Oblivion

Isobel ducked her head as heat rushed to her cheeks. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Promise.”

She tapped the pencil’s eraser on the table, taking her turn to say nothing. She glared hard at the equation before her, willing the stupid thing to factor itself.

Above them, the vacuum droned on, creeping across the top landing toward Isobel’s bedroom, where Isobel knew her mom would stop and let it run as a sound cover while she riffled through her things.

“Promise,” Danny pressed. “Or I’ll tell Mom and Dad not to leave.”

“Jeez, Danny.” Isobel smacked her pencil down. “I said I wouldn’t.”

“They keep fighting,” he blurted. “Not when you’re around. But they yell at each other over the phone when Dad picks me up from Scouts. I guess they don’t think they have to hide it from me. Because I’m not the one who went crazy.”

Isobel’s mouth fell open, but it wasn’t Danny’s comment about her sanity that surprised her. She knew their parents had been fighting, and that the rift she’d caused between them wasn’t something that could be healed with her dad’s usual trick of flowers, or even a date. What she hadn’t been aware of, though, was how much Danny had picked up on. Or that things had degraded to the point of yelling.

“Look, they’re going to work it out,” she said, because she wanted to believe it too. And because saying so helped to assuage the guilt that crushed her a little more each day.

Because any other outcome seemed too impossible to consider.

“I’m going to work it out,” she added, a vocal reminder for herself as much as for him. “So we’re all just going to work it out. Okay?”

“Yeah well,” Danny mumbled, nodding to her papers, “I hope you’re better at solving mental issues than you are at math problems.”

Flinching inwardly at the shot, Isobel tried not to let the hurt show on her face.

“You really think I’m crazy?”

“Um, yes,” he said. “No,” he amended quickly, hands ducking into the diorama again.

Isobel leaned back in her chair, the sting in her heart easing by a fraction.

She folded her arms. “That sounds suspiciously like something a crazy person would say. I dunno, maybe it’s contagious. Or maybe it runs in the family. Ever consider that? You could probably start coming to my sessions with me if you wanted. The worst part is when they hook you up to the electrodes. But I haven’t lost any hair yet, so the voltage they’re using can’t be too high.”

“Izzy, I’m scared,” he said, not taking the bait. “I’m scared they’re not going to be okay. I’m scared something is going to happen to you again. I keep . . . having bad dreams.”

Isobel sat up. “What do you mean? What kind of—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Isobel nervously flicked a corner of her paper, hoping that Danny’s dreams were his own, products of internal stress. Memories replaying. But just in case they weren’t . . .

“Dreams aren’t real,” she said. “You know that, right? They only feel real when . . . when you let them.”

“You die in every single one,” he said. “So you tell me how that’s not supposed to feel real.”

Isobel opened her mouth, ready to spew more false comfort. That well had run dry, though, and all she had left was the idea for a stupid distraction.

“Hey.” Leaning over the table, she grabbed the partially shrink-wrapped stack of construction paper sitting by his elbow. Pinching the edge of one pink sheet, she drew it free and folded it on the diagonal. “Check this out. You can use it to impress your girlfriend tomorrow.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend, stupid,” he snapped.

Isobel stopped. Abandoning the sheet of paper, she found her pencil and returned the lead tip to the equation she knew she had no hope of answering now.

“Sorry,” she murmured. “Just forget it. I’ll go back to solving my mental—excuse me—math problems.”

A beat of silence passed. Then Danny straightened in his seat.

“I have girlfriends,” he corrected, and placing a palm on the pink paper, he pushed it toward her. “Duh.”

Again, Isobel laid her pencil down, slowly this time, a slight and unexpected smile teasing one corner of her mouth.

As she took up the scissors, Danny went quiet, his glower softening into a concentrated frown while he watched her clip off the bottom strip, making a square. She spun the square on the tabletop and continued folding, pressing a finger hard along each edge to get a crisp line.