Some weeks he slept through. Some weeks he woke at two in the morning with his hand at his own neck, breathing as if the podium had followed him into the dark. Naomi learned to hear the particular silence that meant he was awake and trying not to need her. She would knock, enter, sit. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes she just rested her palm on his blanket until his breathing slowed. She did not tell him to be strong. She told him strong was already what he was doing by surviving the night.
In November, a counselor named Dr. Amina Shah began seeing Isaiah biweekly. Shah had a plant-filled office and a way of asking questions that did not feel like cross-examination. She taught him grounding techniques. She helped him separate the clarinet from the hold—sound from threat, breath from command. Progress was not linear. After a fire drill at Northside that trapped them briefly in a crowded hallway, Isaiah came home mute and shaking. Naomi canceled her evening class. They ate cereal for dinner and watched a comedy neither of them found funny until, somehow, they did.
"Does it ever go away completely?" Isaiah asked once.
Naomi considered lying. She chose not to. "Some things become quieter. They sit in a chair in the corner instead of standing on your chest. You learn the room is still yours."
He nodded. He was thirteen now, taller, the baby softness leaving his jaw. The mustard cardigan still fit, barely. He wore it on hard days like a flag of his own.