I look up, and Dad and Mom are staring at me with identical expressions of surprise. My stomach drops to my toes. What did I do?

“That can’t be right,” Mom says. “I thought we went only a few weeks ago.”

Gram smiles encouragingly. She wants me to trust them. They’re my parents after all, so maybe they won’t think I’m weird.

Yeah, right. Sure they won’t.

“I think Lulu might be correct,” Dad says, scrolling through his phone. “I remember I was going to buy the tickets and I didn’t have to because it was free. Yep, here it is. I made a note of it because that was the day before I went to that conference in Berkeley.”

Mom’s eyes go wide. “That’s amazing, Lulu! What are the odds you’d remember with such detail? I think you have a little of my artistic eye, don’t you?”

I open my mouth to tell them it’s so much more, when the doorbell rings. Dad shoves his chair back with a sigh. “Sorry, guys. I forgot that Ben wanted to go over his thesis.”

Mom frowns. She hates when he brings work home. Funny, since she works on her art constantly. “Ask Ben if he wants some dinner.”

Dad kisses the top of Mom’s head as he walks by. In a way I’m relieved for the distraction. I don’t know if I’m ready for anyone else to know what I can do. And honestly, why should I trust them with my secret when I can’t even trust them with Gram’s?

Gram picks up Clay’s plate and tsks at all the wasted food around it. She seems perfectly normal. Better than ever really. And I want to believe everything will be okay. That the memory loss is no longer a problem and our family will stay just like this forever.

26. Thalamus: The Inner Chamber

Can you imagine never sleeping? Located deep within the cerebrum is the thalamus, which is an inner chamber that helps the brain stem, spinal cord, and cerebral cortex send messages to one another. One of the things it does is regulate sleep.

Total insomnia is what happens when a person can’t sleep. There are studies that say that without sleep, you’ll die within six months. One person, who tried to break the record of the most days without sleep, started hallucinating within eleven days. For kids I bet it happens even sooner.

The darkness presses all around me. My dresser seems to loom in the shadows as if it’s ready to come alive and eat me. It’s close to three in the morning, and my thalamus is not doing its job. I blame the excitement of today. The park, Yakov, Max and Olivia’s belief that Gram must be a spy—all of this has caused my thalamus to misfire.