Just a step back, and Diana could retreat inside. The glass door would snap shut again.
“You seemed worried,” Lazare said.
“Not really.”
Diana’s teacher took a deep breath. “You say he’s playing nonstop, and you don’t know if you should tell on him.”
“Wow,” Diana said slowly, amazed that her teacher would come out and talk to her like that, not only rereading but repeating written words—dragging Diana’s dark, unformed thoughts into the light.
“I thought you might want to—”
“Hey!” Diana cut her off. “Are you talking about my family?” Her face was burning. She had never spoken to a teacher in this way.
Lazare said, “I was afraid you wrote about your brother for a reason.”
“No, not at all,” Diana said. “Only for the assignment. Educational purposes only!”
She stepped inside and the glass door snapped shut. Then she closed the wood door, and locked it too. She was the only one left, and it was up to her to defend the house. Go away, Diana thought. Get the hell away from me.
She ran down to the basement, which was piled with cartons and moldering window shades. She pushed hard and opened a door to the utility room. There, behind the water heater, she had hidden her doll carriage. Inside the carriage under blankets lay Aidan’s black BoX. “Stay there,” she said, and stuffed her journal deep inside. “Sit tight.” She left her elephant on top.
—
Hour after hour, Aidan slept. The sun had set, but he didn’t know the difference. He had been moved from the ICU to a regular room, and in two days he had two different roommates, a little boy and then a baby in a hospital crib. Doctors rounded, nurses came to change his bags and check his drips. Janitors emptied receptacles of trash and sharps and linens. At night they buffed and polished the smooth floors. Children tottered outside his door and their parents supported them, one step at a time. A chaplain came and blessed the baby on the other side of the curtain. Aidan slept on. He saw none of this.
Sitting at his side, Kerry watched pain, fear, longing flash across his face, and she spoke to him. Sometimes she prayed, “Please.” Sometimes she whispered, “Aidan. Where are you?”
Even as she sat with Aidan, he fought on. He killed a thousand bats, yet every moment, more attacked. With huge effort he shook them off, and still they flew at him from their caverns until at last he could do no more than kneel, feeling for some tunnel, or some hole in which to hide. If he could get to the river, the great silver river, if he could immerse himself, that dead water would cover him entirely. Nothing could hurt him then.
Kerry roused herself to cheer him on. “You’ll be all right. You’re breathing on your own. Your body is resting.” She asked and answered her own questions. “Tell me, Aidan. Do you know where you are? You’re at the hospital. Do you know why you’re here? You have meningitis. Do you know what’s going to happen? You’re going to get better. Can you hear me? Can you squeeze my hand?”
He did hear his mother, not all the words, but most of them. Do you know you’re at the hospital? Her voice was both close and far away, like the rush when you pressed a seashell to your ear. Can you hear my hand?
Ten o’clock at night, Kerry dozed in her chair, and Aidan clawed for some way out, trying to escape the bats feasting on his flesh.
“Mom?”
Kerry jumped at the light touch on her shoulder. “Aidan!” For a split second, she thought he’d risen from his bed. She saw him standing before her in his black shirt, basketball shorts.
“It’s just me,” Diana said.
“What did you do to yourself?” Kerry cried out. “What happened to your hair?”
“I cut it.” Diana was gazing at Aidan. Her mother was still talking, but Diana could barely hear.
Sleep-deprived and overwrought, Kerry felt possessed by her twins’ strange reciprocity. Even as she’d told herself Aidan needed a haircut, Diana had chopped off her own hair.
“You just went at it with a scissors? Diana. Why?”
“I was hot,” Diana answered automatically.
“I left you all alone.”
Diana just stared at Aidan, with the needles in his hand and tubes and bags.
“Where’s Priscilla?” Kerry asked her daughter. “Did she drive you?”
“No.” Aidan was shrouded in his sheets, his faintly printed hospital gown. His chest seemed empty as he breathed in and out.
“I don’t think you should take the T at this hour of night.”
“I didn’t take the T. I just ran over. Hey, Aidan.”
“He needs to rest.”
“It’s me,” Diana told her brother.
Kerry broke in, “Wait. What do you mean you just ran over?”
“Look at me,” Diana said, but Aidan’s eyes remained closed. There was something strange about the lids, as though they’d been sealed, gold lashes glued together. His skin was strange as well, almost translucent. Yes, he was breathing, but he wasn’t sleeping normally. He was becoming a statue, an icon of himself. She could see the metal in his cheek. “Open your eyes.”
He didn’t move.
Diana’s voice trembled. “Open your eyes because you’re scaring me.”
He stirred, turning ever so slightly toward her.
Kerry stood next to Diana. “Keep talking.”
Diana’s voice sounded hollow, as though someone else were speaking. “So now that you’re here, I figured it was a good time to cut my hair, flunk my exams, and sell your stuff.”
His eyelids twitched.
“Kidding!”
“Go on,” Kerry whispered.
Diana told Aidan whatever came into her head. “Remember in fifth grade when we had that field trip and all the mummies kept beeping when we stepped too close?”
No response.
Remember the bodies in their coffins? Diana thought. Remember their gold masks? She could see Aidan’s body; she could see his mask.
“Remember when Jack caught that bird?” If Aidan remembered anything, he would remember this. On a different field trip, in Copley Square, Jack had actually caught an obese pigeon with his bare hands. Teachers started screaming, Oh, my God, what are you doing? Don’t touch that thing—it’s filthy! Drop it! Drop it! The whole time the pigeon kept flapping in Jack’s hands.
Nothing.
“Remember when we went on the T into Boston by ourselves and we thought someone was going to kidnap us? Remember when we thought if we clasped our hands together we could cast spells? Remember how I turned into a deer? I ran three miles tonight. I ran across the BU Bridge and followed the signs for Longwood Medical Area. I was like that crazed deer in UnderWorld.”
When she said “UnderWorld,” Aidan opened his eyes.
“Don’t stop,” Kerry whispered.
Aidan’s irises were bright as coins, expressionless. Looking at him hurt, like staring at the sun.
“Keep talking,” Kerry said.
Diana repeated the one word that was working. “I’ve been playing UnderWorld on your computer. I’ve been using your account,” she added, just to get a rise out of him. “No, actually, I can’t log in.” She paused. Then asked tauntingly, “Could I have your password?”
Aidan’s voice was hoarse but distinct, as he spoke for the first time in three days. “No!”
Kerry was crying. She was so relieved. Her tears were falling all over Aidan’s pillow. Diana was embarrassed, because her mother always made such a big deal about everything, and because when she started crying she made Diana cry. “Aidan, make her stop,” Diana said, brushing away her own tears, but Aidan did nothing. He had no energy to tell his mother what to do. To tell the truth, if he’d tried a stunt like that, Kerry would have cried even harder.
The nurse came in. Everyone was talking, but Aidan looked up at Diana. The gold was fading from his cheek, and his eyes were human, soft again, slightly amused. Can you believe this? he was asking silently.
“You’re awake!”
Kerry told him, as if he didn’t know.
Then Aidan smiled at Diana and she knew exactly what he meant. Their mother was so crazy. Dying was so boring. As soon as I can walk, I’m outta here. He said all this without words, and Diana understood. Kerry could read her children, but only haltingly. They were her second language. Diana was a native speaker; she came from Aidan’s country. When he closed his eyes again, she knew he wasn’t going anywhere.
Now the air-conditioning rushed over her, and her sweaty T-shirt chilled her skin. The hairs were standing up on her arms, and she could feel each one individually. She could feel everything from the most enormous, overarching joy down to the jagged middle toenail stabbing the toe next to it inside her right shoe. She wasn’t just happy, she was thirsty. Actually, she was starving. She realized all this as she watched Aidan drift off to sleep again. Kerry was still tiptoeing around the bed, but Diana said, “Mom, could we order pizza?” because everything was good now. Aidan had decided to come back to life.
—
The next day, he began to look about him. He saw his IV, his plastic bracelet, his scanty gown, his uneaten dinner on the swing arm tray. He began to see the colors of the hospital, grays and muted pinks, the red sharps container on the wall.
His eyes were fierce, even as he lay crumpled in his bed. He seemed to Kerry like a rescued bird of prey, one of those injured hawks caged with a few dead mice for dinner. He was quiet and obedient and—he even let her touch him—almost tame. Stay like this, she thought, even as she prayed for his recovery. Stay gentle. Please don’t fly away.
Slowly his strength returned. He lost track of days, but every morning he limped along, leaning on his mother in the hall. Through open doors he saw other mothers in other patients’ rooms. Beds decorated with helium balloons, windows covered with cards and paper flowers. Wasn’t he too big for this? At the end of the hall they stopped at a lounge filled with toys and dolls and children’s books. There were shelves of children’s movies. “People donate their old stuff,” his mother said. There was a play operating table as well, where a large teddy bear awaited surgery. Or was it a rabbit? He couldn’t tell. He had to rest, and, sinking into a tiny armchair, he felt childish and unsteady. He was growing younger and more wobbly by the minute, even as his mother glowed, telling all her nurse friends, We’re so lucky. Look, we’re up and around!
He knew where his mother was going with all this. In her mind, if you were lucky, you were also blessed, and once you were blessed, it was just a tiny jump to everything happening for a reason, and God putting you on this earth for a purpose. He didn’t buy any of it, but he didn’t argue either. Leaning on Kerry as they walked back to his room, he was simply grateful for his mother, and happy that she didn’t have his BoX.
He was thankful in small ways as well. Glad to wear his own pajamas, grateful to lose his catheter. He felt something else too, a strange curiosity as he observed his own recovery. After four days at the hospital, he closed his eyes and he saw nothing, no spots or sparks, no monsters approaching, just darkness. On the fifth morning, he woke empty, as though he’d run out of dreams. Could that happen? Could your imagination actually run out of things to see? Fascinated, he tried to remember where he’d been last. Caverns? Tunnels? Crevasses? Which circle? Seven or Eight? Briefly his gaming history vanished, and he could not remember where he had left off.
Only Daphne stayed with him. The kiss, the shock of meeting her, his intense desire, and his humiliation. He wanted to speak to her, wanted very much to hurt her. He imagined ripping her open with his sword. But his fantasy had little heat. His mind drifted away.
His fingers began tapping. Softly they drummed the edge of the mattress, and he thought he would be a drummer. He would play drums as he had before, in Liam’s band. Or he would play keyboard. Scales and sonatinas returned to him as he lay in bed, and he thought, I’ll play again.
The next day this conviction faded. He watched the young resident listening to his heartbeat with a stethoscope. For the first time it occurred to Aidan how strange that was, to listen to another life. The doctor was listening intently, as though he could hear distant hoofbeats, and Aidan thought, I will study medicine.
By evening this vocation floated off as well. All his ideas were abstract, all his desires theoretical. He observed, he admired, he imagined, but he wanted nothing—not even UnderWorld.
Maybe meningitis had wiped out his gaming life. He knew that this was what his mother hoped. This was what she really meant by lucky. When she said everything happened for a reason, she was praying that fever burned the games right out of you.
“Aidan.” She was sitting on his bed, and the sky was dark outside his window. “I want to ask you something.”
“I know,” he said. She wanted him to start over, to return from the hospital cleansed of all his sins. Then this ordeal would be a blessing, his meningitis actually an act of God.
“Could you promise?” She looked so thin. Her hair and hands, her arms, were light as straw. All the color had leached out of her, as though she had taken on his illness for herself. Even Kerry’s eyes were ghostly blue. “Promise you won’t play again.”
He hadn’t touched a computer in what seemed like years. Looking down upon himself, as from a great distance, his own thoughts seemed strange, oddly colorless, like clouds. Not even clouds, but the shadows of clouds on empty valleys. How still it was, how slow. Delicious to lie back powerless, to drop the threads of all your gaming lives. It was a kind of death, an abdication. His kingdom would carry on without him as he lay in state. He would sleep and sleep. It was easy to say yes.
The heat smothered Collin outside Arkadia’s air-conditioned halls. He had been working such long hours, drawing such beautiful and terrible things, that he felt a kind of grief to leave, as though he were giving up his wings to walk the streets. Summer days were white, overexposed. Trees dusty, and all the flowers overblown. Old houses flaked, bricks needed repointing, and you couldn’t do the job in one stroke either. You couldn’t change colors in an instant, or render different trees, or refresh roses dry and withered in the sun.
Nina was waiting for him in her VW bug, and he eased himself in. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, shyly.
Quiet, careful with each other, they drove past Waltham’s office parks. Were those tiny birds filling the air? Like aeroflakes, they scattered and then drew together.
“Where do you want to go?” she said.
“Anywhere.”
“Let’s get lunch.”
“No,” he told her. “Let’s get out of here.”
They drove to Walden Woods, just a few minutes away. She wasn’t dressed for hiking, and they had no food or water, but they parked at the trailhead and they went walking anyway, taking the dirt path into the shady trees.
The light was green, the boulders massive. Chartreuse silkworms swayed on invisible threads. Some leaves were bright, some dark and glossy, some dull, some pale, some olive, and all around them, pines grew straight up to the sun.
It was amazing how fast Arkadia dematerialized in this green light. Mountain ranges and wild horses, brilliant sunsets, Whennish alliances, even UnderWorld’s silver river faded away. The lowliest leaf, brown and shriveled, brittle-veined, showed more life and detail than anything in EverWhen. The humblest rock displayed more intricate patterns, lichened, mica-flecked, cool and wet on its underside, sheltering a thousand ants.
Collin helped Nina when the trail got steep. He offered her his hand as they crossed a shallow stream. His shoes squelched, his jeans, her skirt wicked water. Mossy stones slipped under them. No flying here, no bounding over rivers. The stream was slippery and refreshing, but their feet were slow, the whole forest heavy with summer heat.
Her sandals weren’t good for climbing, so they didn’t get far. They found a leafy knoll, and turned off the trail to rest. Higher and drier than the rocky path, carpeted with pine needles, the knoll was shaded by young trees. Collin sat down
, leaning back against a maple. Nina sat on his lap, leaning back against him.
“What if we were the size of tiny insects—like mayflies?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t want to live for just one day.”
“But it wouldn’t seem like just a day to us.” Collin closed his eyes.
“I would rather be a bird,” Nina said.
“What kind? A little one, or something like an ostrich?”
She answered slowly. “Maybe an owl.”
“Are you sleepy?”
“Are you happy?” Nina was so quiet, and so close, the question might have been his own.
“I am now.”
“I went to see Diana,” Nina told him, “but she wouldn’t talk to me.”
“Of course not. You’re a teacher,” Collin said.
She turned to face him and she wasn’t thinking about Diana. She was thinking about Daphne. “I do jump to conclusions.”
He pushed back her long heavy hair. “It’s okay.”
“Not really.”
“Nina,” he said, “it was a million years ago.”
“A week.”
“That’s like a million years in EverWhen.”
“I don’t like her.”
He tried to keep it light. “She’s not your type.”
She settled down again, leaning against him. As far as Collin was concerned, their fight was history, and so Nina’s next question startled him. “Do you ever draw her?”
“What?”
“Do you draw Daphne?”
“No!” Collin lied reflexively. Why was she still thinking that way? How could she mention Daphne in this place, under these trees? “She’s obsessed with Peter,” Collin added.
“So are you.”
“Not like that.”
“He’s got you drawing nonstop. He’ll get you to the point where you can’t stop.”
Collin frowned.
Nina said, “He’s hard to resist.” She was thinking of the way Peter had driven Julianne, recording her for hours. Julianne had been sixteen when she sang those mermaid voices. She had wilted with exhaustion, but Peter would not let up. He kept her working and he kept watching her. “I’m afraid he’ll crush you.”
The Chalk Artist Page 19
