Cyrus’s eyes rolled around the hall. Had Tigs left him? “You’re tearing my ear off. Let go!” He bit his lip. His eyes were watering with pain. He tried to find her legs with his feet.
“Smith?” The boy’s voice was almost a squeak. “He’s one of them? He could have killed me. What does he want?”
Ignoring the kid, Mrs. Eldridge released Cyrus into the hall and shut the door.
Breathing hard, Cyrus massaged his ear and examined his fingers for blood. How could his ear not be bleeding? How was it still attached?
Mrs. Eldridge crossed her arms, examining him.
“You’re nuts,” Cyrus said. “Did you have to do that?”
“Boys need hard lines,” said Mrs. Eldridge. “Sneaking into the hospital.” She shook her head. “The Polygon’s not rough enough for you already? If I’m to be responsible for you around here, I’ll do what needs done to keep that empty head on your shoulders. Where’s Antigone? I always thought you were the dimmest Smith bulb, but you never know with families.”
Near the end of the hall, behind Mrs. Eldridge, a door cracked open. “Cyrus!” Antigone whispered. “Get in here! He doesn’t look good.”
Mrs. Eldridge smacked her lips. “Well, I have my answer then, don’t I?” She turned around. “Miss Antigone!”
The door widened, and Cyrus watched his shocked sister step out into the hall.
“Mrs. E?” Antigone asked. Cyrus blinked. His sister sounded relieved to see the woman who’d just tried to souvenir his ear. “Horace doesn’t look good. He’s gray and barely breathing and hooked up to all sorts of stuff.”
Mrs. Eldridge, arms crossed and angry, deflated a little. “I know, doll. I know. He doesn’t look good ’cause he isn’t. He’s the opposite of good. They put all new blood in him twice over — that bullet was a big one, and it spread out and splattered. Now come on. Let’s get you two out of here and back to where you belong. I know what I said, and I know what I swore, and if it were up to me, I think I’d shut you two out and stick to it. But with Skelton dead and Horace dying, Rupert didn’t give me a choice. I’m your Keeper now, and that’s that.” She glared at Cyrus. “And you’ll be doing as I say, starting now. In the morning, we’ll get you proper clothes of your own and get you working. You two have got an impossible lot to learn.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Antigone said.
“Just tell me how you like your waffles,” Cyrus muttered.
eleven. BED
WHEN MRS. ELDRIDGE finally rereleased Cyrus and Antigone into the Polygon — she actually stood at the top of the dank stairwell, tsking them all the way down — and the two of them had made their cautious way across the network of planks, through the corked gap in the showers, and through the hole, they found Nolan tucked awkwardly onto a stone bed. His teeth were chattering, his shirt was off, and sweat dripped from swollen mountain ranges of Whip Spider welts. His right arm was twice as thick as his left, and his neck had expanded out past his jaw.
Wheezing, Nolan opened his eyes. “I’m fine,” he whispered. “Happened too many times to count. Need to sleep.”
Antigone looked at her brother. “We should call someone.”
“No.” Nolan shook his head, and then managed to point to a thick envelope on the floor. “Was on the door. For you.” He squeezed his eyes shut.
“What now?” Cyrus asked, watching Nolan breathe.
Antigone picked up the envelope, ripped it open, and sat down on one of the other stone beds.
Cyrus watched his sister pull out the three defaced photos he’d found in Skelton’s camper. Then she tugged out a rectangle of misshapen glass. His beetle.
“Ow!” Shaking her fingers, she dropped the glass, kicked it off her foot, and sent it tumbling across the carpet. A small note fluttered out of the envelope and settled on the floor.
“It shocked me,” Antigone said, popping her fingers into her mouth. “Who’s it from?”
Looking back at Nolan, Cyrus pinched the glass and dropped it into his pocket before he picked up the note. “ ‘U left these in the car. Creeps. Made it back. Couple stitches but fine. Heard about you. Sorry. Horace is deliryous. Check in later. Gunner.’ ” Cyrus looked up. “I’m glad he made it. I wonder what he heard about us.”
Antigone laughed. “Maybe that we got stuck in the Polygon. Tomorrow I absolutely need a toothbrush. And a hairbrush.” She looked around the room. “And a mirror. And someone who can tell us what’s going on with Dan.” She shivered, pulling her knees up to her chest. Her eyes settled on Nolan’s dripping face. “I really don’t want to sleep in here, and I feel like I’m going to cry.”
“Well, don’t,” said Cyrus. “Think of me. How much worse would it be for me if you were crying?”
“It’s not like I’m planning on crying. It’s just that, well, here we are. And Mrs. Eldridge is the only person we know, and it’s not like she’s excited to help us. Dan’s gone and we don’t know if anyone is doing anything about it. Mom’s back at the hospital — when will we get another Mom day? Are we even allowed to leave? And we’re sleeping in a room with a boy we just met who looks like he’s dying, and there are Whip Spiders, and the motel is burned, and who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow? This place was supposed to help us.” She scrunched her face.
“I think you are planning on crying,” said Cyrus. “It’s like you’re trying to talk yourself into it.”
“Dork.”
“Girl.”
“Oh, shut up.” Antigone raised her head. “If you think making me mad is going to keep me from crying, you’re dumber than I thought, and you haven’t been paying any attention to girls for pretty much your entire life.”
“Just trying to make you laugh.”
Antigone dropped her forehead onto her arms. “I don’t want to laugh right now, Cy. I can’t. Honestly, this has been the most traumatic forty-eight hours of my life. Tell me that’s not true.”
Cyrus pulled in a long, slow breath, and his mind jumped back in time — he couldn’t stop it — and an old ache, forever fresh, broke out of its cage inside him. His lungs compressed, his heart tightened, and his ears began to ring. In a shattered second, the temperature of his soul had dropped ten degrees.
“Tigs,” he said, breathing carefully. “That’s not true.”
Nolan sputtered. The grandfather clock on its lumber stilts tocked. The lights of the Polygon buzzed. The little refrigerator hummed. Together, Cyrus and Antigone were far away.
Antigone lifted her head. “You’re right,” she said. “This is nothing like as awful as that.” She sniffed. “This is just another part of that.”
The two of them sat, seeing and hearing invisible things, sharing silence.
“I miss Dan,” Antigone said.
Cyrus nodded. He missed too many things. His mom’s smile. Her laugh. The blackness of her hair. His father’s heavy hands and thigh-thick arms that had so easily popped his ten-year-old ribs. The smell of his wind-salted skin.
Dan. Their mother might never look in Cyrus’s eyes again, and his father’s smile was at the bottom of the sea, but Dan would be back. He had to be. Dan gone for good would be too much. More pressure than Cyrus’s lungs could fight.
He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to care. Caring hurt. But not caring would be worse. And then his mind arrived where it always did when the deep ache got out of its cage. Death was real. It was waiting. For him and for everyone he loved and needed. In the end — in one year or in ninety — he would be alone in a cold box, silent, breathless, bloodless, listening to the slow groping of tree roots.