“Counseling,” I tell him.

His eyebrows flick up. “Is everything okay?”

“Not really, no.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” he says.

“No.” The silence swells between us, unspoken words burbling up under my chest until I feel like I’m going to burst if I don’t say them. “You really hurt me, Matt.”

“I was a jerk.”

“You were supposed to be better than that.”

“Believe me,” he says. “I thought so too.”

As soon as he pulls into the parking lot, I jump out of the car even though we’re still on the opposite side of campus from Alice’s office and it’s pouring rain. I can’t sit next to him any longer. Everything Beau said itches under my skin. Beau is under my skin, and Matt doesn’t even know he exists. As I march toward the building, Matt drives alongside me, rolling the window down. “How will you get home?” he asks, clearly worried, and I look up, wiping raindrops free from my lashes.

“I’ll figure it out,” I tell him. “Please leave, Matt.”

He opens and closes his mouth a few times, like he’s trying to supply his tongue with words. “You know, this isn’t all my fault,” he says, anger ebbing into his voice.

“What isn’t? You forcing yourself on me and then hooking up with a girl who used to be one of my best friends?”

“God, Natalie,” he snaps. “I made a mistake. You don’t need to keep rubbing my nose in it like I’m a dog who pissed on the carpet.”

“I’m sorry if I can’t forget about something like that in the course of a few days, Matt,” I shout back. “You scared me—don’t you get that? I didn’t feel safe. I thought you were going to . . .” I trail off, unable to even say it aloud.

Matt scoffs, cheeks turning livid. “Just say it, Natalie,” he almost screams. “That’s what you really think of me. You think I would rape you.”

“I didn’t say that,” I say, shaking badly now.

“You might as well have.”

“I was scared,” I answer. “I told you to stop, and you didn’t listen. You’d never acted like that before. What was I supposed to think?”

“Sometimes,” he says, shaking his head at the steering wheel, “I can’t even believe what a raging bitch you can be.”

My mouth falls open, the retorts I’d prepared slipping from my mind, leaving me empty and trembling. “Don’t ever talk to me again,” I say. “Don’t call me. Don’t come to my house. We’re done, Matt.”

“No problem,” he spits. He rolls up his window and speeds off.

I close my eyes, letting the rain soak me through, and my stomach floats upward within me, the sensation that lets me know the world’s changing around me. When I open my eyes again, the buildings are gone, replaced by rolling hills and thick thriving woods that shimmer and shake in the rain, but I set off toward where Alice’s building should be anyway.

With the buildings gone, it’s like Matt doesn’t exist. Like no one exists and so nothing bad can happen. The whole world feels safer and more tender, but I can’t stop crying and shaking.

I just need to keep going. Don’t think about Matt. Don’t think about the countdown or even about Beau. I’m getting closer to understanding everything. The whole world, and my place in letting it be born. If I just keep going, everything and everyone will be okay.

With a jerk in my center, Alice’s building pops back into view. I go inside, climb the stairs, and wind down the hallway to her office. “Cancel the rest of your appointments today,” I say when she and Dr. Wolfgang, the hypnotherapist, look up from her untamed desk.

“No can do,” she says, turning the page in her notebook. “It’s your responsibility to get here on time, and if you can’t manage that—”

“I know who the Others are.”

Alice pales. “Dr. Wolfgang, I think we’re going to have to reschedule.”

“Alternate realities occupying the same physical space,” Alice says, drumming her fingers on her mouth. “I’ve never seen concrete evidence before, but it makes sense.” She scribbles in her notebook, stops writing for a moment, and starts drawing tight circles with her pen as she hmmms.

“Hmm?” I say.

“So, say your Closing comes in three months,” Alice says. “Maybe you only have three more months before you’re shut out of these alternate realities, which are sort of like lunar eclipses. Multiple worlds overlapping, but it’s temporary.”

“Okay.” I already feel panic coursing through my veins at the thought of being shut out of Beau’s world.

“In that case,” Alice continues, “it’s possible Grandmother wants you to do something in the other world. Maybe that’s what the time limit’s for.”

“Maybe,” I agree. “There’s only one way to know for sure, though. I have to find her.”

“And your friend—Beau—has he ever encountered her?”

I shake my head. “No, but he says he’ll help me find her.”

“You think he can?” she asks, one dark eyebrow arching.

“I don’t know. But he has a lot better control over this. He’s been going between the two worlds since he was little.”

“Bring him here next time,” Alice says. “We’ll see what parallels we can draw between the two of you.”

“I’ll try,” I say noncommittally. I can’t imagine Beau agreeing to be cross-examined by Alice, especially not after spending his whole life thinking he was losing his mind.

“In the meantime,” Alice says, “I still think we’re heading in the right direction. I feel it. The key to getting Grandmother back is in your mind. Dr. Wolfgang just has to find a way to get at it. Your brain’s like Alcatraz in its heyday.”

“I thought it was a Walmart.”

“A maximum-security Walmart,” she says. “One where otherworldly visions and teenage football players are welcome, and hypnotherapists panning for trauma are most definitely not. We’ll bulldoze your brain if we have to—we’re getting in there.”

“Speaking of getting somewhere,” I say, “I need a ride home.”