“Yes.”
“So, it’s impossible.”
“Oh, it’s possible,” said Mr. Pinscher.
Theo felt his lips move, his mouth shaping the words. “Who did they sell to?” Even as he asked, he knew. He knew because Tess had somehow known all along.
“So, Slant is our new landlord?” Theo asked.
“I don’t think so,” said the short man.
Mrs. Biedermann said, “We have thirty days to vacate.”
Theo took a step back as if someone had just shoved him. Vacate? In thirty days? It had taken him twice as long to build the model in the dining room. How would they pack everything up in thirty days?
And where would they go?
The tall man, Mr. Stoop, glanced over their heads, eyes darting around their apartment. Theo didn’t have to turn around to see what the man saw: the well-worn furniture, webbed in cat hair; the books spilling out of the mismatched bookcases they’d bought at a flea market; the palm plant that had gotten so big that it grew in crazy loops at the top; Theo’s sprawling model encroaching like a rising tide on the living room. A strange heat crept up Theo’s neck into his cheeks. It wasn’t grand, it wasn’t even tidy, but it was their home.
To his mother, Theo said, “What will happen to this place?” But her face had gone stony, unreadable.
His mother tapped the paper in her hands. “I’m going to need confirmation of this.”
“As you can see,” said Mr. Stoop, “that is a legal document, signed, notarized, and served. But you can call the mayor’s office if you’d like.”
Theo squeezed the blocks so hard, the edges bit into his palms. He should have built the Morningstarr Tower like Tess had wanted. But how could he have known what was going to happen? That was Tess’s thing, the what-if game she always played with herself, driving everyone else crazy. What if a great white shark swam up the Hudson River? What if a tornado touched down in the middle of Broadway? What if boys were girls and girls were cats? What if a greedy jerk bought your house right out from under you?
No, he shouldn’t have built the Morningstarr Tower. He should have built 354 W. 73rd Street.
“Mom?”
In the doorway, Stoop and Pinscher parted to reveal Tess, frizzy hair coming loose from her braid, Nine hunched like a sad gargoyle beside her.
“What’s going on?” she said. “There are all these people outside. They’re saying . . . they’re saying . . .”
Nine lowered her ears and hissed at Stoop and Pinscher, dropping some kind of paper she’d had clenched in her teeth. Mr. Pinscher bent to retrieve the paper, and Nine lunged with a yowl. Tess fought to control her cat, and everyone started shouting. Mr. Pinscher told Tess to call off her monster, Mr. Biedermann told the two creepy men that it was time for them to leave, and Mrs. Biedermann said something that Theo couldn’t hear because a thin buzzing noise had filled his head, drowning everything and everyone out. His legs pivoted him, robot-marched him back to his model, stepped him over the wall. Like the debtors and disgraced royalty that had crossed the gates into the Tower of London before him, he stood in the courtyard, wondering how he had gotten there.
Tess, still wrestling with the cat, watched him from the doorway, frowning at him as if he were someone she’d met before but couldn’t quite place. Look at that boy in the dead-cat T-shirt. He seems so weird.
The blocks dropped from Theo’s hands and landed right on the Tower Green where the wives of Henry VIII had lost their heads.
And Theo—who, as it turned out, was neither calm nor well adjusted—lost his. He cranked up his foot and put it through the new bridge, the sound of the crash not nearly loud enough.
CHAPTER THREE
Jaime
While Tess Biedermann was trying to keep her monster cat from eating Mr. Stoop and Mr. Pinscher and Theo Biedermann was losing his head, Jaime Cruz remained blissfully unaware that anything had changed. Despite the commotion in the hallway and Mozart’s Fortieth Symphony blasting inside his own apartment, he was fast asleep, big brown feet hanging over the edge of his twin bed. And he would have stayed asleep if his grandmother hadn’t thrown open his bedroom door, waded through the piles of clothes and comic books, and given one big toe a hard pinch.
Jaime shot up. “WATCH OUT FOR THE ZOMBIES!”
His grandmother, who he called Mima because she was like a mother to him, put her hands on her hips, raised one brow. “I am looking at a zombie right now.”
“Mima?” Jaime said, blinking away dream-images of the shambling undead.
“No,” she said. “It’s the secretary of state. I’m declaring your room a disaster area.”
Jaime found his glasses on his nightstand and put them on. His grandmother came into focus—short and wiry, thick dark curls shot with silver, her expression the usual mixture of fondness and exasperation.
“What time is it?” he said.
“Time to admit to your long-suffering grandmother that you spent the entire night playing video games. Again.”
“Not the entire night,” Jaime said, yawning.
“Jaime,” she began, pronouncing his name the Cuban way, the J curling like smoke from the back of her throat. In addition to her native Spanish, she spoke five other languages fluently and another three well enough to make polite conversation, and she could ask for the ladies’ room or a cup of coffee in a dozen more.
“Mima, it’s the first week of summer vacation,” Jaime said. “Kids are allowed to stay up playing video games during summer vacation.”
“Says who?”
“It’s in the Bill of Rights.”
“Not the one I read. After breakfast, you can clean up all these books and papers and junk. It’s a fire hazard. I won’t have a fire hazard in my building, let alone in my own apartment.”
“Okay, Mima.”
She turned to walk out, stopped, and picked up a drawing from Jaime’s desk. He had a Lion-powered tablet his father had sent him but preferred drawing on paper. The tablet had a stylus and all sorts of fancy settings, but the smooth, pliable screen seemed so indifferent to his efforts. Paper soaked up the ink, drank it in as if it were thirsty for it.
“Is this a zombie fighter?” said Mima, inspecting the drawing.
“Yeah,” said Jaime.
“Not bad. I like the sword. And these are some fancy boots he’s wearing.”
“See, I told you I wasn’t playing games the whole night.”
“No, you were drawing cartoons,” she said, putting the sketch back on the desk.
“What’s wrong with that?”