As soon as he said the word asylum, Tess flinched as if stung by a bee. She closed her eyes, lids twitching. Theo didn’t have to ask to know what she was thinking about. The day they brought Grandpa to that new place, shiny and blue and smelling like mouthwash. This will be better for Grandpa, their mother said. He’ll have twenty-four-hour care. He can’t manage anymore on his own and I . . . I . . . It will be better for him. And Grandpa Ben, small and hunched on the new bed, trying to smile through it. It had been one of his rare good days, and that only made the whole thing worse. A wizened woman hobbling down the hall on the arm of a relative grinned through the open door. Welcome to the asylum, she’d said, giggling, until her grown daughter hushed her. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
In the cemetery, crumbling grave markers all around them, Nine snuffled, then chewed on Tess’s fingers, but still Tess stood there, eyes closed, swaying a little. Theo should snap her out of it, he should take her arm or say something.
“Is that girl okay?” said a man standing nearby with his family. He was wearing a baseball cap and a T-shirt that said “Take a Bite Out of Gotham City,” which was plain nonsensical.
“She’s fine,” Theo said. “She just gets headaches sometimes.” He willed Tess to open her eyes, see the man’s nonsensical T-shirt, say, “Thabat’s sabo sabilly.”
“Doesn’t look like a headache to me,” the man said.
Now other people in the graveyard were looking and whispering. Theo wanted Tess to laugh, to tell them that no one had paid her this much attention since kindergarten, when she’d brought in a bone and told the class that it could be a chicken bone or the finger bone of a Sasquatch that had gotten into the city from New Jersey via the Lincoln Tunnel, and she was forced to have a talk with the school counselor about the difference between real life and make-believe.
Nine’s meows turned loud and insistent. Theo was telling himself to say something, to do something, when Jaime lifted his hand as if to put it on Tess’s shoulder. Though Jaime didn’t touch her, she seemed to feel it just the same. Her eyes flew open. “What?” she said. “What are you guys staring at?”
“Are you . . . ?” Jaime said.
Tess flushed, wrapped Nine’s leash around her hand. “Me? I’m totally fine.”
His parents told Theo to go easy on Tess after she’d had one of her “spells,” to be gentle with her, but he knew Tess hated that.
“Are you done with your nap?” Theo said. “Can we go now?”
She made a show of rolling her eyes. “You’re such a robot.”
“That’s me,” he said, letting out a rush of breath that felt like the pulling of a splinter. “Your robot brother.”
But the asylum would have to wait; they needed to get home for dinner. On the Underway, Tess dug a napkin out of her pocket and told Theo he still had mustard on his face, like nothing weird had happened. With the Guildman staring him down, he was careful to tuck the soiled napkin in his pocket. He didn’t want to drop it and get thrown off the train. Nine seemed to notice the Guildman’s attention and sat on Theo’s feet, guarding him.
With the warmth of the cat against his legs and the rocking of the train car, Theo could stop thinking about Tess and about Grandpa and think, instead, about something that didn’t make his brain and eyes feel like they were made of water.
He thought about Charles Dickens.
Dickens first came to America in 1841 to lecture Americans about international intellectual property, something Americans weren’t much interested in at the time, because they liked being able to publish the work of non-Americans without paying any of the writers. But Dickens had ten children to support. Plus, he enjoyed writing about America—the gross parts of it, anyway. Like the Five Points neighborhood, which he described as “reeking everywhere with dirt and filth,” with “coarse and bloated faces” peeking through “broken windows that seem to scowl dimly.” That was probably why Theo had dreamed of the Five Points, because Dickens had written about it in American Notes, one of Theo’s all-time-favorite bedtime stories. In American Notes, Dickens had also written about Blackwell’s Island, now called Roosevelt Island. Theo wondered what they would find there, where they would go next. And then he wondered again at the way in which the clues kept coming together for them, snapping neatly the way Legos did. In 1855, the newspapers said that the Cipher was just waiting for the right people to solve it. Had it been waiting for them all this time? A bunch of seventh-going-into-eighth-graders? Grandpa Ben had always told him to never underestimate himself just because he was young. The energy of young people powers the world. You are smart, Theo. More than that, you are curious, and that will carry you. But Tess was the curious one. And Theo was smart enough to know there was a mountain of things he didn’t know, and that mountain weighed on him.
When they got back to 354 W. 73rd Street, they said good-bye to Jaime and let themselves into the apartment. Which was crowded with society members. Edgar Wellington, Priya Sharma, Omar Khayyám, Imogen Sparks, and Ray Turnage were all sitting in the living room, eating oatmeal cookies. Grandpa Ben’s Lance clomped around the Biedermanns’ apartment, serving large glasses of milk. He seemed about as happy as an empty suit of armor could seem.
“Ah, here are the kids now!” said Mr. Biedermann.
Theo and Tess greeted everyone and took a few cookies from Lance’s tray. Nine circled the room, getting scratches and pats and murmurs of Who’s a kitty, are you a kitty?
“We decided to bring Lance down here because he seemed so lonely upstairs by himself,” said Mr. Biedermann.
“Good idea,” said Theo, munching on a cookie. But Tess was eyeing the society members suspiciously.
“So . . . ,” she said, trying desperately to sound casual but not sounding remotely casual, “what are you guys doing here?”
“We have to start packing up Grandpa’s apartment,” said Mrs. Biedermann. “Since he always wanted the society to have his collection, I asked them to come over and help, since they know which artifacts are important.”
Tess lowered the cookie from her mouth. “We don’t have to do that now, do we?”
Nine circled back to Tess and rubbed against her leg. Mr. and Mrs. Biedermann exchanged a look. Edgar Wellington said, “We’ll just be taking inventory for a while. We won’t remove anything till you’re ready.”
Mrs. Biedermann knocked back a swallow of milk. “Except for Lance.”
“What about Lance?” Tess said.
“We don’t have the room for him here, and it’s not good for him to be alone anymore. He shredded six rolls of paper towels and left the mess in the bathtub.”
Tess put the cookie back on Lance’s tray and stalked from the room, Nine on her heels. Mrs. Biedermann sighed.
Edgar Wellington said, “She just needs some time.”
“That’s just what we don’t have, Edgar,” said Mrs. Biedermann.
Lance stomped back to the kitchen and rattled around in a cabinet until he found the griddle.
“Well,” said Mr. Biedermann, “I hope you Cipherists like pancakes.”