Safety in Numbers

Numbers always made Anya feel safe. They were easy to understand and didn't change the rules on a whim like people tend to do. One plus one is always two. Three from seven is always four. From the time she was tiny she would count every step and had a running total in her head. Fourteen steps from the basement to the main floor. Twenty-two steps from the front door to the bathroom. Eighty-three steps from her house to her best friend Gina’s and another fifty-five to the field on the other side they liked to play in.

Mother told her to stop counting out loud all the time.

“People are staring,” she'd whisper. “They think you're strange. Count in your head.”

Mother meant well, of course. Anya had a hard enough time fitting in. Counting in her head didn't do much to improve that, but Anya did as she was told. She also stopped sharing with others how many steps it took to get from the library to the ice cream parlor. Apparently no one else thought it mattered.

That's probably why no one else noticed when the numbers started to change.

It should have been four hundred seventeen steps. It had always been four hundred and seventeen steps. Until it was three hundred and sixty-two.

“You're a lot bigger now,” mother pointed out. “It should take less steps now that you're a teenager.”

“Maybe you're just remembering wrong,” Gina laughed. “You have so many numbers up in that crazy brain of yours, you're bound to get them mixed up from time to time.”

Father just grumbled under his breath and continued reading his newspaper. He usually did that when Anya mentioned numbers.

But, Anya knew she hadn't grown that much since she walked from the library to the ice cream parlor last week. She was equally sure she remembered the right number. But she watched everyone else walk casually down the sidewalk as though everything was just fine. She crossed the street (forty-one steps) so she could better see the space between the library and the parlor.

She felt certain they were closer together, but she couldn't remember what was missing between them. There had never been anything she cared about going to between the library and ice cream parlor so she'd never counted any of them.

Anya could not prove anything had changed so eventually she resigned herself to the fact that the library now sat three hundred and sixty-two steps from the parlor.

A couple weeks later, Anya walked beside Gina as she moaned about Mr. Curtain's homework being unfair. They had left the school to walk to their dance studio five hundred and thirty-seven steps away. They had made it four hundred and eighty-nine steps when Gina turned to the right.

“Where are you going?” Anya stopped her.

“Dance class, it's Tuesday, remember?” Gina's blue eyes were full of concern.

“But…” Anya looked around. They had arrived at the dance studio, forty-eight steps early. “No, it should be further. What's missing, Gina?”

“Nothing's missing, silly,” her best friend laughed, but Anya noticed a look on her face that she usually got from other people, never from Gina.

Normally, Anya loved dance class. Counting and dance go hand in hand; the rhythm and the steps made a beautiful choreography of mathematics. Only in dance class did Anya not stand out as an oddball. But today, math had failed her and Anya stumbled around, uncharacteristically unable to focus on the beat. The other girls grumbled and the teacher scowled.

“I think the town is getting smaller,” Anya told Gina while they walked home after class. “I'm just not sure how.”

“Of course the town is starting to feel smaller,” Gina smiled, her usual kind smile. “We're teenagers now. We get to go wherever we want in town, not like when we were in elementary school and we were only allowed to go a few places. One day we'll probably outgrow this place all together.”

“But the numbers shouldn't change,” Anya sighed sadly.

It kept happening. The following week the park suddenly jumped seventy-two steps closer to church. A few days later the grocery store moved sixty-three steps closer to the post office. Town Hall slid fifty-two steps closer to Father's office and it was ninety-nine steps closer to the doctor's office.

“Everything is shrinking!” Anya insisted while the doctor blinded her with his light.

“The world will feel that way the older you get.” He reassured her. “But that's a good thing. It gives you the opportunity to explore further away and gain new experiences.”

“But I'm not going further away. Everything’s just closer,” Anya felt tears of frustration burning her eyes. How could numbers betray her this way? Why didn't anyone else notice?

“Her grades are slipping and she's getting into trouble in school more,” Mother's voice sounded heavier than usual. "And she caused a big disruption in dance class."

“Well, we always knew Anya was a very special girl and sometimes that means things are going to be harder for her to understand,” as he typically did, the Doctor spoke to Mother but kept looking at Anya, smiling in his sickening sweet way that didn't make him seem happy or kind.

“I'm not having a hard time understanding!” Anya entreated. “It's everyone else that doesn't see!”

The doctor prescribed a pill for her. He didn't explain what it was for, not to Anya. She didn't think she needed it but Mother insisted it would make numbers clear again.

Once home Anya went sixty-one steps to her bedroom and dropped off her things. Then she decided she needed to talk to her best friend. Mother found her an hour later, eighty-three steps away sobbing uncontrollably in an empty field, screaming incoherently for somebody named Gina.

Mother and Father took her away the next day.

Anya’s white room is fifteen steps wide and eighteen steps long. The bathroom is twelve steps from her bed. When the nurse brings her pills she can hear all fifty-six of her steps, echoing down the hall.

The numbers never change here. The numbers are safe again.