The Seven Rays, a fantasy and science fiction novel by Jessica Bendinger, is about a girl named Beth Michaels, a seemingly normal girl who's a senior in high school and on her way to go to Columbia University, after a lot of hard work. She receives a strange golden envelope, at her school, with an intriguing message that's not even addressed to her, rather to an Aleph Beth. Then she starts seeing things, strange things, like dots, bands, and ropes. She has surgery done to her eyes because she's so worried about her strange vision, but it doesn't work. She also falls in love with a guy from school, Richie. He happens to be the brother of her best friend's love interest. Beth eventually ends up in a mental institution because she keeps seeing things and has episodes. She's diagnosed as a schizophrenic. While she's there, she befriends a girl that happens to be deaf, learns difficult truths about her mother and best friend, who actually turns out to have a terrible character, and discovers that she's actually not crazy.