She pressed her lips into a thin white line and disappeared into the kitchen.
I stood, hurled the pill bottle on the floor, and ran to my room. The pictures floated from the walls when I threw the door open. I tossed my camera onto the bed and ripped the nearest picture off. In it was a tree with bright red and orange leaves. The problem was, the other trees were all green. Because I’d taken the picture at the end of spring. I tore another snapshot down. This one was my first sighting of the Hannibal’s Rest phoenix. It perched on top of Red Witch Bridge, staring straight into the camera. I took another picture down, and another.
All of them still had their subjects. Nothing had changed.
I sunk down on the rug. Pictures spilled across the floor, leaving new gaps in my photograph-covered walls. The tears came on full force, wet and messy and stupid. I should have known. I should have paid better attention. Now Miles would know, and everyone would— I stopped myself. That wasn’t why I was upset.
I was upset because I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t tell that Bloody Miles wasn’t real. I’d gotten—I thought I’d gotten so good at telling the difference. These pictures meant nothing. They told me nothing.
The door creaked open and a tiny body wedged its way inside my room. I opened my arms and Charlie climbed into my lap without hesitation. I buried my face in her hair. She was the only one I let myself cry in front of, because she was the only one who never asked what was wrong, or if I needed anything, or if she could help.
She was just there.
Am I crazy?
Concentrate and ask again
Am I crazy?
Reply hazy try again
Am I crazy?
Cannot predict now Better not tell you now Concentrate and ask again Better not tell you now Reply hazy try again Cannot predict now Ask again later
Ask again later
Ask again later
Part Two: The Lobsters
Chapter Seventeen
I spent the next three weeks in and out of the hospital.
By the end of the second week, I more often haunted my living room, but the Gravedigger rained medication on me like the London Blitz.
Every morning I woke up with the image of Bloody Miles burned into my memory, and every night I dreamed I stood on a gymnasium floor spray-painted red with the word Communists, while McCoy’s scoreboard cackled on the wall behind me.
Nothing felt or tasted or looked good anymore. I didn’t know if it was me or the new medication. Food made me want to throw up, blankets and clothes scratched and twisted, every light blinded me. The world had gone gray. Sometimes I felt like I was dying, or the Earth was breaking apart beneath my feet, or the sky might swallow me whole.
I couldn’t go to work anymore. Not that I cared. Finnegan hated me anyway. This would be the perfect excuse for him to fire me.
I didn’t even sneak out to Red Witch Bridge. I couldn’t risk it. And a dark part of my mind imagined Bloody Miles standing in the trees, waiting for me.
Homework came in overwhelming waves, especially chemistry and calculus, which I had a hard enough time learning even with formal instruction. My mother tried to teach me, but she sucked at it, too. Some days I thought she’d break down in the hallway or the kitchen and fill the house with sobs. I don’t know much about what my mother’s life was like before she had kids, but I think she was happier. I think she didn’t spend all her time caring for one child who was a high-maintenance musical prodigy and another who couldn’t even manage her own medication schedule.
Charlie was a little different, because Charlie did what she always did when she was afraid or not sure how to handle a situation: she hid. She stayed out of the living room, my fortress, and only ventured into the kitchen when she knew I wasn’t there. I hardly saw her at all those first two weeks, but after I had a particularly bad time with the Gravedigger, Charlie stood on the other side of the doorway, out of sight, and played me songs on her violin. Usually the 1812 Overture.
The third week turned out to be the best of the three. That Sunday, Dad came home.
Rain thundered against the windows. I sat barricaded in my pillow fort, leaning against the couch, wondering about the contents of those eighteen-and-a-half lost minutes of the Nixon White House tapes, when rain-rippled headlights roamed across the far wall and gravel crunched as a car pulled into the driveway. Maybe my mother had left without me knowing and was just getting back. But she wasn’t supposed to leave me alone. She wouldn’t.
A car door shut. Someone pulled open the screen door.
“DADDY’S HOME!” Charlie screamed from the kitchen.
I peeked out of my fort. My mother stood right in the doorway, Charlie’s fringe of red hair visible behind her.
And then a completely soaked, suntanned someone leaned around the doorframe. He grinned when he saw me, his warm dark eyes crinkling at the corners.