Annica: Starseed Ambassador

Chapter 3: Needs Improvement

Annica spent the next two weeks in a daze. She didn't know if what she had experienced was real, or unreal, or, like Maya said, somewhere in between.

The experience being entirely physical seemed unlikely – how, for example, could she have materialized through the walls in her house? And yet, the memory felt real; it wasn't obscured by the fog of forgetfulness that clouds the memories of dreams.

There were two possibilities: Either what Annica had experienced was "real" in some way, or she was experiencing an extreme hallucination. She pondered the two possibilities and was unsure about which disturbed her more.

The experience was magical, but also tinged with a kind of fear that Annica had never before experienced. The longer she sat with it, the harder it weighed on her psyche. The human mind, she realized, was not equipped to easily absorb information of this nature. It hit her in the pit of her stomach, and she found it difficult to think about anything else – it was as if her day-to-day life were progressing on its own, in the background, without any direct involvement from her.

She still hadn't received any further contact from Maya. The lack of follow-up contact was adding to Annica's "hallucination" hypothesis – with each passing day, the experience became easier and easier to write off as being purely imagined. But if it was all purely the result of psychosis, why wasn't that continuing either?

Annica's mind was a complete mess. Even if Maya was telling the truth – that Annica really was chosen as some important "starseed ambassador" – the uncertainty surrounding the whole situation left Annica barely functional in the normal physical world. After two weeks of living in this state, she was losing sleep and feeling increasingly agitated.

Mavis and Daryl were waiting in the living room when Annica arrived home from school one day. They were both seated on the couch with serious looks on their faces.

Annica immediately felt the tension in the air. She removed her backpack and let it fall to the ground. "What?" she asked flatly.

"Please have a seat," Mavis instructed.

"Am I in trouble?" Annica asked as she dropped her body into the chair facing the couch.

"Oh, no no no," Mavis and Daryl quickly assured her.

"Honey," Mavis began with some reticence, "we've been noticing some unusual behavior from you recently."

"Sorry," Annica replied. "I've just been stressed out lately."

"Is it something you want to talk about?" Mavis asked.

Annica sat in silence. She wouldn't even know where to begin, and she was quite certain that nothing she could say would sound any different from "I'm still thinking about a weird dream I had a few weeks ago."

"Is it something you'd want to talk to anyone about?" Mavis rephrased.

"What do you mean?" Annica asked.

"Annica," Daryl chimed in, "your mother and I have been talking a lot lately, and we'd like to suggest that you see someone after school."

Annica narrowed her eyes. "'See someone'?"

"Noah Abelman," Daryl clarified.

"I don't know who that is."

"He works at your school," Daryl added.

"Doing what? Jesus, just tell me what's going on already!" Annica snapped.

"We'd like you to talk to a therapist," Mavis said bluntly.

"You're sending me to a shrink?" Annica asked defensively. "Why?"

"We're not 'sending' you, to be clear," Daryl quickly replied. "We're just... suggesting."