The footsteps grew louder and louder until they reached the balcony outside the apartment. I gave Neil a confused look. Then the sliding glass door unlocked, and Francesco appeared with three people I knew very well.

It was my family.

I jumped and hid under the covers. I became a child in the dark. If the monster can’t see me, it won’t find me.

Neil tapped the floorboard underneath my bed. “Amir, I know this might come as a surprise to you—”

“No, no, no. No!” I yelled. “What the hell is going on, Neil? Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

Neil looked at my parents nervously. “We were afraid that if I told you, you might run off again.”

I could hear my mom and dad and sister breathing heavily. An infinite number of questions were swirling in my head. What was happening? How did they find me here? Were Francesco and Neil really in on this?

Some part of me wanted to go down and leap into my mom’s arms, smother Soraya with kisses, but I stayed hidden under the sheets.

“Amir.” My mom croaked my name. She was so close; I could see her fingertips inches from me, on the edge of the mattress. I wanted to reach out and hold her hand so badly. “Please, come down. Please. I love you, joonam. Come home.”

“Come on, Amir,” my sister pleaded.

“Come, baba jaan,” my dad said. “Come.”

I was cornered. I looked out from under the sheets, and there they were, lined up in a row: Maman, Baba, Soraya. Their eyes were tired; my mom’s were even puffy and red. My chest was burning, like I had been playing with matches and all of a sudden one of them sparked, lighting the whole stack on fire.

“Why are you here?” I asked sharply.

My mom and dad looked at each other.

“You don’t want me back,” I said. “You don’t want me. We talked about this over the phone.”

“That’s not true,” Neil said. “Amir, look. I talked to your parents. They’ve assured me that they love you”—he turned to my mom and dad—“just the way you are. You have nothing to worry about.”

I didn’t believe it.

I leapt down from the bed, standing face-to-face with my family for the first time since the morning of graduation. Except that morning, they thought they knew who I was. Now they were staring at me like I was a stranger, looking me up and down in my boxers and white undershirt and messy bedhead.

I bolted past them and through the sliding glass door. Soraya tried to grab my arm, but I yanked it free. I ran down the stairs, but as I was rounding the corner to the second set of steps, I twisted my ankle and tumbled down five or six steps into the small grassy yard. I slammed my face into a clay flowerpot to the side of the stairs. I wanted to get back up, but my entire left side was throbbing.