The wind off the sea smelled of metal and wet cordage. The lighthouse on the edge of the cliff hadn't lit since spring, as if someone had pressed pause on the town's most important button. They said it was because of austerity, that now everything is done by drones, sirens and apps, but when I saw the dark tower against the sky, I felt as if some small, stubborn light had gone out inside me too. The lockers in our school buzzed like a swarm of steel bees. When I opened mine, a white envelope slid out of my books. The third this week. The card inside was printed, no signature, no embellishments. The letters even, patient: "Yesterday you counted your breaths to four. Four inhale, four pause, four exhale. No one noticed how you kept your thumb in your pocket. The anger in you like a taut chord you're afraid to touch. You don't have to be brave for show. Today at dusk - a cliff. The lighthouse misses you as much as you miss it." I slammed the cupboard door shut and felt the blood begin to rush in my ears. I rested my forehead against the cold metal. That sentence about breathing was like a nudge into a place I'd been guarding to make sure no one saw. Ever since Dad left for work in Gdansk, everything about me was either too quiet or too loud. Mum would come back from duty at the hospital as tired as old blankets, and I... I would count to four and pretend I had everything under control. - Again? - Marcel stood next to me, as usual with his hood slipped over one eye and headphones around his neck. - Give. I handed him a piece of paper. He read it once, then a second time, as if the letters could explain to him a second time who it was. Marcel was always collecting things that others threw away - old transistors, cassettes, maps, and recently even a cooker knob that spun smoothly like a thought before falling asleep. He had a gift: everything he touched immediately wanted to tell him its story. - It's someone who knows you,' he murmured at last. - 'Or watching you. But it sounds... - he suspended his voice and rolled his eyes. - Almost poetic. Well, and 'tonight at dusk - a cliff'? Really? - I'm not going alone - I said faster than I thought. He shrugged his shoulders and slipped the note into his sweatshirt pocket as if it was his. - 'Of course you won't go alone. Just you know I can't for long, it's Grandma's birthday. But we'll check. Maybe someone is playing a prank. Until the last lessons I sat like on needles. The Polish teacher gave us a topic for an essay about heroes who chose the right path, even though it was more difficult. It sounded like something from a poster in the corridor. I would have preferred to write about heroes who don't know if they are heroes because they sometimes cry in the bathroom and count the tiles. Or about girls who are afraid that one day they will be left alone with it all and don't even know how to ask for help. After lessons we went to the breakwater. We sat on the concrete, our legs dangling over the foamy water. Marcel threw pebbles and I watched them glide lightly and violently at the same time. Four inhale, four pause, four exhale. The sea was doing the same, only without counting. - 'Maybe it's someone you helped once,' he said, without looking at me. - 'Or someone who reads what you've written down online. - I didn't write anything down,' I replied. - Do you remember how I made that nickname? I don't have anything in there about... - I paused. About how I clench my fingers in my pocket when the teacher asks where my father is. About feeling like an empty wardrobe at night. - Well, that's going to make me terribly angry," he muttered. - 'Because this getting into someone's head without knocking is weak. The sun was setting sharply, a razor orange cut through the clouds. The lighthouse was a shadow against the sky, thick with a metal balcony beneath a lamp that was supposed to have been dismantled long ago. Yet some people said that sometimes, when there is fog, you can see a flash - not a light, more like a reflection, like someone flashing a torch from very far away. - 'All right,' Marcel stood up. - 'We're going before it gets completely dark. We'll show up, see if anyone comes. If it's some twit, I'll take a picture of him and tell him he has a serious privacy problem. The path to the cliff was narrow, leading through tamarisk bushes that hummed like adult conversations behind closed doors. I walked and felt my heart leap, not just from exertion. Four inhale. Four pause. Four exhale. I had a torch, water and a notebook in my backpack, the one in which I occasionally wrote sentences I couldn't say out loud. The first page still had the sentence, "What I want to learn: not to apologise for feeling." The lighthouse up close was bigger than I remembered. Its plaster, sprinkled with salt and wind, was the colour of the sky after a storm. The door was chain-locked, but one leaf jutted out like the eyebrows of someone who doesn't know whether to smile. As we approached, the cool smell of old metal and damp concrete came from inside. - Check - Marcel leaned over and pulled the chain. It creaked unpleasantly, but... let go. As if someone had only fastened it "for show". Inside it was semi-dark, like in a cinema just before the start of a film. The staircase spiraled upwards in a narrow spiral. On the wall, near the first bend, hung an old poster announcing maintenance. The date was obscured by a stain that looked like a smudged finger. Marcel switched on the torch on his phone. The cracks in the plaster were arranged in delicate veins, like in a leaf under the light. - Hello? - he called out quietly. The echo answered us with a voice that cannot be attributed to any person because it belongs to a place. - Whoever it is, don't pretend to be a ghost, okay? We only have two powers - mine and Lena's - and we both prefer to talk normally. On the second floor we found a table with metal legs and scattered sheets of paper. Plain printouts, like the ones in my locker. On the first page was written: "This is no joke. You need to hear that what you are feeling is real. The sea reacts to the wind and you react to what you are experiencing. Don't pretend you went to bed last night without tears." My hand trembled. I hadn't told anyone about this. I didn't even want to fully admit it to myself. Marcel put his hand on my shoulder. We didn't look into each other's eyes, because then everything would have been too much. Instead, he grunted and pointed to the next sheet of paper. "I know you're afraid that you won't go back to the person you were a year ago. But going back isn't always necessary. Sometimes you go forward, like a light that circles the horizon and comes back at the next wave. Today the beacon will answer. Today you will hear her." - "It will answer?" - repeated Marcel. - To whom? To us? There was a cooler gust. The stairs above rustled. From above came something like a light clatter, as if someone had put their bare feet on glass. I looked at Marcel's torch. The circle of light trembled, as if held by a hand not quite decided. - Let's go,' he said more calmly than I felt. - 'We'll see what it is. And if it's some kid playing scaredy-cat around here, we'll walk them home, okay? Each step creaked differently. I could smell salt and something like old oil. There was a small alcove on the third floor, and something else in it: chalk lines drawn on the wall. Four long ones, one crossing out. Five. In the next row, four long, one crossing out. And again. Instinctively, I put my fingers on the lines. They had the powdery smoothness of a blackboard. I counted: four, pause, four. Suddenly I felt as if someone had touched the same rhythm in me that I had counted during the night. I didn't know whether it calmed me or frightened me. - Watch out - Marcel grabbed my elbow. - Someone's been here recently. It's fresh chalk. Just below the glass lantern, the ceiling was lower. I looked up. A milky glow was oozing from above us. It was not strong, not blinding. It shouldn't have been there at all because the lantern was disconnected. And yet the light was there, like a breath behind the door. Then my phone vibrated. I took it out and the screen lit up my hands like a beacon to small ships. One message. Sender: me. My heart clenched into a fist. "You're close. Don't make noise." Marcel looked at my screen, then at me. His eyebrows raised a millimetre - that millimetre after which plans other than what we had assumed begin. A soft sound came from above again. As if someone had moved a gloved hand across the glass. The light above us dimmed for a second and came back in an even, calm rhythm. Four flashes. Pause. Four flashes. - Lena... - Marcel's whisper was almost voiceless. - Someone is upstairs. The stairs beneath my feet twitched, as if someone had placed a weight above us, right on the metal ladder to the gallery. I swallowed my saliva; it tasted like rust. I knew the feeling well: fear and curiosity pushing through a narrow passage, neither wanting to let the other pass. I took a step. And another. And then above us something moved against the glass, a shadow cutting through the milky glow.