Arty grumped and groaned and stomped, but came back

out in a minute with a box of cheese crackers. He hurtled

himself into a beanbag placed close enough to the TV he

could have read Braile on the screen, and turned on

cartoons loud enough to make me wince. He wasn't happy

to scoot back or turn it down, but he did. I tried to ignore

the crumbs spewing from his mouth with each guffaw.

I took my bag up the narrow stairs and down the dark,

close hal to the room at the back of the house. My mom

close hal to the room at the back of the house. My mom

had taken the front room, overlooking the street, with a

panel of four large windows. Arty's smaler room was

between hers and the bathroom. The room at the end

should've been a nice den, a sewing room, a playroom, but

for some reason nobody in the house used it.

There was a bed, at least, a creaking twin bed that

matched one of the dressers I'd inherited from my

grandma. The sheets were clean, and the bedspread, and

my mom had laid out clean towels for me, too. I set my

bag on the rickety, spindle-legged chair I'd never have

dared sit on, and I colapsed onto the bed. The ceiling had

cracks in it, and water damage. One high, narrow window

had a blind but no curtain. That would be pleasant in the

morning.

"Paiiiiige! I'm hungry!"

The wail drifted up the stairs and I heaved myself out of

the bed to holer, "I'l be right down!"

When I yanked the door opposite the foot of the bed,

though, al I did was chip a nail on the knob. The door

stayed stubbornly shut. Not the closet, then. It must have

been the door to the attic. I tried the one next to the

been the door to the attic. I tried the one next to the

dresser, revealing a set of wire hangers I used to quickly

hang my work clothes for the next couple days. Then it

was downstairs to the kitchen, which looked as if it had

been cleaned in preparation for my arrival.

Which meant my mom had wiped down the counters and

cleared out the sink, but the floor was a little sticky in front

of the fridge and crumbs coated the table. When I was

younger, it had never occurred to me that other people

stored leftover food in the fridge or the freezer. When we

got pizza it often stayed out on the counter until it was

gone. Sometimes she put it, stil in the box, in the oven until

we remembered to take it out and throw it away. My mom

cooked but haphazardly, so spaghetti sauce had always

made Rorschach blots on the stovetop and stiff noodles

stuck to the ceiling where she'd tossed them to see if the

pasta was done.

When I was in elementary school, I'd come down with

food poisoning. To be fair, it wasn't my mom's fault. I'd

spent the day with my dad at his country-club pool, where

they fed me extravagantly on fries and hot dogs instead of

making me eat the peanut butter and jely sandwich my

mom had packed for me. I brought it home and ate the

sandwich later that night for dinner. An hour after that, the

sandwich later that night for dinner. An hour after that, the

world began to spin. An eternal half hour after that, I

started to puke.

I had a morbid fear of food gone bad after that. I wouldn't

eat anything I suspected, even vaguely, of having turned.

When I opened my mom's fridge and saw the containers

and jars, al potentialy swimming with bacteria, my

stomach clenched tight in protest.

"Let's go out to eat, okay?"

I didn't have to say it twice. My arms filed with squirming

little boy as Arty tried to squeeze the breath out of me and

mostly succeeded. I put the kibosh on McDonald's, but

conceded to Wendy's, where he thought he tricked me

into letting him get a Frosty, when realy I just wanted an

excuse to get one for myself.

Inside the restaurant, Arty launched himself across the

room. "Leo!" Arty seemed incapable of using a voice at

anything less than a shout, but Leo didn't seem to care. He

patiently let Arty leap al over him, then looked at me over

the top of Arty's head.

"Hey, Paige."

"Hey, Paige."

I stuttered for a second. "What…hey. What are you doing

here?"

He lifted his bag of food. "Getting dinner."

Arty had settled back down to the toy he'd found in his

kids' meal bag. Leo was hesitating, but I gestured at the

table, and he sat. "It's good to see you, Leo."

"You, too. What's been going on?"

Of al my mom's boyfriends over the years, Leo was the

one I liked the best. He'd never tried to be my dad, and he

hadn't forced friendship on me, either. Maybe it was

because I was already grown up and moved out of my

mom's house when they started dating.

I glanced at Arty, lost in his own world of ketchup-firing

French-fry cannons. "I thought you and my mom were

going away together."

Leo's eyes never left mine, though his mouth set into a hard

line centered in his bushy, biker beard. "Obviously, we

didn't."

"So where did she go?"

He shrugged and looked away. "That's between you and

your mom, Paige."

Another guy? It had to be. Why else would Leo look so…

lost? And on a man his size, with that beard, the tattoos

and the denim biker vest, lost wasn't a look I'd ever

expected to see.

"I gotta run," Leo said and leaned across the table to ruffle Arty's hair. "Take care of the kiddo."

"Of course." I watched him head out and turned back to

Arty. "Where did Mama say she was going?"

"To a spar," he said.

"A spa?"

"Yeah, that's what I said. A spa. She's going to get a

message."

I sighed. "A massage?"

He grinned, showing the gap between his teeth where he'd

He grinned, showing the gap between his teeth where he'd

lost one. "Yeah."

"Alone?"

"I guess so." Arty shrugged.

It wasn't like I could realy expect him to know more, but

why had she lied to me?

I woke, disoriented, when a smal hand tugged my arm.

Expecting Arty, I sat up and fumbled for the light next to

my bed, but there wasn't one. I blinked until my eyes

focused, but my brother wasn't hovering over me. The

touch I'd felt had come from nothing.

I sat straight up, the blankets I'd tucked so carefuly

around me fighting against me now. At the foot of my bed

stood two smal children, both about Arty's age, clutching

each other's hands. Pale, white children I didn't need a

lamp to see because they both gleamed in the darkness.

Pale children with empty black holes where their eyes

should've been and blood dripping from their ragged

fingertips. Behind them, the attic door gaped wide.

I waited for the blood to start pouring out of the door like

it did in The Shining, but al that happened was they

it did in The Shining, but al that happened was they

stared. And stared. The pounding of my heart became a

roar and I did the only thing I had the courage to do. I

closed my eyes, then clapped my hands over them, too.

Nothing happened until I heard a smal voice whisper,

"Take care of us."

Then I screamed, and screamed and screamed…until I sat

straight up in bed to the sound of my phone ringing. The

attic door was stil closed. No ghostly children were

begging me to adopt them. The room wasn't even that

dark, lit as it was by the light from an outside streetlamp

through the window.

I stumbled out of bed and dug in my purse for my cel. My

heart had started pounding again, but for a different

reason. I got al kinds of texts and cals in strange hours,

but this one felt wrong, and I didn't recognize the number.

"Ms. DeMarco?"

"Yes, who's this?"

"This is Dr. Philips at the Hershey Med Center. I'm sorry

to cal you so late, but your mother's surgery has had some

to cal you so late, but your mother's surgery has had some

complications—"

I had to blink twice to make sure I wasn't stil dreaming

and even then I wasn't convinced. "I'm sorry, hold on a

second. Her surgery?"

"The breast-reconstruction surgery had some complica

tions," he explained patiently, probably used to waking

people up to give them bad news. "She's running a high

fever and has been hemorrhaging."

My mother had gone and got herself a boob job. I gritted

my teeth. "You're her plastic surgeon?"

"Yes. I've been working closely with her oncologist, Dr.

Frank, since your mother was diagnosed."

I was stil stupid. "Wait a minute. Her oncologist? I thought

she was having her breasts done."

"Your mother had a double mastectomy," the doctor said.

"With a planned reconstruction. But as I said, there are

complications."

I sagged against the headboard. "What kind of

complications?"

complications?"

"Can you come to the hospital?" he said. "I think you should."

Chapter 33

Leo probably hadn't even gone to bed yet when I caled

him to come sit with Arty and get him on the bus in the

morning. He was there in fifteen minutes. I should've been