Page 34 of The Fall Classic

“It doesn’t sound dumb. That’s the goal. Now the challenge is to remember that feeling. You don’t have to turn your mind off completely, Logan. But you can let your mind take its proper place in the universe.”

“What place is that?”

“Very, very small.”

I chuckled.

The brainspotting session after wasn’t quite so effortless. Dr. Chang wanted to locate the spot in my visual field where my eyes naturally lock up—the rationale being that the body holds the emotional memory of your stored stress or trauma in a specific physical location. It sounds fake until your therapist is slowly, methodically sweeping his pen in front of you, and suddenly you feel this intense heaviness when you look at seven o’clock in your visual field and you have to hold it on that spot while you think your darkest thoughts and worry you might not come back.

I’m still not sure what happened when I looked at it today, but when the panic kicked in, I reached for that sense of dissolution again, and it helped.

I came back.

I pick up my phone, seeing another text from Lucas.

Lucas

If Georgiana’s already there, good luck. We love you, man.

Logan

You guys love me? You are so mushy, it’s embarrassing.

Lucas

Scottie typed that.

Logan

Whatever. I’m telling Lee.

Lucas

Don’t tell Lee. If you tell her, she’ll tell Coop, and then he’ll start saying I love you around the clubhouse all the time.

Logan

I can’t control what our sister or her boyfriend will do with this information. You brought this on yourself.

Lucas

Fine. Then I’m telling Lee you’re on a date.

Logan

On second thought, what Lee doesn’t know won’t hurt her.

Truce?

Lucas

Truce.

I pause, missing my brother so much, it’s like missing a lung. Like I can’t breathe deeply enough because half of me is gone. I watch a family go into Mudcakes and a couple of teens come out. One of them is messing around with a friend, and when he pushes the other, his entire top scoop drops to the sidewalk.

Logan

Gotta run. Miss you bro.