“Who did you lose?” I ask.
Carmen flashes a smile that is at once dazzling and sad. “I’m a Librarian, Miss Bishop. I’ve lost everyone.”
Before I can say anything, she opens the door to the large reading room with the red rug and the corner chairs, and leads me to the wall of cabinets on the far side. I reach out and run my fingers over the name.
BISHOP, BENJAMIN GEORGE
I just want to see him. That’s all. I need to see him. I press my hand flat against the face of the drawer, and I can almost feel the pull of him. The need. Is this the way the Histories feel, trapped in the Narrows with only the desperate sense that something vital is beyond the doors, that if they could just get out—
“Is there anything else, Miss Bishop?” Carmen asks carefully.
“Could I see him?” I ask quietly. “Just for a moment?”
She hesitates. And to my surprise, she steps up to the shelves and produces the same key she used to disable Jackson Lerner. Gold and sharp and without teeth, but when she slides it into the slot on Ben’s drawer and turns, there is a soft click within the wall. The drawer opens an inch, and sits ajar. Something in me tightens.
“I’ll give you a few minutes,” Carmen whispers, “but no more.”
I nod, unable to take my eyes off the sliver of space between the front of the drawer and the rest of the stacks, a strip of deep shadow. I listen to the sound of Carmen’s withdrawing steps. And then I reach out, wrap my fingers over the edge, and slide my brother’s drawer open.
TWENTY-ONE
I’M SITTING ON THE SWINGS in our backyard, rocking from heel to toe, heel to toe, while you pick slivers of wood off the frame.
“You can’t tell anyone,” you say. “Not your parents. Not your friends. Not Ben.”
“Why not?”
“People aren’t smart when it comes to the dead.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If you told someone that there was a place where their mother, or their brother, or their daughter, still existed—in some form—they’d tear the world apart to get there.”
You chew a toothpick.
“No matter what people say, they’d do anything.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’d do it. Trust me, you’d do it too.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Maybe not anymore, because you know what a History is. And you know I’d never forgive you if you tried to wake one up. But if you weren’t a Keeper…if you lost someone and you thought they were gone forever, and then you learned you could get them back, you’d be there with the rest of them, clawing at the walls to get through.”
My chest turns to stone when I see him, crushing my lungs and my heart.
Benjamin lies on the shelf, still as he was beneath the hospital sheet. But there’s no sheet now, and his skin isn’t bruised or blue. He’s got the slightest flush in his cheeks, as if he’s sleeping, and he’s wearing the same clothes he had on that day, before they got ruined. Grass-stained jeans and his favorite black-and-red-striped shirt, a gift from Da the summer he died, an emblematic X over the heart because Ben always used to say “cross my heart” so solemnly. I was with him when Da gave it to him. Ben wore it for days until it smelled foul and we had to drag it off of him to be washed. It doesn’t smell like anything now. His hands are at his sides, which looks wrong because he used to sleep on his side with both fists crammed under the pillow; but this way I can see the black pen doodle on the back of his left hand, the one I drew that morning, of me.
“Hi, Ben,” I whisper.
I want to reach out, to touch him, but my hand won’t move. I can’t will my fingers to leave my side. And then that same dangerous thought whispers into the recesses of my mind, at the weak points.
If Owen can wake without slipping, why not Ben?
What if some Histories don’t slip?
It’s fear and anger and restlessness that make them wake up. But Ben was never afraid or angry or restless. So would he even wake? Maybe Histories who wouldn’t wake wouldn’t slip if they did… But Owen woke, a voice warns. Unless a Librarian woke him and tried to alter his memories. Maybe that’s the trick. Maybe Owen isn’t slipping because he didn’t wake himself up.
I look down at Ben’s body and try to remember that this isn’t my brother.
It was easier to believe when I couldn’t see him.
My chest aches, but I don’t feel like crying. Ben’s dark lashes rest against his cheeks, his hair curling across his forehead. When I see that hair tracing its way across his skin, my body unfreezes, my hand drifting up to brush it from his face, the way I used to do.
That’s all I mean to do.
But when my fingers graze his skin, Ben’s eyes float open.
TWENTY-TWO
I GASP AND JERK MY HAND BACK, but it’s too late.
Ben’s brown eyes—Mom’s eyes, warm and bright and wide—blink once, twice.
And he sits up.
“Mackenzie?” he asks.
The ache in my chest explodes into panic. My pulse shatters the calmness I know I need to show.
“Hi, Ben,” I choke out, the shock making it hard to breathe, to speak.
My brother looks around at the room—the stacked drawers reaching to the ceiling, the tables and dust and oddness—then swings his legs over the edge of the shelf.
“What happened?” And then, before I can answer: “Where’s Mom? Where’s Dad?”
He hops down from the shelf, sniffles. His forehead crinkles. “I want to go home.”
My hand reaches for his.
“Then let’s go home, Ben.”
He moves to take my hand, but stops. Looks around again.
“What’s going on?” he asks, his voice unsteady.
“Come on, Ben,” I say.
“Where am I?” The black at the center of his eyes wobbles. No. “How did I get here?” He takes a small step back. Away from me.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say.
When his eyes meet mine, they are tinged with panic. “Tell me how I got here.” Confusion. “This isn’t funny.” Distress.
“Ben, please,” I say softly. “Let’s just go home.”
I don’t know what I’m thinking. I can’t think. I look at him, and all I know is that I can’t leave him here. He’s Ben, and I pinkie-swore a thousand times I’d never let anything hurt him. Not the ghosts under the bed or the bees in the yard or the shadows in his closet.
“I don’t understand.” His voice catches. His irises are darkening. “I don’t…I was…”
This isn’t supposed to happen. He didn’t wake himself. He’s not supposed to—
“Why…” he starts.
I step toward him, kneeling so I can take his hands. I squeeze them. I try to smile.
“Ben—”
“Why aren’t you telling me what happened?”
His eyes hover on me, the black spreading too fast, blotting out the warm, bright brown. All I see in those eyes is the reflection of my face, caught between pain and fear and an unwillingness to believe that he’s slipping. Owen didn’t slip. Why does Ben have to?