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get home okay.”
    I shook my head, flexed my toes so my flip-flops would stay on as my feet swung back and forth over the driveway. I’d just gotten home from a date with Tommy and had found my brother standing by Dad’s car, counting. I shook my head. “No, it doesn’t make sense. You can’t stop something horrible from happening by counting. How long have you been doing this?”
    He’d shrugged. “A while. It started with me just saying,‘Kendra will be all right,’ or ‘Dad won’t get in a car crash,’ or ‘Mom will come home,’ and that used to be good enough, but then I started having to say it a bunch of times. And then… you know, it turned into I had to say it an even number of times. And then it got to where I could just count and it did the same thing. Which is better. Takes less time.”
    We sat in silence for a few minutes.
    Oh my God, my brother has really gone crazy
, was all I could think. It scared me. And it broke my heart.
    “I know,” he said, as if he could hear my thoughts. “I can’t help it. I’m sorry.”
    “It’s okay, Gray,” I’d said, and put my hand on his shoulder. “But you really should stop. You’re not keeping everyone safe by counting.”
    Still, some days Grayson did nothing but sit on his bed and count, forward and backward, to really high numbers, just to keep us all alive. I always felt like I should have been more appreciative of his efforts. Like I shouldn’t have thought it was so stupid or something he could just stop doing. Like I should have thanked him that night instead of telling him it wasn’t working.
    “Four thousand, seven hundred sixty-
five
,” he said, then shook his head and gave one of those little coughs that I’d heard earlier. “Four thousand, seven hundred sixty-
six
…”
    Even though it was still late afternoon, the bottom of the quarry was fully engulfed in shadows. My fingers werestarting to hurt, no matter how many times I blew on them to warm them up, and my ears were starting to sting, too.
    “Gray,” I said again. “Come on. Mom’s going to get all worried when she realizes you’re gone.” He kept counting. “She’ll probably cuss you out in Italian,” I tried, smirking, hoping he’d get the joke. He coughed again and kept counting.
    I bowed my head, knowing what I needed to do. I hated it when I had to do this—and Grayson really hated it—but sometimes it was the only way.
    “Grayson! Stop counting and listen to me!” I shouted, and jumped in front of him, using my feet to kick at the rocks he was staring at. I shuffled my feet like I was doing a dance, sending the rocks flying everywhere.
    “No!” Grayson gasped in his raggedy been-counting-all-day voice. “Don’t… Kendra…”
    His face looked pale and terrified, his fingers jerking as he tried to follow the scattering rocks with his eyes. As if he could keep track of them, keep counting them.
    Normally this would have been enough to stop me, but today was different. Today, turning Grayson’s world into chaos felt justified somehow. It felt right. It felt… good.
    “One-two-three-four-oh-God-Grayson-look-at-them-go!” I shouted, jumping up and down and doing side kicks into the rock mound. Rivers of rocks swirled at his feet. He gazed down at them sickly, that cough coming in rapid fire:
Uh… uh-uh-uh… uh
… I bent over and picked up twohandfuls of rocks and slung them high into the air over our heads. They rained down on us and I laughed, blinking every time a rock pelted the top of my head. “Oh, no, Grayson, you better count them quick!” I yelled. “They’re getting away!”
    “Stop it!” he shouted, and before I could even react, he lunged forward, both arms outstretched, planted his hands on my shoulders, and pushed me backward. For the second time that day, I found myself flat on my butt, only this time I was laughing too hard to feel the fall. “I made you stop,” I sang, pointing up at him. “I made you mo-o-ove.” Grayson