I guess that remains to be seen. Saying very little else, Damien got up from the bench, told me he’d text me, and then left. I walked home, hoping the cold air and long trek would help me clear my head. There were so many things about that conversation that were strange, that were hard to digest, that needed a lot more interrogation. But my brain was really stuck on one thing. Even though I denied that Atypicals weren’t human, I’m not totally sure I believed it.

I don’t always feel human. I don’t always feel … here. In fact, sitting on that cold park bench with Damien was the most in my body, in the world, I’d felt in months. Talking to someone who understands—who knows what it’s like to have an ability that makes other people uncomfortable, but that feels like the missing piece of who you are, who knows what it’s like to feel utterly lost … it made me feel like I had my feet on solid ground.

I wish I could explain this to my family, explain how, despite the fact that we’re now all bonded in our Atypical-ness, that I am one of them in the way I always wanted to be, I still don’t feel like I belong. But before I could even broach the subject, maybe even tell them about my day, explain that the AM is not to be trusted in the way that they want, my parents jumped down my throat the moment I entered the kitchen.

“Where were you today, Rose?” my mom demanded. She was in her scrubs still, must have just gotten back from her shift, which is when I remembered that I was supposed to stay home today and help my dad with some house stuff that we weren’t sure he could handle on his own.

“Shit,” I mumbled.

“Shit indeed,” my mom said, moving around the kitchen in an agitated storm, opening cabinets and pulling down cookware to make … something. Honestly, based on what she was grabbing, it felt like she was just taking things at random—I couldn’t think of a single dish that would require all that stuff together, though now I definitely am thinking about what dish I could make with cottage cheese, long grain rice, seaweed, and pine nuts.

“I’m really, really sorry—”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” a voice said, and that was when I noticed my dad sitting at the kitchen table, his face buried behind a newspaper.

“Of course you don’t.” My mom sighed, stopping her whirlwind around the kitchen for a moment. “But Rose promised—”

“I’m so sorry, Dad,” I said, hoping to see his face come out from behind the newspaper. It did not.

“Were you off sleeping somewhere?” my mom asked.

“What?” I said. “No.”