Sal shook his head. “I—I would rather we do this now.”
“If you wish. I won’t touch anything of yours, if that makes you feel better. And if there’s anything you want to show me, I will gladly look at it. I’m not here to judge you, Sal. Not at all.”
“Then why are you here if not to judge?”
Linus balked. “I—well. I’m here to make sure this home is exactly that. A home. One that I can trust to keep all of you safe and sound.”
Sal dropped his hand from the doorknob. He turned fully toward Linus. Calliope sat near his feet, looking up at him. This was as close as Linus had ever been to Sal. He was as tall as Linus was, and though Linus was thicker, Sal had a heft to him, a strength that belied how small he tried to make himself seem at times.
“Are you going to make me leave?” Sal asked, that frown deepening.
Linus hesitated. He had never lied to any child in his life. If the truth needed to be stretched, he would rather say nothing at all. “I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to,” Linus said slowly. “And I don’t think anyone should.”
Sal studied him carefully. “You’re not like the others.”
“Others?”
“Caseworkers.”
“Oh. I suppose not. I’m Linus Baker. You’ve never met a Linus Baker before.”
Sal stared at him for a moment longer before turning back to the door. He pushed it open and then stepped back. He began to gnaw on his lip again, and Linus wanted to tell him he was going to hurt himself, but he asked, “May I?”
Sal nodded jerkily.
The room was nothing fancy. In fact, it seemed to be devoid of almost anything that Linus would associate with Sal. The other children had made their spaces their own, for better or worse. Here, the walls were blank. The bed was neatly made. There was a rug on the wooden floor, but it was muted and gray. There was a door to a closet and … that was it.
Mostly.
In one corner, there was a pile of books that reminded Linus of Arthur’s office. He looked at a few of the titles and saw they were fictional classics—Shakespeare and Poe, Dumas and Sartre. That last caused Linus to arch an eyebrow. He had never quite understood existentialism.
But other than that, the room was a blank canvas, as if waiting for an artist to bring it to life. It saddened Linus, because he suspected he knew the reason why it was the way it was.
“It’s lovely,” he said, making a production of looking around. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sal peeking through the doorway, tracking his every movement. “Quite spacious. And just look out the window! Why, I think I can almost see the village from here. A wonderful view.”
“You can see the lights from the village at night,” Sal said from the doorway. “They sparkle. I like to pretend they’re ships at sea.”
“A pretty thought,” Linus said. He stepped away from the window and went to the closet. “Is it all right if I look in here?”
There was a brief hesitation. Then, “Okay.”
The closet was bigger than Linus expected. And there, next to a chest of drawers, was a small desk with a rolling chair tucked in underneath. Atop the desk sat a typewriter, an old Underwood. There was a blank sheet of paper already threaded through. “What’s this, then?” Linus asked lightly.
He didn’t hear a response. He looked back over his shoulder to see Sal standing next to the bed, looking like a lost little boy. Calliope hopped up onto the bed and rubbed against his hand. He spread his fingers into the hair on her back.
“Sal?”
“It’s where I write,” Sal blurted, eyes wide. “I—like to write. I’m not—it’s not very good, and I probably shouldn’t—”
“Ah. I seem to remember something about that. Last week in your class, you read something for everyone. You wrote it?”
Sal nodded.
“It was very good. Far better than I could ever write, I’m afraid. If you need a report filled out, I’m your man. But that’s as far as my creativity extends with the written word. No computer?”
“The light hurts my eyes. And I like the sound of the typewriter better.”
Linus smiled. “I understand. There’s something magical about the clack of the keys that a computer can’t emulate. I should know. Most days, I sit in front of one at work. It can hurt my eyes too, after a time, though I believe your vision is a little sharper than mine.”
“I don’t want to talk about what I write,” Sal said quickly.
“Of course,” Linus said easily. “It’s private. I would never ask you to share something you aren’t ready to.”
That seemed to appease Sal slightly. “It’s just—it doesn’t make sense, sometimes. My thoughts. And I try to write them all down to find an order, but—” He looked as if he were struggling to find the right words.
“It’s personal,” Linus said. “And you’ll find the order when you’re ready. If it’s anything like what you read previously, I’m sure it’s going to be quite moving. How long have you been writing?”
“Two months. Maybe a little less.”
So only since he’d been at Marsyas. “Not before?”
Sal shook his head. “I never—no one let me before. Until I came here.”
“Arthur?”
Sal scuffed a shoe against the rug. “He asked me what I wanted more than anything. For the first month, he asked me once a week, telling me when I was ready to answer, he’d do whatever he could within reason.”
“And you said a typewriter?”
“No.” He looked down at Calliope. “I told him I didn’t want to have to move again. That I wanted to stay here.”
Linus blinked against the sudden and unexpected burn in his eyes. He cleared his throat. “And what did he say?”
“That he’d do whatever he could to make sure that happened. And then I asked for a typewriter. Zoe brought it the next day. And the others found the desk in the attic and cleaned it up. Talia said she polished it until she thought her beard was going to fall out from all the chemicals. And then they surprised me with it.” His lips curved up. “It was a good day. Almost like it was my birthday.”
Linus crossed his arms to keep his hands from shaking. “And you put it in the closet? I should think it would look nice in front of the window.”
Sal shrugged. “It—the closet helped me feel small. I wasn’t ready to be bigger yet.”
“I wonder if you’re ready now,” Linus mused aloud. “Your room is a little bigger than the closet, but not so big that it feels like all the walls have fallen away. It’s like the village at night. You can see them, but they can’t see you, though there is all that space between you. A little perspective, I think.”
Sal looked down. “I never—I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“Just an idea. The desk is perfect where it is, if that’s what you want. It doesn’t need to be moved until you’re ready, or even at all. For all I know, the window might prove to be a distraction.”
“Do you have a window where you work?”
Linus shook his head. He thought this was dangerously personal, but did it really hurt anyone? “I don’t. DICOMY isn’t … well. They’re not fond of windows, I think.”