Night finally arrives, and Julia’s father returns home from a long night at the hospital. He and Julia’s mother have a brief exchange about how he needs to get some rest, but Joel is “too wired” to sleep (31). He goes to clean up the dead blue jay from their deck instead. Julia surmises that perhaps the blue jay died because gravity has somehow changed during “the slowing,” and her father dismisses the idea. Julia also mentions that she is sorry that a woman died. Julia realizes that her mother was not supposed to tell her about the woman: “He looked at me, surprised. I understood then that it was a mistake to mention it” (32). Julia’s father proclaims that she and her mother worry too much, and Joel offers his daughter a lie: “No, sweetheart, […] no one died” (32).

The environmental changes due to “the slowing” are slight at first, starting with only a subtle change in gravity. Julia remarks, “We were living under a new gravity, too subtle for our minds to register, but our bodies were already subject to its sway. In the weeks that followed, I would find it harder and harder to kick a soccer ball across a field” (33).