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holes, their own Big Bang in some large underground collider machine? I bet they screwed up an experiment and cracked the universe.
    The whole thing is just unreal. My mind won’t stop spinning.
    My phone rings, and Benji’s name and face appear on the screen. I’m surprised he’s called me twice and not Mom or Dad. Whenever we talk, either it’s awkward or we get into a fight. I set my journal aside and click off the TV to shut out the media before answering the phone.
    “Hey,” I say, “What’s up? Where are you?”
    “Doesn’t matter. They’re sending me home.”
    “Home home?” I grab one of the striped side pillows from the sofa and hug it.
    “Yes, but not off duty. They’re stationing me at one of the vertexes. Not sure which one yet, but they’re supposed to assign us to one close to our families.”
    “Lucky us,” I comment. “You’ll be back.”
    “You would think that, wouldn’t you?”
    We both allow seconds of silence to tick between us.
    “I can’t really talk details,” he continues, “but from where I sit, none of it looks good. Every country is having a different reaction. It’s bad.”
    I think about what he’s saying and what he’s not saying. He’s usually a die-hard patriot, like Dad, a rare creature to find these days. For him to say something is bad in our country, it must be catastrophic.
    “Why didn’t you call Mom and Dad?” I ask. I pull on a tiny string on the corner of the pillow, and it starts to unravel the seam.
    “Because Mom will be emotional, and Dad will be Dad. What does it matter? Can you just tell them that I should be back in a week?”
    “Sure,” I say, annoyed. “They’ll love having you back.”
    He sighs into the phone, and I get the impression that he’d rather be overseas in a foreign land dealing with foreign wars than be on the home front dealing with the new unknown. Or maybe his real problem has less to do with the holograms and more to do with the family.
    “One week. Tell them.”
    Curly hair is a punishment, especially in August humidity. Rita’s coming over around three o’clock to hear all about the hologram and the vertex firsthand, and then Dominick’s coming after dinner. I have an hour to shower and tame my hair into submission. I step into the tub, careful not to get the bandage on my elbow wet. The smell of disinfectant from last night burns into my memory. I grab a loofah and lather half the bottle of berry vanilla body wash on every inch of my skin. The water rinses over me as I let the wall hold me up.
    Stepping out of the shower, I wrap myself with a huge mintgreen towel and dry off. It’s a struggle to put on my clothes, a Paramore T-shirt and jean shorts. As I lift my hands to slick my wet curls into a ponytail, a dull pain shoots through my heart and takes my breath away. My heart spasms into a million little unnatural beats. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was having a heart attack. But I know better.
    During middle school, my parents brought me to the emergency room three times for supposed heart attack symptoms. By the third time, the diagnosis was panic attacks caused by general anxiety disorder. Either way, the doctor implied that it was all in my mind and recommended counseling, which I tried for a while but found medication more effective than talking about my physical symptoms to a stranger.
    The bathroom walls close in on me. My body rebels and screams, Get out! Can’t breathe. Get out!
    I grab the knob and fight with the door at first, pushing instead of pulling. I flee to my bedroom to get my anxiety pills, but it’s going to be bad regardless. The attacks that sneak up out of nowhere for no apparent reason, those are the ones that get you. I pop a pill, sit on my bedroom floor, and hug my knees. My brain continues to short-circuit, reacting as if I am under imminent threat of death when I was just doing my hair. The explosion inside of me feels so real I want to scream. Sweat pools down my