I said nothing. I think I held my breath the entire time. I just stared up at the ceiling. There was nowhere else to look. I remember feeling like . . . like if I didn’t move, if I just stared at the same spot on the ceiling, that I wasn’t even there, in the room. That I had disappeared. I could see where Arthur’s parents had water-damage stains above us. Big brown circles mapped across the ceiling. I traced the lines. Imagined they were different things each time. A race-car track. A dying snail.
