Prologue
I never used to think much about life or death.
To me, life always seemed simple, predictable.
One day blurred into the next — same faces, same streets, same tired view from my window.
Everything changed when I decided to leave for New York.
I was born and raised in a small town in Maine — a place where time stood still. Looking at the lives around me, it felt like everyone was trapped in their own version of Groundhog Day.
Day after day, year after year, nothing changed.
That wasn’t the life I wanted. Even as a kid, I knew I had to rewrite my story.
While most teens were out partying by the lake with cheap beer and bad music, I was buried in textbooks, chasing something more. I didn’t care about popularity or prom.
I cared about getting out.
About building something bigger.
I poured everything into school — years of quiet discipline and late-night study sessions. So when the time for college exams came, I was ready.
My scores were high. Higher than expected.
I sent out applications to the best universities in the country and waited — heart in throat — for the answers.
When the letters finally arrived, I was too scared to open them.
My entire future sat in a neat little stack on my desk.
That evening, my younger sister and I sat down and began opening them, one by one.
I couldn’t believe what I was reading — acceptance after acceptance, most with scholarship offers.
That night, for the first time in my life, I let myself dream out loud.
I chose NYU — New York University.
One of the top schools in the country.
And the first step into a life I had no idea would change everything.
My father assured me he had saved enough to cover part of my tuition. That was all I needed to hear — I chose NYU without hesitation.
I didn’t change much during my time at university.
I still studied obsessively. I still spent more time with books than with people.
But somewhere within those towering red-brick buildings, something shifted.
For the first time in my life… I found connection.
Her name was Rachel.
My first real friend.
My roommate.
She was sharp-tongued and full of life — a storm in designer heels with platinum hair and eyes the color of steel rain.
At first glance, she looked like she stepped straight out of a Vogue photoshoot. But behind the flawless eyeliner and effortless charm was a brain that could out-calculate half the finance majors on campus.
She solved equations in minutes that I spent hours struggling over.
Her help meant everything.
I majored in Marketing and Communications, dreaming of a life filled with movement, people, impact. I wanted stories. Campaigns. Cities that never slept.
A career that would take me far from routine.
Rachel, surprisingly, majored in Psychology.
She wanted to be a psychoanalyst — the real kind, with a couch and a pen and the silence that forces people to tell the truth.
I never understood it.
How could someone so intelligent — so logical — willingly dive into other people’s emotional wounds?
But I never said that out loud.
She respected my ambitions, and I respected her madness.
That’s what friendship was.
Or at least… what I thought it was.
I was a skeptic. Through and through.
Raised on facts, not fairy tales.
I never believed in ghosts, aliens, conspiracies, or anything that couldn’t be measured, proven, or explained.
Blurry photos? Mass delusion.
Haunted houses? Please.
I trusted only what I could see with my own eyes — or calculate with my own mind.
That made me the odd one out.
Most people around me were fascinated by the paranormal. UFO sightings. Government cover-ups. Ghost stories whispered at night like bedtime lullabies for grown-ups.
Shows like Supernatural only fed the obsession.
But I wasn’t buying it.
I shut down every conversation about it.
I rolled my eyes and moved on.
I couldn’t understand how smart, educated adults — people with logic and ambition — could believe in that kind of nonsense.
Eventually, I gave up trying to figure it out and just… tuned it all out.
Until everything changed.
Rachel and I had just graduated. Diplomas in hand, future wide open.
She suggested we get an apartment together — something small and manageable.
I agreed. Rent in New York was insane, and going back to Maine wasn’t an option I was ready to consider.
After a month of searching, we found a tiny apartment near the edge of the city, but close to the subway. That was enough for me — I hated the idea of wasting hours stuck in traffic.
Rachel set up shop quickly.
She started offering therapy sessions from home. Within weeks, she had clients — real ones — who trusted her and kept coming back.
I was proud of her.
Meanwhile, I was stuck in a cycle of endless interviews and rejection emails.
My savings thinned. My hope withered.
One afternoon, on the edge of giving up, I picked up my phone to call my father — to tell him I was coming home.
That’s when it rang.
A number I didn’t recognize.
One call… that changed everything.
