“This is necessary.” That intensity that makes you believe she really can see the future. “Now go. And Dylan? Remember—your body knows how to keep you alive. You just have to listen.”
I turn north. Toward Fishtown. Toward home.
Three miles of learning to feel what I’ve spent fifteen years trying to ignore.
Alex’s footsteps fade behind me. Giving me distance.
The ring burns against my chest. Dahlia’s ring. Her last possession.
And maybe she’s trying to teach me the same thing Alex is.
That sometimes the only warning you get is the one your body gives you.
And sometimes that warning comes too late.
I walk.
One foot. Then the other. The cold finding every gap in my coat. Hands buried in pockets.
Behind me—somewhere—Alex follows. Making sure I’m safe while teaching me what unsafe feels like.
The ring burns. Dahlia walks with me. A dead woman I couldn’t save, teaching me how to save myself.
Three miles ahead, our apartment waits. Where a ghost needs me to listen. Where everything I’ve been running from lives.
Where I’ll have to become someone who trusts what her body knows.
Even when what it knows might kill me.
Eight
I stareat the city block like it’s the first time I’m seeing it.
Because in a way, it is.
But I can’t see it for what Alex wants me to. Can’t flip some switch in my brain that suddenly makes me feel things instead of just observing them.
And maybe I don’t pay attention to my surroundings like she says. Maybe I’m just a girl on a mission who doesn’t listen.
But what does that even look like?
I feel frozen on this city block outside the restaurant. Like if I start walking, something fundamental will change. Like I can’t go back to the Dylan I was before.
Which is probably the point.
Fifteen years I’ve been walking through this city performing fine. Performing confidence. Performing unbothered.
What happens when I stop performing and just... feel?
It’s about a forty-minute walk home. Not terrible. Not great.
And I’ve walked before. These streets aren’t unfamiliar. But I’m trying to view them as Alex would.
And for some reason I can’t.
So I begin to walk.
No earbuds. No podcast to keep me company. Alex was pretty strict about it. She laid out her rules, and I’m following them because she thinks I have no intuition.
