Summer sat back with a jolt. “Possessed,” she repeated. “By what? /How?/ You — oh, god.” She’d been thinking suicide, social anxiety, some chronic disease. “What have you — how many of you are there?”
And this is why Allison usually kept her mouth shut. She knew that there was a possibility that this would be the reaction, and yet she said it anyway. ”Uh, you know what. I was just kidding. He has frontotemporal dementia. He’s going to die, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
The change in tone brought Summer’s gaze back up with a snap. “You think I don’t believe you. But both the things you’ve said are true. Are they related?” Her voice softened. “Not that it matters, either way you’re confronted with something even parents have trouble knowing what to do with. Either way you’re afraid of losing your friend, right?”