He had always believed that the only things that could harm him were those that he could not see. When he was a child, and he believed in God, he had kneeled on the padded bar that hovered over the hard-word floor for a full moment after those around him had returned to the stiff, communal seat, and he obeyed all that his parents said, and he never once slipped and said "Jesus" outside of a prayer or a Bible reading. By the time he was twelve, he decided he was a scientist and that all that was above him was a lot of nothing and gas, but the fear stayed at him, prodding, because nature was far worse.

From a young age, he trained his eyes to stay open two times longer between blinks, and he wore glasses strong enough so that objects far ahead had sharp edges, as though they were well-focused photographs lined up in a series of frames in a window formation. During storms, like the one the weatherman hadn't predicted for tonight, he perched on the long brown radiator, below the largest windowsill, to watch the weather hit the ground, to be certain it did not meet his part of the Earth with a violent slap of light, until his feet burned and his calves ached under his weight. He stayed up as late as his body would allow—far past a time advisable for a man with an early job, at a lab forty minutes away—closing his eyes after each shock in the sky, and opening them again when he heard the world shake, counting on his fingers in the faulty elementary school trick, which equated Mississippi-seconds to miles.

Ryan often thought about the one season he had pretended not to be afraid. Rather successfully, he had ignored the wind and the thunder and the dark for the full summer after he graduated from high school, when his family had purchased a house in Dennis, on the bay side, only the width of the beach and the dunes away from the cold water and malodorous tides. The local girls found Ryan's accent charming—a welcome break from missing R's, by way of mispronounced T's—and one of them, a girl with the name and scent of a pale flower, had taken to trailing behind him on the cool evenings, when they needed to pull their fathers' old sweaters over their madras shorts and facial tissue t-shirts.

It was the beginning of August, a week before he was expected in New York, and Ryan took the girl's hand. They danced to the soft pats of the water against the Earth's skin, and slid themselves along the green-coated boulders, embedded in the sand, until they reached the sharp rock, the one that would cut soft feet. The cold breath of the planet spat gently against their bare legs, consenting to stability, until the world coughed, swinging out against them, throwing him backwards and to the left. Ryan landed five feet away, safe and on a small island made of sand, surrounded by dark water. The girl, who had been lifted and dropped by the livid wind, landed on the sharp rock, puncturing skin on her back and snapping a fragile rib. The next day she was able to laugh, although it caused a shooting pain in her midsection, but Ryan was frightened, again, of the things that could hide from eyes.

The wind and other invisible things had won, chose then to punish him for his doubt, condemned him, forever, to stay on the sandy shore. By three o' clock in the morning, a reasonable man could no longer avoid moistening his eyes, and he fell asleep on a rigid windowsill, with one foot still strewn across the overheated cast iron radiator.