Fallout (172)

PSI-3

The opaque gray shade in the basement doorway was displaying a message: PRIVACY, PLEASE, which Erik had seen on the locks of some of the nicer pay toilets. One of the Ps, an E and the C had been reversed.

Cerise had glued Soup to the banister of the sweeping staircase. The magic around his wrists and ankles was still glowing faint pink.

“Now you stop that, little white boy, none of this is Annie’s fault.” She dabbed under her nose and eyes with a folded red handkerchief. It had grass stains on it.

“That is like the one thing you know how to do, isn’t it?” Hyacinth said sourly.

Cerise sniffed. “You are not a helpful person.”

“You glued me to a wall!”

Soup was crying too, and he couldn’t wipe his face. “It’s just messed up, that’s all! He didn’t want to be in your basement because that’s messed up! Little kids shouldn’t take care of big, grown up teachers!”

Maggie looked unsettled, but she wasn’t crying and she shook her head. “Soup, you do that. You brought him here.”

“That’s different!” Soup snapped. “I’m twelve years old and I’ve been taking care of my mom for basically ever!”

“You’ve got a mom?” Maggie said, staring.

“No,” Soup said. “She only likes me when she’s wasted and I don’t like her at all. I have that guy who’s falling apart in your basement! Is that what you do to him every time?”

“Angel, please let him down. Please,” Ann said. “He’s just upset.”

“I’m upset too!” said Hyacinth.

Ann rubbed the bridge of her nose where Milo’s glasses usually sat. “Hyacinth, please let’s not make this about you. Just Soup, Cerise. We’ll deal with the other thing later.”

The pink woman nodded. She waved a hand and Soup slid gently to the floor. He drew up his legs and put his head in his hands. “It’s messed up!” he said. “Erik has people to take care of him and Seth takes care of everyone and it’s not supposed to be like… like some kid walking his drunk dad home from the pub! Why don’t you do it?” he demanded of Ann. “Why don’t you glue him back together and put him to bed — you’re old!”

“I can’t,” Ann said. “Erik can help him stop feeling sick and nobody else can do that, so we’ve been letting him. I know it’s not right, but it’s always seemed the least wrong thing to do…”

“That’s not fair to Erik!” Maggie burst out. She shook her head. Her expression crumpled. “And it’s not fair to Seth, he must hate that!” That was her hypercompetent, super-adaptable teacher in there! And the hurt little kid who kept forgetting her name not that long ago!

He almost killed himself calling a god to help someone he loves too, she thought. She remembered how thin he’d been. It had been like hugging a marionette, just sticks and wire and clothes. And she’d helped him do it.

“We can’t just let him do this stuff all the time, you stupid adults are supposed to watch him!” she cried. She darted a finger at Ann. “This is not my responsibility! It’s not my fault I didn’t know this was happening. He never told me! He hid this on purpose! What the hell am I supposed to do?”

Sanaam’s attention had already been drawn by the phrase ‘little white boy,’ which he found amusing in this cultural context. But now he thought he heard Maggie winding up to set somebody else’s dress on fire. He picked up Bethany, who was still crying, held her against his shoulder with one hand and ran over. “Mag-Pirate!”

Because it was a magic storm, the worst she could do was kick Ann in the shins. She was about to, and Ann was about to let her, when Sanaam grabbed her. Maggie began to cry. She hid her face against his shirt and pointed a finger at the scene behind her in general. “This is not fair! People should not be allowed to be so dumb!”

“Oh, Maggie,” he said. He knelt and used his spare arm to hug her. “Your mother and I feel that way a lot too.”

She shoved him. “Well, why don’t you fix it?”

“Your mother has been trying but I’ve given up,” he said. “Why don’t we go in the kiiii…” He closed his teeth and bit off the word. There was an insane man cooking in the kitchen. “I mean, upstaaaa…” He glanced upwards. No, the blue gentleman and the yellow woman were throwing boxes at each other up there. “Let’s have Room 102! There’s always a box of tissues in there! We can sit on the rug! Soup, come on. You too. You can help explain what’s going on.”

“It’s the exact opposite of what should be going on!” Soup said damply. But when the enormous black man whom he barely knew offered a hand, he took it.

Cerise hugged Ann. “There. Now that’s all right, isn’t it?”

“No.” She shook her head. “We shouldn’t have been letting him do it, but now that I want to stop him, I can’t. We can’t. He won’t let us. There’s just always so much going on!” She flung her arms wide and indicated the whole room. Flying boxes, flying food, flying people, an argument about mixed relationships and a hostage situation. She shut her eyes and turned away from it.

PRIVACY, PLEASE was still written across the flat gray basement doorway.

“They’re quiet, so we don’t give them the help they need. They help each other, so I thought it was all right, but Soup is right. It isn’t.”

Cerise’s eyes brimmed over again. What little makeup she had managed to apply was running. “Oh, Annie, you must know… Sometimes there are no good choices. You do know that, don’t you?” She had seen Ann’s scars. Ann never wanted to talk about them, but it obviously wasn’t a happy story. There were very few happy stories at the Black Orchid. Maybe a couple with happy endings, like Lalage and Barbara. And Harry seemed all right, but even he was a war orphan originally. Most of them just had a few hours a night when they could be safe and accepted and then it was back to whatever lesser existence they had outside.

She brushed self-consciously at her gardening outfit. I’m one of the lucky ones. And so’s Annie, even though she lives in a slum. We didn’t always have it this good.

I could be dancing with the Novikov Ballet right now, she reminded herself.

And I would be miserable, she further reminded herself.

“Hey, are you guys okay?” It was the green boy with the guitar. He was still holding the birdcage.

“Give me that!” Cerise said. She jerked it from his hand. “I don’t know why you’re so upset about what a senile old biddy thinks about your girlfriend when she also thinks a mango is a pet!”

“It’s a horned melon,” Tommy said. “Penny’s grandmother likes them.”

“I don’t care what it is, just give it back to her, go hug your girlfriend, and stop listening to what a bunch of idiots with no judgment have to say about it!”

“You’re one of those idiots, Miss Cerise,” Tommy said.

“Tommy, look at me,” Cerise said. She was wearing her work clothes, her makeup was a disaster, and she had forgotten to put on her hair — but she remembered to put on her favorite shoes! Which were muddy and scuffed now. “I can’t even mind my damn self. Do not take relationship advice from anybody during a magic storm.”

“You just gave me…”

“I did, and you can roll it around in your diseased brain and decide what to do about it, but if your girlfriend is any kind of a person she’ll understand that none of us are our best selves right now no matter what you end up doing. I’m giving this back to Bianca. Unless something distracts me.”

Tommy stood there frowning for a moment, then he turned and knocked lightly on the door of Room 103. “Hey, hon? You in there?”

“Miss Hauser!” Barnaby declared. He had just had one of those extremely rare (for him) non-clairvoyant moments of clarity. He waved a smudged dustcloth like a flag of surrender. “Excuse me! Miss Hauser?”

The woman was consumed in yellow flames, with her white hair forming a crackling corona around her head. Her clothing appeared to be steaming, or perhaps disintegrating. When she turned she left a trail like a comet. “What?”

Magic hit a couple more decoys outside and the lights flickered.

He leaned on the railing and spoke conversationally, as if over tea, “Miss Hauser, you do realize that any objets d’art that strike Mr. Treves’s fancy will go with him when he leaves? And he will store them in his studio and lovingly curate them?”

“It is not possible to curate a dead rat!”

“Sure it is!” Calliope said. “Glorie fixed all my pigeons! They’re still good! She can write the spell down and you can do it, or Chris, or whoever reads magical notation.”

“He wants half the things out of that room! Where will he put all of them?”

“I got a suitcase that holds everything!” Calliope said. “You can borrow it, babe. Just don’t steal my arts and crafts stuff, okay?”

He looked down at her, and then at the woman who was trying to drag down his leg with a pole. He kicked lightly and that didn’t seem to do anything, but it wasn’t like she was impeding him, so he ignored her. “Mars,” he said. “Je aime tu, but your oeuvre is infantile. Je ne veut pas tu glitter glue.” He waved a disdainful hand.

He blinked and leaned down. “Il y a chocolate cake?!”

“It’s floor cake,” Calliope said. She stamped her foot. “It’s cake for people with their feet on the floor. These are the rules, babe, I don’t make ‘em up.”

“Pinche floor cake and floor chocolate bars,” Chris muttered, descending. “Let go you me, madame. Please.”

“I suppose if he takes it with him and cleans it up…” Kitty said. She stepped onto the upstairs railing, and from there to the floor next to Barnaby. He wrapped her in two fire blankets and she went out.

“I can’t clean like this, Mr. Graham.”

“We’ll work something out, Miss Haber, just rest a moment.”

Ann regarded Calliope’s ex-boyfriend, who had just qualified for floor cake and was still intermittently spouting phrases in various dialects.

So, Ann… Calliope doesn’t just like shy people who hide in basements, does she? She likes weird people who are two people.

…one of whom is damn near impossible to communicate with, Milo. Yes. I suppose she does. Why are you happy about this?

If she hadn’t been wearing the dress he would’ve been dancing around the front room and trying to get Mordecai to make him some champagne. I’m better than him for all of that! She’ll never find anyone weirder or more two people or harder to talk to! She traded up!

I suppose that’s nice for you, Milo. For us. But what are we going to do about Erik?

That sobered him. We can’t be mad at him no matter how scared we are, Ann. Okay? Not today. I don’t think ever, not for this. This is bad for him, but he didn’t throw us out of the basement to be bad. And he’s probably really scared we’re mad at him and he did something wrong.

It is wrong, Milo.

Yes, but it’s not wrong because he wanted to do a wrong thing or he didn’t care. It’s the opposite of that. So we can’t scold him and tell him no. It’s way more complicated and we can’t do that today.

Do you want to just let him?

Not ‘just.’ But sometimes we can only do the least wrong thing, and I think that’s not having a fight with a scared, sick kid during a magic storm. I don’t know what else, but the first thing we do is we don’t do that. Get me?

Yes, but I don’t think anyone else would if you tried to explain it like that. She shook her head. I hope he lets us back in and we don’t go the whole storm with PRIVACY, PLEASE.

So we can still do the thing with the headphones?

Milo, it’s a very good thing I can’t hit you, because right now I would. Get me?

I was only teasing, Ann.

I know exactly what you were doing. Cut it out.

He quieted, and she sat down on the floor facing the basement doorway.

PRIVACY, PLEASE.

———

Sanaam had dispensed several tissues, most of which had been crumpled and deposited on the rug. He raked them into a pile. “Okay,” he said. “So you are upset because Erik has to look after Seth at all, and you are upset because of that, but also because nobody told you and now you can’t do anything to help. Have I got it?”

This was pretty much standard operating procedure for conflict resolution on board ship, except he was usually dealing with a couple of people who had decided to start punching each other, so the tissues would have blood on them and he’d either be in the infirmary or the brig. Listen first, then restate the problem, but nicer, and confirm. He had cribbed his arbitration style from the legal system on Saint Matt’s, and they didn’t even have a brig. The judge would just tell one or both parties to go home, essentially sentencing them to ‘time out.’ Or sometimes they’d go to the Marselline Consulate and get drunk.

Neither of these seemed like an appropriate solution in this case.

“I’m sick of this happening! I live here too! He had a whole year to tell me and he didn’t! I thought we were friends!”

“I used to have to walk my mom home and put her to bed and tell her she was a good mom — even though she’s not — and that’s an awful thing to do to a kid and Erik shouldn’t have to do it too!”

He raised both hands for quiet. “Okay, okay. And you both have very complicated lives for a ten-year-old and a twelve-year-old respectively, but I can’t do anything about that right now. The thing right now is Erik and Seth in the basement, right?”

“I made my teacher cry and I’m still mad about the rainbows,” Bethany said. She rubbed her eye with a fist.

Sanaam turned and smiled at her. “Sweetheart, I know. Please play nicely with Erik’s stuffed bear and try not to think about it, I’m trying to do several things at once. I’ll bring you something to eat in a minute.”

“I want cookies,” the pink girl said.

“Okay. In a minute.” He turned back. “Now you…”

“I’m almost eleven, Dad.”

He blinked at her. “Okay, yes, Mag-Pirate, but let’s try not to get distracted. We’re upset about Seth and Erik in the basement and there is literally nothing anybody can do about that because Erik has sealed them both in there, right?”

Soup said, “Yes.”

Maggie planted her hands on her hips and said, “Can’t you come up with anything?”

“Er,” Sanaam said.

Still no wind, Cap. Want me to get out and push?

Stop being selfish, Bill. I’m more helpless and desperate than you are! Throw me a line and I’ll dive over the side and pull.

Oh, the fun they had. But it didn’t solve anything. They just laughed a little and went back to staring at the ocean and feeling helpless and desperate.

“I’m going to get everyone some cookies!” Sanaam declared, and he ran for the kitchen.

———

The General broke away from Ted and Maria, whom she had just convinced to remove the shield from the dining room, and caught her husband by the arm. “Tell me what’s going on.”

He snatched his arm away and glared at her. “I have to wait months before I find that out, you can give me a couple minutes to get cookies!”

“There are cookies out here,” the General said, but he had already vaulted over the invisible baby gate and she didn’t like to follow him.

———

“Mordecai, did you make any cookies?”

The red man was kneeling in a puddle beside the washtub and trying to do dishes. This was irritating and difficult with one hand, and he was beginning to wonder if he could just bake more plates. He had a vague idea that ovens were involved in the manufacture of ceramics; it was only a matter of temperature level.

Also he kept forgetting he had a cast and repeated immersions in the washtub were beginning to override whatever water repellent charms were included in the plaster. He had lost his foil sticker with the pink poodle somewhere and his three-legged rainbow unicorn was melting. It was like watching a distant relative age over a series of photos in an album. Hey! Check out the inevitable advance of mortality in stark images! Wow!

He straightened with a smile and leapt back to his feet. “Cookies? Sure!”

Sanaam clasped both hands on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. It looked a bit like a giant movie monster latching onto a skyscraper so he could use it as a toothpick. Instead, he leaned against it, making the wood creak, and said, “I have no idea how to handle a problem I can’t wrestle to the ground and tie up! You have ten minutes maximum to teach me how to do emotions before people start to get suspicious and my daughter finds out I’m a terrible father!”

“What kind of cookies?” Mordecai said happily. He brandished a spatula.

Sanaam’s expression tightened. He looked the red man up and down. “This is like the goose with the golden eggs and if I crack open your head to gain access to the knowledge inside, I will only find a lot of useless gray goo and you’ll die, correct?”

“I’ve never had occasion to try that!” Mordecai said. He began dishing a random assortment of baked goods onto a paper towel.

Sanaam frowned. “There’s an egg in there somewhere and I’m going to get you to lay it, you stupid goose. Give me the spatula.”

“That is a rare phrase,” the General said, observing from the doorway.

Sanaam screamed and fell over the chair.

———

Calliope was still monitoring Chris’s consumption of chocolate cake, but she’d decided to sit on the floor next to Ann and view him from a distance, like wildlife. “You know, every once in a while he’ll quoi something when he’s working, but he’s embarrassed and he doesn’t like it. Except during storms. I finally got it out of him he grew up in this little tourist trap on the border and everyone there speaks everything, but not all of it. So when you don’t know a word, you switch languages and say it louder and slower while gesturing. But when he moved to San Rosille his teacher told him he sounded like an idiot, so he quit talking in school… You’re not interested.”

I’m interested! What was that about not talking in school? I’m going to adopt Chris! Unless he has parents!

Ann shook her head. “I’m really sorry, dear. It’s not that I don’t want to be interested… and Milo is trying. We’re just thinking about something… It’s a problem but it’s a secret and it’s not our secret, so I don’t feel right sharing it.”

Calliope wrapped an arm around her and dropped her head on her shoulder. “Is what’s going on with Seth and Erik a secret?”

Ann turned her head and regarded the opaque gray doorway. “Well, it is now,” she muttered.

“Steven told me something funny about magic season,” Calliope said. “Chris kinda told me, but getting him to talk about personal stuff is like pulling teeth. I kinda thought he wanted an open relationship, but it is totally not that and I’m embarrassed now and I think I bullied him into saying it was okay if I wanted to bang other guys when I didn’t even want to and I was just trying to say it was okay if he wanted to… Girls, not guys… Or guys, that’s okay too… I mean, he can bang whoever he wants now, we broke up… but he’s probably not gonna calm down enough for me to apologize today.”

Ann winced at her. “I’m sorry dear. This is hard for me too, but if you can’t stay on topic I may not be able to follow you right now.”

“It’s okay, Ann, just do your best,” Calliope said. “I asked a dumb thing. Bethany’s birthday is in March and I can do math…”

Ann drew back. “Oh, my god, Calliope, you didn’t!” She knew, because she’d almost asked that herself back when she’d first moved in, but Hyacinth grabbed her and told her it was rude.

Calliope frowned. “This isn’t a religion, Ann, I’m not making stuff up to teach you a lesson. I said it was dumb. But they are exactly the same hue, value and saturation and Ted and Maria and Steven live together anyway, so I thought maybe they had a thing.”

“They do not have a thing!”

“I know, I already asked about it.” Calliope bapped Ann lightly on the forehead with the heel of her palm. “Duh, Ann! But Steven straightened me out. He told me Bethany isn’t his even if she is really. Because magic storms don’t count. Colored people got together a long time ago and decided that. They had to, because they used to have cities all by themselves, and everyone would go out of their minds a few days every year, but then they still had to live together and get along the rest of the time. Steven said the shtetls in Xin…”

Ann put up her hand. “I’m sorry, Calliope. Did Steven Yaojing use the word shtetl to mean little colored villages in Xin or are you being funny?”

She’s not, Ann. Pay attention.

“He doesn’t know what they call them in Xin and that’s what they call them here,” Calliope said. She shrugged. “Anyway, they made their calendars out of knotted silk rags and the days when it storms are just gone. Like, some years have three-hundred-and-fifty-five days, and some have three-fifty-two. Maria said it’s the same way in Iliodario, but they made wool rugs. And they called their colored villages barrios, but that just means neighborhood. Like, we live in a barrio too.”

“Can we go back to the idea that magic storms don’t count, dear?”

“Yeah. Sorry. That’s the important part. They still happened and you don’t have to pretend you don’t remember. And if you broke something you have to try to fix it. And if it can’t be fixed you have to do what you can to make up for it. But it’s not anybody’s fault. Nobody meant it, so it doesn’t mean anything. Bad or good. It’s the other three-hundred-fifty-five days or however many you need to be a good guy or tell your family you love them or punch that dude you hate and blow up his shed. Ted is Bethany’s dad when it counts, so that’s what matters. And it was dumb of me to ask, because I already knew that.”

Ann sighed. She put her elbows in her lap and her head in her hands. “I suppose I already knew it too, but it’s nice to have it in context. I don’t know if Erik understands it that way… And even if he does, I’m worried about all those other days. We are. He’s little and he’s still learning, and the world isn’t being very careful about what it teaches him when we can’t be there to protect him. Milo and I already decided not to talk to him about this today, but I don’t know how to talk to him about today tomorrow… And I don’t know what to do about today today!”

Calliope hugged her. “Then it’s a really good thing today doesn’t count.”

———

“So Master Rinaldi is having some kind of flashback to early childhood trauma and Magnificent is angry about being excluded and the violation of trust, and you successfully divined the problem and then panicked and yelled for help with a solution.”

“Rather,” Sanaam said. He was still standing on the other side of the baby gate and hoping the goose would lay an egg. “I think there’s a little violation of trust with Soup too. Seth is the closest thing he has to a good parent…”

The General reached through the doorway, pulled him down to her level and put a kiss on his cheek. “I appreciate a support person who knows when to ask for some support of his own. It saves lives.”

Sanaam put a hand to his cheek. “A support person? Is that what I am?”

“Well, you’re certainly not in charge.” She drew herself up. “I outrank you.”

He grinned at her. “In every way. Except clothing sizes!”

“You know, the thing about magic storms is they don’t discriminate against colored people,” said the goose. The two people in the kitchen doorway paused and observed him. He had decided cookies required tea and was arranging the coconut-shell tea set on a tray. “They discriminate in our favor, and they get all of us, more or less. Everyone has an excuse for acting totally mental and nobody’s head is clear enough to take unfair advantage of it. We have to be understanding and accepting of each other — it’s a matter of mutual self-preservation! And it never lasts much longer than a day, so we don’t get sick of it. Like a carnival! Except that’s something we swiped off of you people, culturally. Colored people don’t need to schedule a day to turn the world upside-down, it happens randomly and with very little warning.”

There were six cups in the set and he popped a tea bag in each one before pouring boiling water over them from a glass pot. Neither Sanaam nor the General could recall seeing him place that pot over a heat source of any kind. It just happened.

“We say magic storms don’t count, that’s the only way to explain it, and people like you understand that from a practical standpoint, but they can’t understand how it feels from the inside. Intellectually, I know that I’m acting like a total idiot today and neglecting some very real responsibilities, but I also know that I can’t be held to any standard of behavior. And when impostor syndrome kicks in, all I have to do is look around at everyone else like me, struggling just the same way. And when they see me making a fool of myself, that makes them feel better too. It is intensely frustrating not to be able to think about anything much more complicated than hollandaise, but also strangely liberating to know that everything is messed up today, it’s not anybody’s fault, and there’s nothing to be done about it. It’s a shame all you have are carnivals.” He picked up the tray, then he blinked and put it back down. “Did you want cookies? I seem to have got it into my head somehow that you wanted cookies.”

“There’s your egg, what would you like to do with it?” said the General.

“Serve it to the children with cookies, I suppose,” Sanaam said. He picked up the tray. “Thank you, Mordecai.”

“I ought to make hollandaise,” muttered the red man. “Are there eggs in this house?”

“Sort of a two-pronged attack?” said the General. “Then I shall accompany you. We shall cut off their supply lines — of stress — and beat them into submission with tea and baked goods!”

Sanaam stepped lightly over the baby gate, which elected not to interfere with his delivery of the tray. He leaned down and lowered his voice, “You’re not colored, sir. What’s your excuse?”

“I do not make excuses.”

“General D’Iver?” Maria was holding a cardboard box full of paper and art supplies. “Calliope put this together for us, but we’d rather play cards, I think. And Mr. Treves wants to play with the things from upstairs. Bethany likes to color. Maybe your daughter does too?”

“She prefers to create her own designs, but thank you, Mrs. Toussaint.”

———

The General noted the crayon drawings affixed to the walls with a frown. Most of them were at a lower level of skill than she had come to expect from her daughter, barring a few which she suspected had been given as gifts.

On the walls? But they will become dirty and damaged.

She had Maggie’s art in a file. It came in handy. They went over it occasionally. Do you notice how your grasp of perspective has markedly improved since your Sunny Yellow Daisies Period at age six, Magnificent? Let us compare to the early Fauvists…

The Captain knocked into her from behind and lifted the tray over her head. “Whooo wants cookies?” he said, beaming.

“Bethany wants cookies!” the pink girl cried.

Soup looked torn and said, “Well…”

Maggie put a hand out and nudged him back. “They’re trying to distract us, don’t encourage them.”

The General suppressed a smile. That would make it look like she wasn’t taking this seriously. She squared her shoulders and spread her arms, taking on the aspect of a stewardess on an airship.

Magic killed one of the decoys outside and the lamp flickered.

“Magnificent,” said the General, darkly. “I regret to inform you that our situation today is irrevocably Bartholomew’s dogs, it is nobody’s fault, it is nobody’s responsibility, it cannot be fixed and we can do nothing but make small repairs and distract ourselves — both of which are equally valuable as occupations. Forgive me for being gruesome, but the ship has gone down and we are only deciding which of the survivors to eat first while we wait for rescue, raw and without salt. Any wailing or gnashing of teeth will be entirely appropriate for the duration.” She bowed.

Maggie staggered back a pace. “Shoot, Mom,” she said, blinking. “You sure?”

“Magnificent, if it were ever going to be possible to improve the operation of Hyacinth’s house during a magic storm, we would have managed it today while she is glued to a wall and out of our way, and your father is here to assist us. I am afraid this is the best we can do.”

“This sucks,” Maggie said.

“Yes,” Sanaam said. “Eat this cookie.” He put one in her open mouth.

“I also have art supplies,” said the General. She set the box on the floor.

Maggie removed the cookie and stared at it. “Oatmeal raisin cookies!” she declared at a shriek. She lifted it over her head as if she desired to cram it down the throat of an almighty god. “Why is Uncle Mordecai using perfectly good magic to make the worst cookies known to mankind?”

The General put a hand on her shoulder, “Because today sucks, Magnificent. Write it down, draw a rainbow around it and I will put it up on the wall to remind you.”

“Hell, I’ll eat them,” Soup said, already cradling multiple cookies in his hands and with one in his mouth.

“I am going to draw a sucky rainbow,” Maggie muttered.

Sanaam clapped her on the back. “That’s the spirit, Mag-Pirate!”

———

“Hey, Ann?” Calliope nudged her and pointed to the basement doorway.

PRIVACY, PLEASE had been replaced by JUST ANN, PLEASE. I’M SORRY. The words were surrounded by an orange box like a place on a form that required a signature. The J, an R and both of the N’s had been reversed.

Ann hugged her own shoulders and let out a sigh. “I guess we’re all done deciding what we’re going to do about today today.”

Calliope signed her two thumbs up and smiled. “It doesn’t count today, sis!”

I wish I believed that, Ann thought. She put a cautious hand out, and when the gray nothing in the doorway accepted it, she followed after and disappeared.

PRIVACY, PLEASE flickered back into place.