Halfway Heroes
Page 38
Rooke didn’t watch over Mark that day as he mixed ingredients, after the lessons with his tutor. Rooke claimed he had business to attend to, and shut himself up in his office for most of the day, along with Heather and Finster. He left Mark in an employee’s care to watch the mixing and test the mice. He only dropped by every once in a while to check their progress.
Not that Mark minded, since the process was slow and boring. He half hoped that the chemicals would explode or at least fizzle, if only to provide something different from mix, test mice, mix again. He went about it all day until it was time to head home.
His parents were fighting when he arrived at the apartment. For hours he lay in his bed, trying to fall asleep, but in the middle of the night, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He snuck out of the apartment amidst their shouting match and knocked on Finster’s door. No matter how hard he knocked, there was no answer.
Eventually, Heather opened her door and poked her head out. She wore rumpled shirt, shorts, and scarf. She glared at Mark groggily and blew a puff of hair out of her eyes. “Why do I have to be such a light sleeper? she said, muttering.
Crash! Something heavy broke in Mark’s apartment. That didn’t deter the yelling within. Heather looked at Mark’s door and then at him. He shuffled his feet toward her. She grunted and opened her door wider. “Fine,” she said, letting him in. She shut the door behind him. Her apartment was much like Mark’s, only smaller. Heather tossed a blanket and pillow on the living room couch. “Just keep it down,” she said. She disappeared to her bedroom. Mark, relieved, made himself comfortable on the couch and was soon fast asleep.
He woke once, very early in the morning. He saw Heather out on the balcony, facing away from him. Suddenly, a black cloud, dark and thick like the one she’d expectorated on Kirk, swarmed in front of her head. It was difficult to tell if it was his own imagination making shapes out of the night sky, but he pretended to be asleep when she passed by him on her way back to her room. Mark got up and looked at the balcony afterward, but the cloud had dispersed. He was too tired to dwell on it at the moment. So he forgot about it and conked out again.