It’s five minutes later, twenty minutes later, two hours later—who knows?—when I remember that it’s Saturday. Good. I can just stay here. I don’t need to check my phone. I can stay here and sleep.

My brain is cataloguing every detail of the pattern on my wallpaper like it’s memorizing the information, but the moment it enters my brain, it evaporates. My head is empty. My head is too full. I’m drowning.

A loud crash jerks me awake—when did I fall asleep again? Was I sleeping? I hear my dad yell, “Sorry! Sorry, I’m fine!” from the kitchen, where it sounds like he’s making breakfast for twenty people.

Oh shit. My aunt Annabelle is coming over today for brunch. I’m supposed to be up for that. A new wave of anxiety fills me but my body immediately rejects it. I don’t have the energy to be anxious. A blessing and a curse.

“Adam?” my mom calls from the hallway. “If you’re up, could you go help your father with breakfast?”

To call back or not to call back, that’s the question. Well, no, actually the original version stands in this situation—to be or not to be. One of the most famous lines and, in my opinion, kind of the wrong question. It’s not “to be or not to be,” Hammie—you are. Whether or not you like it. The question is how?

While I’m lying here contemplating Hamlet, my mother knocks on my bedroom door.

“Adam? Sweetie?”

If I don’t answer, she’ll come in to wake me, and I don’t have the wherewithal to face another human right now.

“Yeah,” I shout, my voice tense, “I’m awake.”

She says something else that gets lost somewhere between my closed door and my ears processing sound and then I hear her move down the hall. I need to get up now. I need to get up and get dressed and help my dad and hang out with my aunt and be the functioning human my parents so desperately need me to be.

How, Hamlet? Help a brother out.

The next thing I know, I’m sitting at our dining room table, pushing eggs around my plate, trying to work up the strength to eat them. I don’t remember getting eggs. I don’t remember sitting down. There’s little spots of white and green mixed in with the yellow—my dad has made scrambled eggs with cream cheese and tarragon. My favorite. The thought of eating any of it in this moment makes my stomach roil.

Why the special eggs this morning? Are we celebrating something? Sound makes its way through the cotton in my ears—voices, two women, one man—and I look up blearily from the mess of food I’ve created in front of me. Oh. That’s right. My aunt is here. I knew that.