“What are you trying to say?” she asked, desperate to know the important piece of information his brain sent to safekeeping before losing consciousness. “Say it again,” she implored. Howdy fine, how define, how—
CHAPTER 25
How’d they find me?”
Ford woke with those words like a swimmer breaking the surface of a lake, wide-eyed, gasping, and thirsty. He’d been unconscious for five and a half days.
It was two thirty in the morning, although time had ceased to have any meaning in the Winter house. One day slipped into the next, someone always sitting in the chair next to the couch in case something—anything—happened.
“Who?” Lulu asked. She was the one on watch when his eyes opened. When he showed a sign of actual consciousness, not another false alarm, she called over her shoulder, “Mom, he’s awake,” and turned back to him to say, “Don’t look in the mirror when you go to the bathroom, you’ll be scared.”
Ford took a deep breath, and Sadie felt him wince at the pain it triggered in almost every part of his body. “Good to know,” he said. He looked down at his arms and hands, which were criss-crossed with cuts and abrasions. There were bandages with smiling suns on both forearms, and one with Snoopy taped over his right knuckles.
Sadie had never been as grateful for anything in her life as she was for Ford waking up. She was overwhelmed by her love for him, by her relief, and by the vacuum left by worry and fear, but she pushed all of that aside to concentrate on Ford. Whatever you feel doesn’t matter, she told herself. You’re here to be with him.
To observe him, she corrected.
The first thing she observed was that the pain, which had registered as a fairly unobtrusive set of noises while he was passed out, was now like a noisy cityscape. Every time he moved, some kind of discomfort zigzagged through him, setting off different noises depending on its type and calibrated in volume to its intensity. Sharp pain sounded like a truck horn, throbbing pain resembled an extended bleating, stinging was the piercing jangle of bells.
Lulu gave him a tour of his primary injuries. “You have a bruise on your stomach that according to the Internet means at least two of your ribs are broken. The only thing to do is put ice on it, which we have been, and take aspirin, which you did about three hours ago, although you were a baby about it.”
Ford smiled, setting off shrill bells. He reached up to touch his cheek and discovered another bandage. “Thank you for taking such good care of me,” he said.
His mother came in then, looking even more exhausted than usual. She was carrying a bowl, which she set on the trunk in front of him.
“Good, you’re up.” Her tone was completely flat, her face expressionless. “You should eat this. You’ll need something in your stomach.”
Ford’s heart started to pound fast, and Sadie knew he was nervous. He was desperate for his mother to understand this hadn’t been his fault, he hadn’t picked this fight. “Thank you,” he said, trying to catch her eye, but she wouldn’t look at him. “Mom, I want you to know how—”
“Eat your soup.” Her flat gaze moved to Lulu. “I’m going to lie down. Make sure your brother finishes that. And no gabbing, he needs to sleep.”
His head turned to watch his mother leave the room, and a sharp thrust of pain overwhelmed him, filling his mind with blaring truck horns. Sadie saw his vision go misty and wished she could steady him.
His eyes refocused a moment later, on Lulu, who was watching him with unconcealed worry. Show her everything’s fine, Sadie heard him think and wanted to kiss him. He licked his dry, craggy lips and said, “What day is it?”
“Tuesday.” Lulu scooched her chair toward him and whispered conspiratorially, “Mom found you on the couch Thursday morning and you’ve barely moved since then. And neither has she. She sat right next to you the whole time. I think she might have prayed. She even started to draw again.”
Ford moved his eyes to the bowl of soup, and Sadie felt a lump in his throat and tears prick at his eyes.
“Are you crying?” Lulu said.
“Yeah, no, it’s just—” He swallowed back the lump. “The pain.” But it wasn’t, Sadie knew. He reached for the soup and made a show of eating it. Holding the spoon caused a bus-sized horn blast, so he raised the bowl to his mouth and slurped.
“I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth,” Lulu said, very serious. “Did James’s monster do this?”
“What monster?” Sadie and Ford asked in unison. Hands shaking, he set the bowl down.
Lulu took a big breath. “He said I couldn’t tell you. Not”—she rushed to assure him—“because he didn’t love you as much as me. Or almost as much. It was because there were circumstances. But now this has happened, and I wonder if I had told—” She glanced away but not before Sadie saw the pain in her eyes.
She thinks she’s responsible, Sadie realized, her heart aching.
“Tell me about this monster of James’s,” Ford prompted.
Lulu frowned, trying to figure out where to begin. “He said there was a monster in our city, taking control of people and making them zombies. They looked okay on the outside, but they were dead inside, and they fed off sadness. James said Serenity Services was powerless to stop it from happening, and you couldn’t trust anyone except little kids like me, but he was going to fix it.” She picked up speed as she talked, the story bubbling out of her. “He had a magic power that made him invisible, and he was going to find the monster and slay it, and then everyone would be free.”
“How was he going to find the monster?” Ford asked, his mind spinning over the words magic power.
“The monster had a treasure hidden in a stone fortress. James was going to use his invisibility power to hide there, and when the monster went to count the treasure, he’d slay it. And then everyone, you and me and Mom and Copernicus, would all live happily ever after. But he was worried if he failed you’d go hunt the monster even though you don’t have his magic power. I asked him why he couldn’t just give it to you, but he said it didn’t work that way, you either had it or you didn’t.”
Ford was having trouble keeping his eyes open. Tell her she’s not responsible for what happened to you, Sadie urged. You can pass out after, just tell her that.
“But you went looking for the monster anyway,” Lulu pressed on. “Because you’re a hero, like James.”
“No.” Ford shook his head. Her face was an indistinct series of shadows, and his voice sounded like it was coming from far away. “I’m not like James. And what happened to me had nothing to do with the monster.”
“You’re sure?” Lulu asked. “Swear?”
“Swear,” he said and plunged back into unconsciousness.
The next time he woke, thirty-six hours later, Mason was in the chair next to the couch.
Ford frowned. “What are you doing here?”
Mason glanced at his watch. “My shift. I have another hour. So don’t think of doing anything rash until three thirty. That’s when Mrs. Entwistle comes on, and your mom can’t yell at me.”
“Mrs. Entwistle?”
“Neighbor across the hall.”
“I’m sorry they made you do this,” Ford said.
“I volunteered,” Mason told him. “What else am I going to do while my overpriced scout is out of commission?”