“I don’t know, Colleen,” she says.
I roll my eyes. Her therapist. Mom’s been seeing Colleen since Ben died last year. I’d hoped the sessions would end with the move. Apparently, they haven’t. Now I brace my hands on either side of the doorway and listen to one half of the conversation. I know I shouldn’t leave the Narrows door open, but my list is clear and my curiosity is piqued.
“It hasn’t come up,” says Mom. “Yes, okay, I haven’t brought it up. But she seemed better. Seems. Seemed. It’s so hard to tell with her. I’m her mother. I should be able to tell, and I can’t. I can tell something’s wrong. I can tell she’s wearing this mask, but I can’t see past it.” My chest tightens at the pain in her voice. “No. It’s not drugs.”
I clench my teeth against a curse. I hate Colleen. Colleen’s the one who told Mom to throw out Ben’s things. The one time we met face-to-face, she saw a scratch on my wrist from a pissed-off History and was convinced I did it to myself to feel things.
“I know the symptoms,” says Mom, ticking off a list that pretty well sums up my current behavior—evasion, moodiness, troubled sleep, being withdrawn, inexplicable disappearances…though in my defense, I do my best to explain them. Just not using the truth. “But it’s not. Yes, I’m sure.” I’m glad she’s sticking up for me, at least on this front. “Okay,” she says after a long pause, starting down the hall again. “I will. I promise.” I listen to her trail off, wait for the jingling sound of her keys, the apartment door opening and closing, and then I sigh and step out into the hall.
The Narrows door dissolves behind me as I slide my ring back on. The skirt and the bag seem undisturbed behind the table, and in a few short steps I’ve transformed back into an ordinary Hyde School junior. My reflection stares back at me, unconvinced.
I can tell something’s wrong. I can tell she’s wearing this mask, but I can’t see past it.
I practice my smile a few times, checking my mask to make sure it’s free of cracks before I turn down the hall and head home.
That evening, I put on a show.
I picture Da clapping in his slow, lazy way as I tell Mom and Dad about my day, injecting as much enthusiasm into my voice as I can without tipping my parents from pleasant surprise to suspicion.
“Hyde’s pretty incredible,” I say.
Dad lights up. “I want to hear all about it.”
So I tell him. I’m basically feeding the pamphlet propaganda back to him, line by line, but while I may be amping up the excitement, the sentiment isn’t a total lie. I did enjoy it. And it feels good to tell something that even vaguely resembles the truth.
“And you’ll never guess who goes there!” I say, stealing a carrot as Mom chops them.
“You can tell us during dinner,” she says, shooing me away with a pile of placements and silverware. “Set the table first.” But she smiles as she says it.
Dad clears some books from the table so I can set it and retreats to the couch to watch the news.
“Who’s closing the coffee shop tonight?” I ask.
“Berk’s got it.”
Berk is Betty’s husband, and Betty is Nix’s caretaker. Nix is ancient and blind and lives up on the seventh floor and won’t come down because he’s wheelchair-bound and doesn’t trust the rickety metal elevators.
Berk and Betty moved into one of the vacants on the sixth floor two weeks ago after Nix finally succeeded in lighting his scarf on fire with his cigarette. I was shocked—not about the fire, that was inevitable, but that they would move in for him, not being related in any way. But apparently Nix was like a father to Betty once, and now she’s acting like a daughter. It’s sweet, and it all worked out because Berk—who’s a painter—was looking for a social fix, and Mom was looking for a hand at Bishop’s. She can’t pay him yet, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He only asked to be able to hang his pieces in the coffee shop for sale.
“I’ll take him down some dinner later,” says Mom, setting aside a plate.
I’m carrying water glasses to the table when the headline on the TV catches my attention, and I look over Dad’s shoulder at the screen. It’s the same news story from early this morning, about the missing person. A room in disarray flashes across the screen, and I’m about to ask Dad to turn the volume up when Mom says, “Turn that off. Dinner’s ready.”
Dad obediently clicks the TV off, but my eyes linger on the blackened screen, holding the image of the room in my mind. It looked familiar.…
“Mackenzie,” Mom warns, and I blink, losing the image as I turn to find my parents both already at the table. They look like they’ve been waiting.
I shake my head and manage a smile. “Sorry. Coming.”
But sitting down turns out to be a bad idea.
The moment I do, the fatigue catches back up, and I spend most of dinner rambling about Hyde just to stay awake. As soon as the dishes are cleared, I retreat to my room in the name of homework, but I’ve barely gotten through a page of reading before my eyes unfocus, the words on the paper blurring together. I try standing, then I try pacing while holding my textbook, but my mind can’t seem to grab hold of anything. I feel like my bones are made of lead.
My gaze wanders to the bed. All I can think of is how much I want to lie down…
The book slips through my fingers, hitting the ground with a soft thunk.
…how badly I want to sleep…
I reach the bed.
…how certain I am…
I tug back the covers.
…that when I do…
I sink into the sheets.
…I won’t dream of anything.
SEVEN
THE ROOF IS full of monsters, and they are all alive.
They perch on stone claws and watch with stone eyes as Owen stalks me through the maze of bodies.
“Stop running, Miss Bishop,” his voice echoes across the rooftop.
And just like that, the concrete floor crumbles beneath me and I plunge seven stories through the bones of the building to the Coronado lobby, hitting the floor so hard my bones sing. I roll onto my back and look up in time to see the gargoyles tumbling toward me. I throw my hands up, bracing for the weight of stone. It never comes. I blink and find myself in a cage made from the broken statues, a web of crossing arms and legs and wings. And standing in the middle is Owen, his knife dangling from his fingers.
“The Archive is a prison,” he says calmly.
He comes toward me, and I scramble to my feet and back away until I’m pressed up against the stone bodies. Their limbs jerk to life and shoot forward, grabbing my arms and legs, snaking around my waist. Every time I struggle the limbs tighten, my bones cracking under their grip. I bite back a scream.
“But don’t worry.” Owen runs a hand over my head before tangling his fingers in my hair. “I will set you free.”
He draws the flat side of the knife down my body, bringing the tip to rest between my ribs. He puts just enough weight on the blade to slice through my shirt and nick my skin, and I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to get away, trying to wake up, but the hand tangled in my hair tightens.
“Open your eyes,” he warns.