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July marked Amaya's fifth year at Dr. Raymond's office.

Melancholy hit her hard after that realization. She didn't get out of bed at all that weekend, and no one noticed. Of course, no one would. Helen had been the only other person to walk through her door in years. And Amaya still wasn't sure that Helen counted as an actual friend, so much as someone who seemed determined to torment her until she finally gave into the desire to drown herself in the bay.

Amaya lay in her room, draped over pillows, tangled in sheets, staring at whatever she was facing, whether it was the window or a speck of fuzz on her blanket.

Every plant and vegetable in the house was dead by Monday morning. She wasn't sure if she touched them all, or if they had died simply by being near her. She chose to believe the first reason. The other was too horrible to think about.

She roamed through the house, dumping rotted plants out of their pots into trash bags, chunking piles of decaying fruits and vegetables, thankful that her canned food and the loaf of bread on the counter seemed unaffected.

Amaya hauled the bags out to the dumpster, then went to shower and get ready for work. She set her rose bush into bloom before she left. That had been all she needed to do.

And another revelation came: her power was weak when she was weak.

After work, she took out a few more trash bags and threw away all the junk food, all sodas, all high-calorie foods. She began buying more fruits and vegetables, and she ate as little as she could without passing out halfway through the work day. It took a few weeks to get the balance right.

She added the information to the journal she kept locked in her bedside table.

Years would pass before she had even a bite of cake.

Amaya sent in her college application that week, and when she received her acceptance letter and a fair financial aid package, she enrolled in her first course, Introduction to Biology, which would run from six to nine through most of the summer.

As soon as she had her schedule, she ran to the stationery store and loaded a basket with pens and mechanical pencils with extra lead, erasers, highlighters, a pencil box, looseleaf paper, notepads, note cards, whiteout, staplers, staples, staple-removers, and post-its.

She burst into tears in the aisle of pocket dictionaries. Finally. She was finally doing this, after years of hating her life and doing nothing about it, she was changing things.

Then, before she was ready for it, the day came, and she was there in a classroom full of people a decade younger than her, people with unidentifiable clothing styles, people who had brought laptops but no pencils.

She was a university student, something she'd dreamed about but never had the guts to try for, sure that the other students would end up like her high school friends, sick or dead or hating her because, at some point, she lost the ability to laugh with them.

On her first day of class, she took three pages of notes and crammed the eight-page syllabus into the middle of her five-pound textbook because she'd forgotten to buy a folder.

Far too soon, Dr. Kiehl told them they were dismissed and turned her back on them to erase the marker board. Amaya packed her things away in her new bag as the rest of the class rushed out to bars and coffeehouses and dinners with friends. She had nowhere to go but home, so she didn't hurry.

When Dr. Kiehl finished clearing the board, only she and Amaya were left in the room.

"Amaya Vega, right?" Dr. Kiehl said, glancing at her list.

"Amaya Morales Vega," Amaya said, then tried not to cringe. Professors surely don't like to be corrected. At least the other students were gone.

But Dr. Kiehl only made a small note on the page and put it away. "Nice to meet you, Amaya." She headed for the door, and Amaya followed. "Are you interested in biology, or just fulfilling a general ed. requirement?"

"Both," Amaya said, and Dr. Kiehl smiled as they made their way down the grey hall.

"That's nice to hear. Have you declared a major?"

"Not yet," Amaya said. "I don't really know what I want to do."

"You want to get an education," Dr. Kiehl said, stopping in front of her office door. "That's a good start. See you tomorrow, Amaya."

"Thank you," Amaya said, but Dr. Kiehl was already inside.