The next morning, Freya woke up early as the first rays of dawn shot through her window. They reflected off the emerald leaves of Yggdrasil and painted her ceiling green. She watched the blotches of light shift as the sun rose. Freya needed to pee, but she didn’t get out of bed. It was too early. She didn’t want to leave her room until Lassa went to work.

A thread fluttered at the back of her mind, and she tugged at it, tumbling into the ghost of a dream. She’d dreamed of going blind. The world had slowly retreated into an indistinct blur, and all went dark. She was left sliding through the void, anticipating a crash. The falling-in-place feeling had jolted her awake, and she immediately regretted waking up.

Freya wondered why she’d dreamed of being blind, or why she was dreaming at all. Was the Lunesta becoming less effective? That had to happen at some point, that she would build up a tolerance. She shrank from the thought. What if she stopped being able to sleep? Everything was so hard already.

Freya looked over at the desk where the Lunesta bottle was and noticed her laptop missing. She blinked, wondering what had happened. Had someone broken in and taken it? If so, they wouldn’t get anything out of it. She hid everything that mattered on an encrypted partition. She checked to make sure her phone hadn’t been taken. It sat charging on her bedside table. Next to it was the Starball, resting in the center of an old Robert Johnson CD so it couldn’t roll away.

Curiosity was enough to get her out of bed, and she turned on the light and looked around her room. The laptop was definitely gone, and she had to use the bathroom. The mystery was short-lived. When Freya emerged from the bathroom, she found Lassa sitting at the kitchen table. She’d taken Freya’s MacBook, and she frowned at the screen.

“This is so slow,” Lassa complained. No apology for taking Freya’s stuff without asking or going in her room while she was asleep. It wasn’t the first time either. But Freya was prepared for this.

Lassa poked around on her desktop, unaware it was all a façade. She didn’t know about the secret partition. To complete the Potemkin profile, Freya had seeded the desktop with a clutter of pictures and homework assignments. She’d even spent a few hours browsing innocuously to create a believable history.

It had taken a while to set that all up, but it was so very worth it. Freya would pay any price to never hear Lassa comment on her pornography choices again.

“Sorry,” Freya said automatically.

Lassa shot her a look, somehow sensing her mirth. Pale eyes lingered on Freya, and Lassa’s gaze intensified. If Freya were ten years old, that stare would have been enough to get her to give herself away. But Freya was an old hand at this now. She refused to crack.

“I guess it’s just old,” Lassa said. She paused a moment to see if Freya leapt on the excuse, but Freya knew it might be a feint. She gave Lassa nothing.

“When was the last time you used this?” Lassa asked.

“I haven’t turned it on since I got the new phone.”

“Don’t you need it for school?”

Freya shook her head. “I do everything on my phone.”

“Well, something is wrong with the internet. It’s really slow. I’m just checking to make sure you don’t have a virus.”

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“Do Macs get viruses?” Freya asked, pretending to be stupid. When Lassa fell for it, she felt both elated she’d tricked her mother and outraged Lassa thought so little of her.

“Yes, it’s just uncommon. If this has been turned off, it’s not the culprit. Let me see your phone.”

Freya went back to her room and got her phone, trying to remember if there was anything she didn’t want Lassa to see. But there wasn’t much. Freya hadn’t texted anyone in almost a month. It had been over three weeks since the last email she’d sent to Betty. She still hadn’t gotten a reply.

As she surrendered the phone, Freya realized there were about a hundred pictures of the meteorite she could not explain. But Lassa only thumbed through system preferences and checked the network settings. She didn’t look at the pictures.

“It’s not your phone. You barely use any data at all. It’s not my computer or my phone. Someone must have broken into our network. Let me check the router.”

“Do you need me for anything?” Freya asked, and Lassa shook her head. Freya showered, brushed her teeth, and got dressed, slipping the Starball into her pocket. When she came out, Lassa still frowned at the screen.

“Someone broke into our network and downloaded a ton of stuff. This is the list of connected devices.”

Lassa turned the MacBook screen towards Freya. She was logged into the router interface and looking at a list of active DHCP leases. There were entries for Lassa’s work computer, Freya’s MacBook, and each of their phones. There was an entry for SONYTV also. The final row was a MAC address with no device name. In the DATA TRANSFERRED column, it said 262.75GB. As they watched, the number climbed to 263 and kept going.

Lassa tried to launch the calculator on Freya’s laptop, but it was taking a while to load and, finally, the cursor turned into the spinning beach ball. With an annoyed sigh, Lassa pulled out her phone and typed.

“We have a 10-megabit line. That can download about four gigs an hour. It looks like they’ve been maxing out the line for about three days.”

“Why would they do that?” Freya asked, feeling relieved. For once, Lassa didn’t think something was her fault.

“It’s probably some kid in the neighborhood running torrents.”

“Can we see what they’re downloading?” Freya asked, still playing dumb. Lassa was smart about a lot of things, but Freya was sure she’d never run Wireshark in her life. She enjoyed a few minutes of schadenfreude watching her mother fumble around in the router’s web interface.

“I don’t know if there’s a place to see that,” Lassa concluded, and her mouth became a tight line. She didn’t like to admit defeat. “Maybe the ISP knows. I’m going to change the password to something stronger.”

Lassa changed the Wi-Fi password to an unwieldy string of characters and reconnected all their devices. Then she logged back into the router, and the weird entry was gone from the DHCP list. She browsed on her phone a bit. It seemed much faster.

“I guess that’s it. I’ll contact the company just to make sure we’re covered in case someone was doing something illegal.”

“Do you have to tell your work?” Freya asked, watching Lassa closely. Her mother blinked. The question made her uncomfortable.

“Normally, I would. But after the incident at your school, I don’t need more attention on me. It’s probably nothing. We’ll see what the ISP says first.”

“How many more times do I have to see Dr. Garbuglio?” Freya asked, trying to capitalize on the moment of vulnerability.

“Three more times. If there are no more problems at school, I think we can stop then. I won’t let him give you any drugs, don’t worry. Are you sleeping okay?”

“Yes,” Freya replied. Lassa was paying much more attention to her since the fight. She wasn’t used to it and didn’t like it.

“From now on, Garbuglio will be on Thursday nights. He moved someone to fit you in yesterday. Your first Krav Maga class will be on Wednesday. Give it your best. It may save your life.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t look so miserable about it. Maybe you’ll meet some nice boys there. If nothing else, at least they’ll be fit.”

The pendulum of discomfort had swung fully to Freya. She couldn’t wait until Lassa was gone. Hopefully, she wouldn’t come home tonight. When the BMW pulled out of the driveway, Freya looked at the clock. 9 AM. Twelve hours until she could go back to sleep.