“I have supernatural narcolepsy!” My voice rose so much faster than I had wanted, my mom’s few words like a knife straight between my ribs, stabbing a response out of me. I know. I know I haven’t been around, but I’d just been hoping that no one was noticing, as usual.

“I understand that you’re still learning how to control it,” she said, “but we could help with that! You’ve barely told us anything about your ability, about your time at the AM and we want to help. We’re worried about you!”

There it was. Wasn’t that what I had wanted? To talk to them, be a part of the Atypical Family Atkinson? But “we’re worried about you”—is there a single more condescending phrase in the English language than that one?

“I’m fine!” I said. “I’m in therapy and I’m doing my AM-mandated meditations, being the good Atypical, and I’m going to work and I’m dating a girl—who I really think you would actually like by the way,” I added when I saw my mom ready to jump in with some probably snarky comment. Okay, so I haven’t dated the nicest girls in the past, but I also haven’t brought any home since junior year of high school because of the disastrous dinner where Phoebe, a girl in my class, had interrupted everyone throughout dinner and then absconded with my mom’s favorite teakettle—a weird ritual that Phoebe had, it turns out, done to everyone she dated.

I got the kettle back but … still.

“I’m sure I will,” my mom said, offering me an olive branch.

I didn’t want to take it. I wanted to shout more at her, ask why she was demanding things of me when I’m hurting too. I wanted to ask why she didn’t know about Dad before, if she did know and just didn’t do anything. I wanted to demand that she tell me exactly what to do because I have no idea.

But I didn’t say any of that. I just nodded, agreeing to the truce that she’d presented to me.

And then I turned and hightailed it out of the kitchen and up here as fast as I could, like the coward that I am.

LATER

I recognized the smell before I recognized the place. I guess I really never recognized the place, not really, just the feeling of the place. A school is a school. They all have the same essence of chalk, linoleum, fluorescents, anxious minds, and nervous, hopeful hearts. It didn’t matter that I had never been in this particular school. The hallway, echoey and poorly lit, felt exactly like the hallway I’d walked for four years of my life.