Frankie first noticed the smell.

  A smell that had no business being in her life. Not the familiar, comforting scent of salt and sea spray, or the smell of her mother’s shampoo. A dead smell. A clean, chemical smell tried to hide the scent of sickness and fear that clung to everything.

  Antiseptic.

  The second thing she knew, the light.

  A flat, merciless, fluorescent glare beat down from the ceiling, reflecting off the polished linoleum floor and the pale, mint-green walls. It's a hundred times worse than the light in her bedroom. It's a physical weight, a piercing hum that vibrates behind her eyeballs.

  Frankie moaned, a low, wounded sound. She lay on her back, on something crinkly and stiff. Paper. A thin sheet of paper over a cold, vinyl surface.

  “Frankie? Honey, you’re awake.”

  Her mother’s voice. Close by. Underneath the concern, a frayed, jagged edge of panic.

  Frankie forced her eyes open. It took a monumental effort. The world swam into focus, a blurry nightmare of mint-green and blinding white. A small, sterile room contained her.An examination room.

  The Norchester clinic.

  The door opened, and two more figures came in. One, Ted, evinced a jumble of fear and confusion. The other, his mother, went by Dr. Harris.

  Dr. Harris, the opposite of Frankie’s mom, remained calm and clinical.

  Today, it just made her feel like a specimen under a microscope.

  “Well, Frankie,” Dr. Harris said, her voice steady. She offered a small, professional smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “You certainly gave your mother a scare. Let’s have a look at you, shall we?”

  Frankie longed to protest, to say no, don’t touch me, don’t look at me, but extreme weakness overcame her. She sagged like a marionette with severed strings.

  Dr. Harris began the examination. Her hands were cool and dry. She listened to Frankie’s heart with a cold, metal stethoscope that made her flinch. She took her blood pressure. She peered into her ears. Everything seemed gentle, methodical, and terrifying.

  “Hmm,” Dr. Harris murmured, her brow furrowed in concentration. “Heart rate is elevated, but that’s expected after a fainting spell.”

  Then she pulled out a small, pen-like instrument. “I’m just going to check your pupils now, Frankie. Look straight ahead for me.”

  The light she shone into Frankie’s right eye, a supernova of pure agony, flared. Not merely bright, but delivered a physical blow, a spike of white-hot fire driven straight into her brain.

  “Good heavens,” Dr. Harris said, pulling the light away instantly. “Extreme photosensitivity. Noted.”

  Ted took a step forward, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. “Mom, she’s been like this all morning. The light, the nausea… she says even the smell of food makes her sick.”

  Dr. Harris nodded, her expression unreadable. “Your mother mentioned that you felt a bite on your neck yesterday, Frankie. Can you show me where?”

  Frankie’s hand trembled as she pointed to the spot. The spot where she’d felt the phantom sting. The spot that had ached all night.

  Dr. Harris leaned in, her gaze sharp and focused. She tilted Frankie’s head gently to the side, examining the skin with the intensity of a detective. Frankie held her breath. See it, she prayed. Please, see it and tell me what it is.

  After a long moment, Dr. Harris straightened up, her face a blank mask.

  “I don’t see a thing,” she said.

  The words hit Frankie like a splash of ice water.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “What?” Frankie whispered. “No, it was there. I felt it. It was like… a sting.”

  “I’m sure you felt something, honey,” Dr. Harris said, her voice taking on a soothing, placating tone that set Frankie’s teeth on edge. “But there is no mark. No puncture, no rash, no abrasion of any kind. The skin is perfectly clear.”

  Frankie looked past her at Ted. Conflict marred his face. He yearned to believe her—she could see it in his eyes. Yet he trusted his mother implicitly. And his mother, the doctor, the scientist, stated she was wrong.

  The next hour blurred with quiet, sterile efficiency. A nurse came in to draw blood, her movements brisk and practiced. Frankie barely felt the needle go into her arm; she lost herself in a fog of dread. They took samples. They ran tests. Blood panels, viral screens, and allergen tests.

  Frankie, her mother, and Ted sat in the small, silent room and waited.

  Waiting proved the worst part.

  The clock on the wall ticked, each second a tiny hammer blow against Frankie’s skull. She stared at a poster on the wall detailing the human circulatory system, the red and blue lines a meaningless, tangled web. She wanted them to find something. A rare virus, a tropical disease, anything. Any diagnosis, no matter how scary, would be a relief. It would be proof. It would mean she wasn’t losing her mind.

  Finally, Dr. Harris came back into the room, a clipboard in her hand. Frankie’s heart hammered against her ribs. Here it comes. The answer.

  But the look on the doctor’s face evinced neither concern nor grim discovery. It held a polite, professional skepticism.

  “Well,” Dr. Harris began, “we have the results back from the lab.”

  She paused.

  “And everything is perfectly normal.”

  Normal.

  The word hung in the air, cold and heavy and wrong.

  “What do you mean, normal?” Maka asked, her voice tight. “Did you see her? She’s not normal. She collapsed!”

  “I know this is confusing,” Dr. Harris said, her gaze fixed on Frankie. “All of her tests came back negative. No pathogens, no toxins, no indicators of any known illness. Physically, she’s the picture of health.”

  “Then what’s wrong with me?” Frankie croaked.

  Dr. Harris pulled a small stool over and sat down, her knees almost touching Frankie’s. She leaned forward, her expression one of carefully constructed sympathy.

  “Frankie, you’re a high-performing athlete. You put a lot of pressure on yourself, with surfing, with school. Sometimes, when the body is under extreme stress, it can react in very physical ways. It’s called a somatically-expressed panic attack.”

  Panic attack.

  The words slapped her.

  “The mind is a powerful thing,” Dr. Harris continued, her voice calm and reasonable. “It can create very real, very frightening symptoms. Extreme nausea, photosensitivity, dizziness… even the sensation of pain with no physical cause. It’s the body’s way of sounding an alarm when the stress becomes too much to handle.”

  So all in her head?

  The chest? The bite? The sickness?

  All of it. Just a product of a stressed-out, over-imaginative teenage mind.

  “So you’re saying she imagined it?” Maka said, her voice dangerously quiet.

  “I’m not saying she imagined the symptoms,” Dr. Harris corrected gently. “The symptoms are very real to her. But the cause isn’t a virus or an injury. It’s psychological.”

  She placed a pamphlet on the vinyl cot next to Frankie’s leg. The title, in cheerful blue letters, read: Understanding Anxiety and Panic Attacks.

  Frankie stared at it. It felt like a judgment. A verdict.

  They dismissed her, invalidated her, and labeled her hysterical.

  She looked at Ted, who avoided her gaze. He stared at the floor, a flush creeping up his neck. His world, one of science and logic, had a high priestess in his mother, and she had spoken.

  A profound, crushing sense of loneliness, more isolating than any physical pain, now betrayed Frankie's body and the world of logic and medicine, the world of adults, too.

  The doctor sent her home with a prescription to “get some rest” and a suggestion to “try some mindfulness exercises.”

  The car ride home remained silent. The silence blared louder than any screaming. Her mother gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles white. Ted sat in the back, staring out the window, lost in his conflicted thoughts. They didn’t know what to believe. And Frankie couldn’t blame them. What seemed more believable? A centuries-old sea monster in a box? Or a teenage girl having a panic attack?

  Back in her room, Frankie stood in front of the bathroom mirror. The same ghoulish reflection stared back at her. The pale skin. The dark, haunted eyes. She looked sick. She felt sick. The pain in her head and the fire in her nerves were real.

  But the doctor, the expert, said they weren't.

  Doubt, cold and insidious, crept into her mind.

  Could Dr. Harris be right?

  Did she imagine it? Did she see a weird chest in a creepy cove, and did her mind, her stressed-out, overachieving mind, just… snap? Did she invent a winged monster, a phantom bite, a supernatural sickness, all to give a voice to her anxiety?

  She touched her neck. Smooth, unbroken skin.

  The proof existed right there. Or rather, it did not.

  She looked into the eyes of the stranger in the mirror, and a new, more terrifying thought formed. A thought colder and sharper than any diagnosis.

  Perhaps the monster lived not in the cove, but within her skull. And perhaps, just perhaps, it yearned for release.