“You are such a freak.”
“I can see you’re a tough sell, kid. That’s why I saved the best for last. Did I mention the twelve miles of hiking trails? Or the generous daily breakfast prepared to order by a genuine French chef?”
Mom pulled out her phone, checked the time, and then put it back. It was the third time she’d done it in the last twenty minutes.
“Dad just has a few things to finish up,” I said. “And then he’ll be ready.”
Mom tried to smile, but it was a poor effort. She kept her eyes locked on the front door. I pulled out my brochures and put the finishing touches on the plan. We’d probably all want a little rest after the drive, so I thought naps first and then we could cook out on the charcoal grill the place provided. I’d already talked to the manager about the best grocery store to go to in town for steaks and things. After that I figured you and I could go over to the main house and grab a whole bunch of board games. Day Two was definitely horseback riding and then maybe a trip into town. Day Three was—
Footsteps on the sidewalk. My heart jumped into my throat. When I looked up, though, it wasn’t Dad coming out of the house, it was Mom going in.
“Mom, no, wait! He just needs more time! He’ll be here in—”
Mom slammed the door behind her, and the fight started almost immediately. Mom yelled. Dad yelled back. I could hear every word, almost as if there were no walls between us at all. It was a familiar enough sound by then, but standing there with those brochures clenched in my fists, I felt like there was this iron bar running down the middle of me and someone had taken it in both hands and shaken it.
I turned to you, but you had your head down and your fists jammed in your jacket pockets so hard I could make out the peaks and valleys of your knuckles through the black corduroy.
“We can still get there before dark,” I said. “We can take one of the boats out on the lake. Or maybe Mom and Dad can. I brought the Xbox. Me and you could hook it up and—”
You looked up from the sidewalk. Your eyes were angry slits, rimmed in red, and your jaw was clenched. I found myself stepping back, moving away from you.
“It’s going to be fine,” I said. “We’ll be away six whole days. By the time we get back, everything will be the way it—”
“You’re just like them.”
“Tennant—”
You turned your back and walked away, your body framed by Lucy’s Promise, which autumn had turned into a wall of flames. I wanted to say something. I wanted to call out to you, to stop you, to tell you that everything was going to be okay, but I couldn’t talk and I couldn’t move because that iron bar was still rattling inside of me. You turned a corner and were gone, leaving me alone on the sidewalk as the house and the street and the world shook with Mom’s and Dad’s voices. I didn’t see you again until late the next night.
October sixteenth.
I rolled up off the floor and knelt before the ellipse. You were all there, pressing in closer, surrounding me until I could hardly breathe. I pulled my arm back and drove my fist into the wall as hard as I could. It was like punching a downed power line. I hit the floor and curled around my throbbing hand, waiting for the pain to burn you all out of my head, knowing that it never could.
18
AT SOME POINT I must have fallen asleep. When I woke up, Hannah was across from me.
It was late, either that same night or the next. She was alone, sitting next to the rift in the wall with a backpack in her lap. A lantern sat in the middle of the ellipse beside my mask and the pile of comics. It filled the chamber with an amber glow.
“Greer ran out to get some supplies. He’ll be back in a minute.”
Hannah didn’t look at me as she spoke. She kept her eyes on the concrete floor, twisting at the backpack’s strap.
“How’d you find me?”
She shrugged. “We asked around. Some people saw you heading this way.”
I started to get up, wincing as I did. “Is everybody—”
“Everybody’s fine,” she snapped. “Benny has mostly stopped asking why you just up and left, which is good, since Greer and I ran out of excuses a few days ago.”
The rough steel of the ellipse raked across my back as I fell against it. Freeman’s aspirin had long since worn off, leaving my body feeling like a bag of splintered bones. Bruises snaked around my knuckles like vines. My hand was swollen. I flexed my fingers to make sure nothing was broken.
“You okay?”
I drew my hand back into the shadows and said I was fine. Hannah turned to stare into the darkness on the other side of the rift in the wall. I looked up at the skylight, hoping I might see a few stars through the dirty glass haze, but the sky was blank, like something that had been hollowed out.
“These are your dad’s.”
She had pulled the stack of comics closer to her. I nodded.