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sealed inside like flies and ants and moths in polished chunks of amber. All her crazy medicine, her psychoactive trinity: Elavil and Xanax and the powder-blue Klonopin tablets. It made her feel better to have the bottles nearby, especially when Daria wasn’t. Niki reached for the Xanax, first station of that pharmaceutical cross, calming palindrome, and the glass of water that Marvin had brought her almost half an hour before.
    Lady lost where night can’t reach you anymore, tripping softly ’round the edges you endure…
    She popped the top off the plastic bottle and tipped it carefully so that only two or three of the pills would spill out into her open palm. Always careful, because she hated it when she poured out a whole handful by accident, that sudden rush like candy from a vending machine, and always a few that slipped, inevitably, between her fingers, bounced or rolled away across the floor, and she’d have to scramble about to find them. She tapped the mouth of the bottle once against her hand, but nothing happened. Niki checked to be sure the bottle wasn’t empty, saw there were at least two weeks’ worth of tablets left inside and tried again. And that time a single white pill came rolling out and lay glistening like a droplet of milk on her skin. It certainly wasn’t Xanax, whatever it was, wasn’t anything she was supposed to be taking and nothing she remembered ever having taken before, that tiny, glistening sphere like a ripe mistletoe berry, and Those are poisonous, aren’t they? she thought, holding the strange pill closer to her face.
    Dark in day, Daria sang inside her head, I’d always say, dark in day, that’s not so far to fall.
    And then a very faint, rubbery pop, and the white pill extended eight long and jointed legs, raised itself up, and she could see that there were eyes, too, shiny eyes so pale they were almost transparent, a half-circle dewdrop crown of eyes staring up at her. Niki squeezed her hand shut around the thing, the impossible spider pill, and glanced quickly towards Marvin. He was still sitting on the sofa, his nose buried in The Moon and Sixpence . So he hadn’t seen, had not seen anything at all and he wouldn’t, even if she walked across the room and showed it to him.
    Pain then, little pain like someone pricking at her skin with a sharp sewing needle, and so she opened her hand again. But the spider was gone and there were only three pink Xanax, instead; Niki put the extra pill back into the bottle, set the bottle down on the floor beside her. She exhaled slowly and then took a deep, hitching breath. Her heart was racing, adrenaline-dizzy rush and beads of cold sweat, a faintly metallic taste like aluminum in her mouth.
    You hold it all inside, you hold it all in, you hold it all inside you…
    Niki chewed her lower lip and concentrated on breathing more slowly, breathing evenly, knew from experience she’d only wind up hyperventilating if she didn’t. She stared at her palm like a fortune-teller trying to divine the future from two Xanax; but there was something else there, something other than the pills, so small she hadn’t noticed it at first. A pinpoint welt, raised skin gone a slightly brighter shade of pink than her medication, and she closed her hand again, making a fist so tight her short nails dug painfully into her flesh.
    The song ended, and this time Niki pulled the headphones off, let them fall to the floor among the CDs. The noise drew Marvin’s attention, but only for a moment. She forced a smile for him, something false but credible enough to pass for a smile, a strained charm against his questions, and he smiled back, relieved, and let his eyes drift once more to his book.
    Not real, she whispered, not aloud but safe inside her head, the way that Dr. Dalby had taught her. Not real at all. Even if it meant something, even if I needed to see it and pay attention and remember I saw it, nothing real.
    Like a memory or a ghost. Nothing that can hurt