My scalp bristled. "What? Mum, you're freaking me out!"

"They say if we just stay out of sight, we're safe…"

"Safe from what?"

She stared at me, wildly conflicted, then let it all spill out: "From women, honey. Sick women! It's called Agent X, but it's some kind of disease like rabies. It's a real epidemic. It infects everyone, but it starts with women. They're out there like-like Typhoid Mary or something, crazy, and if they catch you, you get it. Or you can also catch it from men, once they've been infected, but either way we're not supposed to go outside: 'Beware any aggressive, unusual, or disheveled-looking people. ' She giggled hysterically. "That's us, isn't it?"

With that it hit me that my mother had flipped. She was imagining all this, getting lost in some kind of paranoid, psychotic episode. The fear I had been feeling turned inside out and became an entirely different kind of terror, one bound up in pity and loneliness and infantile need. What was I going to do? I was still a minor-what would happen to me? Ward of the state? I had no relatives to take me in, we had no money. I could feel the tears spilling down my cheeks.

"Mum," I begged. "Come on. It's okay. It's going to be okay." I gingerly took her by the arm. "Come on. Come sit down and rest. You're okay. See? It's okay, you just need to take it easy. Everything's going to be fine…"

She was resisting my gentle attempts to pull her.

"What do you think you're doing?" she erupted at last. "I'm not crazy!" The way she said this-the wry edge to her voice-was so completely normal that it cut through the strangler vines of fear like a machete. I continued to try to lead her by the arm, but my own arms had gone wobbly, and she wouldn't budge.