Chapter One

Chapter 1

It was happening again: that feeling of being adrift in her own body, mystified by the simplest of things. Like a mourned lover, it had crept up on her out of nowhere, intoxicating her senses, and she struggled to remain focused on the task at hand. But what was the task? And how long would it be before she remembered—seconds like before or hours? Days perhaps. Unfortunately, time for her had become much too easy to lose.

Dahlia paused at the light on the corner of Colorado Boulevard and Orange Grove and wondered where she would end up this time. The signal changed, horns sounded, and still confusion in all its glory danced around in her head, spinning and twirling with reckless abandon. She was aware that she was somehow off balance, but she was at a loss for how to identify the cause of her difficulty. If anyone were to ask her, she wouldn’t know how to adequately articulate how she felt without sounding like she was in desperate need of a padded room and wrist restraints. No, there was nothing to be revealed to anyone about these random spells that were beginning to occur more and more frequently. She would work through them—lean into the curve, so to speak—and in time, this one would pass just like the others and she would be no worse for wear. Wrinkled a little, yes, but not shredded into countless pieces—not right now, anyway. Dahlia pressed her foot on the accelerator and followed the gold Mercedes in front of her onto the 134 freeway. Today she’d go west toward Los Angeles, toward the ocean.

Oftentimes during moments like these, Dahlia reached for an emotional anchor to weigh h