a jumbled mess that refuses order.

“W-where am I,” I say haltingly.

Chloe shoots a glance at Kate, whose face is still covered. “In your old bedroom.” Her eyes return to me as she speaks. “In Seattle.” Her voice rises on each word.

Bedroom? Seattle?

I look again at the room. The color doesn’t look right. Although the shape of the room and placement of the closet seem familiar.

“Max.” Chloe brings my attention back to her with my name. “Will you… we… can we help you?”

Help me?

“I… what’s going on,” I asked.

Chloe sits back, her face unreadable. Kate’s tears dry up and she lowers her hands. She scoots closer to Chloe until they are touching.

“Max,” Kate says through sniffles. “Please don’t push us away. We want to help you. But we don’t know how.”

“I – I don’t know what you mean.”

“Bloody hell,” Chloe explodes and starts to rise. Kate’s hand on her arm stops her. I shrink back, confused and hurt by her actions. The turmoil in my mind strengths and threatens to consume me. Kate leans over and whispers in Chloe’s ear.

An image comes to me of Kate and Chloe on a couch, exchanging words of encouragement. Through the window behind them I see trees and mountain peaks.

Then I’m back in the empty room with them. Kate is speaking but I lost her words in that memory or vision or whatever. “-you ok,” she finishes.

“I-“ I begin when dark brown eyes glare at me from nowhere! A suddenness takes my heart and it’s pounding hard! “No!” I can’t let him get me! I have to get away! And I’m scrambling and crawling and twisting to get away from his horrible gaze.

An off-white wall meets my eyes. I’m in a corner, curled as tight as I can be with my face toward the wall. It’s hard to breath and all I hear is pounding.

It fades, and breathing becomes easier. But the wall doesn’t go away. There are two of them. A corner that I’m scrunched into.

“Max?”

Chloe and Kate.

Realization filters into my mind, clawing through the maelstrom of images that shows no sign of abating. A desire to flee this place fills my heart, to find somewhere without the images. Slowly, I push myself into a sitting position, back to the wall and eyes ever alert for him.

Chloe and Kate sit several feet from me. Kate’s eyes are very wide and Chloe holds one of her hands. At the edges of my vision, reality is fuzzy and insubstantial. The way I feel. The way I am.

“Max,” Kate calmly says. “Do you know where you are?”

“Y-you said in my bedroom in Seattle.”

“Do you know who we are?”

I lick my lips, which are suddenly dry, and say, “Chloe Price and Kate Marsh.”

They both brighten at that. “Do you know what year it is,” she asks me next.

Year?

But my mind and thoughts are a storm that refuses to let me latch onto an item as trivial as the year. So I take my best guess. “2014?” No. That can’t be right. And with that look from Kate…

“It’s 2019, Max,” Chloe says shortly. “You’ve been-“ she cuts herself off by turning her head to the side.

Kate gives Chloe a hug then turns her attention to me. “It’s been five years, Max.” She crawls forward to sit close to me. Her hand raises again, hesitant, and she asks, “Is it ok if I touch you?”

A voice, Chloe’s voice yet not, speaks in my mind. “She will hold you and make you feel loved more than anything else. And there’s nothing like making her feel the same.”

“Yes,” I whisper. And her hand settles on mine.

Kate reclines in Chloe’s arms. Lynn shouts in anger and throws something. A sense of overwhelming guilt. Kate’s arms around me. A bag packed in haste. Chloe storming out of a room. A sunny day that brings pain. These scenes and more run through my mind at Kate’s touch. They move too quickly to understand.

“You left five years ago,” Kate whispers. “I’m so sorry for my part in that. We… I didn’t see the pain you were in. My own grief consumed me, and you did so much to help me it didn’t occur to me that you needed help. Until it was too late. I’m sorry, Max. Will you forgive me?”

This is wrong. So wrong. But I don’t know why.

“I…” I lick my lips again. How do they get so dry? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Shit. What the hell happened to you,” Chloe says as she stands. The door behind her opens and another person steps in. She steps to Chloe’s side, a few inches taller than her. Lynn looks at me with a flat expression.

“We need to go,” Lynn says. “The homeowners will be here any moment.”

“Max,” Kate warmly says, “will you come with us?”

A world of hidden meanings lies within Lynn’s eyes as she considers me. Slowly, I push myself to my feet, my hand sliding from Kate’s. “I…” There’s so much I should know and do and be but everything eludes me. From behind her back, Lynn produces a small rectangular package. It’s silver with blue lettering.

“I thought you might be hungry,” she whispers as she holds the package out for me.

I take a step toward her. The edges of my reality are frayed and crumbling and I don’t feel all here. For the briefest moment I am everywhere yet nowhere. A million billion fragments cast among the stars and facets of reality seeing through infinite eyes. Then I’m here, in front of Lynn Marsh who I have to look up to. She’s tall. Taller than Chloe. It’s awkward and strange and uncomfortable but I reach out and take the package.

Two words form in my mind as I look at the shiny thing. Pop tarts.

And I remember.

But I don’t want to.

Yet, I have to.

“I don’t like pop tarts,” I whisper, my voice suddenly dry and hoarse. I hand the package back to Lynn. An odd sensation in my hand causes me to look at it. Rather than skin, I see static, a fragmenting of the realities. They run through me, pulling me apart and dissolving me. It spreads throughout me, an undoing of all that happened.

“Help me,” I whisper, frozen by the sight of my dissolution. Chloe is next to me though I never saw her move. “Help me,” I beg.

She looks at me with her quizzical eyes and tilted gaze. “What’s the matter,” she asks. I hold my hands in front of her, but she doesn’t see or know because she raises an eyebrow and frowns.

“Please,” I beg as I begin to unravel.

“Try holding her,” Lynn says.

“Is that-“ Chloe begins, but I grab her before she can finish. She’s there but I’m not or mostly not and it scares me. Her arms come to rest on me, awkward and slow.

Words are spoken that I don’t know or hear. In her arms I unravel and reform many times. Each time I am someone new, someone old, someone unknown. And the voices never stop.

After what seems hours, the unraveling stops. The cracks remain, filled in by her words and touch. I continue to cling to her long after the event passes. The vivid images in my mind are pushed aside and I glimpse new memories. Or maybe they are old ones. Memories, I think, of here.

There is movement and light and darkness and more movement. Through it all, I am consumed by what I see in my memory. Devastation. Guilt. Love. Joy. Sadness and grief. Loss.

A softness clasps my hands. Warmth accompanies it, seeping into me, into my heart. The black interior of a car comes into focus. The center console is in front of me, marked by use and wear. A broken vent points at the floor.

Hands hold mine: Chloe and Kate. I sit between them. Kate is to my left and she gives me a pleasant smile when I look that direction. To my right, Chloe looks out the window. Lynn drives, occasionally glancing at me in the rearview mirror. What secrets do you hold? She seems central to several events that brought me here.

“Hey,” Chloe whispers when she notices me looking around.

“Hey,” I return, my voice low and crackly.

“We had to take you with us. The homeowner returned and we had to get out fast. We looked for your clothes and stuff before we left, but… couldn’t find any.”

The words mean something, but not really to me. Now that my mind is kind of clear, the words they said earlier come into focus. It’s 2019. That means here … I’ve been gone five years. And when I left them… I don’t want to think about that. It’s suddenly hard to swallow and my hands want to pull away from theirs.

“I hurt you,” I whisper to no one. A bracelet, black leather and black metal studs, wraps Chloe’s wrist. It pulls my eyes, which travel up to hers. But she glances away after a moment.

“We can talk about it soon,” she mutters. Even as she speaks, the car stops moving.

We’re in the parking lot of a small cafe. Lynn turns off the engine and opens her door. She exits without a word. Kate and Chloe open their doors and a blast of frigid air hits me. The thin hoodie and t-shirt I wear are no protection against the cold.

I wrap my arms around myself and shiver as I slide out on Chloe’s side. She shuts the door and looks at me. “Come here,” she says and holds out an arm. I snuggle against her. We make our way to the front of the cafe where Lynn and Kate wait for us.

“Remember the last time we did this,” she whispers, “walked arm and arm in the cold?”

Not really, but I don’t want to tell her that. My hesitation must tell her though because she mutters a curse. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

Then we’re at the door which Lynn holds open, and we step into the warm cafe. I glance around the interior and recognize the place. It’s a small cafe I used to frequent during my Junior year in High School. The year before I returned to Arcadia Bay and Chloe. And Blackwell.

The decor is largely the same, which is comforting. Few people are present. My favorite spot is still here, and unoccupied. “Can we sit there,” I ask, pointing to a large sofa tucked into the back.

With a shrug, Chloe says, “Sure.” We make our way to the counter and order our meal. The menu is mostly the same, but my favorite vegetarian sandwich is no longer served. Instead, I make do with a salad and a pastry.

Once I place my order, I grab my cup and fill it with some of their light roast coffee. It smells and tastes like I remember. A pleasant sensation blooms within me as that realization spreads through my mind. I remember.

Content in the pleasant feeling and comfort brought by the cafe, I make my way to the couch. Along the way I stop to study the different flyers on the local board. Most are for activism or music. One stands out to me. It promotes an exhibit by a local artist pushing the edge of various visual medium. When I read the artist’s name, I almost drop my coffee. Victoria Chase. Dazzling green eyes fill my mind.

“What are you looking at,” Kate asks and I make a surprised sound. Coffee sloshes from the hole on the lid, but thankfully doesn’t get on me. “Sorry about surprising you,” she says as she hurries to grab some napkins.

Together, we clean up the spill and toss the soiled napkins away. “I was… just looking at upcoming events,” I say.

“It looked like you were quite interested in one.” Kate sits near the middle of the couch. I take the end hidden behind a column. It’s a cozy little hiding place.

“It’s been a while since I was last here,” I say, uncertain how much I want to share. The memories of my other lives are still fragmented and raw. Sharp jabs to the heart happen each time I ponder one. “Last time most of the events were music related. Now, I see more flyers for social rights activism.”

Chloe joins us then, plopping herself on the couch beween us. In front of the couch is a long coffee table on which she places a stand with a number. Lynn seats herself in a cushy chair diagonal from me. I let my eyes fall to my coffee cup as the others settle in.

An uneasy silence falls on the group. I close my eyes and lean back. My feelings right now are a mess. Chloe’s and Kate’s presence makes me happy, and more. At the same time, when last I saw in this reality we argued. The words are fresh in my mind, but after five years, are they as fresh in theirs?

“Five years,” Chloe says. “There are so many things I want to say and ask right now.” I hear her slurp her drink. “But I think what I want to know most, Max, is: are you ok?”

Not: where were you? Why did you leave?

“I don’t know,” I whisper. It’s the honest truth. Will I be here tomorrow? Will I blink and flit away to another life? There’s too much I don’t know. Her hand takes mine, warm from her drink.

“It was strange walking into your old bedroom,” she continues. “To find you wearing the same clothes from five years ago. Dressed the same. Looking the same.”

The couch is covered in old leather, soft and pliable. I trace patterns among the cracks on the armrest. “When I … ran away,” I say but am interrupted by the arrival of our food. The server places the items on the coffee table, takes the number stand, and walks away with a smile.

I grab my salad bowl and package of plastic utensils. After I kick my shoes off, I tuck my feet underneath myself. With the salad bowl balanced on the wide arm rest, I open the utensils. Before I dive in, I mix the salad together. The dressing I leave on the side.

The first bite reminds me of why I loved coming here. Little prickles of delight run through my mouth. A little sound of joy squeaks out, which makes Chloe and Kate chuckle. “Glad to see simple things still make you happy,” Chloe says before she bites into her sandwich.

With a warm face, I take a few more bites, then proceed to play with the salad. “When I ran away,” I begin again. “I went back to Arcadia Bay.”

It looms large in my minds eye when I say that. Destroyed buildings resemble jagged teeth thrust upward from the ruined earth. Dark and foreboding in the night, each of them a witness to my crime. ‘Why!’ they seem to hiss at me. ‘Why did our people have to die?’ ‘Why did you let them die?’

“I was drawn, pulled there,” I correct myself. “I… the town consumed me. All those people dead…” The cafe disappears in a blur of colors. Only when a hand covers mine do I realize I’m shaking. With a sniff and a swipe at my eyes, I continue.

“I went back to where it started, the restroom in Blackwell.”

Brown eyes, the color of mud, leer at me. They mock me as I enter the restroom, where I set the town and its people on a oneway trip to the ground. He stands in the shadows, taunting me, cursing me, luring me onward. And then the flash.

“And I … unraveled … I don’t have a better word for it. Split into infinite fragments and spread across every … reality? I was in different times, different Maxes simultaneously. Not aware of the other mes and places except when a random thing would happen and I’d be aware of being elsewhere. It’s like some times the places would overlap.”

I shake my head and look at my salad. “I’m sorry. I’m sure that doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t to me.” I spear more of the salad for another bite.

The crunch of my salad is the only sound for a while. Kate and Chloe exchange glances with each other. I try to ignore Lynn who looks only at me or her food. She’s been silent ever since the pop tarts. Pop tarts. It’s as if she knew. A few things click together for me and I look at Lynn.

She raises her head to give me a thin smile. A gentle shake of her head tells me No, but for what?

“So, when you ran away,” Kate slowly says, “you went back to Blackwell and then … became an infinite number of Maxes in … alternate … universes?”

I ponder her words over another bite. “That’s a better description,” I say.

“How did you get back,” Chloe asks.

I frown and glance at Lynn. Her full attention is on her food. “I’m not exactly sure,” I say. “One moment I was someone else, the next… I was in the room where you found me.”

“Need to use the restroom,” Lynn mumbles and stands up.

“I’ll join you,” I say and set my salad on the table. Quickly, I slip my shoes on, then rise and follow her. She’s a full head or more taller than me and I feel small walking behind her. The bulky winter coat no longer covers her. She wears a light red, long-sleeved pullover. With her black jeans it is a flattering outfit.

While she uses the toilet, I stand at the sink. A pale faced girl with hair that doesn’t want to obey looks back at me in the mirror. There’s no sign of whatever I experienced earlier. No cracks or transparency. But dark circles surround my eyes.

The stall door bangs open and Lynn steps to the counter. I turn, lean back against the counter and look at her. She still wears her beanie. It looks like her hair is cut short since the hat is small yet covers all of her hair.

“Do Kate or Chloe know,” I ask as she washes her hands.

She gives me an inscrutable look. “Know what,” she asks in a neutral voice.

“That you are … like me with powers.”

“I’m nothing like you. And no, they don’t know.”

She keeps her gaze focused on the sink. I don’t know how to take that response. Her voice remained neutral, but her movements are stiff and short.

The water turns off and she straightens herself. She grabs a paper towel and begins drying her hands. I step close and touch her elbow. Immediately, she spins away from me and faces the wall. “Please don’t touch me,” she says.

“Are you … mad at me?” In my mind I see her again, or at least a version of her, at the mountain cabin. “At what I did? What I took from you?”

She doesn’t answer, but stops drying her hands. “I’m sorry, Lynn,” I whisper.

“That’s not it,” she whispers. Suddenly, she squares her shoulders and looks at me. “I know you mean well,” she continues in her whisper. “But I’m not the girl from that other place that pretended to hate you. I…” She stops and fidgets with the paper towel in her hand.

“What do you see when you look at me,” she whispers.

I look at her, but don’t know what she means. “Umm, a girl who’s nervous?”

“That’s not what I see.” She looks at herself in the mirror. “There’s a lot that I’m just not comfortable sharing with you. Home is my safe place. My only safe place. If sis and Chloe knew about my abilities, I’d be a fr- it wouldn’t be a safe place anymore.”

Was she about to say ‘freak’?

Lynn turns to face me again. “Please don’t tell them.” Her fingers touch my arm briefly and she looks almost pleading in her request.

“I won’t, Lynn.”

She nods at my answer and moves toward the door. “Thanks.”

We walk through the cafe, back to our seats. Kate and Chloe sit close to each other, chatting quietly. Kate’s head leans against Chloe’s. “I can’t leave you alone for five minutes,” Lynn teases them as she takes her seat. Chloe and Kate glance at me, their eyes unable to meet mine.

“I-it’s ok,” I mumble as I seat myself next to Chloe. Both of them straighten up when I sit. “I’m used to seeing you two together. You were a couple in one of the other places.”

A part of me longs for that intimacy. Before I ran away, Chloe and I were close. Kate and Lynn had recently joined our little family. At least, that’s what my memories tell me.

I take a breath, close my eyes, and sink into myself. It’s confusing, jumping from place to place. All sorts of emotions and thoughts from those other people are in me. My hands itch to touch Chloe and Kate, to hold them like we did while fleeing Dr. Smith. Yet, that was different people.

And my heart throbbed with joy and excitement when I read about Victoria’s exhibit. The thoughts and feelings of the other Maxes, and even Chloe, are part of me. Mine, but not mine. But the people I’m with now, my Chloe, my Kate, they don’t know me that way. I can’t just slip myself into their life, their world like I never left. Like we’re –

“Kate, Lynn,” Chloe says, interrupting my musing, “would you mind giving Max and I time alone?”

My eyes flick open in time to see the sisters walk away. Chloe has moved to sit crosswise on the couch. Now, she leans against the back and looks at me. We sit in silence a while, she with her head on her arm, me looking at her and my knees.

“I was so fucking pissed when you left,” she whispers and I start. Her words hit me right in the heart, which drops and leaves a pit inside me. “I’m not mad anymore, just sharing how I felt then. It hurt so much to realize that I’d been selfish again, focused only on myself and ignoring the fact you needed support too.

“Kate helped me a lot. Well, Kate and Lynn. I’m not mad anymore, Max. I’m excited and happy you’re back. I … I missed you a lot.” She pauses and lets her hand stray to my shoulder. “When we got conclusive proof you’d be at your old house this morning, I wanted to drive here right away! Kate and Lynn talked me into waiting until morning. I barely slept last night, I was so excited.”

I look at her with a smile. But it’s hard to keep the smile. The yawning pit her words formed vie with the storm of uncertainty that occupies my mind. “It’s difficult to understand what you explained about being in other places,” she continues. “It’s confusing and sad, but at the same time … a relief. I-“ She cuts herself off and looks down.

“I thought we … I… lost you forever and I know I’m pushing this early and it’s really premature because you just got back and you’re confused and I’m confused but I don’t want to lose you again and …” Her torrent of words trails off, which is good because they came so fast I didn’t keep up.

“I’m glad to be here too,” I whisper. That gladness is tinged with the fear that at any moment all this will be gone. A blink and I’ll be somewhere else.

“What I’m trying to say,” she says after a deep breath. “Is, I want to help you. To support you. What we started five years ago … I want that too. But more than that, I want to help you heal. I can’t begin to imagine what you’re dealing with.”

“Thank you,” I say after a moment. “Right now, everything is so confusing. I… my memories are all jumbled up with thousands of others and it doesn’t make any sense. But there is one thing that makes sense…”

I give her the steadiest smile I can. “I want us to be close, too. You and I and … Kate.”

That makes her eyebrows go up. “Kate,” she asks, surprised.

“You two are together, right?”

She nods. “Yeah, just… I thought we’d take it slow to help you heal. You and I before we tried complicating your life with an open relationship like this.”

“In one of those other places, you and Kate were a couple and… Well, you included me in it. Just…” I look away, at my knees. There is an ink stain on the right knee. Not exactly a stain, more of a drawing. It’s a picture I drew many years ago when I was trying to distract myself. It serves the same purpose now as I trace the outline with a finger.

“I need some stability right now, Chloe. The memories and feelings of that other place, with you and Kate, are the strongest. I think I need that. One thing that makes all this so hard, is at any moment I fear all this will be gone. That I’ll be gone again.”

“Is that what was happening earlier? In your old house when you asked for help?”

I nod, eyes and finger still focused on the drawing. “I was … unraveling. I don’t feel quite here and … I’m scared I’ll never feel ‘here’ anywhere.”

There’s a moment of silence, where only the distant voices of the employees and the sounds of food preparation disturb it. Unreality lurks at the edge of my existence, seeking to whittle me away bit by bit. Chloe’s nearness and feelings radiate from her. They push at me, at my skin. But it’s welcome and I struggle to open myself to it, to let those good things consume me instead of chaos.

“Would you like a hug right now?”

I nod, the drawing is all I can see. If I move my eyes from it, will the world cease to exist? Will I switch to another place with its own rules and relationships? Will this ever stop?

Then her arms are around me. I close my eyes and bury my face against her. She holds me tight. Against her warmth and arms the tidal wave of chaos and fear and doubt and confusion crashes. They threaten to erode my existence, to pull me and unravel me and scatter me across the universes.

The beat of her heart sounds in my ears, a soothing song against the tempest I hear. It anchors me in this reality. The storm of chaos surrounds me and tears at me, but the circle of Chloe’s arms holds it at bay. With every fibre of my being, I want the chaos to end, to leave me alone.

And in her arms, maybe that’s possible.