The Keepers (17 page)

“Oh, hell yes. But I go back thin, I make sure it's out. It doesn't hurt the dragonfly, but it leaves a mark on me.”

Horace was feeling faintly horrified. It must have shown on his face, because Chloe scoffed at him again. “God, Horace, it's not that big a deal. It happens to me all the time.” She rocked forward onto her knees and cocked her left arm, showing Horace a small constellation of irregular scars below her elbow. “Rocks,” she explained. “Fell down crossing the train tracks one time and sort of flashed thin and thick again without really meaning to. Got some gravel in my skin for just a second.”

“Oh, man.”

She threw her other arm up over her shoulder, revealing her triceps and a jagged, purplish stretch of skin that went from her elbow to her armpit. “This was from a curtain. Backed into it, didn't know it was there.”

She hiked up the hem of her long shorts, revealing a small, faintly raised patch of thigh that Horace couldn't begin to identify. It was fan-shaped, square on one side but
sort of spiny on the other—it looked like a fossilized plant of some kind, embedded in her skin. “Corner of a book. Got distracted. Oh, and these,” she went on, putting both shins forward and showing front and back. All around the bottoms of her legs there were dozens of very faint, knife-thin scars. From far away, it looked like the skin was just lighter there, but up close he could see the texture of all the little blemishes. “Weeds,” Chloe said. “Just long grass, from the empty lot across the street. We used to play tag out there and I would . . . you know.” She grinned sheepishly at Horace. “Cheat. And then I'd go thick while I was running, and if I wasn't careful, the weeds would tear at me.”

Horace didn't know what to say. It all sounded awful. “You should be more careful.”

She hugged her legs against her chest. “Maybe. I'm much, much better than I used to be. And if I'm
really
in something—if something's overlapped with me deeply—I feel it right away when I start to go solid, and I stop before anything really awful happens.”

Horace tried to imagine what Chloe might consider “really awful.” He said, “You could, like, break bones and stuff.”

“Oh, I have. A long time ago. Actually, I could totally die. But I would have to really not be paying attention for that to happen. Or I would have to run out of breath inside something.”

“Run out of breath?”

“I can't do this forever, you know.” The dragonfly's wings
began to vibrate again, and Chloe began swaying, waving her arms around. She swung them through the floor like it was water. Through the walls, through the nightstand. She leaned over Loki where he lay like a loaf of bread and swept a hand through him, from rump to front. Loki's golden eyes got huge. As her hand emerged from his chest, he sprang up and spun in place, sniffing. He sat down and glared at Chloe. Chloe laughed and hugged herself, her face lit with intensity. “I'm holding it, like you hold your breath. I run out after a while,” she said. Then she went quiet, carefully stretching her arms out, free of everything. A moment later, the dragonfly went still too.

Horace thought of her hidden in the trunk of the tree. He tried to keep his voice light as he asked, “So, how long can you . . .”

“Stay thin?” Chloe finished. “Like two minutes, maybe. I've been practicing. Plus if my face is inside, I actually
do
have to hold my breath. But I can hold my breath for a long time.”

Two minutes. He'd saved her, then, that night in the park. He'd gotten Dr. Jericho away just in time. But still, two minutes inside the trunk of a tree—for someone with claustrophobic tendencies like Horace, the idea was unbearable. Suddenly a new thought occurred to Horace, both horrible and wonderful.

“So could you, like, go into the earth? I mean like undergr—”

“I can't,” Chloe said, cutting him off.

“But why not? You can go through walls and grass and trees. Metal, even—I've seen you. So what's to stop you from going underground?”

Chloe scowled at him. “I said I can't, okay? That doesn't happen.”

Horace frowned, annoyed. It didn't make sense that she wouldn't be able to go underground. Matter was matter. But he searched for something new to talk about. “So . . . weird fact about the box. It can't see itself. I never see the future box through the box.”

“That's strange.”

“And awesome.”

“Yeah.” Chloe looked down at the dragonfly. “Okay, here's one for me: I can hear the dragonfly. When the wings are going. I . . . hear it in my flesh. It sounds like music. Like a kind of wind that sings. No one else ever hears it.”

“That's cool. How about this—did you ever do anything really stupid with the dragonfly?”

“I think most of the things I've done with it are probably stupid,” Chloe said, tugging a strand of black hair and crossing her eyes to look at it. “Like, come on—cheating at tag?”

“No, I mean embarrassing. Because you didn't know any better yet. Like, at first I thought the box was just sending stuff someplace else—teleporting it, right? So I wrote a note and sent it through. I thought about it really hard. I said a major scientific discovery was happening, or something. I included
my address and I wrote ‘Chicago, Illinois, USA,
Earth
.'”

Chloe let out a little titter. “If the note's going
off the planet
, you don't need to put earth on there. You're probably screwed anyway.”

“Yeah, I thought of that later. Oh, and my dad found the note. After it came through.”

Chloe slapped her hand over her mouth and huffed into it, her eyes wide with delight.

Horace laughed with her, trying to stay quiet. “He goes, ‘I don't know whether to praise your creativity or question your sanity.'”

Chloe scooped Horace's pillow from the floor and buried her face in it. They laughed for a long time, Chloe's muffled shrieks leaking out. Horace hoped the pillow didn't stink or anything. At last she lifted her head and fell back against the wall. “Oh man. Oh man,” she said. “That is so funny.”

“Yeah, well. I figured it out. That's the important thing.”

Chloe pointed into the air over Horace's head. “Hey, there's a firefly in here.”

Horace turned and craned his neck. “Oh, that's just Rip.”

“Rip. You live with a firefly named Rip.”

Horace blushed. “Yeah, well, that's not his full name.” He stood up and scooped the bug out of the air. “It's twelve forty-five. He just got here.”

“What do you mean?”

For an answer, Horace held up the box. Chloe's eyes popped open. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. I guess—speaking of stupid things. But it was because of him that I even figured out what the box can do. With the viewings, I mean.” He knelt and gently deposited the bug inside the box. Loki watched with wide dark eyes, his tail thumping softly into the carpet.

“Is that safe?” Chloe asked, leaning forward to see.

“I've been doing it every night for over a week now. He seems fine.” Horace closed the lid. He felt the tingle, then reopened the box so Chloe could see the bug was gone.

“Little bug,” she called out. “Little Rip.” She sat back and cocked her head at Horace. “Horace, tell me you didn't name a firefly Rip Van Winkle.”

“I didn't.”

“No, you're cleverer than that. I'm close, though.”

“
Really
close,” Horace agreed, pleased that she'd called him clever.

She narrowed her eyes and chewed on the corner of her mouth. At last she said, “Horace, do you have a time-traveling lightning bug named Rip Van Twinkle?”

“I do.” They caught their laughs in their mouths again, rocking silently in the gloom.

Chloe pinched the bridge of her nose and let her hand fall into her lap with a sigh. “I don't laugh much, usually.”

Horace didn't know what to say to that. He fiddled with the lid of the box. “Anyway, it's your turn. Something embarrassing. Something dumb you did with the dragonfly.”

“Oh, that.” Chloe looked thoughtful for a bit, and then
she rolled her eyes. “Okay, but it's
really
embarrassing.”

“I won't laugh.”

“I don't care about that. Just . . . don't be gross about it.”

“I won't.” What did she mean,
gross
?

“Okay, so. When I first started going thin, I had a problem with my clothes.” She gave him a sideways glance. “If I stood still, I was fine, but as soon as I moved, my clothes wouldn't move with me, and I'd . . . you know. Be naked.”

Horace felt himself blushing again, hugely now, to hear Chloe use the word
naked
. He was grateful for the dim light in the room. “Wow, that's . . . really weird,” he said. He tried to be logical about it. “But I guess it makes sense. There's no substance for the clothes to hang on to.”

Chloe shrugged. “I guess. And even though things can't pass through me, of course I can pass through things, so as soon as I started walking, I walked right out of my clothes. My clothes would just fall in a pile where they were—shoes still tied, socks still inside them. Like I'd melted, or something.” She pointed at him. “I told you it was embarrassing.”

“No, it's cool. I mean, it's not
cool
. But it's interesting. The science of it is interesting.”

“The science.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I suppose. Anyway, like you said, I figured it out. I remember practicing, telling my clothes to come with me. I tried to think of them as a part of me, and eventually they just
were
. Now it's automatic.” She looked down at the dragonfly.
“I don't know. We just made it so it worked.”

We
, Horace thought. “Chloe, how long have you had the dragonfly?”

“Awhile. I don't remember how long.”

“Did you ever go back to the House of Answers?”

“You mean that place? That's what it's called? I don't know for sure I was ever there.”

“But you remember the birds. And you were in the neighborhood that day we met. Plus, where else would you have gotten the dragonfly?”

“I'm not lying to you, Horace. But okay, I'm in that neighborhood a lot because there's something there that . . . calls me. Or pulls at me. I don't know, I just feel drawn there. But I don't know what it is.”

“That's the House of Answers,” Horace said, leaning forward. “Mr. Meister says it draws the thin man there too.”

Chloe's face seemed to fight itself. Her brow kept twitching and her mouth seesawed—firm and determined one moment, lopsided and anxious the next.

“What is it?” Horace asked.

“The tall man. The freak.”

“Dr. Jericho.”

“That's his name?”

“He's not actually a doctor.”

“No kidding,” Chloe said, as if that was obvious. “Anyway, that day on the bus wasn't the first time you'd seen him, was it? I think you've probably talked to him, even.”

Horace shuddered, remembering his first encounter with Dr. Jericho. “I have. Once. And then he chased me off the bus that day you were there.”

Chloe fidgeted, looking uncomfortable. “Yeah, well. Get used to it. He follows me, all the time. Sometimes he's with two others like him. And I've seen other . . . strange things.”

“You mean like the girl with the flute?”

“Yes. I saw her talking to the freak once. But mostly it's just him—three or four times a week for the last few months. He's followed me here, even, but I make sure I lose him first. I've had some close calls.”

“I know, I—”

“I mean, I'm not afraid. Not for myself.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged and looked at him as if he were dumb. “Because I can't be caught. Period. But then there's my dad. And my sister.”

“Chloe, you should—”

“The freak was in my house.”

Horace tried to stay afloat atop the dread rising inside him. “What did you say?”

“Last night. Late. Talking to my dad. He was asking about me.” She swung a sad look at him. “And you.”

C
HLOE AND
H
ORACE STOOD AT THE BLUE DOORWAY TO THE
House of Answers. Chloe let out a slow, thoughtful sigh. “Yeah, right,” she said dreamily. “This place. This is the place.”

“You remember this?”

“Maybe. Like I've been here or I dreamed it, but I can't tell which.”

“How come you don't remember more?”

“Nobody's perfect, Horace. But you're forgiven for assuming.”

It was Monday, just after noon. The school year had ended for them both that morning, with a mostly pointless half day of school. Since their first long talk they'd been meeting every night, and Chloe had at last agreed to go to
the House of Answers. It turned out that when the thin man had showed up at Chloe's house asking questions, she hadn't been able to hear the whole conversation because she'd been hiding as only she could hide.
“In the heart,”
she'd said, which meant nothing to Horace. But Chloe had heard Dr. Jericho ask about her, about the dragonfly, about the boy with the box. It was unclear how Chloe's father had answered Dr. Jericho's questions, but Horace got the impression that something wasn't quite right with him. “My dad does some stupid things sometimes,” Chloe had explained. There was a little sister, Madeline, but she'd been at an aunt's house that night. No mention of a mother had been made at all.