Page 29 of Bound By Fury

Daisy seems intuitive, fluid, creative, empathetic—plus, she thinks she’s psychic… “I don’t know,” I say, “I’m just really into astrology.” How could I not be with sixteen years of Gigi’s blabbering about the stars making me especially attuned to this sort of thing? But obviously I can’t say that, either.

Daisy laughs. “OMG, I love astrology! Lemme guess your sign… hmm, okay, you’re an Aries, right?”

I scoff. “Me? Hell no! I’m a Cancer, obviously,” I say demurely, “I’m sensitive.”

Sam rolls their eyes. “Astrology is fake.”

We ignore them.

“So much for you being psychic, right?”

Daisy pretends to be offended. “I never claimed to be psychic.” She smiles. “I just get… feelings sometimes. They tell me things about people, places, things—”

“Well, now you’re just describing what a noun is,” Sam interrupts.

“Sam, you’re clearly a Capricorn,” I say, and they blanch.

“How—”

I turn back to Daisy. “How long have you been seeing auras?” I ask, leaning closer.

“Oh, I don’t know. My whole life, I guess. It’s just like an energy thing or something, I think. My whole family is like this…” Her eyes skate away from the table evasively, and something twists in my gut.

“Yeah, well, if Daisy’s a psychic, and you’re a… I don’t know, astrology guru or whatever, then I guess I’m a vampire,” Sam says dismissively.

“Still,” I say, dropping my voice. “It was kind of freaky how you could tell that stuff about me. Where do you think it comes from? You said your whole family is like this? That’s cool!”

Daisy looks at the ceiling. “No, yeah, it’s just—um, I don’t know, really! I haven’t thought much about it, it’s just who I am!” She straightens and meets my eyes again. “But this year I’m on a journey of self-discovery. I’m going to own my power.” The intensity of her expression makes my eyes widen.

“I love that for you,” I say, ignoring the fluttering in my stomach. “Can you do anything else? Like, do you ever feel like you’re being totally overwhelmed with rage, and it’s like you could probably blow something up with your mind if you wanted to?”

I realize my mistake the second the words burst from my mouth. I’d been too excited about meeting someone who seems just as weird as me, and I took it too far. Daisy and Sam exchange a look. I need to hurry up and say something normal(ish).

“… Because I had a dream once that I had these insane powers, and it felt like my head was going to explode!” I force a shiver. “It was low-key horrifying.”

“Oh my god!” Daisy squeals. “Dreams! Okay, but lately I’ve been obsessed with watching storytimes about people who can lucid dream and all the alternate lives they live while they’re sleeping! Sam says they can never remember their dreams, can you believe that?!” Daisy pats Sam on the shoulder while Sam hides their face. “They’re not in tune with their inner self. Too much jiujitsu, not enough meditation.”

My hands shake under the table where I wipe the sweat onto my pants. I can’t believe that worked. They were starting to look at me like I was insane, and maybe they have a point. I’ve been so caught up in this dream and the fire in my veins. Is this all real? Do I really have power, or am I having some kind of break from reality? A way for my brain to protect me from the vastness of my grief?

Maybe my mom is right, and too many stories in your head can break you.

After dinner I invite Daisy and Sam up to my room to hang out for a bit. We sit on my bed, and I sketch my view from the window as we talk, trying my best to capture the beauty of campus in muted tones. And it truly is beautiful despite the unsettling nature of all I’ve learned about it so far. Bordered by dense trees and plummeting cliffs, pedestaled above Earnest like an idol.

Tonight, the forest tops have turned a deep, fog-shrouded indigo in the waning light, and the town below twinkles against the dark.

I’m adding canary-yellow splotches that blend into the surrounding lilac like the glow from a lightning bug when Daisy says, “I don’t know, I just don’t get her. She’s so strict. I mean, she’s always talking about how Ama came all the way to the states from Taiwan so that we could have more opportunity and ‘freedom’ ”—she says with air quotes—“but then the second I try to gain some independence and actually, like, be a whole person, she shuts me down.

“Even when I got enough followers to join the creator fund, it wasn’t good enough. It’s never good enough or wholesome enough or anything.” She sniffles a bit, but no tears fall. “Meanwhile she’s, like, clinically obsessed with reality TV and being the ideal American woman. It’s like, ‘make up your mind, Minnie!’ ”

“She sounds a lot like my dad,” Sam says. “The Used-Car King of the Carolinas.” They put on an especially deep voice when they say this. “He worked so hard to build his businesses so that he could make a comfortable life for us, and that’s really cool, and I admire that, but he’s so old school. So Catholic. So repressed. I know he’s trying—like, he doesn’t misgender me or deadname me anymore now that he’s gotten used to it, but it’s definitely a struggle. I know he means well and wants what’s best for me, but on a fundamental level, he just doesn’t get it.

“Every day he texts me, ‘Ponte las pilas. Dios te bendiga,’ telling me to wake up and get my act together like I don’t understand what it’s like to work hard just because of where I grew up. It’s like every day he can’t help but remind me that my problems will never matter as much as the struggles he went through to get here. That he didn’t leave everything he knew behind to give us a better life only for me to be mediocre.”

I nod, my heart hurting for my new friends.

I don’t even know where to begin when it comes to my own mom. Everything is so complicated in ways I’ve never tried to express out loud before.

“My mom loves me,” I start. “She’s so gorgeous and smart. She helps people for a living, and she’s outspoken and funny, but she’s broken. She’s been broken ever since my dad left. And I don’t know, maybe there’s nothing we could have done to, like, stop ourselves from drifting apart, but also it feels like you shouldn’t be able to drift apart from your own mom, you know? And I know she can’t help it, so I feel guilty every time I feel sad about it, or I feel guilty because maybe it’s all my fault, like maybe I’m the one who’s not doing enough—”