“Ruby!”

Dad’s bushy eyebrows drew together as his shoulders slumped. “Well…”

“Don’t you dare,” Mom said, using her free hand to try to pry his big one off her other trembling fingers. “Jacob, don’t you dare—”

I kept my hands clenched together under the table, trying not to stare at Mom’s face as it paled from a deep red to a stark white.

“No one…” Dad began. “No one knows, sweetheart. I can’t give you an answer. Everyone finds out when it’s their time. I guess it probably depends—”

“Stop it!” Mom said, slapping her other hand down on the table. Our plates jumped in time with her palm. “Ruby, go to your room!”

“Calm down,” Dad told her in a stern voice. “This is important to talk about.”

“It is not! It absolutely is not! How dare you? First you cancel the party, and when I told you—” She strained against his grip. I watched, my lips parting, as she picked up her water glass and threw it at his head. In ducking, he lifted his hand from the table, just enough for her to wrench away and stand. Her chair clattered to the ground a second after the glass shattered against the wall behind Dad’s head.

I screamed—I didn’t mean to, but it slipped out. Mom came around to my side of the table and grabbed me by the elbow, hauling me up, nearly taking the tablecloth with me.

“Cut it out,” I heard Dad say. “Stop! We have to talk to her about it! The doctors said we needed to prepare her!”

“You’re hurting me,” I managed to choke out. Mom startled at the sound of my voice, looking down at where her nails were digging into the soft skin of my upper arm.

“Oh my God…” she said, but I was already in the hallway, flying up the stairs, slamming my bedroom door shut and locking it behind me, closing out the sound of my parents screaming at each other.

I dove under my heavy purple bedcovers, knocking the row of carefully arranged stuffed animals to the ground. I didn’t bother to change out of the clothes I had worn to school, or turn off the lights, not until I was sure my parents were still in the kitchen, and far away from me.

An hour later, breathing the same hot air under the comforter in and out, listening to the rattle of the air vent, I thought about the other significant thing about turning ten.

Grace had been ten. So had Frankie, and Peter, and Mario, and Ramona. So had half of my class, the half that never came back after Christmas. Ten is the most common age for IAAN to manifest, I had overheard a newscaster saying, but the affliction can claim anyone between the ages of eight and fourteen.

I straightened my legs out and pressed my arms in at my sides. I held my breath and shut my eyes, staying as still as possible. Dead. Miss Finch had described it like a series of stops and nots. Stopped breathing. Not moving. Stopped heart. Not sleeping. It didn’t seem like it should have been that simple.