Her feet hit the wet sand, shattering the fragile peace from the water. The world crashed back in. On the ocean, her heightened senses acted as a superpower, a set of tools giving her a supernatural connection to the waves. On land, they transformed into an instrument of pure torture.

  She walked out of the surf, and the competition's chaos immediately engulfed her. The beach lived and breathed, a monster of noise and motion. The crowd's roar formed a physical wall of sound, slamming into her. Blaring announcements from the loudspeakers—naming sponsors, calling out scores—drove like sharp, metal spikes into her ears.

  Every sound magnified, amplified, sharpened into a weapon. Hundreds of overlapping conversations assaulted her at once, a chaotic babble of words scraping against her brain. The squeal of a laughing child nearby became a high-pitched shriek of agony. The thumping bass from a portable speaker pulsed dully, painfully, deep in her bones.

  And the smells. Oh, god, the smells. The air thickened into a greasy soup of them. The cloying, sweet scent of a dozen different sunscreens mingled with the hot, oily stench of French fries and fried dough from concession stands. The sharp, acrid reek of sweat combined with the faint, foul odor of overflowing trash cans, buzzing with a cloud of persistent flies. A faint metallic tang, like old pennies, hinted at the underlying grime. The combination launched an olfactory assault, making the bile rise in her throat, a sticky film coating her tongue.

  “Frankie! You were incredible!”

  Dee Dee’s voice cut through the noise, a painful intrusion. She and Ted rushed toward her, their faces beaming with pride.

  “That last turn was insane!” Ted said, his eyes wide. “I don’t know how you pulled it off.”

  A smile refused to form on Frankie's lips, any thanks or shared excitement impossible. A brutal, pounding migraine built behind her eyes, a dark storm gathering in her skull. The world dissolved into a painful, pulsating blur of light and color. Bright team banners snapping in the wind, the sun's glitter on the sand, the sea of smiling, shouting faces—all of it formed a tidal wave of stimuli, and she drowned in it.

  She produced a weak nod. “Thanks.”

  “You gotta get some water, hydrate for the next round,” Ted said, ever the pragmatist, already steering her toward the competitors’ tent.

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  But the tent held too many people. More noise. More smells. More light.

  The pressure in her head built. The low, dull hum of her curse escalated into a high-pitched, screaming frequency. A snarl—a real, animalistic snarl—formed on her lips. She bit it back, hard. The sharp tang of her own blood in her mouth provided a shocking, momentary relief.

  Get out, the monster inside her screamed. Make it stop.

  The urge to lash out became a physical thing, a white-hot pressure building in her chest. Her gaze fixed on the loudspeakers, the source of the sharpest, most painful noise. An image flooded her mind: her hands grabbing the metal stand, ripping it from the sand. Smashing the speaker into a thousand silent pieces. The beautiful, blissful silence that would follow.

  The vivid, tempting thought sent terror through her. Annoyance failed to describe the feeling. She needed to destroy the noise.

  “I… I have to go,” she stammered, backing away from her friends.

  “Frankie? Where are you going?” Dee Dee called after her, confusion coloring her voice.

  Frankie offered no answer. She turned and pushed through the crowd, ignoring the calls of her friends, ignoring the pats on the back from strangers who saw her incredible run. Every touch burned. Every voice slapped.

  Like a cornered animal, she sought escape with desperation.

  She found it in the cool, relative quiet of the competitor’s locker rooms, a small, cinderblock building set back from the beach. She shouldered the door open and stumbled inside, into the blessed, semi-darkness.

  Emptiness greeted her. The closing door muffled the chaotic roar of the beach to a distant, manageable hum.The stale air, heavy with the scent of damp concrete and acrid chlorine, clung to everything, a suffocating shroud.

  She collapsed onto a wooden bench, her body trembling, her head in her hands. She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, a physical attempt to push the pain from her skull, to fight back the sensory onslaught tearing her apart.

  Control slipped from her grasp.

  Out on the water, she commanded power, held control. Here, surrounded by the happy, oblivious world of her old life, she became fragile, a glass sculpture cracking under pressure. The primal, violent part of her, the part that sent a homeless woman flying, urged her back outside to smash the world into silence. It demanded silence through destruction.

  The fear of her own potential actions against an innocent person, a child, her friends, terrified her more than the pain.

  She huddled in the darkness of the empty locker room, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps.

  She fought a war on two fronts: against the hostile world outside, and the more desperate war against the monster within. And in the echoing quiet of the locker room, she couldn't tell which side was winning.