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Her gaze drifted across the cafeteria. “I guess I have. Like them? The blond guy?” She tilted her head at a group of students across the way, and the blond boy with sharp, angular features effectively holding court there.

Roy, who’d been suspiciously silent since Simon and Alannah arrived, peered to see who Molly meant.

“You got a crush already?” he asked, teasing.

Molly kicked his shin beneath the table. Roy merely laughed and flung a ketchup packet at her.

“Hardly,” she said. “He called my dad a hobo during drop-off. He’s in four or five of my classes. I guess he’s somebody important. There were literal gasps when his name came up during roll call.”

Roy looked again, squinting. “Huh. Who is he?”

Simon and Alannah had also craned to look.

“Yikes,” was all Alannah said.

Yikes, indeed. They’d been caught staring. Several kids in the group looked over, their expressions ranging from disinterest to distaste. The blond boy leaned to the girl next to him, said something while looking directly at Molly, and then broke out into a fit of laughter.

Something uncomfortable sizzled in Molly’s chest. It felt like a spotlight had been turned right on her as her face heated. All her swirling excitement about this new academic adventure took a back seat to sudden self-consciousness. Were they laughing at her?

“That,” Simon said, sounding annoyed, “is Aster Bishop.”

Chapter 3

Simon Clay

One week bled into the next in a way that made a mockery of liminal spaces and Molly’s ability to occupy them. Time lurched: impossibly fast and unbearably slow. She felt at home in her new apartment and like she was a visitor at the same time. Roy drove her to her first follow-up appointment where her doctor presented her with painful optimism even though absolutely nothing about her condition had changed.

She lived with a man she thought she knew but didn’t, and couldn’t seem to figure out.

She and Bishop had reached a peculiar détente wherein Molly acknowledged that perhaps he wasn’t the teenage nightmare she remembered, and he cautiously tiptoed around her as if expecting her to run away at any moment. It soon became clear they were both waiting for something.

Molly, waiting to blink and remember the last six years of her life, to understand how she’d ended up here.

Bishop, waiting for the same thing to bring his wife back to him.

In the meantime, Molly felt like something of a steward by necessity over a body that both was and was not hers. Living a life that was and was not hers. The technicalities felt like gossamer-thin, diaphanous things.

“It’s just a small headache,” Molly said, trying to preempt Bishop’s concern while popping two ibuprofen tablets into her mouth. She’d emerged from the bedroom that morning after having been awake and reading since an unholy hour and went straight for the pills.

In hindsight, she might have greeted him before beelining for the painkillers.

He set his coffee down and pulled out a Post-it pad. Molly tensed; she almost wished he would hide the way he kept taking notes about what he called her “ongoing symptoms.” Their place of prominence stuck to the refrigerator made their presence an unignorable element in her life, especially as their numbers continued to grow.

“I’ve been reading all morning,” she added. “Small text, lots of it on a screen. I’m not surprised I have a headache. And it’s only a little one.”

Bishop didn’t look convinced. He never did. “We’re supposed to track any neurological symptoms. And you’re supposed to rest when you experience strain.”

“Hence why I stopped reading.” Eventually. “My doctor didn’t seem especially concerned at my appointment, even when I conveyed your worries.”

She pulled the carafe from the coffee maker only to find it empty. Before she’d so much as opened a cabinet in search of the beans, Bishop was beside her and taking over.

The man was wickedly controlling over the coffee brewing process and insisted on making it fresh for her every morning. They’d already bickered over it twice that week.

“They’re not taking your symptoms seriously enough. I’ll take more time off and come to your next appointment, explain my perspective in person,” Bishop said, absently pulling out a chair at the kitchen table for her to sit in.

“I’m perfectly capable of handling my own doctor’s appointments. They said some mild headaches are normal, especially when I told them how much I read.” Sitting, Molly averted her gaze from the precision of Bishop’s actions: weighing and measuring, tamping and tapping. She couldn’t put her finger on what, exactly, but there was something indecent in the whole routine.

“You always read a lot. You don’t always have headaches.”