Swipe

curled down in an ugly grimace. Finally she turned the thing on, dragging some files aside and opening its message window. Then she stared at that too for more than a few minutes before she finally made the call.
    “Mom,” she said. “Hi.” And a hologram of Dr. Arbitor’s head popped up out of the screen.
    “Erin! How have you been? I haven’t heard anything, and I’ve been so curious—how’s Spokie? How was the train ride? How’s your new school?”
    Erin immediately felt a flood of guilt for not calling her mom sooner. “It’s . . . good.” She swallowed.
    “Yeah? What’s it like out in the country?”
    “Quiet,” Erin said honestly. “But Iggy seems to be adjusting.”
    “That’s good.” Dr. Arbitor laughed, and Erin turned the tablet so her mom could see the lizard, perched under a reading lamp and absorbing its heat.
    “How’s Beacon?” Erin asked.
    “The same. Lonelier now.” Dr. Arbitor smiled, and it broke Erin’s heart.
    “I shouldn’t be out here,” she said. “You shouldn’t have let Dad do this to us.”
    “I had nothing to do with it, sweetie.”
    “You should have let me stay with you. I wanted to stay with you!” Her sadness turned to anger now.
    “That wouldn’t have been possible, Erin. You know I’m in Europe half-time these days. There wasn’t a choice in the matter.”
    “Wasn’t a choice ? At what point is one of you going to stand up and put this family first?”
    Dr. Arbitor was quiet for a long time.
    “Mom?” Erin said finally. She thought hard about which words to say next. “Are you and Dad . . . okay?”
    Dr. Arbitor frowned over the connection. “Why . . .” She cleared her throat. “Why would you ask that?”
    “He insists everything’s fine. To hear him tell it, you’re joining us out here any day now. But I know you’re not going to, and I tell him so.” She scanned the small, undecorated space of the room around her. “So then he changes his story, says it won’t be long before we come home to you .” Now Erin’s eyes found the DOME box in the corner, holding the truth behind the scope of her father’s assignment. “But I don’t think that’s true either. In fact, I’m starting to think the job he took here is supposed to last a good long while . . .”
    Dr. Arbitor left the tablet’s field of view. Through the connection, Erin could see the living room of her apartment back in Beacon, and a new wave of awful homesickness swept over her. She could see her mom’s hunched shadow in the reflection of a far window, and Erin thought with some alarm that her mother appeared to be wiping her eyes.
    “Mom, when are we going to be a family again?”
    “That’s up to your father, dear.”
    “No! It isn’t! It’s up to both of you! You’re in this marriage together!” And immediately, Erin was hysterical. “How could you let things come to this? Did you really think you could keep it from me? Who gave you two the right to destroy my life like this?” She went on and on, not listening to her mom’s stuttered interjections and not wanting to.
    “Erin, please!” Dr. Arbitor finally snapped, and Erin subsided. “There’s no reason to get so worked up about—”
    But Erin was worked up. And for no good reason she thought of bedtime reading and Shakespeare in pajamas, and then her heart broke in two and it sank and burned in little pieces in the acid of her stomach and suddenly she was very worked up and she said, “Are either of you even trying anymore?”
    And Dr. Arbitor said, “Of course we are,” but the words hit Erin like a punch in the gut. Because her mother’s voice was hollow. It was broken. Her mother was lying.
    “I love you, Mom,” Erin said, ending the call so fast she wasn’t even sure all the words made it out. She was not about to let her mother see her cry.
    Dr. Arbitor called her back, of course, immediately and probably frantically and surely wanting at least to say, “I love you too.” But Erin would not let her do that. She declined the call. And when she did, she saw her own reflection again in the glass of the tablet’s screen, and this time it was red and blotchy and it disgusted her. So she threw the computer into the bubble wrap of the couch, and she insisted to herself that she was disappointed when the thing didn’t break.
    It’s up to your father, dear .
    It’s up to your mother, dear .
    It’s up to the other to keep us together, dear .
    Erin paced across the room, sobbing,