Postcards from the Basement (171)

PSI-4

There was a young woman sitting on Calliope’s bed and sobbing. Steven had his arm around her and kept handing her tissues. “He didn’t have to yell at her! Now everyone’s going to hate me…”

“No, no,” said the pink gentleman. “We usually have a fight about something. Nobody hates you. Hyacinth’s house is… This is just how it is. Isn’t that right, Ann?”

“Yes, dear.” She wrapped her arm a little tighter around Seth and helped hold him up. “I suppose you need the room.”

“Yes. The kitchen is… Well…”

“No, I know. I’m sorry, Seth.” Steven stood up to help her with him and she motioned him back down. “I’ve got him.”

“I don’t think she really is racist though,” the girl said.

“No, no, she definitely is,” Steven said. “She tells Mordecai to make egg rolls every time so I have something to eat!” He closed the door behind Ann. “But she’s old,” Ann heard him say, muffled. “So it’s kind of charming…”

Bethany pushed her way out of the shimmering wall of orange and yellow magic which had sealed off the dining room. She looked like a single chunk of fruit cocktail escaping an aspic mold. Pablo attempted to follow her, bounced backwards and landed on his butt with a cry. A vague figure, either Ted or Maria, picked him up. Lucy sat at the top of the dining room step, bathed in colored light, and waved at Ann, unnoticed.

“Seth!” the pink girl declared.

“Bethany, not now, please,” Ann said. “Get out of the way.”

“Why don’t you go play jump rope or something?” Soup said. He tried to pull her off to the side. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot he could do to help Seth, but he was willing to fight a six-year-old if needed.

“Lemme go or I’ll break every bone in your hand,” Bethany said.

Soup hesitated, but did not quite remove his hand. “Come on, kid…”

Maggie dropped her hand on his shoulder and dragged him back. “Soup, she can totally do that. I taught her. What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He made a weak smile. “Helping, I guess? It never seemed like a good time to stop…”

Bethany ran forward and planted herself in front of Seth and Ann before they could make the basement. “Seth!” she repeated, pointing a finger. “You lied to me about colors!”

“What?” said the schoolteacher, with faint horror that Ann thought was foreshadowing either a mental or physical collapse.

“Bethany, go away!” She kicked lightly at the girl. “Shoo!”

“Bethany, come over here and finish vandalizing my wall!” Hyacinth called out, but she couldn’t come over. She was stuck in the middle of the vandalism. Bethany had been outlining her in rainbow crayon.

“I told Penny we were better than this!” said the green teenager with the birdcage and the guitar.

“A flat rat is not art!” shrieked the yellow woman who was floating near the ceiling, and a heavy-sounding box of indeterminate origin thudded into the middle of the front room, crushing a floating plate with a pie on it.

“I lied to you about colors?” Seth said.

Ann gave up, changed her grip and began dragging him backwards with her arms around his waist. But Bethany followed them.

“Yes!” said the girl. “You said yellow and blue make green and they don’t! When you mix colors that way they look yucky and dark! The real primary colors are cyan, ma-gen-ta and yellow. Calliope showed me! Ma-gen-ta and yellow make red, and ma-gen-ta and cyan make blue and cyan and yellow make green. I have been painting crummy rainbows for years because of you!”

“Oh my gods, I’m sorry,” Seth said. He had never really stopped crying, but now he began sobbing outright.

Bethany stopped, blinked and said, “What?” Maggie and Soup corralled her before she could get hit by a box. She started crying too, “I didn’t mean to make him sad, I’m just mad about the rainbows!”

“Hey, Chris, what about this chocolate cake?” Calliope said.

“Erik, can you please just take the baby gate down?” Ann called out, dragging a weeping man who was two inches taller than her when both of them were in flats. “Don’t do anything interesting, just take it down, okay, sweetheart? Please try!”

It seemed like he was able to manage taking it down. He also put it, or something like it, back up behind them. The screaming and crying and chaos was cut off as if he’d slammed a door.

Erik stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up. He was still in his nightshirt and he hadn’t brushed his hair. He was wearing his eyepatch and a white bandage on his left hand. He looked a bit like a hospital patient.

He also looked like he might’ve been crying, but he wasn’t crying now.

The man at the top of the stairs was medium blue with damp white hair, grease-stained denim trousers, and two cheap enchanted blankets wrapped around him. The one on top was gray. He was wearing creased black shoes with no socks. He had more the look of someone you might find in an asylum, and not a nice one. The kind with chains on the walls.

“No,” he said, very softly. He took a step backwards and knocked into Ann, who tightened her grip and prevented him from falling.

“Dear,” she said.

“No, no, no,” he replied, shivering. “No…”

In the front room, Soup abandoned Bethany and dropped a box of tissues on the floor, then kicked it out of the way. “What the hell is she doing? He didn’t want to be in the basement!”

“It’s farther away from the strikes,” Maggie said.

“I don’t care!” Soup said. For some reason he couldn’t get past the basement doorway. He could see and hear what was going on in there, but when he put out his hand there was a cold, flat, invisible hardness in the way. Like a window, but no glass. He tried knocking on it and it didn’t make a noise. “Hey!” he said. “Ann! Seth doesn’t want to be in your basement! Are you stupid or something?”

He didn’t know if she didn’t hear him or she was ignoring him.

She didn’t hear him. Erik wanted to protect Seth from all the screaming and chaos in the front room, but he didn’t care about hiding the basement from anyone in the front room, so the effect was one-way.

“No, dear, it’s all right,” Ann said. “We’ll just… Erik, please don’t right now…”

Erik paused with one foot on the lowest stair. He shook his head. “I know,” he said softly. He looked up at her, pained. “Can’t… words… Ann.” The radio wasn’t talking yet, but they weren’t getting strikes yet either.

He knew he had hurt Seth — he’d even known that at the time, no matter how much Seth tried to tell him it wasn’t his fault. It was, because he didn’t know how to do Auntie Enora’s magic as well as she could, and he couldn’t call her and make medicine like his mom used to. Hyacinth would kill him if he tried, but he didn’t think it would work anyway because Seth wasn’t really sick anymore, it was just a bad memory.

He knew he could fix this if he could just talk, if he could explain it — he was better at it now! He thought he could get around Seth’s whole family dying, like he got around the bad stuff that happened to Milo. He was never going to hurt Seth like that again. But he didn’t have the words, only a feeling of certainty like a fire in his chest that he couldn’t express. “I’m… Sorry.”

“No, sweetheart, please don’t be sorry,” Ann said. Seth was trying to curl up and hide and she had to let him sit down. She held him. “You don’t have to do words. I have lots. Let me do this. Go back and play with the sugar.”

Erik shook his head. “You… can’t.” She didn’t know what he knew, she didn’t know anything because he couldn’t tell her. He put his right hand on the banister and came up the stairs — on tiptoe, because of the magic patches. “Ann…”

Ann remembered, just vaguely, Milo sitting on the floor and playing Prokovian Roulette with a mental gun he had no idea how to operate — and she knew Erik pushed that at her because she didn’t understand him at random like Milo. “Erik!” she said sternly. “You put that gun down right now and go play with the sugar like a good boy. We are not going to shoot the schoolteacher no matter how unhappy he is. Erik, look at me. I’m being very serious right now. You and Milo agreed you weren’t going to talk that way anymore because it hurts…”

Erik was halfway up the stairs. “Not… Milo,” he said.

“Erik, I am not going to have a legal argument about something you need to do to be safe! Now you stop this right now! You don’t have to fix everything.” She shook her head at him. Milo had done Erik a card about this. It was so damn frustrating! They could write that everything wasn’t Erik’s responsibility ten feet high on the side of the house, but reality wouldn’t stop providing these situations to tempt him. She couldn’t exist in his head and guide him away from the behavior in real time, all she could do was talk and he wasn’t listening. “Please trust us!”

Erik made a weak smile. He shook his head. He knew she wanted to, but he also knew she couldn’t. Not this time. She wouldn’t have liked it if he tried to tell her. “Sorry,” he managed.

It wasn’t like really grabbing her, because it didn’t feel like a part of him doing that. It felt like he had a brand new imaginary friend who was as big as a house and really strong, and who liked to do things for him. Sometimes a little too enthusiastically, like when he hit the General on the kitchen ceiling, so Erik had to keep an eye on his new friend and make sure he explained things exactly. I just want her to go away a little and not be hurt. Just for right now. Okay?

The invisible baby gate across the basement doorway hugged Ann around the waist so tightly it made her gasp, and dragged her into the front room. “Erik!” she said. She pushed up on her knees and banged on the nothing, making no sound.

“He has a gun?” Soup shrieked at her.

Maggie swatted him. “Of course he doesn’t! You think we could keep a gun in this house? Hyacinth would fix people with it!”

“It’s not a real gun,” Ann said. “It’s worse because I can’t take it away from him…” She winced at her surroundings. It had gotten loud again all of a sudden, there were still multiple groups fighting, and Hyacinth was alternately demanding to be let off the wall and to be told what the hell was going on.

Cerise abandoned Mrs. Taube and the argument about mixed relationships and fruit. She put both arms around Ann’s shoulders, “Annie? Did someone push you?”

Ann sighed and shut her eyes. “Cerise, angel, I really wish you’d let Cin off the wall, but I guess it doesn’t make any difference. He doesn’t have to listen to anyone. Milo gave him control of the whole house.”

“The little boy with the weird head?” Cerise said, observing him from what seemed like a safe distance.

“His name is Erik, Cerise,” Ann said sourly. All they could do was watch.

———

“Uh-uh,” Seth said. He fell backwards, and this time Ann didn’t catch him. When he turned to look, she was sitting on the other side of the doorway and shaking her head at him. “Ann?” he said.

Erik paused four steps away from the top. Okay, he thought. I am not going to shoot the teacher. I’m not very good at this, but I know I don’t have to do that.

Unfortunately, he also knew he couldn’t coax Seth over and then grab him like Milo had done to him when he was scared and wouldn’t listen. Erik hadn’t known Milo could do that — Milo didn’t seem like he knew he could do that. Seth knew Erik had the magical ability to KO him any time he wanted, and Erik could not explain in words how he had gotten better at punching people and it wouldn’t hurt as much.

…And I’m not just going to use Auntie Enora’s spell on him either. I’m not going to hold him down and make him have medicine like the sisters at the workhouse, that’s mean. This person is my friend. I have to at least try to explain I’m not going to hurt him before I do anything, and give him a chance to tell me it’s okay because I don’t like doing this on someone who says it’s not okay. I don’t want to do it like that. That’s skeevy like that guy who put his hand on Maggie’s butt.

What he had to do was not shoot the teacher or sneak up on the teacher, but very gently — and very quickly — put a metaphorical hand over the teacher’s mouth and stop him from screaming long enough to explain things without words.

And not feed a piece of his shirt into Seth’s machinery like he’d done to Milo on accident. That too.

Erik gave a weak sigh and a resigned shake of his head. Oh, boy. This is so not gonna go like I want. I’m gonna hurt one of us. I already hurt Ann.

He did it anyway, because he didn’t know anything better to do. He pushed it, like he promised Milo he wouldn’t anymore. He folded both hands behind his back, so Seth would know this wasn’t ‘touching’ like Auntie Enora did, then he reached out another way and tried to get Seth to understand him without talking, not just words but intent: (Seth, I’m…)

He didn’t get caught — he’d held back so he wouldn’t — but something slapped his push aside and pushed him away. It was like someone had spliced a couple frames of a martial arts serial into his movie reel and then snapped him back into the basement to continue the personal drama, confusing the hell out of the actors and the audience.

(What?)

Seth was crouched at the top of the stairs, holding up a shield spell that bent his image into a blue-shaded fish-eye from where Erik was standing, and did the same to Erik’s image from where Seth and the others were.

Erik was off balance with one hand in the air. He put a foot back to steady himself. It kinda felt like those two guys sparring had been on level ground, but that was not how it was in the real world. He was standing on the stairs, there was nothing behind him, and he went over backwards. His hand caught the banister but it wasn’t enough to stop him.

Cerise produced a burst of pink-shaded magic, but the baby gate turned it aside.

There was a sound of thunder.

Seth said, “No, no, no…” very soft, but ragged around the edges like torn paper.

Erik felt something minor and stinging snap, then he lost hold of the banister. He had time to think, Aw, man…

He landed on something flat and mildly-springy like the ouchless ice at Papillon Island, bounced upright, and managed to catch himself with both hands before he hit his face on the edge of the stairs. He was buoyed by a cushion of warm air and then two real arms caught him and wrapped around him. They were cold and damp and shaking, as was the rest of the person.

“I’m sorry,” Seth said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Are you hurt? I’m so sorry…” He made a low, wretched noise but managed not to throw up on the little boy he’d almost thrown down the stairs.

Thunder again, and magic hit one of the decoys outside, not yet the house, but they both felt it. Seth tightened his embrace, too tight, and then let go. He couldn’t protect Erik that way. He couldn’t protect anyone.

Erik pushed back from him just enough to look at him. Seth was glowing faint blue. Erik reached around him to collect both fire blankets, and pulled them around the man’s shoulders.

(Hey, you need those.)

He didn’t mean to. They were so near and he didn’t even have to push. It just slipped out.

He felt… something. Not like words. Not like images or memory. Not even like when he understood Milo and the knowledge was just there. It was like his uncle had been cooling a pie in the kitchen and had wrapped it up and put it away in the basement an hour ago, but the kitchen was still warm from the oven and maybe there were crumbs or something. It didn’t smell like pie, but you had a vague idea of maybe a pie, if not exactly what kind.

A vague idea of negation, and then dismissal: No, it’s not that, but not in so many words. Then it was gone. Like a door closing. Click.

“I hurt your hand,” Seth said. “Your hand hurts. I feel you!” He shuddered. “I’m so sorry. I know you were just trying to help. We’re connected, we’re all connected, but Auntie Di knew how to use it and she taught me a little… I don’t understand it and I’m really awful at it and I hurt your hand!”

“Shhh.” Erik said. He curled up in Seth’s lap and put both arms around him, helping to hold up the blankets. Seth was lit up with magic and that was no fun. Erik was able to handle that better than most people and it wasn’t any fun for him either, so it really had to be hurting Seth. It’s okay. If you want to explain that later you can, or we’ll pretend you never said it, like the stuff about Candlewood Park…

She had said, Sprite, I teach everyone I love how to stop me. You have to learn at least that much. I’m really sorry. It’s not your fault you have a weird family…

He was still in short pants and crying and saying he didn’t want to hurt anyone, and she had a bloody nose like he’d hit her in the face. The bed had a white duvet and a canopy and there was a huge rocking horse with a real mane and tail — Seth wasn’t too impressed with it at the time, but Erik briefly forgot he was trying to comfort a hurt adult and thought, Hey, how come you get a real horse? at the crying kid from thirty years ago who couldn’t hear him.

He’d just been trying to push her away like she wanted, but he didn’t want to do that anymore. Dad came in and said it was okay, he didn’t have to, and Auntie Di said no, he did, and they had a fight about it and he was scared he broke them so they wouldn’t love each other anymore.

They put her on the Empire quarters, but that was much later.

Erik sighed. …And I guess we’ll pretend the gods don’t tell me stuff all the time too. Heck, I’m used to pretending that.

He wished he knew a song that said ‘I still love you and I’m not mad.’ It seemed like there ought to be a lot of songs like that, but he couldn’t think of one. He brushed back Seth’s hair. Seth winced but let him.

But Erik didn’t hold him down and trap him in the past where it was all okay and this wasn’t happening and his family was still alive. He tucked the hair behind one of Seth’s ears and then pulled up one of the blankets and covered Seth’s head.

The blue glow flickered and finally went out.

“I did hurt your hand,” Seth said. “I know I did.” He sobbed. “And I lied to Bethany about colors!”

Erik just held him. “Shhh.”

“I am the worst teacher on the face of the planet!”

Erik shook his head.

“I deserve to be hurt!”

“Uh-uh,” Erik said.

“I don’t even know what ‘cyan’ is! I should’ve gone home. I should’ve just gone home!”

Growing up means wanting to be dead sometimes, thought the eight-year-old boy at the top of the stairs. Then later you feel bad about it and want to pretend you didn’t think that. It wasn’t just Seth. He’d seen it and seen it. Even in strangers. And movies and junk. That ice-pick murderer in Ann’s play wanted to jump off a bridge but he pulled himself together and kept right on murdering, and then at the end he didn’t want to die.

Boy, I hope I have a lot of people around me to grab me and help me when I grow up and want to die, Erik thought.

And I’d rather not murder anyone…

“Happy… here,” Erik managed, but he frowned and shook his head. He was glad Seth was here and didn’t go home and get shot, but nobody was happy here. “Sorry.”

There was the crackly sound of a woman’s voice singing. For a moment Erik wasn’t sure if the radio was doing the mind-reading thing again or if it had just turned itself on.

Every morning, every evening, ain’t we got fun? Not much money, oh, but honey, ain’t we got fun…?

The meaning came soon after, like the magic strikes followed the thunder. People whose minds belonged to just them had pages full of line drawings in their heads and sometimes they had to guess what a picture was. But a bunch of quarrelsome kids kept coloring Erik and scribbling notes in the margins, and sometimes they ripped a page.

The blue man and the blue woman both realized they were upsetting the little blue boy on the bed at about the same time. They stopped fighting and sat down on either side of him, holding his hands. They said they still loved him and nobody was really mad, they were just having ‘a disagreement’ about the best way to keep him safe.

‘Then I want to be dangereux!’ the boy said, weeping. They thought that was funny and he didn’t really, but he laughed anyway because it seemed like they were happy again. Dad put an arm around him and Auntie Di did too and they sang the song Grandpa had on the cylinder.

The rent’s unpaid, dear, and we haven’t a bus…

The cylinder was rolling against the phonograph needle.

A little blue girl in an old-fashioned white smock with straight-legged shorts underneath and little black shoes sat on a creaking desk chair, kicking her legs back and forth and smiling as Mamma and Daddy danced to the music and all three of them sang along.

Daddy dipped Mamma backwards until she was almost upside-down and Mamma laughed and grabbed a pencil from the cup on the desk to hold between her teeth like a rose.

But smiles were made, dear, for people like us…

The little blue girl, somewhat older, addressed the blue baby who was swaddled in the bassinet. She told him even if Mamma couldn’t come back from heaven to be with them, they still had all her music and this was her favorite song, so if he wanted to be her little brother he’d better like it too.

She wasn’t supposed to work the phonograph but she knew how. She stood on a chair to get the box with Mamma’s cylinders.

Daddy ran up the stairs and found her leaning over the bassinet and singing along. He put out his hand like he was going to take the needle off the cylinder, maybe even throw the cylinder away, but then he shook his head and turned it aside. He picked up Diane and danced her gently, swaying and holding her little hand. He sang with her.

She pretended not to notice the tears.

In the winter in the summer, don’t we have fun…?

They kidnapped the pretty yellow lady from the party and sat her down in Dad’s office chair. She was still holding her glass of champagne and she thought they were playing. She wanted to know if they knew how to make a paper clip chain.

Diane was on lookout, but she didn’t have to stand at the door or actually look to do that. She pulled out the drawer with the cylinders and set up the phonograph. She was wearing a perfect scaled-down ball gown with white elbow-length gloves and couldn’t have been any bigger than Maggie. Jacob’s little suit was likewise impeccable, with short pants and a black bow tie. He told the yellow woman that this was their Mamma’s favorite song, and if she was going to be their new mom, she had to like it too.

Diane added that if she didn’t like it, they’d fix her so she did. The yellow woman laughed and said she was sure she’d love it, like she loved them.

(That’s cute, Miss Kaiser, but we’re not kidding,) Diane said — and fifty years away Erik damn near fell down the stairs again.

All the color drained out of the yellow woman’s face, but she did not scream or run away.

Jacob clapped his hands and smiled. This one was a keeper!

Times are bum and getting bummer, still we have fun…

They kidnapped the nervous-looking blue girl from the party. Jacob put a gentle hand over her mouth and assured her he was not going to ravish her, and anyway Diane was there to protect her honor.

Estelle said she wouldn’t mind a little bit of ravishing.

Diane said to wait until after the wedding. Her ball gown was no longer scaled down and she looked like a fairy queen, complete with tiara. Jacob’s suit was much less intimidating, but at least it had long pants.

They told her this was their family’s song, and if she was going to be in their family she had to like it too, or they’d fix her so she did.

Jacob broke off to assure her that that was just something they said, traditionally, and they wouldn’t really. Diane waved a gloved hand in the air and complained that it would be such a little thing even if we did, Jake.

He elbowed her in the side. She elbowed him back. They kept doing that while they sang the song and she ended up with her baby brother in a headlock while he threatened to spit in her shoes.

There’s nothing surer…

Estelle, wearing a nightgown, was walking back and forth in a huge kitchen and singing to a fussy baby while Jacob, wearing a set of striped pajamas, warmed a bottle of milk in a pan of water on a gas stove.

The rich get rich and the poor get children…

The blue boy who had been crying in the bedroom with the rocking horse looked a little bit younger. He was standing next to a large bed and feeling annoyed that he hadn’t been allowed to climb into it next to his mother, because she was tired and his little sister was still too little. He suspiciously regarded the small green face peeping out from the bundled blanket. He was a Big Brother now, but he wasn’t totally sure that was an upgrade like Dad said.

Okay, he allowed. He guessed Sarah could stay — but only if she liked the song!

In the meantime…

She sat on the bed and sang it with them as Mom helped him pack a bag for school, and then she stood next to him and helped him pack a bag for university.

In between time…

Aunt Diane was at the train station in San Rosille waiting to pick him up and get him settled in his new apartment, before he met his new students. He could hear her singing a mile away. He laughed and the gentleman next to him in the cafe car regarded him oddly.

Ain’t we got fun?

“It’s Doris Day,” he said softly. “My grandparents had it on cylinder. My grandmother liked it, my first grandmother. She had all this syrupy music for the phonograph. ‘Side-By-Side.’ ‘A Bushel and a Peck.’ ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ But that was her favorite. I never met her, but Nana and Grandpa still wanted her to be part of the family. It was like we had a ghost. A good ghost who liked Doris Day.”

“I know,” Erik said. “I’m sorry.”

Seth shook his head. He spared a single hand to wipe his eyes. “It’s not that I mind seeing them again, Erik. It’s not that I mind you seeing them. But I can’t remember they’re gone and I have to find it out again every time. Please don’t help me anymore. Please just let me be sick.”

The radio spoke up, What about your nana and grandpa, did they shoot them too?

Erik winced and waved both hands for a pause.

No-no-no-no-no, said the radio in Erik’s voice. Shut up, you stupid thing, if you’re not going to…

Thunder rumbled again and the words faded.

I’m too slow to argue/explain, said the radio.

Erik nodded. He pointed down the stairs at the radio. The stringed amplifier box was lighting up with subtle flashes that didn’t always correspond to the sound and the glowing glass dial was flickering subtly. He shut his eyes and tried to think obvious thoughts.

The radio said: I won’t hurt you like that again. I practiced with you all last summer and I practiced with Milo when he hurt his head, and when I almost killed those guys…

The radio fizzled and interrupted itself, like changing a station, What? Seth leaned forward and wrapped both arms around Erik.

It doesn’t matter, said the radio. Nothing matters today because today sucks. Today doesn’t count. I won’t hurt you like that — I might hurt you a different way but not like that — but you have to trust me. That’s all. I don’t care about being a murderer or why Diane can talk like I do sometimes or what she and Jake did to that poor yellow lady…

Erik cut both hands in front of him with a disgusted expression, like when Milo wanted to say no but extra. The radio faded back into unintelligible fuzz. For now.

“Please?” said the green boy. He lifted a hand, then he put that one down very fast and lifted the other one. His right hand had a bloody broken nail; the left one had a bandage but at least that wasn’t Seth’s fault.

Seth shut his eyes and bowed his head. “All right.”

Erik noticed past his shoulder that Soup appeared to be yelling at him and strangling Ann, and Maggie was trying to dislodge him by pulling his hair. Erik’s expression twisted into a frown and the nothing in the basement doorway went flat gray like an instant window shade.

Yeah, that works, Erik thought. He touched Seth very gently.

Do you remember when we locked you in the basement for a week?

Something — not quite a hand, because Seth didn’t move — came up but went back down without trying to push him away.

(I do and I’m not thrilled, Erik…)

Erik snickered.

Do you remember when Calliope brought you all the stuff from her room and drew you a butterfly so it wouldn’t look like the basement anymore? Do you remember when she and Milo made you a tree out of tissue paper so you could have Yule down here too? Do you remember how Milo figured out how to warm up the basement with a toaster but it barely worked? Do you remember how we only had toilet paper to blow your nose because we ran out of tissues and Hyacinth kept giving you drugs but not good ones?

(This is less than ideal.)

Do you remember how we were always giving you Xinese soup in a cardboard cup in a paper bag because the drugstore with the phone was on the way back from the school and it was easiest and there are, like, five different kinds of soup so we figured you wouldn’t get bored of it but, like, we never asked which kind you wanted or gave you a menu?

(This is pretty silly but I guess it’s not so bad.)

That’s how we take care of people in this house and you’re stuck with us, but we’re going to try really hard not to mess you up more because we love you. And I’ll be here the whole time. Okay?

(Yes. Okay. Okay.)

Seth touched a hand to his brow and laughed weakly. “You guys are going to steal my pants again, aren’t you?”

“Prolly.” They were pretty messy. There was black gunk on them like when Uncle Mordecai tried to clean out the oven and gave up.

“Erik…” Seth put a hand to his mouth and Erik rolled out of his lap and backed off fast, because he didn’t want throw up on him besides whatever that was on Seth’s pants.

Seth sneezed and then pulled up his T-shirt collar and wiped his nose, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. This is the worst cold. Everything hurts.”

“It’s okay,” Erik said. He took the teacher’s hand. “Let’s go back to bed.”

“I’m going to get everyone sick…”

“Nah, not this time,” Erik said