Chapter 3: The Echoes and the Edge

The phone clattered onto the counter beside the government debit card. My text to Jennifer glowed back at me, stark white on the cracked screen: I’m here. I’m ... figuring it out.

Silence followed—thick, expectant, pressing in like the Tucson heat seeping under the door. Then, three pulsing dots. A lifeline thrown across years of static, frayed but holding. My breath hitched, suspended somewhere between hope and the old, familiar dread.

I was naked. Utterly. Not just skin-bare in the dim, stale-aired kitchen, but soul-stripped. The faded sundress lay where it had fallen—a puddle of defeated cotton on the linoleum. The ancient air conditioner whined, pushing lukewarm currents over goosebumped skin that felt hypersensitive, alien.

Mom’s voicemails—indecent, sinful, disgraceful—pressed phantom-like against my temples, a familiar chorus of condemnation. However, beneath that old, suffocating terror, something else fizzed. A reckless, terrifying lightness—like stepping off a cliff and discovering, for a fraction of a second, that falling feels like flying.

I did it. I’d spoken—not to the indifferent void of job applications, not to the sterile bureaucracy of the unemployment office—but to someone who knew me before. The girl who laughed with Trina over stolen fries. Who plotted road trips with Heidi under star-dusted skies. The girl who existed before the crash carved a canyon of grief and guilt, before the crushing weight of my parents’ world became my cage.

The dots vanished. A new message bloomed: Jennifer: Holy shit. Gwen. Okay. Okay. Where are you? Are you safe?

Jennifer: Talk to me. Coffee? Now? Tomorrow? Name the place. My treat. Always my treat.

A sob tore loose—ragged and wet—echoing in the empty apartment. Safe? Was standing naked in your kitchen while your mother’s spectral condemnation echoed in your skull, and a job offer contingent on shedding every literal and figurative stitch of armor, supposed to feel safe?

It felt like standing on a crumbling cliff edge, the ground shifting beneath bare feet. For the first time, the wind whipping strands of hair across my face didn’t feel like it was trying to claw me back into the abyss. It felt ... clean. Like scrubbed air after a monsoon.

Ghost. The word from her next text stung like salt in a raw wound. Don’t you dare ghost me, McNeil. That’s exactly what I’d been—a wraith haunting my own life. Flitting through university hallways unseen. Burying myself in spreadsheets at Evergreen. Building walls so high that even sunlight struggled to penetrate.

All because surviving Trina and Heidi felt like a theft I could never repay. Because letting anyone see the cracks in the carefully constructed façade—the raw grief, the creeping doubt—felt like inviting judgment that would shatter me completely.

Seeing anyone else—truly seeing them, in all their messy, unvarnished humanity—felt like betraying the rigid, shame-soaked blindness my parents had grafted onto my soul since childhood. Look away. Unsee. Your body is a sin. Their bodies are tempting. Erase them.

Conditioning. The word surfaced like flotsam from a shipwreck. Pavlov’s dogs salivated for salvation, and I had been meticulously trained just as thoroughly—trained to flinch at bare shoulders, to blur the curve of a waist, to unsee the sheer, uncomplicated humanity of skin. The cool sticky countertop under my palms steadied me as I traced the jagged white question mark on my inner thigh – the bike scar Mom had deemed too shameful for a doctor’s inspection. That memory struck like a slap: gravel stinging, Trina shoving napkins into the wound, Heidi sprinting for help, their voices rising together—You’re fine, Gwen, just breathe! Look at me! Deep breaths! No one recoiled. Blood, torn skin, exposed panic—none of it fazed them. They saw me. They never looked away. Their eyes didn’t judge. They cared.

My gaze caught the crumpled Sunset Ridge card half-buried beneath a flyer for groceries I couldn’t afford. For when you’re done playing dress-up.

Lex’s face came back to me from the fluorescent nightmare of Evergreen. Her eyes held no judgment. She hadn’t flinched at Driscoll’s spit-laced rage or the customers filming or at me, motionless, gripping a tube of Crimson Confidence like it might ward off madness.

She saw the bars I lived behind woven from fear, shame, and silent rules. At that moment, she handed me a card. An invitation etched in thick cream-colored cardstock—an invitation I’d been too terrified, too deeply conditioned, to accept.

A shiver started down my spine. This wasn’t cold. This was something deeper—fear, yes, but also something rawer. Resolve. Jennifer had said, Practice being seen. Lex had already seen. She saw my cage firsthand and recognized the captive within. Maybe ... she saw the stress lines now, the bars beginning to bend. Maybe the card wasn’t just an invitation. Maybe it was a map. Maybe it was a beginning.

My hands trembled as I picked up the card, that same tremor rippling through my chest. The cardstock felt like stone—solid, deliberate. Gold-pressed letters caught the light: Free the Body, Free the Mind – Sunset Ridge Collective. Beneath that, a number. No tag line. No sales pitch. Just digits. Simple. Unafraid.

Before the old fear could solidify—could wrap its icy fingers around my throat and squeeze—I dialed. The electronic ring echoed loudly in the quiet kitchen. Once. Twice.

“Sunset Ridge,” a warm, calm voice answered. Lex. Unmistakable. Present.

My throat seized. Words evaporated, leaving only the frantic thud of my heart against my ribs. I stood naked in my kitchen, phone pressed to my ear, the air thick with dust and the scent of something about to change.

“Hello?” Lex prompted gently. She didn’t sound surprised by the silence. She’d met people on cliffs before.

“It’s...” The word rasped out, dry and cracked. I swallowed, scraped together something sturdier. “It’s Gwen. Gwen McNeil. From ... from Evergreen.” The girl was frozen behind the counter. The one clutching your card like a lifeline, she didn’t know how to use.

A beat. Then recognition, warm and steady as the sun on stone. “Gwen. Yes.” Her voice softened into something that didn’t sting. “I remember. How are you, sweetheart?”

How was I? Naked in a half-furnished apartment, texting ghosts I’d buried, clutching a government food card that screamed failure, debating whether to bare my entire self for a job that felt like salvation and execution all at once?

“I’m...” I paused. The truth surged up, unfiltered, bypassing every wall I used to hide behind. “I’m standing on the edge, Lex. I think I’m ready to jump. I just don’t know how to land. I don’t know if the ground will catch me—or if I’ll just ... shatter.”

Another pause. Not judgment, just deep consideration.

“The edge is a powerful place to stand, Gwen,” Lex said, her voice a steady anchor in the rising tide of my fear. “It means you’re finally looking. Truly looking. Not away. Not through. At. Where are you right now? Literally.”

“In my kitchen.” The words felt absurdly intimate, like I’d exposed more than just skin. “Naked.” The word hung in the air, heavy with vulnerability.

A soft chuckle hummed through the line, warm as freshly turned soil after rain. “Good start. That’s a powerful beginning. What do you see—see? Not what you think you should. Just ... what’s there?”

I turned my gaze outward, then inward, pushing past the reflex to critique and shrink. The chipped Formica countertop, scarred with coffee rings like forgotten maps. The dusty windowpane, filtering the afternoon light into soft gold streaks on the floor. My reflection, ghost-like in the dark glass of the oven—pale skin, shadowed eyes, tense shoulders drawn like a bowstring.

“Myself,” I whispered, barely louder than a breath. “Trying not to flinch. Trying not to blur it all away.”

“Keep looking,” Lex urged, her voice gentle but firm. “The flinch—that’s old programming. Let it run. Don’t resist. Don’t judge it. Just ... observe it, like a storm cloud passing through. Then look again. See what’s still there when the flinch is gone.”

We talked. Not long, ten, maybe fifteen minutes. She didn’t fill the silence with empty platitudes. She didn’t try to sell me anything. She asked simple, grounding questions: What does the air feel like? Cool? Warm? Is there a breeze from the window? What color is the light on the wall? Simple. Sensory. Real. She helped me root myself in now, not in the decades of shame howling in my head.

When she spoke about Sunset Ridge, it wasn’t like some radical nudist commune. It was just people—each one on their path—learning to peel back the static fear and expectation. Unlearning the rules. Coming home to themselves.

“It’s just skin, Gwen,” Lex said, plain and true. “The most honest thing we wear. Everything else is a costume.”

As the call drew to a close, a fragile spark of courage kindled somewhere under the cold ash. Hope, maybe. Curiosity. Bravery.

“Lex...” I hesitated. Is Sunset Ridge far? From downtown Tucson?”

Another warm chuckle, low and distant, like friendly thunder. “Honey, you’re practically a neighbor. I live near Reid Park. There’s a little pocket of green nearby ... Willow Bend. More concrete than bend, truth be told, but quiet. Forgotten. Good for thinking. For being still.”

My heart pounded, frantic against the sudden stillness her words brought. Neighbor. The word landed with unexpected weight, comforting, almost sacred.

“Willow Bend,” I repeated softly, committing the name to memory, etching it onto the map of my new, uncertain world.

“Come find the quiet sometime, Gwen,” Lex said. Her voice carried an open-ended invitation. “No agenda. No expectations. Just be. However, you need to be. However you are.” Then the line went silent.

The kitchen didn’t feel empty anymore. The silence buzzed, charged with something alive—possibility. Lex wasn’t just a symbol on a card anymore. She was real. A woman who’d stepped out of the static. Who’d seen me at my lowest and still spoken to me like I was whole. She felt like a guidepost, or maybe just proof that the path wasn’t imaginary. Even if my legs trembled with every step.

Caffe Luce hummed with mid-morning energy—cups clinking, steam hissing, quiet conversations blurring into one shared rhythm. Sunlight streamed through the tall windows, catching dust motes in midair like drifting constellations. My foot tapped beneath the small, wrought-iron table, nervous and constant.

I wore a sundress. Thin straps bit into my shoulders, pale and unused to the sun. The hem kissed my knees. It was the most skin I’d shown in public in years. Every brush of cotton against my body felt too loud. Every glance from a stranger—even imagined—set off alarm bells. I fought the urge to cross my arms or tug the fabric higher.

Mental berries, I thought with a crooked smile. That old phrase. The invisible rules I’d wrapped around myself like caution tape. They were crumbling now, cracking under the pressure of a life no longer willing to be small.

Then I saw her, Jennifer. She hadn’t changed much since university. Still, that wild halo of dark curls that continued to defy gravity. Still, those sharp, scanning eyes that took everything in before locking onto me. There were lines now, fine ones etching stories around her eyes, a steadier way she carried herself. Life had written itself onto her face, and she wore it all like truth.

“Gwen?” Her voice cut through the café noise—hesitant, but hopeful.

I stood. A fist-sized lump lodged in my throat. “Jen.”

The hug came instantly, fierce and unfiltered. Years of silence, miles of unspoken grief, dissolved in that moment. She smelled like rich coffee grounds and jasmine shampoo—familiar and grounding. Solid. Warm. Real.

When we pulled apart, her eyes scanned my face. They lingered on the bare skin of my arms exposed by the sundress.

“You look...” she started, then softened her words. “Here. Tired. Worn thin, honestly—but here. Real. Not like a photograph fading.”

We ordered: bitter black coffee for me, a frothy, over-the-top mocha for her, and finally, the dam broke. The words poured out—not about NaturEra, not yet—but everything else. The silence after the crash. The guilt never made sense, but it clung like wet fabric. If only I’d finished the damn prom sashes faster ... The isolation. The endless, aching distance I built brick by brick. The shrinking world collapsed down to shame, and over it all, the watchtower presence of my parents, who made that shame gospel.