Everybody knows the Lethe will help you forget. Nobody mentions its method of operation.

Limia vomits again and again, her stomach so tight and twisted that it makes her want to vomit, which she does. The taste of it is acrid and salty. She gasps raggedly between gouts of candy-ad jingles, locker combinations, towel smells and her mental map of Yorba Linda.

At the end she’s so weak that she can only bring her grandmother up in pieces. Each piece scowls disapprovingly at her from the water. Limia watches them scud away, wondering why she hates that woman so much.