- On New Year's Day, Deborah goes home for a five-day visit.
- All of Deborah's relatives are there to greet her, and Esther has prepared them so they know she might be—and look—a little weird. They all dote on Deborah, but she can tell that it's overkill and motivated by pity and fear.
- Deborah does her best to cope with all of the attention, but it's exhausting. She still feels the space between her and the mentally healthy.
- Jacob keeps contrasting the comforts of home with "That Place"—which is the not-so-subtle way he refers to the mental hospital.
- Suzy looks at Deborah and sees a homely, desperate-looking girl who is emotionally younger than she herself is—even though Deborah is five years older. Suzy resents that Deborah isn't the big sister of her dreams, who has boyfriends and goes to proms and college football games. She resents that her family's happiness relies on Deborah's getting better. She resents that she feels she should cancel the plans she had with her friend that day, even though she'd made those plans before she knew Deborah was coming home.
- Suzy does cancel her plans—and resents doing it—but lies to Deborah and tells her she wanted to cancel to be with her sister.
- Deborah, who despises lies, calls Suzy out, which makes Suzy storm out of the room.
- All the coddling from her family makes Deborah feel like a burden. She feels that her family is normal and healthy and can do things without much effort that for her require massive amounts of energy.
- At bedtime, Jacob contrasts the hospital with home again and tells Deborah she doesn't have to go back to the hospital with all its "screaming women" (25.21).
- Jacob's comment makes Deborah feel her nonexistent tumor again and respond by telling her father that the woman he heard screaming at the hospital was probably Lucy, a patient who gets off on scaring the visitors by doing a Tarzan impression.
- Jacob is taken aback because he never thought of the scream he heard as belonging to a person.
- Alone in her dark room, Deborah sees her gods from Yr.
- Lactamaeon and Anterrabae try to convince Deborah that they never meant to be cruel. They only wanted to protect her when she was hopeless.
- Deborah wonders if she'll be able to trade Yr for the world that she's still learning to love. She starts thinking about how Yr used to be.
- Deborah remembers how the Censor told her he would protect her as she traveled between Earth and Yr. When she was younger this worked: she felt like she was flying in Yr, and she felt happy. But then things grew dark, and the Censor imposed lots of rules, punishment, and control.
- As she drifts off to sleep, Deborah weighs the "maybe" of this world against holding on to Yr.
- Different groups of family members come over the next few days to visit Deborah. The Blaus have grouped these people according to how much they know about Deborah's illness. It's more levels of deception, which Deborah hates.
- Deborah notices that Suzy's mood has gone steadily downhill since she came home. Even though she knows now that it's not logical, Deborah still thinks about how she could be poisoning Suzy.
- After Deborah goes to bed, Suzy breaks down and has it out with her parents. She hates how they're doting on Deborah and praising her for every little thing she does, no matter how small.
- Jacob tells Esther and Suzy that they're shouting so loud they'll "wake the dead." They all realize that "the dead" is a scarily appropriate reference to Deborah.
- Suzy, Esther, and Jacob then all go back to bed feeling guilty.