That made me feel sad for all the kids who'd never had a fair shake, because their problems hadn't been understood. At the same time, we'd just read two articles about how parents were overmedicating their children for those same problems, so that even children who really did just have some disruptive personality traits were being dosed with drugs that shouldn't have been given them. It was just scary. I wondered if I'd ever have the nerve to have a baby myself. It didn't seem too likely. I'd have to trust my partner completely, to bring his child into the world. The only person I'd ever trusted that much was my brother Tolliver.

And the strangest thing happened as I had that thought. The world seemed to freeze for a minute.

It was like someone had thrown a giant switch in my head. Tolliver was turning away to go to his room, and I was getting up out of the chair I'd pulled over to the desk so I could read the screen on the laptop. I looked at Tolliver's back, and suddenly the world slid sideways and then realigned itself in a new configuration. I opened my mouth to say something, and then I closed it. I didn't know what I wanted to say to him. I didn't think I really wanted him to turn around.

He started to turn, and I bolted for my room.

I shut the door behind me and leaned against it.

"Harper? Is something wrong?" I heard his anxious voice on the other side of the door. I was in a total panic.

"No!"

"But you sound like something's wrong."

"No! Don't come in!"

Tolliver's voice was a lot chillier the next time he spoke. "All right." And he moved away, going to his own room, I supposed.

I sank down to the floor.

I didn't know what to say to myself, how to treat someone as idiotic as me. I was poised in a perfect position to ruin the only thing I had in my life. One word, one wrong act, and it would all be gone. I would be humiliated forever, and I would have nothing.

I had one black moment in which I wondered if I should just go on and kill myself and have done with it. But my strong survival instinct rejected the fleeting notion even as it ran across my brain. If I'd lived through being hit by lightning, I could live through this new knowledge.

He must never know. I crawled across the floor to the bed; pulled myself up, lay prone across it. I planned the next week of my life in a few painful minutes, appalled at my own monstrous selfishness as I did so. Keeping Tolliver with me for one more minute was an awful thing to do.