Free The Veil by Cory Putman Oakes

when Ihad had to endure it in the middle of the day. Maybe I could handle this after all.
    My confidence increased even more when Lucas began to walk away from the edge, in the opposite direction from the dozen or so tourists who were taking turns snapping photos of each other, using the Golden Gate Bridge as a backdrop. I followed just behind him as he walked several hundred yards away from the car and toward a refreshingly solid-looking concrete circle, one of the old army bunkers left over from when this whole area had been a military fortification.
    There was a metal railing circling the edge, which Lucas grabbed onto and used to swing himself up and onto the top of the concrete cylinder.
    I hesitated. I had no desire to go even higher up. But the concrete looked like a much more stable surface than the crumbly ground currently beneath my feet. I puzzled over my dilemma for almost a full minute before surprising myself by jumping up and grabbing the metal bar. I swung my legs up and over the edge of the bunker; I was just a tad less skillful about it than Lucas had been.
    He was waiting for me at the top, sitting with his legs over the edge and facing what most people would probably consider to be a fabulous view of San Francisco Bay, lit up for the night and without a single shred of its customary fog.
    I, however, was doing my very best to ignore the amazing sight before me. Frantically trying to visualize an imaginary brick wall surrounding the entire concrete structure, I crept toward the edge and sat down a few feet to Lucas’s right. I sat cross-legged. No way was I going to dangle my feet over the edge like he was.
    “Heights bother you,” he said after a moment.
    I looked over at him, annoyed to see that he looked amused, like there was something about my phobia he found funny.
    “Was that a question?” I asked him irritably.
    “Nope, just an observation.” He sat there, grinning, looking offinto the distance. “We can go somewhere else, if you want to.”
    “No,” I said firmly. I was already dreading the drive back down. “This is fine. Really.”
    He nodded. His eyes were still focused on the bright lights of the city on the other side of the bridge.
    I had to keep him talking. It was the only thing preventing me from remembering how high up we were.
    “So,” I said conversationally. “Is this where you tell me you’ve been slipping mushrooms into my coffee?”
    His grin faded, replaced by confusion, and I suddenly felt embarrassed about my less than extensive knowledge concerning hallucinogenic substances.
    “You know,” I tried again. “Mushrooms. Or maybe acid? Some sort of drug that makes you see things?”
    “Oh, I get it,” he said, and that grin worked its way across his face again. “Don’t worry Addy. I’m pretty sure nobody, least of all me, has been slipping you drugs.”
    “How would you know?” I grumbled. Why was he finding this all so amusing?
    “I know because drugs can only make you see things that aren’t there.”
    “Yeah . . .”
    “And I don’t think that’s what has been happening to you.”
    “You think the things I’ve been seeing are
real
?” I asked, incredulous. Maybe Lucas Stratton was going to turn out to be just as crazy as I was.
    “Maybe. Before I decide, I need you to tell me about the kinds of things you’ve been seeing.”
    “You want me to
describe
my hallucinations to you?”
    “Please.”
    I gritted my teeth. This was the moment I’d been dreading since the second I first saw the silver blob bouncing up and down on Sully’s shoulder. You see, the prospect of losing my mind, as troublesome athought as that was, had not actually been what had concerned me the most over the past two days. What had really been bothering me was the knowledge that one day, if the hallucinations continued, I would almost certainly have to sit down with someone and describe, in detail, exactly what it was I’d been seeing. The potential humiliation of such a