“I’ll try,” I say, but what I really mean is I can’t control anything Benji does. I wish I didn’t have to think about it.

My mom is my only good parent, but I still feel muted around her, like I’m not the person she’s hoping I am and if I say too much, my cover will be blown. Mostly I feel empty and lost on questions like “You good?” I have no reference point to know what good or bad is. I’m only existing. I guess that means I’m good.

“Thank you for being responsible, Jake.” She kisses me on the forehead and leaves the room.

I look at the house down the street, through the half-open blinds. The lights are off in the upper windows.

I think there’s something there I’m meant to see.

I used to wake up unable to move. Asleep and awake at the same time. Aware and not. I would see figures standing in the corner of my bedroom. Giant shadows with no eyes, pressing themselves up against the wall.

Tonight, when I wake up, it’s to a silent room full of waste. A glass lampshade on an old nightstand colored like dragonfly wings. There’s a wardrobe, a horseshoe above the door. An overflow of old desks with attached mirrors, their frames tucked with tickets to the opera. Golf clubs and tennis rackets floating, and water drooling from the plaster in the corner.

The mist comes down from the ceiling in wires, which fasten around my soul and lift it. My soul pulls from my body and floats to the window. Behind me, my physical self remains curled up, hands under the pillow, like an angel.

I’m moving away from myself.

Goodbye, I whisper to my body. I’ve never felt married to it. Astral projecting sometimes feels more natural, because I don’t have to do anything—the mist steers my journeys for me.

The window glass approaches me, and behind the blinds is Redruth Road, the houses of my avenue, their white paint and blue roofs. I drift through the plaster of my house, a deep coldness densifying in my throat. The bricks pull me apart as I go through them, and then I’m pieced back together. The sky is a deep space of garnet and black casting hellish shade over the houses.

And the houses are in chaos. Chimneys erode in their own smoke; fences crumble like castle gates under siege. A house burns in eternal flame. A man—someone’s dad, or a roofer—trips and rolls backward off a roof, landing on his head and bursting into light.

I’m like an astronaut drifting through a dangerous galaxy cluster. At the end of the street is a devastated planet.