I am five, lined up dead last with several other kids along the back fence of my school’s grassy kindergarten playground. Sunlight filters through overhanging branches, casting mottled shade. It is our first late recess day.

A taller kid—the leader—paces up and down. To each of those ahead of me, he says, “You’re in,” and they fall behind him like soldiers. Then, he reaches me, looming.

“You!” he says, pointing at me. “You’re the enemy.”

They chase me for five minutes. Only when I hide in a green jungle gym tube and refuse to emerge do they grow bored and leave me. Every recess thereafter I spend in that tube, imagining it the seat of a space fighter. I fly heroic missions there. But when recess ends, I wait in my tube until the rest of the children have gone, then carefully follow.

* * *

I am eight, obsessed with gods, mythology, and fantasy novels—the works of Patricia Wrede and Susan Cooper. I wish only to retreat inside those worlds.

On the first day of third grade, I sit beside a girl with green eyes and light brown hair. I notice her staring at a book hidden in my lap. She passes me a note: What is it?

I show her the cover: Diane Duane’s “So You Want to Be a Wizard?” She smiles and flashes the cover of her own small yellowed paperback, concealed in the folds of her red checkered skirt. It is Madeline L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time.”

We eat together at lunch, taking turns reading the back blurbs. “Mine’s better,” she declares—a conclusion I oppose. We decide to exchange, and make a real comparison.

* * *

I am twelve. My grandmother is dying. I am failing math.

One afternoon an ambulance comes to our middle school take away a student; by the time Claudia and I reach the lobby, we see only the janitor mopping up the last of the blood on the linoleum floor. An eight-grader named Brock was bullying a younger kid, who tried to fight back. Brock broke his jaw. Now Brock’s suspended, not expelled.

In social studies, fat Mauricio behind me keeps wiping his fingers on my neck, in my hair. He says they’re covered in boogers; he’s been doing this for months. I’ve complained to the teacher, but when confronted, Mauri always denies it. When the bell rings, I run to the bathroom, pretend to blow my nose in a stall until the place is empty, and then hurriedly wash off my neck and hair at the sink.

* * *

That night, I tell my parents I’m not returning to school. When they ask why, I cannot explain. I cry. They threaten no TV, no video games, no pizza, no Claudia, and send me off to bed.

I lie awake for hours. I haul my clunky boombox into bed, and play the Random House audio books of Dragonlance my Great Aunt Henny gave me last Christmas. But I keep thinking about Brock, and the kid with the broken jaw. I imagine teeth spilling onto the floor. My teeth.

I leave my room, shutting the door quietly, careful not to wake Stephen across the hall. I creep down the narrow stretch of felt carpet, past my parents’ room, and head downstairs. I walk to the side door, boards creaking. Adults can’t help me. There’s only one person I trust.

I put on my shoes. I grab a key from the mounted key ring by the side door. Quietly, I exit the house—my first time sneaking out. I walk twenty minutes to Claudia’s place.

* * *

I am fifteen. Claudia’s parents are away, and we’re supposed to be at friends’ houses, not here, in her bedroom. She is naked. My manhood pokes out of the flap in my checkered boxers. I’m staring at the condom. I have not given this part much thought. I expected a saggy latex sock, not a little disc.

“Sorry,” I mumble, wilting. But Claudia laughs, snatches it from me. “Hey,” I protest, but then she presses against me. Her lips meet mine, and she unfurls the condom on me. Then she yanks me toward her queen-sized bed with the worn Disney’s Ariel bedspread.

I trip on the throw rug, and we topple onto the mattress, laughing.

* * *

I am seventeen. I sit with Claudia atop a cement overlook, in the yard behind our town’s local teen center. It is sunset, the sky aflame, red and orange, shimmering across a small pond below.

Claudia is crying. She reaches into her canvas bag, withdraws a safety pin. “No,” I say. But she ignores me, pushes back her sleeve, revealing the fine white scars that crisscross her forearms, easy to miss against her already-pale skin. I reach for the pin, but she yanks it back.

“If you don’t let me, we are breaking up!” she says.

I hesitate. Finally I tell her, “Okay . . . But you have to cut me, too.”

To my surprise, she nods. I watch her press the pin against the back of her arm; she drags it in a short line—back, forth, again—gasping. Only when blood wells, drips, and trickles, does she stop. She looks to me. I extend my arm, and she rests it on her lap. I don’t look, but feel the needle dig in, rub across my forearm, parting layers of skin.

Abruptly, she halts. “Shit,” she says.

“What?” I glance down, see a thin stream of blood flowing down my arm, my hand.

Claudia tosses the pin, digs out a little tube of anti-bacterial ointment, and Band-aids. As she treats my wound, she whimpers, “My parents are getting a divorce.”

* * *

I am nineteen. It is summer. I drive up outside Claudia’s mother’s house—red brick with a white gable, tucked in the corner of a cul-de-sac.

I’m not sure whether to call or honk when the front door opens. Claudia steps out, in a breezy white strap dress, the sun incandescent against her alabaster skin. Her brown hair is highlighted with auburn; an unfamiliar tattoo—something written in calligraphy—runs along the left side of her ribcage. She looks different, mature, her cheekbones sharper, limbs long and lithe.

She sees me, smiles, comes down the walk. She gets into the car, kisses me on the cheek. “It’s been a long time,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” she replies.

* * *

That night, Claudia and I sit around a campfire with some of our younger, recently graduated high school pals, the forest dark around us. “Watch out for ticks,” our friend Ben calls every time someone walks into the trees to urinate.

We swap campfire stories. I spin a tale about campers who are accosted by an old hermit. They flee, but the hermit picks them off one-by-one. Only, then the last two campers find the hermit’s body. “It turns out,” I say, “he was trying to warn them . . . about the monster!” I roar. Claudia shrieks and grabs my arm. Our friends laugh.

Later, we cook franks and burgers on Ben’s collapsible campfire grill, and drink Rolling Rocks I bought with my fake ID. Claudia leans sleepily against my shoulder. “I’m going to bed,” she finally says. “Who’s sharing my tent?” She looks up at me, green eyes reflecting firelight.

I hesitate. Then our friend Molly chimes in, “I’ll share with you. I’m pretty tired, too.”

Claudia offers me a last doleful look and then she and Molly retreat into a blue canvas tent on the campsite’s perimeter. When they’re gone, some of my friends grin suggestively. I laugh it off, finish my beer, feeling as if I’ve missed something terribly important. I wander into the woods to relieve myself.

* * *

I am twenty, awake in the middle of night. I cannot get out of bed. My neck is locked in a Charley horse. I don’t understand why.

Eventually, I manage to roll off and onto the wood floor. I crawl out of my room and across the apartment I share with Stephen, now a freshman at the New School, but home at our parents’ house tonight. I make my way to the bathroom.

However, as I meander down the hall, my foot strikes something hard. I teeter, and crash to the floor. Neck muscles twitch, writhe, and I wail. I lay there panting, whining like a kicked dog, until the spasm quiets. I realize my hand is wrapped in fabric. I lift it toward my head.

One of Stephen’s shirts. I have tripped over a basket of his laundry. I want to call and eviscerate him, despite the hour. I unconsciously reach for my phone, but it’s in my bedroom, impossibly far. I want to call Claudia, too, but I imagine her in bed with someone else.

I fall asleep on cold floorboards.

* * *

I am twenty-two, sitting beside my mother in Dr. Sarneff’s gray-carpeted office. Wood furnishings reek with age, though perhaps not nearly so aged as the doctor himself. I’ve already been to an internist; neurologist; endocrinologist, allergist; immunologist, with no diagnosis.

The doctor taps a gnarled hand on the desk, poring over test results. “Your blood work came back normal,” he says, and I trade a look with my mother. “What I think we’re looking at is fibromyalgia.”

“What is that? Is he all right?” my mother demands.

“Yes,” the doctor reassures us, “it’s non-degenerative, something you can manage . . .”

* * *

I am twenty-five, waking in my childhood bedroom, feeling leaden. Muscles in my back and neck twitch spasmodically. My head pounds. This is my life. I have been to many doctors, but when I give them my diagnosis, they only try to manage my symptoms. Their efforts are useless. The drugs cloud my head, so I always stop taking them, because all I have left is my writing.

I’m working on a novel. An epic fantasy. The sort of story I’ve wanted to tell since childhood. It’s my one anchor.

I open my door, hear chatter downstairs. I find my mother and Claudia at our lopsided kitchen table, setting out fresh bagels, muffins, cream cheese, coffee. I glance down at my rumpled pajamas. Claudia comes over, awkwardly embraces me. “I was in town for an appointment, thought it’d be nice to bring some breakfast,” she says.

After a few minutes of small talk, my mother leaves us. I sit with Claudia at the table. She scrutinizes me. “What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Nothing,” I say. “Just woke up.” I make an everything bagel with cream cheese, take a bite, eyes bleary, world bright and unfocused.

“You’re getting worse,” she says. “Have you gotten a second opinion?”

“Nobody else thinks I need one,” I tell her. “And I’m sick of seeing doctors. They can’t do anything. I wish you would just stop asking already.”

* * *

I am twenty-seven, standing at the podium of the Upper West Side Barnes & Noble for my first book launch. Friends and family spread out before me in rows of folding chairs.

I talk extemporaneously about the book, my inspiration, all the lesser incarnations scribbled in notebooks over the years. After, I read the first chapter, the text hard to make out, the paper white and glaring. I don’t feel like a participant in this, only a passenger. Later, as I autograph, I notice Claudia sneak onto the back of the line. Only when she arrives at the table do I feign surprise. “Thought you couldn’t make it,” I say. We sort-of-hug over the table.

She replies, “I took an early flight. This was too important. Congratulations.” She grabs a book off the pile stacked beside me, hands it to me.

I grab my pen, hesitate, then settle on a short inscription—“To Claudia, with love.”

* * *

Hours later, after dinner with my family, Claudia and I wander south, to West 59th Street, Columbus Circle, where Central Park, 8th Avenue, and Broadway collide.

Ahead of us stands the USS Maine Monument, at its apex a goddess in gilded bronze—Columbia Triumphant in her seashell chariot—presiding over stone-carved figures assembled around a fountain base. We lean against the low stone perimeter wall, watching cars circle off to different places, the city lights spilling across their windows like constellations. I feel as if I’m glimpsing past a cosmic curtain, watching reality divert into possibilities.

“Something you wanted to talk about?” I ask her.

“Um . . . How do you feel about me?” she replies.

I am quiet several seconds. My voice quavers as I say, “You know how I feel.” Adrenaline and anxiety pump hot and cold, nauseating me, amplified my through illness-fried nerves. Then, Claudia touches my cheek. I turn to her, and she kisses me. I pull away. “I don’t want your pity,” I say.

Her eyes grow large. “That’s not what this is about,” she says.

"Then what?" I ask.

She hesitates. "I love you."

“Why are you doing this now?” I say. “Don’t you have a boyfriend?” People are staring at us.

She ignores this. "Why don’t you trust me?” she asks.

“Well, where were you all this time?” I shout.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “I didn’t know how to be there for you! You never told me what you needed. You just shut down!” Bystanders have their phones out, filming. “But I don’t care about that. Listen, I . . . I want you. And I want you to have me. Please . . . Say yes.”

“I should go home,” I say. “I’ll take the train.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’ll drive you,” she says.

“No,” I say, standing. “I just want . . .”

I sink back onto the barrier, head buzzing, rainbow sparks blooming in my vision. My extremities vibrate, pins and needles, almost numb. Stood up too fast, I think. I double over to bring blood to my head.

“ . . . re you a . . . right?” Claudia asks, the sound fading in and out like a shoddy recording. There’s a pit in my stomach, an abyss, and it’s dragging me down, down . . .

* * *

I am twenty-eight, sitting in a bright room while a new doctor goes over my brain scans. He points out white spots, the same color as his perfect teeth. “With these lesions we’re probably looking at an autoimmune disorder, possibly lupus, possibly multiple sclerosis. We’ll run more tests, but in the meantime we can start you on an immunosuppressant.”

My mother squeezes one hand, Claudia the other, while my sister puts a hand on my shoulder. My father’s at work; with my medical bills, college loans, and my sister’s, he has no choice. “We’re going to sue that Dr. Sarneff,” my mother whispers.

* * *

I am twenty-nine, groggy from painkillers. A black notebook lies closed in my lap as Claudia pushes my wheelchair along the tree-lined path outside the hospital. My legs barely function anymore. My arms, too, but every afternoon before our walk she gives me that notebook, and a pen, like symbols of our own story, which must remain forever incomplete.

I know she wants more from me. I wish I could give her that. But I’ve finally begun to realize I won’t make it past this, no matter what she or my mother might say. Better not to start something that would only make the end hurt that much worse. I think of that night camping, her face aglow by firelight as she seemed to invite me into her tent, and compare it to her face now, upturned toward the sun, flaxen hair gleaming. So much has changed, and so little. I still cannot speak what’s in my heart.

"It’s beautiful out," she finally says. A breeze tosses her hair and I watch it sway. Her eyes remain fixed on the rustling leaves. "Maybe you can find some inspiration today."

I look only at her, though the light hurts my eyes. I smile. "Maybe," I say.

She smiles, too. "Let’s hope."

* * *

I am on my deathbed.

Not lying there, but floating above. I watch Claudia lean over my thin husk-like form. Why am I not inside my body? What’s happening to me?

The heart monitor beside me flatlines. Claudia wails. My family and friends rush in, crowding my immobile form, and I can no longer see myself. It terrifies me. I reach toward the bed, but I have no hand to reach with. What is this? How? Am I going to disappear?

Oh God.

Stop it, I think. But then I feel something, pinpricks across my neck, my head, or what I perceive to be those things. The prickling grows and surrounds me . . .

And I drown in a bright, all-enveloping light.

Next Chapter: iii.