It feels like nana has reached her hands into my mind. She is rummaging through my childhood, pulling out scenes and then tucking them back in. I see bits and pieces, loose ends that have gotten lost amidst a ravel of memories. There is my teacher, Mrs. Gleaves, and her eternal glower of disappointment. "Really, Carmen," she says. "I expected better behavior from the daughter of a commander."

Dad is standing nearby. He is a full foot taller than Mrs. Gleaves, but he winces in the wake of her scowl. Dr. Crusher is holding a cloth under my broken nose to catch the blood. I see a glimmer of amusement in the corner of her mouth. "I don't know-I think Carmen is on par for being the daughter of this commander," she quips.

Now dad is scowling, too. Dr. Crusher giggles to herself. Nobody can make her wince. "Was it Reynold Clancy again?" she asks me.

"Uhn," I say through the cloth, meaning yes.

She clicks her tongue. "You can't keep indulging him, Carmen. You know what my mother used to tell me?"

My eyes turn up in search of her face. I don't get to hear a mother's advice very often. "Uhn?"

"She would say, 'You don't have to attend every argument you're invited to, Beverly.' And that has saved me a lot of grief over the years."

I know she is right. But I also know that I am different from the other children. They only have to feel their own emotions. I have to feel everybody's. It's like being jostled by a crowd of people, a crowd of people who can't see me or talk to me. The only thing big enough to drown it all out is anger. So sometimes, especially when Reynold Clancy calls me stupid, I just let that anger fill me up inside until it comes out of my fists.

I want to tell her these things, but all I do is give her a small, defeated nod. Mrs. Gleaves returns to class, leaving me in dad's custody. I know I will get a long lecture over dinner. But once Dr. Crusher has fixed me up she tells him, "We've already talked about what Carmen did, so there's no need to bring it up again. Just take her home and make sure she finishes her schoolwork."

Dad folds his arms and makes a disgruntled snort. But he doesn't bring up Reynold Clancy for the rest of the night. That's because doctor's orders come before commander's orders.

I find myself back at nana's kitchen table. The afternoon sun is strong. It hangs over the lake like a golden ball, almost twice as big as Earth's sun. "Dr. Crusher...she was the closest thing you had to a mother, wasn't she?"

Nana's question takes me by surprise. But the more I think about it, the more it is true. Dr. Crusher had a way of knowing when to lecture and when to listen. She was fearless and clever and yet somehow, still soft.

"That's why it hurt when she left," nana says. "It's when you started to build your walls, remember?"

I inhale sharply. Now I do remember. The Enterprise never felt the same after she was gone. It lost a certain light, a certain warmth. I felt her absence as something tangible, like a piece of broken glass. I felt the way it made my father and the captain bleed when they were alone with their thoughts.

"It's a shame that Mrs. Gleaves was such a dreadful woman."

Shaking my head, I say, "No, I was the dreadful one. And she...she was a hero."

I go back to those memories of my own accord, sifting through them as if my mind were an old box. I find the one I'm looking for and show it to her.

Mrs. Gleaves is standing in the doorway of our classroom. Admiral Leyton stands across from her in the hall, and they face off like a couple of cowboys in the Old West.

There are only six of us left. Six orphans, cowering behind our desks. Months ago, Starfleet ordered all schooling programs to be halted until further notice. They need more soldiers, not scholars. But that didn't stop Mrs. Gleaves. She continued to carry out her daily lessons in an uncharacteristic display of defiance.

Now Leyton is here for his soldiers. The clock strikes high noon. Mrs. Gleaves fires off quickly, a vast and colorful vocabulary at her fingertips. She fashions her words into bullets, aiming them straight for his heart. Her passion fills me to the brim and I marvel at how Leyton can still be standing.

Then he smiles. Mrs. Gleaves is red-faced and shaking, fresh out of ammo. At the sight of her defeat, his smile grows bigger. It is empty and hollow, just like his chest. All along, she was firing at a heart that wasn't there.

I open my eyes, letting them wander the hillsides surrounding Lake Cataria. They are wooded with trees that remind me of Alaska. Mom and dad must have a similar view. I take comfort in the thought, for it means that I am no longer an orphan cowering in the shadow of a man like Leyton.

But while I am far away from his clutches, and from that terrible war, I am not so far from the pain. I realize now that nana picked those memories for a reason. They weren't just loose odds and ends. They were part of her plan.

I bring up my legs and fold one beneath me. The chair feels hard all of a sudden, and I can't seem to get comfortable. I want to close up that box of memories, shove it out of sight. But nana won't let me.

We have to keep going, she says. Then she finds another memory and tugs on it gently.

No. Not that one. I stuff it back down. It's been five years since that day, the day I finally stopped my Betazoid heart from beating. And I still can't bring myself to think of what it cost.

We're digging up a grave, remember? We're bound to find a few ghosts. But here, let's start with this one…