One of Cami’s hands said to the other, “I made you!”

Izabel raised an eyebrow at her.

“Don’t look at me,” Cami said, in an old-school Batman voice. “Only I can look at me.”

Izabel laughed, but Cami kept her face serious.

When they were done in the food court, Izabel dropped Cami off at the mall’s daycare, and she went to the privacy pods. Sasha was the only one there and Izabel was glad she didn’t have to make small talk with anyone.

In the pod, she began to write.

Dear Cami,

I used to hold my breath going past graveyards as a child. Not just me. Kids did that, as a game. Even though some graveyards were too long for it. A kid at school said you got a wish afterwards, if you could do it, but that didn’t seem right. Another said it was about bad luck or good luck. To me it seemed respectful, and that was enough. Your dad and I once talked about it and he said, the way he heard it, you were supposed to hold your breath past a graveyard until the first white house, so you didn’t breathe in a bad spirit. I think I’ve breathed in a hundred bad spirits.

She took another piece of paper.

Dear Cami,

During the Turning, they didn’t have drills at schools, to go to the gym, or wherever the best air system was. They should’ve been that prepared, but they weren’t. It was hard to imagine the children dying by mass suffocation, in a kind of poisoning—though, as a Jew, of course I had imagined it.

She took another.

Dear Cami,

I thought you would grow up spending a lot of time looking out windows and asking me questions about animals and what it used to be like. I was going to tell you about birdcalls and squirrels and stopping to look at caterpillars and accidentally racing crickets that didn’t know how to get out of your way on the sidewalk. But that’s not what it’s like with you at all. And I think I’m grateful for that.

Izabel shredded all of the papers at once, and she left before her hour was up.

Next she took herself to the acupuncture clinic, like a series of privacy pods itself, but with white walls and more settings for the lighting. In the waiting room, Izabel walked to the sign-in desk. The man there was so tall that he couldn’t be the killer. He didn’t wear a nametag and Izabel was relieved not to know another man’s name.

“Can someone see me today?” she asked.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No. I was hoping you could fit me in.”

“Let me see.” He messaged someone with his tablet. Someone messaged back. “Room four,” he said.

“Thank you,” Izabel said.